Desiderio Navarro Pérez

Researcher and critic of literature and art. Author of the books: Cultura y Marxismo. Problemas y polémicas (1986, Premio de la Crítica), Ejercicios del criterio (1989), Las causas de las cosas (2007) and A pe(n)sar de todo, Para leer en contexto (2008), as well as studies and articles published in journals and anthologies from Cuba and sixteen countries in Europe and America. Director of the journal Criterios.

Born in Camagüey, Cuba, on May 13, 1948. Since the mid-1960s, his studies and articles on literature, visual arts, aesthetics and culturology have appeared in various Cuban and foreign cultural journals and anthologies. He has published Cultura y marxismo. Problemas y polémicas (Premio de la Crítica), Ejercicios del criterio and Las causas de las cosas and A pe(n)sar de todo, Para leer en contexto.

His works have been published in the United States of America, Mexico, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Portugal, Spain, France, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Russia and Estonia. By invitation of academies of science, universities, foundations and other cultural institutions, he has traveled on more than sixty occasions to twenty-four countries in North America, Central America and South America, Western Europe and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, and has delivered lectures and presentations in nineteen of them.

He presided for eight years over the Section of Literary Criticism and Research of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC). For two years he was vice president of the Association of Writers of the UNEAC, and is president of the Cuban Center of the International Association of Literary Critics. He was permanent advisor to the University Institute of Higher Studies of Visual Arts Armando Reverón (Venezuela) and member of the Executive Committee of the Latin American Federation of Aesthetics. Since 1982 he has directed the theoretical journal Criterios (publication founded by him in 1972 and linked to Casa de las Américas since 1983) and in 2003 he founded the Theoretical-Cultural Center Criterios, whose activities he has directed since then.

Publications

He is also author of various anthologies, among which the following should be noted:

Cultura, ideología y sociedad, (1975, 1983).
Anatoli Lunacharski. Sobre cultura, arte y literatura, (1981, 1985).
Textos y contextos, v. I and II, (1986, 1989).
Patrice Pavis. El teatro y su recepción. Semiología, cruce de culturas y postmodernismo, (1994).
Iuri Lotman. La semiosfera, v. I, II and III, (Madrid, 1996, 1998, 2000).
Intertextualité. Francia en el origen de un término y el desarrollo de un concepto, (1997).
Image 1: Teoría francesa y francófona del lenguaje visual y pictórico, (2002). *Intertextualität 1:, Alemania en la teoría de la intertextualidad, (2004).
Stefan Morawski. De la estética a la filosofía de la cultura, (2006).

He has translated from sixteen languages (English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Croatian, Slovak, Romanian, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Portuguese, Norwegian and Dutch) more than four hundred fifty theoretical texts on culture, art and literature, published in Cuba, Spain and Mexico, and has organized more than forty national and international events (conferences, colloquia, etc.) on theory and criticism of these fields—among them the I and II International Meetings of Criterios (Havana, 1987 and 1989), and the First International Meeting of Theory of the Visual Arts (Caracas, 1992). He has been guest editor of Southern Atlantic Quarterly (USA) and Escritos (Mexico). He is a member of the Editorial Board of the following foreign academic journals: Escritos (Mexico), Kipus (Ecuador), Eutopías (Spain) and Entretextos (Spain).

Recognition

He has received the following distinctions:

Award for Criticism of Visual Arts of the UNEAC Salon (1985).
Mirta Aguirre Literary Criticism Award on two occasions (1983 and 1988).
UNEAC Translation Award on two occasions (1986 and 1991).
Award for Criticism of the Ministry of Culture (1987).
Razón de Ser Award of the Alejo Carpentier Cultural Center, (1988).
Translation Award of the Juan Marinello Cultural Center, (1989).
In 1988 he was awarded the Distinction For National Culture, by the Ministry of Culture of Cuba.
In 1989, the Order of Cultural Merit of the People's Republic of Poland.
In 1995 he was distinguished with the Award for the Career of a Latin American Critic, by the Argentine Association of Art Critics.
In 1996 he was declared an Illustrious Son by the Government of his native city, Camagüey, and received one of the fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (USA) for research. *In 1999 and 2005 he was distinguished with fellowships from the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development (Netherlands) for the continuation of his Criterios project.
In 2003 the Council of State of the Republic of Cuba awarded him the Alejo Carpentier Medal.
In 2006 he received—together with Juan Sánchez—the National Publishing Award annually granted by the Cuban Institute of Books.
In 2009 he received, for lifetime achievement, the Prince Claus Award from Holland.

Books in Editorial Process

"Rewind y Fast Forward"

Unpublished Books

"De la fosa al sol", 1972.

Anthologies

Cultura, ideología y sociedad (1975, 1983).
Anatoli Lunacharski. Sobre cultura, arte y literatura (1981, 1985).
Textos y contextos, v. I and II (1986, 1989).
Patrice Pavis. El teatro y su recepción. Semiología, cruce de culturas y postmodernismo (1994).
Iuri Lotman. La semiosfera, v. I, II and III (Madrid, 1996, 1998, 2000).
Intertextualité. Francia en el origen de un término y el desarrollo de un concepto (1997).
Image 1: Teoría francesa y francófona del lenguaje visual y pictórico (2002).
Árbol del Mundo: Diccionario de imágenes, símbolos y términos mitológicos (2002).
Intertextualität 1: Alemania en la teoría de la intertextualidad (2004).
Stefan Morawski. De la estética a la filosofía de la cultura (2006).
El Postmoderno, el postmodernismo y su crítica en Criterios (2007)

Journals

Since 1982 he has directed the theoretical journal Criterios (publication founded by him in 1972 and linked to Casa de las Américas since 1983). National and foreign periodical publications that have published texts supplied by Criterios.

La Gaceta de Cuba
Casa de las Américas
Revolución y Cultura
El Caimán Barbudo
Unión
Tablas
Conjunto
Temas
Semiosis (Mexico)
Texto Crítico (Mexico)
Escritos (Mexico)
Southern Atlantic Quarterly (USA)
Kipus (Ecuador)
Eutopías, (Spain)
Entretextos (Spain)

Regarding His Work

«Throughout all these years at the helm of the journal Criterios and the Theoretical-Cultural Center, Desiderio has been seen betting on creative and anti-dogmatic Marxism as a doctrine capable of interpreting reality. The publication of Las causas de las cosas puts at the disposal of the Cuban reader analyses on the role of the intellectual as well as essays on happening, kitsch, semiotics and testimony, among other central matters of culture, art and society. Essays such as these serve to enchant and re-enchant us in taste, in pleasure, in the lucidity, of living in a revolutionary way, in finding beauty only in complexity, in worrying about the color of the past, as Desiderio said recently, but above all about the color of the future.»[1]
Rinaldo Acosta