Surrealists - 1974 - The Surrealist Revolution in France

The Surrealist Revolution in France

Herbert S. Gershman

University of Michigan Press

1974

253 pages

This book is a survey of Surrealism in France that places a particular emphasis on defacto group-leader Andre Breton and his immediate circle (Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, etc) - in other words, the official members of the Surrealist group. Gershman writes in a dense poetic prose that may sometimes confound the reader although it makes his book a far less dry piece of academic writing than most treatments on Breton’s group.

The author looks to the Surrealists for their inspirations, leading him to discuss love, or mad love (amour fou), more than the Freudian theory that unquestionably had a role in the Surrealist emergence out of Dada. Gershman is priviledging the poetic aspect of Surrealism over even a basic discussion of their theoretical inspirations.  Love, of course, has to be the most widespread inspiration for poetry in history, and its difficult, as a reader, to accept that a movement such as the Surrealists, new in the twentieth century, were driven only by love and dreams. So were the New Kids on the Block.  

Gersham’s book is strong but it’s directed by concerns with the poetic rather than the aesthetic. it’s longest chapter is the chapter on surrealist poetry and literature, which is clearly Gershman’s chief interest with the movement while painting, the best known component of the Surrealist work, is much shorter and often focuses on the artist’s relationship to the writings of Surrealist poets.

Probably the best chapter of the book is the second last, Surrealism and Politics, which describes in detail Surrealism’s attempt to balance its own artistic worldview and its notions of revolution through realizing desire, with that of Moscow directed Communist orthodoxy.  

avant-garde, Lettrisme - book - 1985 - Letterism and Hypergraphics: The Unknown Avant Garde 1945-1985

Letterism and Hypergraphics: The Unknown Avant-Garde 1945-1985
Jean-Paul Curtay
Franklin Furnace
1985
78 pages

Letterism (in French, Lettrisme) is one of the forgotten avant-gardes of the 20th century, having been overshadowed by its predecessors, Dada and Surrealism, and its successor, the Situationist International led by Letterist defector, Guy Debord.  The Letterists were originally formed in 1942 with the writing of the Letterist Manifesto by Isidore Isou, a young Romanian poet who, like Tristan Tzara and Constantin Brancusi before him, left his home to make a name for himself in western Europe. Isou was originally focused on creating letter poetry in the tradition of the Dadaist, Raoul Hausmann, who wrote fsmbw (a title which also makes up the bulk of the poem’s content) in 1920. Isou, in his manifesto, put things under headings such as “The destruction of words for letters” and “the order of letters” revealing an interest in reducing language to its basic form, and creating a poetry that is necessarily typographical.  

The original Letterist movement did produce letterist poetry (were they mentioned in a novel I’ve read? I have a vague memory of them being referenced in a scene of a Canadian novelist, either by Mordecai Richler or Robertson Davies). They also became an anarchistic movement that pulled off pranks such as the Easter morning address at Notre Dame in Paris in 1950 where it was declared by Lettrist Michael Mourre that God is dead.  And they produced abstract films.  They were, in essence, a belated Dadaist unit operating during wartime and then the post-war period.  In addition to these films and letter poems produced by Isou, he also developed what he called ‘hypergraphics’, a mode of writing that freely mixes words with images, or even small symbols or signs set into a sequence to convey some kind of meaning. Letterism and Hypergraphics is a kind of small catalog to an exhibition, currated by Jean-Paul Curtay (who wrote the bulk of the text for this small volume), held in 1985, that features a number of hypergraphic works by Isou and his Letterist allies.

This catalog is significant for being one of the few (very few) English texts to discuss the Letterist movement in a sustained fashion.  Elsewhere, the Letterists are referenced largely as a lead-in to a more deeply focused discussion on Guy Debord and the Situationists.  Debord is certainly mentioned in Curtay’s catalog, but only as part of the timeline of Letterist activity, as much of the text focuses on Isou, his work AFTER the split with Debord, and the influence Isou has had elsewhere (one of the pieces in this book is called Hypergraphics and America). In addition to Curtay’s writing about the Letterist’s, their history and their work, the book contains numerous reproductions of hypergraphic drawings as well as still-shots from some of the experimental films produced by these artists. The text and all the images are printed in some kind of violet.  Because this is an exhibition catalog, it focuses pretty closely on the art of the movement, and it does not actually discuss things like the above mentioned Notre Dame fiasco.  

anarchism - article - 2011 - Collective Action, Opacity and the “Problem of Irrationality”: Anarchism and the First of May, 1890-1892

Collective Action, Opacity and the “Problem of Irrationality”: Anarchism and the First of May, 1890-1892
Davide Turcato
Journal for the Study of Radicalism
Vol 5, No 1: 2011
pp. 1-32
Michigan State University Press

Collective Action, Opacity and the “Problem of Irrationality” is the third article I will have annotated from Vol 5, No 1 of the Journal for the Study of Radicalism.  Author Davide Turcato, an independent scholar, challenges an assertion, that anarchist actions are often irrational eruptions, which is commonly expressed in anarchist scholarship.  Turcato suggests that activity that appears as irrational to previous anarchist scholars is likely the result of planning that has occurred out of view. Anarchist planning is often unseen and therefore not a part of in the historical record.  According to Turcato, this gap in the record has produced the stereotype of the irrational anarchist and has lead scholars such as Peter Marshall (who’s attempted to write a comprehensive history of anarchism, Demanding the Impossible) and Eric Hobsbawm (the great Marxist historian who discusses the irrationality of anarchists in his work, Primitive Rebels) to take events as they appear, or to take the word of police or anarchist critics at face value because their words ARE the record.  Like Gabriel,  with his article, Anarchism’s Appeal to German Workers, 1878-1914, and Andrew Cornell with his article, A New Anarchism Emerges, Turcato is inventing new ways of looking at anarchist action and development.  

Turcato is listed by the Journal for the Study of Radicalism as an independent scholar, however he has received a doctorate in History from Simon Frasier University.  He has also earned a Govenor General’s Gold Medal award for his doctorate on Italian anarchism.  Aside from a very strong interest in historical Italian anarchism, Turcato is a language engineer... I don’t really know what a language engineer is, however most of the scholarly articles that appear on his publishing record pertain to the deployment of language by digital technologies.  

Collective Action, Opacity and the “Problem of Irrationality” proceeds from the assumption that social formations that appear to engage in irrational behavior to distant outsiders (such as historians) should rather assume to be operating on their own set of rationale.  Furthermore, drawing from British historian E.P. Thompson’s studies of the 19th century Luddite movement, Turcato classifies 19th century European anarchism as an opaque movement, a social underground, that produced anarchist texts but not necessarily written evidence for specific actions.  

Violent anarchist events from First of May celebrations in France, Italy, and Spain from the years 1890-1892 are used as case studies, by Turcato, to give substance to his new perspective on anarchist history.  Turcato discusses at length these events to speculate on the underlying rationale that drove the spectacular irrationality that other historians have noted.  The author closely investigates the actions of the Italian anarchist leader Errico Malatesta during these years to demonstrate patterns of activity and planning that suggest that events did not spontaneously erupt into violence but were rather crafted insurrections.

Turcato’s article is interesting because, through his study of Malatesta and his interrogation of the existing historical literature, he demonstrates how even historians and thinkers who are sensitive to anarchist politics, such as the Canadian George Woodcock, or the aforementioned Peter Marshall, reinforce the stereotype of the irrational insurrectionist.  It is difficult for me to reconcile Turcato’s newfound rationality in anarchist activity with an understanding of anarchism that has, perhaps, been in part conditioned by the above authors to consider irrationality to be a component of anarchism’s appeal. 

guy debord, situationist international - book - 1985/2001 - Considerations on the Assassination of Gerard Lebovici

Considerations on the Assassination of Gerard Lebovici
Guy Debord
1985/2001
Tam Tam books
Translated and Introduced by Robert Green
81 pages


Gerard Lebovici was a French film producer, book publisher, and a personal friend to Situationist International figurehead, Guy Debord.  Lebovici managed a publishing company called Editions Champs Libre (renamed Editions Gerard Lebovici after the publisher’s death) which published many works of leftist literature, among them Debord’s revolutionary The Society of the Spectacle.  Debord was a film maker known for creating completely abstract films,and also a cultural theorist.  Lebovici financed three of the radical thinker’s later (that is, post 1968) films.  Guy Debord and the other members of the Situationist International are considered critically influential figures in the erruption of the May 68’ Paris Uprisings.  

On March 7, 1984, Lebovici was murdered in a parking garage in Paris.  The crime was never solved.  A number of French newspapers contained commentary upon the murder often involving wild speculation upon the relationship between the ill fated film producer and Guy Debord.  Numerous newspapers considered the meaning of their friendship, the dangerous social connections a man like Debord could provide, Debord's refusal to be a public figure, his manner of living, etc.  All of the speculations regarding Debord’s character and lifestyle were the grounds upon which newspaper personnel built their case that the former Situationist was responsible in some way for Lebovici’s death.  Considerations on the Assassination of Gerard Lebovici was Debord's response to these accusations and his treatment by agents of media following the death of his friend.  At the time of publication for Considerations, Debord had not published any written work (aside from the scripts for his experimental films) since 1972.  

Considerations on the Assassination of Gerard Lebovici is a survey of the misinformation and invective spread by French newspapers about Debord after Lebovici's murder.  Debord felt compelled to respond to the speculations, if only to ridicule them and demonstrate how the cultural conditions identified in The Society of the Spectacle have accelerated since 1967.  Debord notes, for example, that many of the editorials condemn his ‘silence’ as a point of suspicion.  Some considered it a strategy by which the radical theorist could maintain or expand his notoriety while others simply considered it a reason to believe he is involved in underworld activities.  Debord notes that this focus on his absence from the spotlight indicates a widespread attitude that it is not permitted for an individual to disengage from the ‘spectacle’, that one ‘appears’ if one is a part of society.  (note: see Jean Baudrillard’s essay: The Ecstasy of Communication for a similar discussion of appearance in media as social participation).  

Debord’s ‘silence’ was used as an empty space into which journalists could project all of their assumptions about him.  The Situationist International disbanded in 1972, but many of the journalists did not know that, and wondered what the group is up to now, in secret.  One journalist presumed that the Situationists are now involved in international terrorism, and they maintain connections with other terror groups, including the Red Brigades and the Red Army Faction.  The journalists described chains of imaginary social connections, developed out of the grounds of Debord’s ‘silence’ and his former activities.  Their inventions lead many of the journalists to wonder who, exactly, in this web of terrorist and criminal networks that Debord was speculated to have introduced Lebovici to, was slighted in some way by the film producer that a murderous ambush was an appropriate response?  Many journalists considered the slighted party to be Debord himself, who was often speculated as the man who pulled the strings.  Debord noted at one point in his text that he successfully sued a number of newspapers in a libel suit, and felt compelled to do so because he had never before been accused of killing a friend.

The text is a criticism of the practice of journalism and the power journalists hold to make the unreal appear real.  Many journalists seemed to have taken this murder case as an opportunity to attack an individual, as Debord’s films, writings, and former glories were all subjects for editorial slander, regardless of whether or not a connection to the murder was alleged in a particular piece.  Many of the editorialists attempted to attack the Situationist from all angles, simultaneously characterizing him as an irrelevant egomaniac and also as a puppet-master of the contemporary (extremist) left.   Editorialists deployed slanted language to give the most banal aspects of Debord’s life a sinister edge, making the fact that he enjoys good food, for example, sound like he was hypocritical or incorrigibly decadent. Debord’s short book launches a caustic critique of journalists as frontline agents to the Society of the Spectacle from the vista of his own experience.  Considerations is fundamentally media criticism, and while it emanates from a radical-left point of view, and focuses on the personal issues of its author, it is much more nuanced than much of the existing radical-left media criticism which tends to simply charge such media with brainwashing.