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“La cosa esta que vino después”: Reading Testimonial Literature, Well-Being, and Narrative During the Batalla de Ideas

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The Social Life of Literature in Revolutionary Cuba

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Abstract

The chapter summarizes the main aims of the Batalla de Ideas campaign from 2000 to 2007, designed to counteract the corrosive impact of the Período Especial via a renewed emphasis on nation-building through culture and education. The campaign thus once again acknowledged explicitly the social function of literature and the centrality of cultural participation to individual/national well-being. The chapter presents the results of a reader-response study undertaken with a small but generationally diverse group of readers of testimonial texts in Havana in 2002. This study illustrates that the core value systems behind, and criteria for, SWB that had characterized the first three decades were still relevant in different ways, despite significant social change.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Reading, Reading, UK

    Par Kumaraswami

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  1. Par Kumaraswami
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Kumaraswami, P. (2016). “La cosa esta que vino después”: Reading Testimonial Literature, Well-Being, and Narrative During the Batalla de Ideas . In: The Social Life of Literature in Revolutionary Cuba. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55940-1_5

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