Description
Book SynopsisFocused on the intimate effects of large-scale economic transformations, this book illuminates how everyday efforts to imagine, resist, and enact market reforms shape sexual desires and subjectivities.
Trade Review"Immersing herself in Havana’s gay culture, Stout, an American anthropologist, gives readers a street-level view of the turbulent changes under way in Cuba, as Cuban society gradually transitions from conformist socialism to a more market-oriented individualism." -- Richard Feinberg * Foreign Affairs *
“As an ethnography,
After Love gives a richly evidenced account of how Latin America’s neoliberalization changes the very possibilities for economic and intimate relationships. Focusing on queer identities, Stout’s work is a welcome addition to the scholarship on neoliberalism in the region as it is able to illustrate the complex interplay through which neoliberal subjects constitute themselves through the resistance, re-imagining and embracing new forms of economic transfers through ‘love’ relationships.” -- M. Gabriela Torres * European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies *
"In
After Love, Noelle Stout provides a refreshing take on a widely-studied topic: sex tourism and hustling in contemporary Cuba. Focusing on a handful of case studies of mostly young habaneros trying to get by in a hostile economy and rapidly changing social and political environment, this is ethnography at its best: powerful portrayals of daily life presented in an engaging and elegant style." -- Carrie Hamilton * Journal of Latin American Studies *
"Stout's attention to experiences of abandonment, betrayal, and disillusionment adds to the growing scholarship on Cuban sexual identities under neoliberalism and raises important question about populations in Cuba's economies of desire who have reached the outer limits of affective exchanges." -- Karina Lissette Cespedes * GLQ *
“
After Love is a very good book, well written, sympathetic, and insightful. It wears its sophisticated theory lightly, making it both accessible and rewarding to read as much as for the picture of contemporary Cuba it paints as for the more general insights it provides into how people negotiate the contradictions life throws at them.” -- Mark Graham * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *
"This book is a timely and important contribution to contemporary anthropological accounts of queer sexual politics in Cuba. Beyond anthropologists specializing in Cuba or the Caribbean, this book is of interest to Cuban historians, professors and students of gender studies, scholars working on the intersection of neoliberalism and desire, and those utilizing affect theory. Stout’s debut is an extremely useful contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship on contemporary Cuban sexual culture." -- Lisa M. Corrigan * QED *
"
After Love is a must-read for anyone interested in gender, sexuality, and queer politics in the Caribbean and is
also a good read for those seeking to understand the broader socioeconomic contradictions of Cuba’s postsocialist transition. The engaging and crisp prose, rich with thick description and methodological intuitions, makes it an excellent text for assigning in undergraduate and graduate courses." -- Mrinalini Tankha * American Anthropologist *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction. Can't Be Bought or Sold? Love and Intimacy in the Aftermath of Crisis
1. Tolerated, Not Accepted: The Historical Context of Queer Critiques
2. A Normal Fag with a Job: The Complicated Desires of Urban Gays
3. Tell Me You Love Me: Urban Gay Men Negotiate Commodified Sex
4. Smarter Than You Think: Sex, Desire, and Labor Among Hustlers
5. Get Off the Bus: Sex Tourism, Patronage, and Queer Commodities
Conclusion. Love in Crisis: The Politics of Intimacy and Solidarity
Notes
Bibliography
Index
