'Architecture is repetition': adapting postcolonial spatial theory for post-Revolutionary socialist Cuba

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Ramone, J. ORCID: 0000-0003-3508-4796, 2019. 'Architecture is repetition': adapting postcolonial spatial theory for post-Revolutionary socialist Cuba. Interventions, 21 (7), pp. 959-976. ISSN 1369-801X

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2019.1585909

Abstract

This paper brings architectural theory into contact with spatial theory developed in literary and cultural studies and human geography. Arguing that the basic principles of postcolonial and of Marxist spatial theories (as applied by David Harvey, Achille Mbembe, Doreen Massey, Edward Soja) require significant adaptation for a Cuban context, this paper begins to develop a new spatial theory appropriate to socialist post-Revolutionary Cuba. This adapted spatial theory which builds on architectural practice and theories can be applied to Cuban literary culture: this paper briefly examines the annual Havana book fair and literary festival, Feria. An examination of social space in Havana, and its representation in texts that provide an insight into those spaces for “global” readers, needs to be alert to the ways in which the politics of space remains foregrounded in Cuba, as well as the extent to which the accommodation of policies compatible with capitalist global trade and tourism begins to replicate the inequalities of capitalist spatial configurations.

Item Type:

Journal article

Publication Title:

Interventions

Creators:

Ramone, J.

Publisher:

Routledge

Date:

2019

Volume:

Number: