Dr. Kathy Russell, the chair of the Philosophy Department, will be presenting a Sandwich Seminar on "Bringing Marginalized Communities into the Cuban Revolution" at 12:00-1:00 PM on November 9 in the Jacobus Lounge in Brockway Hall. She will be talking about some of the work that she did for her sabbatical last year and her research trip to Cuba.
Philosophically, Russell is interested in the shift in both liberal and socialist paradigms away from a universalist perspective to what social theorist Iris Marion Young has called a politics of difference. All over the world, new social movements have challenged the idea that human needs and interests are homogeneous, a perspective philosophy inherited from the Enlightenment. After the 1959 revolution in Cuba, social policy redistributed resources to guarantee universal access and equity in areas like jobs, health care, education, and land. The government gave special attention to the most vulnerable, so infants, people with disabilities, and pregnant women received more than others did, but the values of the revolution were consistent with a Marxist universalism.
In the 1990's, Cuba faced a severe economic crisis known as the Special Period. The government maintained its commitment to social services and in fact increased its expenditures for people in need, but heightened social inequality coupled with demands that cultural diversity be recognized have increased tensions in the Marxist. Government leaders and philosophers have said that "we do not have a theory to account for these changes."
The talk will explore these philosophical tensions and discuss some examples of Cuban social policy that fit into a new politics of difference. [1]
[1]Text taken from email written by Dr. Kathy Russell on November 8, 2006, with slight editing changes made by Karin Howe.
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Last updated 12/9/06