MARTINE ANTLE, CULTURES OF SURREALISM: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE OTHER

par Richard Spiteri

Following other female critics, Martine Antle demonstrates in this work that today we can no longer continue to marginalize women's work in the surrealist enterprise. Moreover, when the critic addresses another major question in her book, otherness, she comes to adopt a challenging attitude toward the center of the surrealist movement. This attitude aims, however, to reopen the debate on plural cultures.

During their travels to distant lands, French surrealists almost ignored the multiethnic Other. For example, contemporary Mexico is absent from The Tarahumaras where Antonin Artaud rather seeks a mythical country. Furthermore, when the Priest enters the scene, Artaud uses indirect discourse thus depriving the protagonist of the right to speak. And what can we say of André Breton whose Travel Notebook among the Hopi Indians testifies to a taste for exoticism. Moreover, in the Haiti Conferences of the surrealist leader, one searches in vain for the slightest trace of the indigenous public, or even of their culture.

In the era of the civil solidarity pact (PACS), Martine Antle also addresses an aspect of sexual identity, namely lesbianism. The attempt to valorize the work of Hannah Höch and Claude Cahun—photographers and lesbians—is relatively recent. The German participated in Dada-Berlin. The French woman, during the interwar period, signed some tracts distributed by the surrealists. But the theme of lesbianism will mainly serve to clarify the episode of The Deranged Women in Nadja. We know the aversion Breton had for homosexuality. Yet this is the main subject of P. L. Palau's play. In his reading of The Deranged Women, Breton remains silent about the true relationships between Solange and Madame de Challens. For his part, Palau, subscribing to popular prejudices, shows the lesbian who indulges in sadism and pedophilia. Breton experiences fascination before these perversions.

We observe among the surrealists a lack of theoretical texts on photography. For example, among the décor of Jean Cocteau's The Newlyweds of the Eiffel Tower figures "a human-sized camera." In this play, Cocteau implements a conception of photography where automatism dominates. But no contemporary exploited this marriage between the photographic genre and theater. Another gap becomes evident among the surrealists. Never did a true discussion begin to bring photography closer to painting.

Chapters of this work are devoted to the work of surrealist women. We read with pleasure those that deal with Hannah Höch and antiracism, Claude Cahun and transvestism, Leonora Carrington and old age, and mental alienation in Unica Zürn. The cultural practices of these women allow an opening onto the Other.