This lecture is devoted to studying the visual representations of José Martí’s body, and the discourses of power that make it possible for Martí’s images to be perceived as icons today. In this lecture he discusses, from a critical perspective, the retrospective reconstruction that an interested observer of Martí’s image today has to experience in order to participate in the iconicity of Martí’s visual representations. How and why has Martí’s visual image become a Cuban national icon? What political, aesthetic, and phenomenological factors have contributed to the enormous success of Martí’s image as icon through different and even radically opposed governments and ideological configurations? He explores these and other questions in different moments of Martí’s life and Cuban history.
