Abstract

In this article I analyze the early years of Ultra Cultura Contemporánea. Revista de revistas, published in Havana by Cuban ethnologist Fernando Ortiz between 1936 and 1947. My focus is to explore the role that science has in the definition of culture that this clipping magazine states as a cultural project. I suggest that the clippings of US popular science journals such as Popular Science (1872-today) and Science (1880-today) that Ultra publishes and the translation processes they undergo in the journal are part of a transcultural praxis. Through this praxis, Ultra promotes an ecology of knowledge, inscribing foreign technique in trajectories which interrupt the definitions of life in the years prior to World War II from Ortiz's vitalist materialism. This materialism is expressed in the magazine's editorials from an arborescent imaginary, conceiving nature and culture within a continuum.