Overview

An examination of surrealism's unofficial ethnography of marginalized subjectivities In interwar Paris, the encounter between surrealism and the nascent discipline of ethnology led to an intellectual project now known as ""ethnographic surrealism."" In The Persistence of Masks, Joyce Suechun Cheng considers the ethnographic dimension of the surrealist movement in its formative years through a close look at the reviews Documents (192930) and Minotaure (193339) as well as the surrealist writer-turned-ethnographer Michel Leiris's ethnography of possession. Analyzing surrealist aesthetic criticism, art, poetry, and field research in terms of a common interest in marginalized modes of subjectivity, Cheng argues that the surrealists used the figures of the mask, the veil, the hand, and the hat to radically reconceive the subject as nonhegemonic, nonanthropocentric, and feminine-identified. Though ethnographic surrealism usually refers to the collaboration between professional ethnologists at the Institut de l'Ethnologie in Paris and Georges Bataille's so-called dissident circle of surrealists, Cheng demonstrates that surrealism's unofficial ethnography began long before the founding of the movement. Starting with Andre Breton's wartime text ""Subject"" (1916), written when he was still a young psychiatric intern treating traumatized soldiers, she shows how the future surrealist poet shifted from a clinical to a para-ethnographic approach to subjectivity when adopting his patient's first-person voice as a textual mask. Revealing surrealism to be always implicitly ethnographic, Cheng uncovers deep affinities between archrivals Breton and Bataille, highlights psychiatry's underacknowledged role in surrealism's lay ethnography, and theorizes the surrealists' feminine identification as a means of critiquing power. By broadening the scope of ethnographic surrealism, The Persistence of Masks offers new insights that challenge longstanding beliefs about this multifaceted movement in poetry, the arts, and culture.

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9781517917784

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Reviews

""Sophisticated and bold, The Persistence of Masks links surrealist fascinations with marginal forms of subjectivity to a latent ethnographic practice distilled through intellectual activities and creative practices. Joyce Suechun Cheng reinvigorates the debates central to the movement's rich history in ways that honor its profound theoretical legacy.""--Natalya Lusty, author of Surrealism, Feminism, Psychoanalysis ""An astonishing and necessary scholarly contribution, The Persistence of Masks revalues the relation between surrealism and the discipline of anthropology. Joyce Suechun Cheng dives deep into the archives of surrealism to tell a nuanced story of a generative encounter with the aims and ambits of anthropological inquiry.""--Edgar Garcia, author of Emergency: Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis

""Sophisticated and bold, The Persistence of Masks links surrealist fascinations with marginal forms of subjectivity to a latent ethnographic practice distilled through intellectual activities and creative practices. Joyce Suechun Cheng reinvigorates the debates central to the movement’s rich history in ways that honor its profound theoretical legacy."" - Natalya Lusty, author of Surrealism, Feminism, Psychoanalysis ""An astonishing and necessary scholarly contribution, The Persistence of Masks revalues the relation between surrealism and the discipline of anthropology. Joyce Suechun Cheng dives deep into the archives of surrealism to tell a nuanced story of a generative encounter with the aims and ambits of anthropological inquiry."" - Edgar Garcia, author of Emergency: Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis

Author Information

Joyce Suechun Cheng is associate professor of art history at the University of Oregon. Her essays and articles on dada, surrealism, and primitivism have appeared in journals such as Modernism/modernity; Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics; and Gradhiva.

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