Conclusion

Summary

I have argued in this study that dialogism is at the core of the Cuban literature produced in the 1990s, having a particular fluidity that had not been seen in earlier decades. I have posited that the decade that I study here represents a narrative junction, in part as a response to the hardship and social changes following the 1980 Mariel boatlift and particularly during the Special Period in the early 1990s. The latter is especially relevant for the writers studied here, except for Reinaldo Arenas who left Cuba during the Mariel boatlift. His response was more politically motivated from the very beginning, but I have used his work to indicate the turning point that led to more dramatic narrative changes in the Cuban novel of the 1990s. Indirectly, I have studied similarities and differences in a selection of writers from this decade, starting with Arenas, who died in 1990, but whose novel El color del verano was published posthumously in 1991 and prepared the ground for a new era of writing. I have studied issues concerning dialogism and polyphony, carnival and simulacra, intertextuality, the rewriting of history and the resulting palimpsest, erotic discourse, the body as a feminine strategy used by women authors and the use of language to particular effect between the Semiotic and the Symbolic. It has been my aim to allow the texts to suggest new readings. I have favoured close critical readings in combination with relevant theoretical approaches that shed light on the texts, particularly because the writers themselves seem to adapt to current literary trends.