Surrealism: Archeology of the Imaginary | nd-aktuell.de

On October 15, 1924, André Broten, influenced by the expressionist symbolism and psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, launched a general attack on the conformism of bourgeois art and moral ideas – the first manifesto of surrealism came into the world. In the name of fantasy and enriched by the powers of the unconscious, the aim was to overcome the separation between the dream world and reality and to transform it into a new type of reality: surreality. Starting from artistic practice, it was ultimately intended to contribute to a revolutionary revolution in bourgeois-capitalist society and the human way of life and perception, which was aimed entirely at the liberation of individual expression. Surrealism was an unprecedented phenomenon of artistic revolt in the European interwar period, which – after German fascism brought it to an early end – is still unparalleled today.

Surrealism not only had a revolutionary effect on the visual arts and literature, it also sometimes served as a source of strength for philosophy: for Walter Benjamin, surrealism was “the last snapshot of the European intelligentsia”, a last gasp of bourgeois emancipation at the moment of its self-inflicted downfall in the world war. In the Surrealist movement, which pushed aesthetic practice into the political realm and led to cooperation with the workers’ movement and the French Communist Party, he saw the ideals of civil freedom radically realized for the last time. Benjamin hoped that their ties to institutionalized communism would lead to a synthesis of aesthetic and revolutionary practice in the collective; a mistake that the surrealists also fell for for a while.

In retrospect, these hopes, thwarted by National Socialism, appeared to be illusionary. Theodor W. Adorno, who had already argued with Benjamin before the war about the possibilities of revolutionary Marxism, ultimately relegated Surrealism to the garbage dump of history after the catastrophe that had occurred. Against this devastating verdict, one of his students, the philosopher and literary sociologist Elisabeth Lenk, pointed to the still unrealized ideal of freedom of surrealism and to the close relationship between critical theory and surrealist practice.

Surrealism not only had a revolutionary effect on the visual arts and literature, it also sometimes served as a source of strength for philosophy.

After Elisabeth Lenk moved to Paris in the early 1960s in order, as she writes, to escape Adorno’s “system” and to prepare a sociological doctorate about the strike movement there, she met Breton and belonged to the “Groupe” until his death surrealiste«. The encounter with the Surrealists deeply impressed her and led to a change in her doctoral project: the topic was now “poetic materialism” in Breton’s literary writings. Her interest was in aesthetic art production, not as an individual phenomenon, but as the result of a sociological group process that she saw at work in the avant-garde movements.

Enriched by the reception of French post-structuralism, including Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, but especially under the influence of Georges Bataille, her probably most important project emerged: “The Unconscious Society”. In this work, Elisabeth Lenk brought to the fore a central moment of surrealism, namely the dream, understood as an aesthetic phenomenon. The theme of the book was to follow the path of the repression of dreams in rationally organized society in order to allow the remaining moments of the heterogeneous and non-identical to appear in it, in the spirit of critical theory. Only on the basis of such an “archeology of the imaginary,” according to the German literary scholar and sociologist, could a different society be imagined.

Already with the focus on the empirical, nocturnal dream, Elisabeth Lenk announced a movement in thought that led her away from the fascination with group dynamics and increasingly initiated a turn towards individual ways of thinking and acting. In analogy to Marx’s class consciousness and based on the early socialist Flora Tristan, she coined the term “pariah consciousness.” Central to this conceptualization is the shift in an epistemological position: true statements about society can only be made from a point of externality. On the other hand, being absorbed into the collective or group always involves an affirmative attitude; only the outsider remains critical.

This point of view is further deepened in a later discussion by Elisabeth Lenk with Adorno. The decisive factor for this reconsideration was the collapse of real socialism, an event that, according to the scientist, “disturbed all the compartments that we Marxists had built in our heads.” This put an end to the idea of ​​the planned changeability of the world. Contrary to Adorno’s dictum that practice is postponed indefinitely, Elisabeth Lenk wants to stick to a revolutionary perspective. What this means is a revolution in sensory experience and perception in the spirit of surrealism, which would counter Marxism not with the masses, but with the individual. Aware of Adorno’s imperative – “that Auschwitz not repeat itself” – this revolution would be one of symbolic action, that of gesture, tenderness and consideration; In this respect, an aesthetic practice based on the abhorrence of all violence, which thus tips into the ethical.

Surrealism also becomes a practice of critical theory because both thought movements share the negative viewpoint of nonconformism. It is thanks to Elisabeth Lenk for having worked out this connection. The difficult task it leaves behind is that the unfulfilled promises of critical theory and surrealism must always be updated in the current state of socialization. Since, as she herself wrote, society takes revenge on its outsiders by forgetting, her work is also threatened by this. For the sake of her and this society, it would be desirable that this does not happen, that the dream of a liberated society continues to be dreamed.