Surrealisms: the International Society for the Study of Surrealism Book Series – serie

An examination of surrealism’s unofficial ethnography of marginalized subjectivitiesIn interwar Paris, the encounter between surrealism and the nascent discipline of ethnology led to an intellectual project now known as “ethnographic surrealism.” In The Persistence of Masks, Joyce Suechun Cheng considers the ethnographic dimension of the surrealist movement in its formative years through a close look at the reviews Documents (1929–30) and Minotaure (1933–39) as well as the surrealist writer-turned-ethnographer Michel Leiris’s ethnography of possession. Analyzing surrealist aesthetic criticism, art, poetry, and field research in terms of a common interest in marginalized modes of subjectivity, Cheng argues that the surrealists used the figures of the mask, the veil, the hand, and the hat to radically reconceive the subject as nonhegemonic, nonanthropocentric, and feminine-identified.   Though ethnographic surrealism usually refers to the collaboration between professional ethnologists at the Institut de l’Ethnologie in Paris and Georges Bataille’s so-called dissident circle of surrealists, Cheng demonstrates that surrealism’s unofficial ethnography began long before the founding of the movement. Starting with AndrÉ Breton’s wartime text “Subject” (1916), written when he was still a young psychiatric intern treating traumatized soldiers, she shows how the future surrealist poet shifted from a clinical to a para-ethnographic approach to subjectivity when adopting his patient’s first-person voice as a textual mask.   Revealing surrealism to be always implicitly ethnographic, Cheng uncovers deep affinities between archrivals Breton and Bataille, highlights psychiatry’s underacknowledged role in surrealism’s lay ethnography, and theorizes the surrealists’ feminine identification as a means of critiquing power. By broadening the scope of ethnographic surrealism, The Persistence of Masks offers new insights that challenge longstanding beliefs about this multifaceted movement in poetry, the arts, and culture.

An examination of surrealism’s unofficial ethnography of marginalized subjectivitiesIn interwar Paris, the encounter between surrealism and the nascent discipline of ethnology led to an intellectual project now known as “ethnographic surrealism.” In The Persistence of Masks, Joyce Suechun Cheng considers the ethnographic dimension of the surrealist movement in its formative years through a close look at the reviews Documents (1929–30) and Minotaure (1933–39) as well as the surrealist writer-turned-ethnographer Michel Leiris’s ethnography of possession. Analyzing surrealist aesthetic criticism, art, poetry, and field research in terms of a common interest in marginalized modes of subjectivity, Cheng argues that the surrealists used the figures of the mask, the veil, the hand, and the hat to radically reconceive the subject as nonhegemonic, nonanthropocentric, and feminine-identified.   Though ethnographic surrealism usually refers to the collaboration between professional ethnologists at the Institut de l’Ethnologie in Paris and Georges Bataille’s so-called dissident circle of surrealists, Cheng demonstrates that surrealism’s unofficial ethnography began long before the founding of the movement. Starting with AndrÉ Breton’s wartime text “Subject” (1916), written when he was still a young psychiatric intern treating traumatized soldiers, she shows how the future surrealist poet shifted from a clinical to a para-ethnographic approach to subjectivity when adopting his patient’s first-person voice as a textual mask.   Revealing surrealism to be always implicitly ethnographic, Cheng uncovers deep affinities between archrivals Breton and Bataille, highlights psychiatry’s underacknowledged role in surrealism’s lay ethnography, and theorizes the surrealists’ feminine identification as a means of critiquing power. By broadening the scope of ethnographic surrealism, The Persistence of Masks offers new insights that challenge longstanding beliefs about this multifaceted movement in poetry, the arts, and culture.

How five dissident poets applied Surrealism to everyday life under totalitarian ruleA collective biography of the Surrealist group Infra Noir, Powers of No reveals an important chapter in the history of the postwar European avant-garde. Detailing the group's innovative program for cultivating community and political resistance, Catherine L. Hansen examines how its five members reimagined Surrealism as a means to endure life under totalitarianism and war.Encompassing the careers and friendships of Gherasim Luca, Gellu Naum, Trost, Paul Păun, and Virgil Teodorescu, Powers of No is the first English-language book about this Francophone Romanian group active between 1941 and 1947. The members of Infra Noir created radical art and publications that attracted the attention of André Breton and other central figures in the wider Surrealist movement. Charting their course from the Bucharest avant-garde amid the rising tide of fascism through the turbulent intellectual and political scene of postwar France and Stalinist repression, Hansen unpacks the concepts this group developed, which envisioned new possibilities for emancipatory thought and praxis.Grounded in a wealth of archival materials and original translations, Powers of No situates the unique legacy of Infra Noir's revolutionary project among the various intellectual currents of a tumultuous era. Establishing Infra Noir as more than an obscure clique of dissident poets and artists, this book presents their work as a repertoire of lessons for resisting authoritarian oppression and avoiding despair even under the harshest political conditions.Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.