Abstract
Surrealism was an important avenue for anti-colonial thought at the beginning of the twentieth century in French culture. Such a proposition goes against common assumptions of how surrealism is understood today. A typical view of surrealism in contemporary Anglo-American culture regards it as the antics of a group of sexist young men totally preoccupied with their own chaotic internal thoughts who were the initiators of scandalous asocial activities. Accounts of historical surrealism have become a caricature and, even in a sociology of art interested in the European avant-garde, surrealism is described as doing not much more than creating a ‘shock’ to other members of its petty bourgeois class and a frisson of excitement for a bored native bourgeoisie.1
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Notes and References
See, for example, Peter Burger, Theory of the Avant-Garde ( Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 1984 ) pp. 53–4.
André Breton’s ‘Speech to Young Haitian Poets’ is published in What is Surrealism?, pp.258–60. See also Helena Lewis, The Politics of Surrealism (New York: Paragon, 1988), pp.161–4.
There are too many examples to cite here, but see, for example, Homi Bhabha’s essays in The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1990) which is almost wholly devoted to the problematic of what one culture does when it comes into contact with another.
James Clifford gives an assessment of the surrealist contribution to ethnography in The Predicament of Culture (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp.117–51.
David Bate’s essay, ‘Photography and Colonial Vision’, Third Text, No. 22 (Spring 1993) and book, Photography and Surrealism: Sexuality, Colonialism and Social Dissent ( London: IB Tauris, 2004 ).
There are many texts which discuss the issue of photographic realism. For an introduction, see John Tagg, ‘Introduction’, in The Burden of Representation ( London: Macmillan, 1988 ).
See, for example, Victor Burgin’s discussion of a colonial photograph in his ‘Looking at Photographs’, Thinking Photography ( London: Macmillan, 1982 ).
Palà, Documents Exposition Coloniale, Paris 1931 (Paris: ville de Paris, 1981).
See also Charles-Robert Ageron, ‘L’Exposition coloniale’, in Pierre Nora, (ed.), Les Lieux de Mémoire, vol. 1 ( Paris: Gallimard, 1984 ), p. 574.
See, for example, the photographs used as illustrations in the book published for the exhibition by Victor Chazelas, Territoires Africains sous mandat de la France, Cameroun et Togo ( Paris: Société d’Editions, 1931 ).
These figures do not include entries with forged tickets. Catherine Hödeir and Michel Pierre, L’Exposition coloniale ( Paris: Editions Complexe, 1991 ), p. 101.
Carlton J.H. Hayes, France, A Nation of Patriots ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1930 ), p. 130.
Herman Lebovics, True France, The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900–1945 (London: Cornell University Press, 1992) describes the Colonial Exhibition as ‘an effort to promote a French identity as a colonial people’ (p.93).
Broadly speaking his argument on the Colonial Exhibition follows the ‘semioclasm’ of Roland Barthes, Mythologies (London: Paladin, 1979). See Barthes’s own 1971 preface to this book for his discussion of the fate of dismissing myths.
The first congress of the Anti-Imperialist League was held in Brussels in late 1928. According to Babette Gross the Anti-Imperialist League was supported financially by the Mexican government, who were themselves trying to push Standard Oil out of their country. See Babette Gross, Willi Münzenberg: A Political Biography (Michigan University Press, 1974), pp. 188–9.
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© 2004 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Bate, D. (2004). Surrealism, Colonialism and Photography. In: Evans, M. (eds) Empire and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230000681_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230000681_4
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