My dissertation examines the role played by the surrealist object in the avant-garde
strategies of the French surrealist group, in the difficult political circumstances of the 1930s.
In my reading, the surrealist object is located in a critical relation to modern art; it
depends on the invention of collage for its own realization, but it also attempts to supersede
modernism through an act of desublimation, the return of art to its sexual origins. A n
understanding of this critical relation is established through Peter Burger's Theory of the
Avant-Garde, through the use of psychoanalytic theory, and through an understanding of the
difference between Kantian and Hegelian aesthetics.
The object's invention in 1931 is then related to the cultural debates occurring on the
revolutionary left in France and the Soviet Union. The surrealists wish to achieve an
alliance with the Parti Communiste Francais, but avoid the politicization of the cultural field
undertaken by the Communists in both countries. They answer the demand for the
politicization of art with the supersession of art, for which the object provides a model.
In the 1930s, the surrealists develop the notion of a revolutionary science that would
forge a relation between action and interpretation. They attempt to indicate such a relation
in a number of experimental texts, taking unconscious thought as the object of their
investigation. As a central category of their reflection in this period, the surrealist objects
are often given as extra-aesthetic examples of such thought in physical form.
The rise of the Popular Front and the move of the P.C.F. towards a reformist politics
presented a crisis for the surrealist movement. A number of surrealists, like Tristan Tzara,
Rene Char and Roger Caillois, split with their group in order to work with the Popular
Front, while the larger part of the surrealist group broke with the P.C.F. and the Soviet
Union. The break with Stalinism led the surrealists to the point of an alliance with the
modern art they had once claimed to supersede; from now on, interpretation would be
preserved, at the expense of action. The surrealist object, which had exemplified the
relation between action and interpretation, begins to recede from view after 1936, as the
avant-garde project that had brought it into being became increasingly difficult to sustain.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/6637 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Harris, John Steven |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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