Loving idols: K-pop and the limits of neoliberal solidarity in Cuba

Abstract

In the 2010s, new forms of hand-to-hand digital media piracy displaced state control over media distribution in Cuba and facilitated the influx of global media, including K-Pop, just as Cuban socialism came under renewed pressure through economic reform. In this context, this article contends, Cuban youth turned to K-pop to reimagine the self, sociality, and Cuba’s place in the world. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this article shows how K-pop appealed to fans by fostering fantasies of becoming enterprising individuals through neoliberal solidarity. These aspirations were reinforced by the industry’s pursuit of immediation, that is, its use of digital media to produce intimate and immediate connections that denied the mediations on which they depended. Ultimately, this article demonstrates how desires for and anxieties about immediacy motivate K-pop fandom and its geo-political imaginaries and how a global capitalist culture industry can appeal to fans by offering relief from the neoliberal capitalism it reproduces.