Surrealism: Subversion and Fascism

It is apt that David Gascoyne writes that “Surrealism is not a style, it is not a school of literature, it is not a system of aesthetics” (Gascoyne, “Introduction,” ix). By failing to pin surrealism within a category, he departs from a logocentric notion of language grounded in “presence” and “absolute meaning” and reflects the spirit of Surrealism.

I sense inherent paradoxes within Surrealism. The positing of an alternate system of reality that is governed by the Unconscious presents another notion of a system of meaning that is grounded in the absolute. The “Unconscious” is marked with a capital U, showing a certain extent of logocentrism implicit in a movement that seeks to relocate itself from a logocentric notion of language and meaning.

On one hand the absoluteness of an alternate reality allows Surrealism to securely enact a resistance to ideology. The notion that it is the “Unconscious” that dictates our actions makes Surrealism subversive in that it questions the basis of assumptions and suggests a certainty of an alternate plane of reality. Rimbaud uses his art to “revolt [...] against old stupidities, conventions, morality—the whole life of the epoch of capitalist prosperity in which he lived” (Gascoyne 7). At the same time, the ability of one to exploit the notion of the Unconscious to impose a certain, arbitrary and indisputable (how can one argue against a theory of the Unconscious?) truth makes Surrealism a possible mode for facilitating fascism and totalizing worldviews. As Gascoyne notes, Surrealism’s associations with Orientalism confirms this rather unhappy truth.