Postmodern Surrealism

Surrealism is a movement in literature and art whose effective

life is generally assigned the years 1924-1945 by historians. In
1924, Andr Breton's first Manifesto of Surrealism appeared,
defining the movement in philosophical and psychological
terms. Its immediate predecessor was Dada, whose nihilistic
reaction to rationalism and the reigning "morality" that
produced World War I cleared the way for Surrealism's positive
message. (Other precursors and influences are listed below.)
Surrealism is often characterized only by its use of unusual,
sometimes startling juxtapositions, by which it sought to
trancend logic and habitual thinking to reveal deeper levels of
meaning and unconscious associations. Thus it was
instrumental in promoting Freudian and Jungian conceptions of
the unconscious mind.
Throughout the 1920s and '30s, the movement flourished and
spread from its center in Paris to other countries. Breton
controlled the group rather autocratically, annointing new
members and expelling those with whom he disagreed, in an
effort to maintain focus on what he conceived as the essential
principals or the fundamental insight which Surrealism
manifested (a conception which changed, to some extent,
during his life).
In the early '30s the group published a periodical entitled
Surrealism at the Service of the Revolution (Le Surrealisme au
service de la revolution, 1930-33). Communism appealed to
many intellectuals at this time and the movement flirted briefly
with Moscow; but the Soviets demanded full allegiance and the
subordination of art to the purposes of "the State." The
surrealists sought absolute freedom and their aim was a
profound psychological or spiritual revolution, not an attempt

to change society on a merely political or economic level. (The

full history of surrealist political involvement is quite complex
and led to dissent and the formation of various factions within
the movement.)
With the advent of World War II, many of the Parisian
participants sought safety in New York, leaving Paris to the
Existentialists. By the war's end in 1945, Abstract
Expressionism had superseded Surrealism as the western
world's most important active art movement. "Ab Ex" grew out
of both the tradition of Abstraction (exemplified by Kandinsky)
and the "automatic" branch of Surrealism (exemplified by Joan
Miro and Andr Masson) with Roberto Matta and Arshile
Gorky as key pivotal figures.
But Surrealism did not die in 1945. Though the attention of the
fickle art world may have shifted away, Breton continued to
expound his vision until his death in 1966, and many others
have continued to produce works in the surrealist spirit to the
present day. The ongoing impact of Surrealism cannot be
underestimated and must be granted a distinct place in the
history of literature, art and philosophy.

Critical Authority
In his The Death of the Author, Roland Barthes argues that
critics up until his time have been not the sages, but the ruiners
of Literature. His essay could have been easily called The
Death of the Critic, or even The Rape of the Text. He describes
Critics as a destructive force to texts, and that their inclusion of
information beyond (or rather, beneath) the texts to which these
critics cast their own pens is destructive to the very texts they
examine.

When describing the work of the Critic, Barthes repeatedly

uses language which brings destruction to mind, including the
words "decipher" (or code-breaking), "pierce," and
"evaporate." He further describes a text as a delicate, even
ephemeral thing, comparing it first to a tissue, and then to the
threads of a stocking. It is as if a text is a membrane that a
writer holds before him for examination (reading, not
criticism), and that these Critics, in their search for the author,
must tear their way through the text in order to examine him.
In contrast, although Barthes calls this idea "the death of the
author," the language used to describe the process of this death
is far more gentle, even passive. The author is not in fact, torn,
pierced, or destroyed, he simply "diminishes like a figurine at
the far end of the literary stage." Since the text stands between
the author and the reader, the author is not harmed by his
"death". He simply goes unseen.
Barthes, in fact, lays no guilt at all on the writer for this
destruction of text. It is the Critic upon whom culpability is set.
It is the Critic who has brought the writer (who upon
publication is as immediately distanced from the text as any
other reader) into the realm of examination. The reason,
Barthes explains, for the inclusion of the Author into analysis
of his work, is that when the actual life experiences, attitudes,
and emotions of the Author are included in an analysis, the
Critic can claim that these attitudes and emotions represent the
True Meaning of the text. This penetration of the text deflates it
and closes it to further scrutiny. It seems then to Barthes that
either the Author or the text must be removed from the process
for this destructive scrutiny to end.
In removing the Author from analysis of a text, Barthes
simultaneously preserves all texts for further study, reopening
the closed books, and also overturns the idea of the "Critic",

authorizing (forgive the pun) all readers to be critical of what

they read. Since without an Author there can no longer be an
"authoritative viewpoint", all viewpoints are valid, and texts
are therefore not only reassembled, but broadened to limitless
"disengagements" by any number of Readers.
It is this new figure, that of the Reader, which can emerge after
the removal of the Author and the Critic, and it is to this Reader
that all texts are directed. Barthes says "the true place of
writing is reading," and this, to him, seems as important as any
other idea about a Text. It is is the reading (not in the person
who in some unseen and distant place and time put the text to
paper), that the text comes to life. A text still tied to its Author
is either unfinished or not to be read by the public. A text to be
read by the public is therefore severed from the hand of the
Author by necessity, and the Reader is born.