Dream-work: Surrealism and Revolutionary Subjectivity in André Breton and Georges Bataille
https://cesaa.org.au/_content/uploads/2018/06/Rory-Dufficy_Dream-Work.pdf

Rory Dufficy

Ormond College, University of Melbourne

Abstract
This paper explores a polemic between André Breton and Georges Bataille around the question of the politics of the avant-garde. Focusing on texts composed in the late 1920s, principally Breton’s Second Manifesto of Surrealism and Bataille’s ‘The “Old Mole” and the Prefix Sur in the Words Surhomme and Surrealist’, this paper argues that in examining this debate around matter and material, it is possible to extract two distinct conceptions of the places of subjectivity and revolution in avant-garde aesthetics. While Breton wishes to separately define the idealist aesthetic projects of Surrealism and the materialist project for revolution, Bataille argues that a commitment to that materialist project requires a similarly materialist aesthetics.

Keywords: André Breton; Georges Bataille; Surrealism; Avant-Garde; Revolution