Our third interviewee in our “Public Intellectual Future” series is Gustavo Arcos Fernández-Britto, a film studies professor at the Arts University (formerly known as Instituto Superior de Arte or I.S.A.), in Havana. To the question of where he sees the role of public intellectuals in Cuba’s present and future, including his own, this is what he had to say:
Public intellectual? The question seems to grant the intellectual a purpose, a kind of fate, an inevitable “responsibility” towards his or her community. Simultaneously, it makes way for a role that, much like a character in a play, must be performed for an audience, following certain considerations.
In Cuba, it’s been the norm to expect intellectuals to legitimize or adorn the current political discourse without hesitation. The regime turns uncomfortable when intellectuals perceive, judge or critique government actions or society’s malaise from their artistic or theoretical platforms. The intellectual figure is publicly discredited, censured or nulled. Given that the Party controls all media sources, there is tension between the socialization of intellectual thought, be it through texts or artistic work, and the ideological interests of the state. Frequently, we hear the phrase: It’s not the right time for this. Such a response curbs the circulation of ideas in the public sphere.
On the other hand, there is an intentional symbiosis that blends the concepts of Patria [fatherland], Identity, Independence, and Nation with Revolution—the latter being understood as a political and ideological project that does not allow for refusal. But there is no Revolution in Cuba anymore—dogmatism, bureaucracy, rhetoric and boredom have kidnapped the Revolution. Uncertainty and pragmatism have taken possession over the greatest part of the population. Each day, Cubans must deal with labor, salary, housing and existential concerns, committing questions of spirituality or aesthetic pleasure to an inferior plane.
Corruption at all levels, constant emigration and class stratification are some of the phenomena present in today’s Cuba. Such questions (all of which the government professes to address) are far from the Revolution’s five-decade old social and emancipatory project. As often happens, ideas and discourse go one way while life goes the other. Today, a singer of reguetón or salsa, a comedian, or a street vendor who sells pirated audiovisual products, has a greater impact on his or her community than any cultural or educational institution. These individuals’ professional actions articulate or recycle the dynamics of “the real” which, by the way, are not to be found in official discourses or by turning these into paradigms of success or personal triumph.
Cuba is at a crossroads. Its identity and independence are once again at stake. It arrives at renewed relations with the United States with a grave problem in tow: its economy and technological infrastructure are weak and need rapid capital investment. Paradoxically, the necessary financing could come from that who was, until yesterday, Cuba’s worst enemy. Intellectuals will have to remain active during this process of transformation. The mission driving artistic creation and thought must be to offer autochthonous and functional cultural alternatives that protect our identities, our History, and our reason for being. Cuba has an extraordinary cultural history that was not born only from the Revolution.
We will have to learn to coexist and dialogue with all kinds of foreign experiences, showing the world what we are capable of while at the same time resisting dissolution.
No one holds the truth, of course. But I think that by establishing a dialogue with the other, by respecting difference, we will be able to arrive at some form of consensus that will generate development, tranquility, and spirituality. I have worked for fifteen years as a professor of film, in the Department of Audiovisual Media, at the Universidad de las Artes. I believe in experimentation and the rupturing of myths and pre-established models—in particular when they have ceased to be effective. I have extensive experience in radio, television, blogs and specialized journals. I believe in the kind of social critique that stems from intellectual responsibility and commitment to a series of values and ideas, but these must be put to the test once in a while. I teach my students and interlocutors to dig deeper, to seek out what may lie behind an image or idea. Even when there are thematic goals and a prescribed course of study, I prefer to incentivize dialogue and interactivity in the classroom. I like to move toward other fields of thought, in particular if it gets us closer to understanding who we are and where we are going in this country. I would feel satisfied if my public motion, as intellectual and educator, were to generate questions and to provoke and stir my listeners’ thinking in any one area of concern.
– Gustavo Arcos Fernández- Britto (Havana, Cuba, May 16th, 2015)
Translated from the original Spanish by Susannah Rodríguez Drissi.
Gustavo Arcos Fernández-Britto is a Professor of Film Studies at Cuba’s University of the Arts, formerly known as I.S.A. (Instituto Superior de Arte).
NOTES FROM THE TRANSLATOR: Translator’s notes are paratextual landscapes wherein the translator gives up his or her invisible position in order to address the reader directly. Beginning with the premise that there is no silent translation, I couldn’t help but share some brief impressions about the translated work: It has been one hundred and twenty-four years since the publication of José Martí’s “Our America” in 1891, and yet Gustavo Arcos’s anxieties about what is next for Cuba echo some of Martí’s own preoccupations in the essay regarding the island: namely, the need to find autochthonous ways to respond to both local and foreign interests and the menacing presence of what he called the “giant with the seven league strides” [el gigante de siete leguas]. It is thought-provoking to consider that, for Arcos, the island’s future may be as much at stake in the first decades of the twenty-first century, as it was for Martí at the end of the nineteenth century.