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“Cultural history is rarely straightforward. Its discontinuities, misdirections, and contra- dictions are all compounded by contacts between cultures.”

Dickran Tshjian, A Boatload of Madmen

Clifford explores the influence that surrealism had in ethnography between the two World Wars. During the 1920s and 30s the two spheres developed in close proximity. Surrealism, in Clifford’s words, is “an aesthetic that values fragments, curious collections, unexpected juxtapositions- that work to provoke the manifestation of extraordinary realities drawn from the domains of the erot- ic, the exotic, and the unconscious” (119). The introduction of views that are different from Western ones is central for ethnography: “To see culture and its norms- beauty, truth, reality- as artificial arrangements susceptible to detached analysis and comparison with other dispositions is crucial to an ethnographic attitude” (119). The relativity of cultural values was a step toward the development of surrealism and ethnography: “Modern surrealism and ethnography began with a reality deeply in question. Others appeared now as serious human alternatives; modern cultural relativism became possible” (118).

Clifford’s reflection about the interrelation between surrealism and ethnography points to the figure of Cuban folklorist Lydia Cabrera and identifies some of the motifs behind her fasci- nation with the Afro- Cuban world. In 1920 Cabrera moved to Paris to study painting. While liv- ing there she came in contact with the surrealist and Negritude movements which increased her curiosity for Afro- Cuban culture. In the wake of this contact she proceeded to shift her interest from painting to folklore. The aesthetics of the surrealist group persuaded her plural appreciation

of reality. Cabrera’s travels away from her native surroundings and society, first as a student in Paris and secondly during her exile in Miami, gave her a new perspective on Cuba6. Cabrera searched for tradition among the Afro-Cuban people: she explored the Afro-Cuban universe and culture in search of a mythical past that would connect this transcultural identity with its present in Cuba7. It is within the past that Cabrera finds a meaningful present. In her book, Itinerarios del insomnio (1977), the author analyzes, while living in Miami, the necessity of returning to ear- lier times in order to confront exile and live in it: “Al no ofrecer alegrías el presente ni esperanzas el porvenir, se siente la necesidad de refugiarse en el pasado. Un bello pasado puede consolarnos de todas las fealdades del presente”8

(1). When talking about the past in relation to making the present bearable, Cabrera, in my opinion, personalizes the needs of Afro- Cuban people, who after being brought from Africa to the New World were disconnected from their his- toric roots. Granting access to history and tradition, which was part of Cabrera’s agenda, enables a reconnection of the Afro- Cuban people to their ancestry through folklore. As Cabrera points out in relation to her status as exile, the previous times give meaning to the present, making it bearable. The past happiness, the one she found while living in Cuba researching Afro- Cuban folklore, allowed Cabrera to overcome the toughness of living outside her homeland. Similarly, Afro-Cuban people needed to touch their past and history in order to live in the moment: being aware of their cultural tradition provided the base to fully develop their individuality and culture in a different geographical enclave. Amy Nauss Millay in Voces from the Fuente Viva (2005) shares this thought: “El Monte reflects the author’s longing for a coherent and authentic source of tradition” (49). Millay analyzes Cabrera’s work in relation to that of other Cuban writers who

6 _{Different speculations, such as her relationship with a powerful Afro -Cuban religious division, surround Cabre-}

ra’s exile in Miami, but the one that seems more plausible is her sexual orientation. Cabrera was homosexual.

7 _{‘transcultural’ is a term used by Fernando Ortiz’s in Contrapunteo Cubano.}

8 _{Because the present does not offer any happy things and the future is not hopeful, one needs to take refuge in the}

found in orality a way of addressing the multiple planes of reality9. Millay highlights Cabrera’s focus on “realistic cultural representations. Their texts are authenticated by the portrayal of actu- al encounters with other voices. In both their narratives and ethnographies, oral language is orga- nized into coherent accounts, and orality takes on an aesthetic function”10 (24). Such representa- tion of different voices also illustrates “a desire to foster cultural diversity in an age of moderni- zation” (25). Her argument reiterates Clifford’s analysis of surrealism and ethnography.

Dickran Tshjian states, in the introduction to this section, that cultural history is the result of multiple cultural encounters; in other words, history is a product of diversity. Modernity rec- ognizes this multiplicity and as Clifford signals, cultural relativism is a strategy to examine this variety. Zora Neale Hurston states in Dust Tracks on a Road: “Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person. That is natural. There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it sees it from its own angle. So every man’s spice box seasons his own food” (45). Cabrera’s personal background in relation to the subject of her study echoes this interest in multiplicity. A member of the white upper class in Cuba, she enjoyed the privilege of having Afro-Cuban servants. Through her contact with them, she learned about folklore. It was during her stay in Paris that her interest for it shifted and transformed when she understood its importance in narrating a different existence. As Edna M. Rodriguez–Mangual states in Lydia Cabrera and the Construction of an Afro- Cuban Cultural Identity (2004) Cabrera’s writings: “struggled to redefine the identity of the otherwise marginalized Afro-Cubans and to reinsert their history into the broader understanding of Cuban identity. In so doing, she also rewrote the

9 _{By orality I refer to story -telling as an aesthetic and anthropological tool of representation. This idea of orality will}

be explored on chapter 3 of this dissertation: it signals the opposition between Western ways of documenting and preserving history through writing whereas African based identities used storytelling to preserve and create history and tradition.

10 _{Millay analyzes the work of different Cuban writers who contribute to the aesthetic of orality during the 1920 and}

narration of the nation”(3). Cabrera asserts the importance that folklore has in its oral elaboration of Afro-Cuban history; as a result, she authentically represents and includes it inside Cuba’s na- tional discourse