This article discusses the polysemy and the political value of the term “Revolution” as a category of practice in Cuba, and analyzes the temporality and historicity that this term – ubiquitous and fetishized in this country – presupposes and helps to produce. Pointing out that the temporality of the “Revolution” in Cuba has a repetitive rather than a teleological character, the text makes two interrelated arguments. First, the use of this keyword has contributed to the political conformity and to the maintenance of socialism in Cuba. Second, the historicity underlying the generalized use of the term “Revolution” in Cuba establishes a close relationship between past and present, and produces a temporality that is highly heterogeneous and full of symbolic content. This notion of temporality challenges the prevailing scholarly view that nationalism is associated with an empty and homogeneous time.
Nationalism; Revolution; Temporality; Cuba; Walter Benjamin