Reference (concepts) Back
to: Reference
(index) Home
|
Name: Keywords: Key figures: Aphorism: Political utility: Associations: |
Surrealism Aesthetic modernism, detournement,
Andre Breton, Louis Aragon, Phillippe
Soupault, Paul Eluard, Robert Desnos, Bataille,
Magritte, Dali Bureau of Surrealist Inquiries
(1924) |
|
The totality here is formed as a juxtaposition between unrelated objects. Hence the idea of e.g. a chance encounter between a
sewing machine and an umbrella on a
dissecting table. Or for another example, the infamous lobster telephone.
“The surrealist image is thus a convulsive effort to split open the commodity forms of the objective universe by striking them
against each other with immense
force” (Fred Jameson, Marxism and Form
1971, p 96)
Martin
Jay argues the surrealist influence was formative in reviving Hegel in France and
for vitalising an anti-Cartesian idea of the whole.
Surrealism is important to study for its links to Dada (from which it emerged) and subsequently situationalism, but it also exacted a strong
influence on Marxist
thinkers like Henri Lefebvre, and has roots through Lettrism with situationalist
movement.
Both
Sartre and Adorno vehemently against, whilst favoured by Benjamin and Marcuse.
There is
a strong theme of individual liberation as requiring communal transformation
“The definitive rupture is
explained if one considers that Marxism insisted on the submission of the irrational,
while the surrealists rose to defend irrationality to the death, Marxism tended toward
the conquest of totality, and surrealism, like all spiritual experiences, tended toward
unity. Totality can demand the submission of the irrational, if rationalism suffices to
conquer the world. But the desire for unity is more demanding. It does not suffice that
everything should be raitonal. It wants above all, the raitonal and irrational to be reconciled
on the same level....for Andre Breton, totality could be only a stage, anecessary stage perhaps, but certainly inadequate, on the way that leads to unity.”
Albert Camus, The Rebel: An essay on Man in revolt.
Quoted in Martin Jay pp 287.
|
|
On this site |
On other sites |
Rating |
|
Read essay |
|
|
|
Resources |
Surrealism.
The last snapshot of the European intelligentsia. By Walter Benjamin,
1929 |
|
|
Bibliography |
|
|
|