Full Description
From its auspicious beginnings in the summer of 1966 to the present, the Chicago Surrealist Group-and the Surrealist Movement in the United States, which grew out of it-have continued to foment an exhilarating whirlwind of revolt while playfully igniting the sparks of Poetry, Freedom and Love in the crucible of the Unfettered Imagination. In so doing, it has brightly illuminated the pathways of absolute divergence that define the intrinsically anarchist trajectory of the surrealist adventure. Drawing on the full range of U.S. surrealist publications, from the original journal Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion to the very latest millennial communique from the front lines of the ongoing battle against miserabilism, this volume contains over 200 texts (more than two dozen appearing here for the first time) by more than fifty participants in the Surrealist Movement, making this the most comprehensive, diverse and lavishly illustrated compilation of American surrealist writings to have ever been assembled. Contributors include: Gale Ahrens, Jennifer Bean, Jen Besemer, Daniel C. Boyer, Paul Buhle, Ronnie Burk, Leonora Carrington, Laura Corsigilia, Jayne Cortez, Guy Ducornet, Rikki Ducornet, Schlechter Duvall, Alice Farley, J. Allen Fees, Beth Garon, Paul Garon, Eugenio F. Granell, Robert Green, Miriam Hansen, Diedra Harris-Kelley, Jan Hathaway, Corinna Jablonski, Joseph Jablonski, Ted Joans, Gerome Kamrowski, Robin D. G. Kelley, Don LaCoss, Philip Lamantia, Clarence John Laughlin, Mary Low, Herbert Marcuse, Tristan Meinecke, Casandra Stark Mele, Anne Olson, Nancy Joyce Peters, Charles Radcliffe, Myrna Bell Rochester, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont, Penelope Rosemont, Ody Saban, Louise Simons, Martha Sonnenberg, Christopher Starr, Ivan Svitak, Cheikh Tidiane Sylla, Claude Tarnaud, Debra Taub, Dale Tomich, Patrick Turner, Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, Jordan West, Joel Williams, Marie Wilson, Haifa Zangana
Contents
Foreword by Franklin RosemontIntroduction by Ron SakolskyPart I. THE SURREALIST ADVENTURE: Total Nonconformism, Insubordination, & Revolution as the Way to a Non-Repressive Civilization1. What Is Surrealism?2. First Steps: Surrealism in the U.S. in the 1960s3. Poetry, Freedom and Love4. Surrealist Games: Play as the Collective Shaping of Reality5. Dreaming Revolution: Surrealism Yesterday, Today and TomorrowPart II. THE SURREALIST CRITIQUE1. Capitalist Civilization: The Global Prison2. Against the Degradation of Language: Exposing the False Poets and the Miserabilist Media3. Patriarchy and Sexual Oppression4. Work: Terror and Boredom at the Point of Production5. The Lie of Whiteness6. Religion as Repression7. The Destruction of Wilderness8. Official Art: The Aesthetics of Repressive Desublimation9. Critique of the Traditional LeftPart III. SURREALIST ACTION: Social Transformation as Festival1. Realization of Poetry in Everyday Life2. Defending the Marvelous3. Subverting the Institutions of Unfreedom4. The Savage Eye: Liberating the Visual Imagination5. Outsiders6. Images of Desire in Motion7. From Horror to Humor: Surrealism's Popular Accomplices8. Black Music: Sounds of the History of Freedom9. Other Musics: Disturbing the "Peace"10. Taking Chances and Raising the Stakes11. Rebel Workers and Utopian Dreamers: Reclaiming the Past12. Surrealist Inquiries: Questioning EverythingAppendicesSourcesBibliographyIndex
