Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the Cuban cultural imagination as a site of diasporic practice through an examination of the experiences with emigration and the narration of absence by Cubans currently living on the island.

Paper long abstract:

Based on the on-going PhD project of the same title, this paper proposes to rethink the concept of Cuban diaspora by exploring the experience and narration of diasporic absence in contemporary Cuba. Fundamentally, the present research examines emigration and diaspora as central features of contemporary Cuban society but, crucially, understands these processes as lived simultaneously by both those who emigrate and those who do not. Through interviews conducted in Cuba, the narratives of those who have not emigrated serve to interrogate some assumptions that characterise the study of Cuba and attempt to account for the complexity of the Cuban cultural encounter with emigration, exile and diaspora. A generational approach is employed to better understand how the absence of family members, friends, colleagues and compatriots has been experienced over several generations of Cubans living on the island. The complex, intertwined, multiple and emotional processes of migration and transnational relationships narrated in the interview material reveal the cultural penetration of the diasporic condition in the Cuban imagination. Through these various diasporic imaginaries, negotiated and edified as narratives, a more nuanced understanding is permitted of the dialogical cultural practice of diaspora in contemporary Cuban society.