Making history: Surrealism and the invention of a political culture

This dissertation examines the role of history within the cultural critique of the Surrealist movement. Informing the discussion throughout is the concept of "political culture," as articulated by Keith Baker and Robert Gildea. Indeed, throughout the discussion the Surrealist movement is theorized in terms of its attempts to create its own coherent sub-culture, which would rival the legitimacy of competing political interest groups.;Following a brief introduction to the topic and the relevant literature, the dissertation begins with a contextual analysis highlighting both the crisis of the First World War and the conservativism of the post-war climate in France. The discussion then moves to the "battleground of history," where agenda-driven and overtly politicized interpretations of French history rivaled one another for validation. The next chapter examines the formation of the Surrealist group specifically within the context described above. Particular emphasis is paid to the politicized nature of the Surrealists' moral code.;Chapter four addresses the construction of a Surrealist "anti-canon," as a project which would subvert the traditional classically oriented art historical canon by celebrating scandalous, anti-rational, and "primitive" figures. At the same time, however, the anti-canon also allowed the Surrealists to validate their own project by providing a means to describe Surrealism as a trans-historical phenomenon rather than as the latest style of painting or poetry.;The following chapter entertains a distinct yet related aspect of the Surrealist critique of history, that of the seemingly self-conscious production of Surrealist "artifacts." Looking at a range of images of the Surrealist group, this chapter will suggest that some of these images functioned to allow the Surrealists to pre-preemptively author their own history, while other images, specifically those emphasizing the collective nature of the group, visualized the Surrealists' disdain for the so-called "Great Man" theory of history. Concluding the dissertation are remarks on the relevance of the Surrealists' critique of history to more recent deconstructions of our dominant histories.