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Thesis

French

ID: <

10670/1.u5ofay

>

Where these data come from
Technocontestations in Cuba : repairs, re-appropriations and alternative uses of technology

Abstract

This dissertation aims to understand the processes of resilience in the technical field in Cuba. I postulate that a specific technical culture has been forged. This culture was fostered by the superstructural elements linked to revolutionary ideology, but it is also dependent on a history of various technical breakthroughs (i.e the change in technical standards with the mass arrival of Soviet aircraft, material shortages linked to the restrictions of the Bloqueo on the transport of products and spare parts to repair the existing fleet and the sudden disappearance of Soviet factories and objects and spare parts produced, etc.). I have identified tactics put in to ensure that daily life can continue and I have referred to them as "technocontestations". The genesis of these practices is to be understood on a macro scale, by analyzing state strategies to fight imperialism on the one hand, and on the other hand, from below, by looking at popular tactics in everyday life whose origin can be found in a much more ancient form of mètis. The dialectic between these two scales, macro and micro, seemed to me to be the starting point for thinking about a regime of contestation in the technical sphere. I postulate, alongside Jacques Ellul and Andrew Feenberg, that the technical sphere constitutes an increasingly autonomous space and that the study of tools and objects allows us to have a grip on the contesting practices of the Technician System. Focusing on observing appropriations, repairs and reappropriations are all elements to be taken into account in order to understand this register of struggle and the modalities of resistance and how these can be exported to other fields.

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