Sacred Surrealism, Dissidence and International Avant-Garde Prose

Sacred Surrealism, Dissidence and International Avant-Garde Prose

Author: Vivienne Brough-Evans

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-12-12

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9780367881023

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Vivienne Brough-Evans proposes a compelling new way of reevaluating aspects of international surrealism by means of the category of divin fou, and consequently deploys theories of sacred ecstasy as developed by the Collège de Sociologie (1937-39) as a critical tool in shedding new light on the literary oeuvre of non-French writers who worked both within and against a surrealist framework. The minor surrealist genre of prose literature is considered herein, rather than surrealism's mainstay, poetry, with the intention of fracturing preconceptions regarding the medium of surrealist expression. The aim is to explore whether International surrealism can begin to be more fully explained by an occluded strain of 'dissident' surrealist thought that searches outside the self through the affects of ekstasis. Bretonian surrealism is widely discussed in the field of surrealist studies, and there is a need to consider what is left out of surrealist practice when analysed through this Bretonian lens. The Collège de Sociologie and Georges Bataille's theories provide a model of such elements of 'dissident' surrealism, which is used to analyse surrealist or surrealist influenced prose by Alejo Carpentier, Leonora Carrington and Gellu Naum respectively representing postcolonial, feminist and Balkan locutions. The Collège and Bataille's 'dissident' surrealism diverges significantly from the concerns and approach towards the subject explored by surrealism. Using the concept of ekstasis to organise Bataille's theoretical ideas of excess and 'inner experience' and the Collège's thoughts on the sacred it is possible to propose a new way of reading types of International surrealist literature, many of which do not come to the forefront of the surrealist literary oeuvre.


Sacred Surrealism, Dissidence and International Avant-Garde Prose

Sacred Surrealism, Dissidence and International Avant-Garde Prose

Author: Vivienne Brough-Evans

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-05

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1317060164

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Vivienne Brough-Evans proposes a compelling new way of reevaluating aspects of international surrealism by means of the category of divin fou, and consequently deploys theories of sacred ecstasy as developed by the Collège de Sociologie (1937–39) as a critical tool in shedding new light on the literary oeuvre of non-French writers who worked both within and against a surrealist framework. The minor surrealist genre of prose literature is considered herein, rather than surrealism's mainstay, poetry, with the intention of fracturing preconceptions regarding the medium of surrealist expression. The aim is to explore whether International surrealism can begin to be more fully explained by an occluded strain of 'dissident' surrealist thought that searches outside the self through the affects of ekstasis. Bretonian surrealism is widely discussed in the field of surrealist studies, and there is a need to consider what is left out of surrealist practice when analysed through this Bretonian lens. The Collège de Sociologie and Georges Bataille's theories provide a model of such elements of 'dissident' surrealism, which is used to analyse surrealist or surrealist influenced prose by Alejo Carpentier, Leonora Carrington and Gellu Naum respectively representing postcolonial, feminist and Balkan locutions. The Collège and Bataille's 'dissident' surrealism diverges significantly from the concerns and approach towards the subject explored by surrealism. Using the concept of ekstasis to organise Bataille's theoretical ideas of excess and 'inner experience' and the Collège's thoughts on the sacred it is possible to propose a new way of reading types of International surrealist literature, many of which do not come to the forefront of the surrealist literary oeuvre.


The Routledge Companion to Surrealism

The Routledge Companion to Surrealism

Author: Kirsten Strom

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-11-08

Total Pages: 516

ISBN-13: 1000735931

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This book provides a conceptual and global overview of the field of Surrealist studies. Methodologically, the companion considers Surrealism’s many achievements, but also its historical shortcomings, to illuminate its connections to the historical and cultural moment(s) from which it originated and to assess both the ways in which it still shapes our world in inspiring ways and the ways in which it might appear problematic as we look back at it from a twenty-first-century vantage point. Contributions from experienced scholars will enable professors to teach the subject more broadly, by opening their eyes to aspects of the field that are on the margins of their expertise, and it will enable scholars to identify new areas of study in their own work, by indicating lines of research at a tangent to their own. The companion will reflect the interdisciplinarity of Surrealism by incorporating discussions pertaining to the visual arts, as well as literature, film, and political and intellectual history.


Angela Carter and Surrealism

Angela Carter and Surrealism

Author: Anna Watz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-07-15

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1134968612

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In 1972, Angela Carter translated Xavière Gauthier’s ground-breaking feminist critique of the surrealist movement, Surréalisme et sexualité (1971). Although the translation was never published, the project at once confirmed and consolidated Carter’s previous interest in surrealism, representation, gender and desire and aided her formulation of a new surrealist-feminist aesthetic. Carter’s sustained engagement with surrealist aesthetics and politics as well as surrealist scholarship aptly demonstrates what is at stake for feminism at the intersection of avant-garde aesthetics and the representation of women and female desire. Drawing on previously unexplored archival material, such as typescripts, journals, and letters, Anna Watz’s study is the first to trace the full extent to which Carter’s writing was influenced by the surrealist movement and its critical heritage. Watz’s book is an important contribution to scholarship on Angela Carter as well as to contemporary feminist debates on surrealism, and will appeal to scholars across the fields of contemporary British fiction, feminism, and literary and visual surrealism.


Magic Realism, World Cinema, and the Avant-Garde

Magic Realism, World Cinema, and the Avant-Garde

Author: Felicity Gee

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-04-19

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1315312794

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This book follows the hybrid and contradictory history of magic realism through the writings of three key figures – art historian Franz Roh, novelist Alejo Carpentier, and cultural critic Fredric Jameson – drawing links between their political, aesthetic, and philosophical ideas on art’s relationship to reality. Magic realism is vast in scope, spanning almost a century, and is often confused with neighbouring styles of literature or art, most notably surrealism. The fascinating conditions of modernist Europe are complex and contradictory, a spirit that magic realism has taken on as it travels far and wide. The filmmakers and writers in this book acknowledge the importance of feeling, atmosphere, and mood to subtly provoke and resist global capitalism. Theirs is the history of magic-realist cinema. The book explores this history through the modernist avant-garde in search of a new theory of cinematic magic realism. It uncovers a resistant, geopolitical form of world cinema – moving from Europe, through Latin America and the former Soviet Union, to Thailand – that emerges from these ideas. This book is invaluable to any reader interested in world modernism(s) in relation to contemporary cinema and geopolitics. Its sustained analysis of film as a sensory, intermedial medium is of interest to scholars working across the visual arts, literature, critical theory, and film-philosophy.


Surrealism, Occultism and Politics

Surrealism, Occultism and Politics

Author: Tessel M. Bauduin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-16

Total Pages: 639

ISBN-13: 135137902X

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This volume examines the relationship between occultism and Surrealism, specifically exploring the reception and appropriation of occult thought, motifs, tropes and techniques by Surrealist artists and writers in Europe and the Americas, from the 1920s through the 1960s. Its central focus is the specific use of occultism as a site of political and social resistance, ideological contestation, subversion and revolution. Additional focus is placed on the ways occultism was implicated in Surrealist discourses on identity, gender, sexuality, utopianism and radicalism.


A Surrealist Stratigraphy of Dorothea Tanning’s Chasm

A Surrealist Stratigraphy of Dorothea Tanning’s Chasm

Author: Catriona McAra

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-11-10

Total Pages: 143

ISBN-13: 1315390574

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1. Unpacking Tanning's library -- 2. The alternative reality of Sedona -- 3. Surrealism in the attic -- 4. The fur of the fairy tale -- 5. Quoting "Tanning" : surrealist heirlooms in contemporary practice.


Otherwise Worlds

Otherwise Worlds

Author: Tiffany Lethabo King

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2020-05-18

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1478012021

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The contributors to Otherwise Worlds investigate the complex relationships between settler colonialism and anti-Blackness to explore the political possibilities that emerge from such inquiries. Pointing out that presumptions of solidarity, antagonism, or incommensurability between Black and Native communities are insufficient to understand the relationships between the groups, the volume's scholars, artists, and activists look to articulate new modes of living and organizing in the service of creating new futures. Among other topics, they examine the ontological status of Blackness and Indigeneity, possible forms of relationality between Black and Native communities, perspectives on Black and Indigenous sociality, and freeing the flesh from the constraints of violence and settler colonialism. Throughout the volume's essays, art, and interviews, the contributors carefully attend to alternative kinds of relationships between Black and Native communities that can lead toward liberation. In so doing, they critically point to the importance of Black and Indigenous conversations for formulating otherwise worlds. Contributors Maile Arvin, Marcus Briggs-Cloud, J. Kameron Carter, Ashon Crawley, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Chris Finley, Hotvlkuce Harjo, Sandra Harvey, Chad B. Infante, Tiffany Lethabo King, Jenell Navarro, Lindsay Nixon, Kimberly Robertson, Jared Sexton, Andrea Smith, Cedric Sunray, Se’mana Thompson, Frank B. Wilderson


Remaking the Readymade

Remaking the Readymade

Author: Adina Kamien-Kazhdan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-05-11

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0429843569

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Replication and originality are central concepts in the artistic oeuvres of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. Remaking the Readymade reveals the underlying and previously unexplored processes and rationales for the collaboration between Duchamp, Man Ray, and Arturo Schwarz on the replication of readymades and objects. The 1964 editioned replicas of the readymades sent shock waves through the art world. Even though the replicas undermined ideas of authorship and problematized the notion of identity and the artist, they paradoxically shared in the aura of the originals, becoming stand-ins for the readymades. Scholar-poet-dealer Arturo Schwarz played a crucial role, opening the door to joint or alternate authorship—an outstanding relationship between artist and dealer. By unearthing previously unpublished correspondence and documentary materials and combining this material with newly conducted exclusive interviews with key participants, Remaking the Readymade details heretofore unrevealed aspects of the technical processes involved in the (re)creation of iconic, long-lost Dada objects. Launched on the heels of the centenary of Duchamp’s Fountain, this new analysis intensifies and complicates our understanding of Duchamp and Man Ray’ initial conceptions, and raises questions about replication and authorship that will stimulate significant debate about the legacy of the artists, the continuing significance of their works, and the meaning of terms such as creativity, originality, and value in the formation of art.


André Breton in Exile

André Breton in Exile

Author: Victoria Clouston

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-22

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 1317181239

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Following the journey of André Breton, the leader of the Surrealist movement, into exile during the Second World War, the author of this book traces the trajectory of his thought and poetic output from 1941–1948. Through a close examination of the major – and as yet little studied – works written during these years, she demonstrates how Breton’s quest for "a new myth" for the postwar world led him to widen his enquiry into hermeticism, myth, and the occult. This ground-breaking study establishes Breton’s profound intellectual debt to 19th-century Romanticism, its literature and thought, revealing how it defined his understanding of hermeticism and the occult, and examining the differences between the two. It shows how, having abandoned political action on leaving the Communist Party in 1935, Breton nonetheless held firmly to political thought, moving in his quest for a better world via Hermes Trismegistus across the utopian ideas of Charles Fourier and the "magical" practices of the Hopi Indians. The author finally reveals Breton’s misreading of the situation in postwar Paris on his return in 1946, and his failure to communicate the span of his ideas for creating a better society while at the same time maintaining a close connection between art and life.