Sovereignties, Poetic and Otherwise
Chapter two traces the link between the Guerrilla or Foco in the early stages of the Cuban Revolution and the role of the dictation of the Muses in Romantic poetry. The chapter shows to what extent what is at issue is not simply a literary or aesthetic question, but the difficulty of confronting the void at the center of any politics. This void is not something that is offered as a motif by the arts, but the central evidence made available by the political upheavals in the Age of Revolution. Nevertheless, much of the intellectual, political, and artistic work that confronts that foundational abyss has no other aim than to cover it up. Thus, the central aim of the chapter is to bring into sharper focus the implications of a thought that is central to the history of modern aesthetics and politics, but which remains fundamentally occluded by that same archive.