ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the central role that meat and other animal products played as metaphors in Cuban and Egyptian literary and artistic scenes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It explores the changing relationship between citizens as consumers and the state as provider in both countries through an analysis of two famous plays, Manteca and al-Rajul al-Ladhi Akala Wizza. The chapter seeks to provide the prevalent assumption of the "failure" of the postcolonial state project and focuses on their metaphoric employment of animal products. As part of Castro's and Nasser's socialist projects that aimed to "modernize" and "elevate" their respective nations especially meat, cheap and widely available in the process changing or reifying ideas about food consumption and health. Through nostalgia and the expression of unfulfilled desires, such narratives present nuanced and complex afterlives of Castro's and Nasser's projects that complicate claims that the postcolonial or national liberation moments are outdated, obsolete, or done.
