LIVES ON HIATUS, VEHEMENT WRITINGS:

IMPRESSIONS AND EXPRESSIONS OF THE CUBAN INTELLIGENTSIA IN EXILE

Abstract

Through the literary, autobiographical, and epistolary writings by Reinaldo Arenas, this paper analyzes the conflicts in Cuban intellectual networks during the 1980s. Inspecting the writer's experience in the United States, his symbolic world of meanings regarding the Revolution and its social issues has been subjected to the signs of engagement and aporia. This approach proposes removing him from the position of the victim of the Revolution and allocating him as one of its notable interlocutors. Using the notions of representation, memory, and testimony, we seek to identify how the writer, among other political dissidents, was affected and reacted to the condition of exile, turning his writings into political and sociocultural intervention instruments.