MONDAY NIGHT LECTURE SERIES | TAKE CARE  | SPRING 2023

Dark Feelings: Sentimentality and Gothic Abolitionism in Nineteenth-Century Cuba

Juan Esteban Plaza • Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Wesleyan University 

April 24th @ 6pm • Daniel Family Commons

In Latin America, nineteenth-century national romances were myth machines that played a significant role in organizing desire for future national subjects. It was as if the acute antagonisms inherited from centuries of colonial rule could be worked through the creation of a universal language of feelings, by which all citizens could participate in the same “pain alliance” (Lauren Berlant). In the case of Cuba, where independence came about at the end of the century, national romances are haunted by paradox. At once progressive and conservative, future and past-oriented, against slavery yet racist, these narratives challenge ideological reductionism, transfiguring into the colonial experience what Mario Praz called the romantic agony. By reading two cornerstones of Cuban literature, Sab (1841) and Cecilia Valdés (1882), this talk explores the inextricable relation between love and possession in abolitionist imaginaries, outlining a structure of negative feelings, a gothic sensitivity that underpins the process of national mythmaking.

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