Temporal Palimpsests: Critical Irrealism in Generation Zero's Cuba in Splinters

The work of Generation Zero (Generación Año Cero), a group of young Cuban writers who began to publish around the year 2000, has been characterized as rebellious and iconoclastic, and this is especially evident in their treatment of time. In these narratives, changes in temporality—the cessation of time, a unique temporal flexibility, the slowing down or speeding up of events or experiences—often serve as an entrance to a more speculative environment. Through the analysis of four stories from the anthology Cuba in Splinters (2014), this essay shows how these narratives employ "inmiscible times" or alternate temporalities to comment on or engage with Cuba's own complex positioning with regard to time. Despite the experimental nature of these narrative techniques, within the North American literary market the stories in this anthology run the risk of reifying the very national context it purports to reject. ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙