Surrealist nonsense as a genre

For the Surrealists, nonsense was a means of transcending a hierarchical reality; rather than being an absence of sense, nonsense became a frustration of constructed expectations about sense. The layered meanings of a word or image in Surrealism generate a world in which no hierarchy or dichotomies exist but rather one where each word and image bears equal weight. The purpose of this dissertation is to answer the question: in what ways might we consider Surrealist's nonsense a genre. Since Freud, psychoanalysis has been the frame of reference to distinguish the conscious from the unconscious, common sense from nonsense. This dissertation departs from a dichotomous discourse and explores the nonsensical aspect in Robert Desnos' writings and avant-garde films in relation to Jungian's theory and Taoism. Ultimately for Desnos, Jung, Avant-garde filmmakers, and Taoists, action free of preconceived ideas grew to be the aspired mode of being-in-the-world, that which enables us to transcend ourselves.