The Aesthetics of Alienation and the Problem of Emancipation: The Case of Cuban and Salvadoran Smartphone Media

This article analyzes mobile videography in Cuba and El Salvador through the lens of critical theory, focusing on how aesthetic strategies deployed by female creators negotiate alienation and pursue symbolic or material emancipation. Drawing on Rahel Jaeggi’s theory of alienation and Habermasian concepts of communicative action, this study compares rural Salvadoran soap-opera-style productions with Cuban urban visual satire. While Salvadoran videos often depict domestic resilience within modest settings without overt critique, Cuban creators highlight urban decay and employ irony to expose social contradictions. Using a qualitative, interpretive approach, this study identifies three core dynamics: (1) contrasting aesthetic strategies shaped by cultural and infrastructural contexts, (2) divergent modes of appropriation and authorship enabled by mobile technologies, and (3) emergent, though partial, forms of emancipation, most notably among women, through creative autonomy and economic self-positioning. Ultimately, the findings suggest that under conditions of structural alienation, the mobile phone camera becomes a symbolic tool through which creators, especially women, negotiate meaning, reclaim interpretive agency, and pursue situated forms of partial emancipation.