Occult Encounters and “Structural Misunderstandings” in Exile: The Surrealists and the Institut Für Sozialforschung in the United States

Abstract

There is a fact¹ little attended in the otherwise abundant chronicles of May 1968 in France: an exhibit of works by surrealists in exile in the United States during World War II was held in Paris at the American Center during the so-called events.² Meanwhile, Parisian walls were being covered with slogans of surrealist inspiration only two years after André Breton’s death, and the surrealist refrain of desire and of imagination in power was often heard in the marches and the general assemblies. While surrealist artists gathered to commemorate the past, only a few of them were enthusiastically welcoming these new social movements. Yet, one year after the political crisis of May 1968 and after more than fifty years of activity, the surrealist group of Paris chose to dissolve.³ The German philosophers and social scientists of the Institut für Sozialforschung were caught in an equally paradoxical bind during the same period. While many radical students in Germany and the United States claimed the Frankfurt School’s writings fostered and justified their actions, they also verbally and physically protested against what they saw as the “resignation” of Adorno and Horkheimer, which contrasted with the mounting protests in the world. In response, the two former exiles republished in 1969 the major Frankfurt School work of the period of World War II, Die Dialektik der Aufklärung. It included a new introduction that undermined the use most of the students were making of it, and it castigated them harshly for politically instrumentalizing the critique of instrumental reason developed in the book. In France and Germany during the 1960s–1970s, the World War II exiles of surrealism and Critical Theory⁴ appeared as a covert presence and a contested legacy.