ABSTRACT
Toward the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, cultural critics in Cuba analyzed the trends that had been emerging in the artistic sphere and began to reinvent the concept of civil society, challenging the longstanding taboo on the topic. Under Cuba’s changing conditions, Gramsci’s ideas on civil society (which had not been written about in Cuba for nearly two decades) were taken up by intellectuals as an alternative to dogmatic Soviet-style socialism (De la Nuez, 1989; Fowler, 1989; Hernández, 1994). Of particular interest was the role of the artistic intellectual in the socialist system. Accordingly, the analyses reflected the heightened profile of art and cultural production during the second half of the 1980s. I argue below that the activity that sprang from the cultural and artistic sphere, including plastic art, theatre, literature, and popular culture, opened a new space in the public sphere for autonomous, critical expression and, in doing so, sparked an expansion of civil society in Cuba.
