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1
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0003215742
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Womanliness as a Masquerade
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reprinted in Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan (eds.)Methuen: London
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The concept of the masquerade was made available by Jacques Lacan, but it had its origins in a paper written by an English contemporary of Cahun's, the psychoanalyst Joan Riviere, in 1929. Joan Riviere, 'Womanliness as a Masquerade', reprinted in Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan (eds.), Formations of Fantasy (Methuen: London, 1986), pp. 35-44.
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(1986)
Formations of Fantasy
, pp. 35-44
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Riviere, J.1
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2
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0039712685
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The Meaning of the Phallus' (1958)
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Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (eds.)W.W. Norton & Co/Pantheon Books: New York
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Lacan uses the term 'masquerade' in 'The Meaning of the Phallus' (1958), trans. Jacqueline Rose, in Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (eds.), Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the école freudienne (W.W. Norton & Co/Pantheon Books: New York, 1985), pp. 84-5.
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(1985)
Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the École Freudienne
, pp. 84-85
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Rose, J.1
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3
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85025366000
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Surrealist Confession: Claude Cahun's Photomontages
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March
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Honor Lasalle and Abigail Solomon-Godeau, 'Surrealist Confession: Claude Cahun's Photomontages', Afterimage, vol. 19, no. 8, March 1992, pp. 10-13.
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(1992)
Afterimage
, vol.19
, Issue.8
, pp. 10-13
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Lasalle, H.1
Solomon-Godeau, A.2
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4
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61249194593
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Jean-Michel Place: Paris
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Cahun's biographer François Leperlier has established these relations in Claude Cahun, l'écart et la métamorphose (Jean-Michel Place: Paris, 1992), while the recent work of feminist scholars like Carolyn Dean, Whitney Chadwick, and Katy Kline has tended to minimize them.
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(1992)
L'Écart et la Métamorphose
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Cahun, C.1
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5
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61249545985
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Claude Cahun's Double
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See Carolyn J. Dean, 'Claude Cahun's Double', Yale French Studies, no. 90, 1996, pp. 71-92
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(1996)
Yale French Studies
, Issue.90
, pp. 71-92
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Dean, C.J.1
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7
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61249745555
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Little, Brown & Co: Boston
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Surrealism has enjoyed a poor critical reputation in recent years, for reasons too complex to enumerate here. Whitney Chadwick's Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement (Little, Brown & Co: Boston, 1985) is one of the major sources of that reputation, and feminist scholars have often turned to it for an assessment of the sexism of surrealist attitudes towards women. Her attempt to minimize the importance of surrealism for those women working within the surrealist movement is unconvincing, however, at the point where her preference for a naturalist aesthetics of self-representation becomes apparent. Cahun was not a part of this assessment in 1985, since she was just then emerging from the obscurity into which she had fallen, but Chadwick has written more recently of her photographic work in Mirror Images.
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(1985)
Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement
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Chadwick, W.1
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8
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79956834079
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Témoignage sur Contre-Attaque 1935-1936
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In the absence of a definitive study of Contre-Attaque, Henri Dubief's memoir of his participation in the group, 'Témoignage sur Contre-Attaque (1935-1936)', Textures, no. 6, 1970, pp. 52-60, is in my view the best account of its activities and ideas.
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(1970)
Textures
, Issue.6
, pp. 52-60
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Dubief, H.1
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9
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0003797185
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University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis
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See also the translations of Bataille's Contre-Attaque texts in Allan Stoekl (ed. and trans.), Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939 (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 1985), pp. 161-8, and trans. Annette Michelson in October, no. 36, Spring 1986, pp. 26-41.
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(1985)
Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939
, pp. 161-168
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Stoekl, A.1
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10
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79956792625
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Gallimard: Paris
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Breton's three addresses to Contre-Attaque meetings are found in his Oeuvres completes, vol. 1 (1922-1939) (Gallimard: Paris, 1992), pp. 585-611
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(1992)
Oeuvres Completes
, vol.1
, Issue.1922-1939
, pp. 585-611
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11
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79956792636
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Le Terrain vague: Paris,and 293-301
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while the public declarations of Contre-Attaque are collected in José Pierre (ed.), Tracts surréalistes et déclarations collectives, vol. 1 (1922-1939) (Le Terrain vague: Paris, 1980), pp. 281-90 and 293-301.
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(1980)
Tracts Surréalistes et Déclarations Collectives
, vol.1
, Issue.1922-1939
, pp. 281-290
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Pierre, J.1
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12
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0005423901
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trans. Michael Shaw,University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis
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I am relying here on Peter Bürger's analysis of the avant-garde's critical relations with modernism in Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Michael Shaw (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 1984), despite the numerous criticisms it has received; from my research, this appears to be the most accurate description of surrealism's aesthetic, cultural, and political position in the interwar period.
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(1984)
Theory of the Avant-Garde
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Bürger, P.1
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13
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79956841888
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On receiving a family inheritance, Cahun and her partner (and half-sister) Suzanne Malherbe moved to Jersey in 1937, where they had vacationed as children. Cahun joined the Trotskyist Fédération Internationale de l'Art Révolutionnaire Indépendant organized (in France) by André Breton in 1938, but remained on Jersey; she and Malherbe led the (nonviolent) resistance to the German occupation from 1940, and were arrested in July 1944 and sentenced to death in November for their activities. This sentence was never carried out, however, and they were released from captivity upon the liberation of the island in May 1945. For these and other details of Cahun's biography, see Leperlier, Claude Cahun
-
On receiving a family inheritance, Cahun and her partner (and half-sister) Suzanne Malherbe moved to Jersey in 1937, where they had vacationed as children. Cahun joined the Trotskyist Fédération Internationale de l'Art Révolutionnaire Indépendant organized (in France) by André Breton in 1938, but remained on Jersey; she and Malherbe led the (nonviolent) resistance to the German occupation from 1940, and were arrested in July 1944 and sentenced to death in November for their activities. This sentence was never carried out, however, and they were released from captivity upon the liberation of the island in May 1945. For these and other details of Cahun's biography, see Leperlier, Claude Cahun.
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14
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62649103084
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Pour qui écrivez-vous?
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December
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'Pour qui écrivez-vous?', Commune, no. 4, December 1933, p. 342.
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(1933)
Commune
, Issue.4
, pp. 342
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15
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0003540036
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trans. Jeffrey Mehlman,The University of Chicago Press: Chicago
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There is no direct evidence that Cahun read extensively in psychoanalytic theory, although of the figures in the surrealist movement active in her period of affiliation to the group, André Breton, Salvador Dalí, René Crevel, Max Ernst, Pierre Mabille, and Tristan Tzara were all quite familiar with at least that portion of the literature that was accessible in French (while Crevel, Tzara, and, of course, Ernst could also read German). On the other hand, the surrealists were quite hostile to the French psychoanalytic establishment, which tended to be conservative in its politics. The two analysts with whom the surrealists had cordial social relations were Jean Frois-Wittmann and Jacques Lacan, whereas they openly criticized other analysts like René Allendy and René Laforgue in their publications. For the relations of surrealism to French psychoanalysis, see Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan & CO.: A History of Psychoanalysis in France, 1925-1985, trans. Jeffrey Mehlman (The University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1990);
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(1990)
Jacques Lacan & CO.: A History of Psychoanalysis in France, 1925-1985
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Roudinesco, E.1
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17
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0040404620
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Cornell University Press: Ithaca, New York
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for the French psychoanalytic establishment, see also Carolyn J. Dean, The Self and Its Pleasures: Bataille, Lacan, and the History of the Decentered Subject (Cornell University Press: Ithaca, New York, 1992).
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(1992)
The Self and Its Pleasures: Bataille, Lacan, and the History of the Decentered Subject
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Dean, C.J.1
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18
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62649158766
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Cahun translated a portion of the sexologist Havelock Ellis's The Task of Social Hygiene for the Mercure de France in 1929, but this work is not concerned with sexual issues so much as with the organization of society on the basis of eugenics and a respect for maternal rights. In this work Ellis presupposes sexual difference rather than questioning it, and takes to task those feminists arguing for equality; he sees such a demand as contrary to nature, in its lack of concern for the biological differences between the sexes. Given Cahun's imagery and writings, there is no reason to suppose she would agree with these views; indeed, I would argue the opposite. Havelock Ellis's book was translated as La Femme dans la société, 1: L'Hygiène sociale; the original title was published in London by Constable & Co. in 1912
-
Cahun translated a portion of the sexologist Havelock Ellis's The Task of Social Hygiene for the Mercure de France in 1929, but this work is not concerned with sexual issues so much as with the organization of society on the basis of eugenics and a respect for maternal rights. In this work Ellis presupposes sexual difference rather than questioning it, and takes to task those feminists arguing for equality; he sees such a demand as contrary to nature, in its lack of concern for the biological differences between the sexes. Given Cahun's imagery and writings, there is no reason to suppose she would agree with these views; indeed, I would argue the opposite. Havelock Ellis's book was translated as La Femme dans la société, vol. 1: L'Hygiène sociale; the original title was published in London by Constable & Co. in 1912.
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85025366000
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13
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For Lasalle and Solomon-Godeau, the way in which Cahun is both subject and object of her photographic work is discussed in relation to the way in which male surrealist artists and writers used women as objects, in order both to privilege femininity (in their opposition to the patriarchal culture of which they were also, inevitably, a part), and to stage representations of their own desire. Cahun takes her own body as object, in an effort to discover the terms by which a woman may represent desire as a subject. Lasalle and Solomon-Godeau, 'Surrealist Confession', pp. 10, 13.
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Surrealist Confession
, pp. 10
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Lasalle1
Solomon-Godeau2
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20
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79956841633
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Dean, 'Claude Cahun's Double', p. 74. Dean takes issue with critics like Lasalle and Solomon-Godeau or with Cahun's biographer François Leperlier, since she believes that they elide Cahun's homosexuality and consequently idealize her work.
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Claude Cahun's Double
, pp. 74
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Dean1
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79956792609
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Dean downplays Cahun's possible relation to each of these discourses in her article; on the one hand, Cahun 'challenges the surrealist leader André Breton's latent Cartesianism and subverts the normative heterosexuality implicit in surrealist texts and images' (p. 72); on the other, Aveux non avenus 'targets in particular a standard Freudian paradigm of sexual development by mocking castration as the determinant of normative heterosexuality' (p. 86). These statements are more assumptions that organize the text, however, than they are arguments proven in the course of its development, and I take issue with them here
-
Dean downplays Cahun's possible relation to each of these discourses in her article; on the one hand, Cahun 'challenges the surrealist leader André Breton's latent Cartesianism and subverts the normative heterosexuality implicit in surrealist texts and images' (p. 72); on the other, Aveux non avenus 'targets in particular a standard Freudian paradigm of sexual development by mocking castration as the determinant of normative heterosexuality' (p. 86). These statements are more assumptions that organize the text, however, than they are arguments proven in the course of its development, and I take issue with them here.
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22
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0003838407
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Indiana University Press: Bloomington
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Teresa de Lauretis, The Practice of Love: Lesbian Sexuality and Perverse Desire (Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 1994), p. 203. From a somewhat different perspective, see also the introductions by Mitchell and Rose to Feminine Sexuality.
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(1994)
The Practice of Love: Lesbian Sexuality and Perverse Desire
, pp. 203
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De Lauretis, T.1
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23
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79956799113
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Angela Richards (ed.),Penguin Books: Harmondsworth
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trans. James Strachey, in Angela Richards (ed.), On Sexuality (Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, 1977), p. 141.
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(1977)
On Sexuality
, pp. 141
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Strachey, J.1
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24
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0003644598
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The Infantile Genital Organization
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trans. Joan Riviere, in Freud, On Sexuality
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Needless to say, such a designation is metaphorical in nature. See also Freud, 'The Infantile Genital Organization (An Interpolation into the Theory of Sexuality)' (1923), trans. Joan Riviere, in Freud, On Sexuality, p. 312.
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(1923)
Theory of Sexuality
, pp. 312
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Freud1
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79956841609
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Difference (1978)
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Screen (ed.) Routledge: London
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Stephen Heath writes, in his essay on sexual difference: 'the phallus is said to symbolize the penis which, strikingly visible, is the condition of that symbolization.' Stephen Heath, 'Difference' (1978), in Screen (ed.), The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality (Routledge: London, 1992), p. 50.
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(1992)
The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality
, pp. 50
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Heath, S.1
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27
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79956747040
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Womanliness as a Masquerade
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As already noted, Lacan uses Joan Riviere's 1929 article 'Womanliness as a Masquerade' to refer to this idea of the veiled woman as object of desire in 'The Meaning of the Phallus', p. 84.
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The Meaning of the Phallus
, pp. 84
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Riviere, J.1
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79954695691
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Introduction - II
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In her introduction to Feminine Sexuality, Jacqueline Rose discusses how women, in their role as phantasmatic objects of desire, are elevated to the place of the Other, which is also the place of God. Rose, 'Introduction - II', in Feminine Sexuality, p. 50.
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Feminine Sexuality
, pp. 50
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Rose1
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30
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21744436295
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The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex
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Freud
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Sigmund Freud, 'The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex' (1924), in Freud, On Sexuality, pp. 317-18;
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(1924)
On Sexuality
, pp. 317-318
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Freud, S.1
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32
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0004340848
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'Female Sexuality' (1931), pp. 375-7. In the second and third of these passages, Freud discusses the different consequences for boys and girls of the castration complex; in 'Female Sexuality', he notes how the fear of castration leads to the resolution of the Oedipus complex for boys, while the 'fact' of castration creates it for girls.
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(1931)
Female Sexuality
, pp. 375-377
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33
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79956833729
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There is a differential logic here in which anatomical differences are not really at issue. Castration anxiety is famously premised on a maternal phallus that never existed in the first place, which is thus a sign rather than something real - although the discovery of its absence may bear a relation to one's own precious organ. Castration is one of the key concepts that Lacan takes up in his reformulation of psychoanalysis in a linguistic direction, but it is based on one's relation to the symbolic order rather than to a specific organ
-
There is a differential logic here in which anatomical differences are not really at issue. Castration anxiety is famously premised on a maternal phallus that never existed in the first place, which is thus a sign rather than something real - although the discovery of its absence may bear a relation to one's own precious organ. Castration is one of the key concepts that Lacan takes up in his reformulation of psychoanalysis in a linguistic direction, but it is based on one's relation to the symbolic order rather than to a specific organ.
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Of Female Bondage
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Teresa Brennan (ed) Routledge: London
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Parveen Adams writes, in 'Of Female Bondage': 'What we have not noted so far and what Freud made abundantly clear is that fetishism is crucially about a splitting of the ego. Which is to say that it concerns not only the disavowal of the absence of the penis in the mother, but also, contradictorily, the recognition that the mother does not have the penis after all. Indeed, when the child disavows what he has seen he doesn't do this directly; he doesn't have the nerve to say that he has actually seen a penis. Instead, he avows the existence of the penis in some other part of the body or in some other object. Thus the fetish is a "memorial" to castration; it is "a token of triumph over the threat of castration and a protection against it".' Parveen Adams, 'Of Female Bondage', in Teresa Brennan (ed.), Between Feminism and Psychoanalysis (Routledge: London, 1989), pp. 254-5.
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(1989)
Between Feminism and Psychoanalysis
, pp. 254-255
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Adams, P.1
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35
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60950579830
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Fetishism,(1927)
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This account quotes, and accords with, Freud's own in 'Fetishism' (1927), in On Sexuality, pp. 351-7.
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On Sexuality
, pp. 351-357
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Freud1
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37
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79956818390
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ed. and trans. James Strachey,Penguin Books: Harmondsworth
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Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), ed. and trans. James Strachey (Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, 1976), p. 693 (Freud's emphasis).
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(1976)
The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
, pp. 693
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Freud, S.1
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38
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79956833589
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José Corti: Paris
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Claude Cahun, Les Paris sont ouverts (José Corti: Paris, 1934), p. 9. As the result of a split engineered by the Parti Communiste Français in 1932, the four surrealist members of the PCF, including Aragon, were forced to quit their group in order to avoid expulsion from the Party. Aragon subsequently reinvented himself as a Communist militant, adopting a realist aesthetic position antithetical to his former views.
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(1934)
Les Paris Sont Ouverts
, pp. 9
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Cahun, C.1
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39
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79956818403
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The proto-surrealist review Littérature, directed by Aragon, Breton, and Philippe Soupault, circulated the enquête 'Pourquoi écrivez-vous?' in Ortober 1919; in 1933, Aragon launched another one in Commune (the journal of the Association des Ecrivains et Artistes révolutionnaires), with the title 'Pour qui écrivez-vous?'. It was to this question that Cahun responded with the answer quoted here on p. 93
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The proto-surrealist review Littérature, directed by Aragon, Breton, and Philippe Soupault, circulated the enquête 'Pourquoi écrivez-vous?' in Ortober 1919; in 1933, Aragon launched another one in Commune (the journal of the Association des Ecrivains et Artistes révolutionnaires), with the title 'Pour qui écrivez-vous?'. It was to this question that Cahun responded with the answer quoted here on p. 93.
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79956792362
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The penultimate pages of Cahun's pamphlet include a long passage in quotation marks whose source she does not identify, but which François Leperlier has traced to a report written by a group of young Trotskyists with whom Cahun associated at this time, including Jean Legrand, Néoclè s Coutouzis, and Pierre Caminade. It is in this section of her pamphlet that the ideas paraphrased in the first part of this paragraph are expressed. Leperlier, Claude Cahun, pp. 149-51 and 194-5
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The penultimate pages of Cahun's pamphlet include a long passage in quotation marks whose source she does not identify, but which François Leperlier has traced to a report written by a group of young Trotskyists with whom Cahun associated at this time, including Jean Legrand, Néoclè s Coutouzis, and Pierre Caminade. It is in this section of her pamphlet that the ideas paraphrased in the first part of this paragraph are expressed. Leperlier, Claude Cahun, pp. 149-51 and 194-5.
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79956808600
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Exposition surréaliste d'objets, text by André Breton (Charles Ration: Paris, 1936). The exhibition took place 22-29 May 1936
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Exposition surréaliste d'objets, text by André Breton (Charles Ration: Paris, 1936). The exhibition took place 22-29 May 1936.
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42
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79956841478
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Prenez garde aux objets domestiques
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11e année
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e année, 1936, p. 46.
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(1936)
Cahiers d'Art
, pp. 46
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Cahun1
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43
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79956792180
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Cahun was first identified as the maker of the object in the 1986 Zabriskie Gallery catalogue, 1936 Surrealism. This was presumably based on the similarity of the text on the object's base to passages in 'Prenez garde aux objets domestiques', the article Cahun wrote for Cahiers d'Art on the occasion of the objects exhibition. The object, which is visible in one of the photographs documenting the 1936 exhibition, had been in the possession of the Galerie Charles Ratton ever since it was first exhibited there
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Cahun was first identified as the maker of the object in the 1986 Zabriskie Gallery catalogue, 1936 Surrealism. This was presumably based on the similarity of the text on the object's base to passages in 'Prenez garde aux objets domestiques', the article Cahun wrote for Cahiers d'Art on the occasion of the objects exhibition. The object, which is visible in one of the photographs documenting the 1936 exhibition, had been in the possession of the Galerie Charles Ratton ever since it was first exhibited there.
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Thus Oedipus's self-blinding, upon his discovery that his queen Jocasta is his mother, and that he has unwittingly killed his father Laius and taken his place on the throne and in the conjugal bed. In Aveux non avenus, which as we shall see is conceived under the sign of Narcissus, blinding is related to the pleasure Narcissus takes in his own image before the pool of the mirror, i.e. as punishment for a form of scopic pleasure
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Thus Oedipus's self-blinding, upon his discovery that his queen Jocasta is his mother, and that he has unwittingly killed his father Laius and taken his place on the throne and in the conjugal bed. In Aveux non avenus, which as we shall see is conceived under the sign of Narcissus, blinding is related to the pleasure Narcissus takes in his own image before the pool of the mirror, i.e. as punishment for a form of scopic pleasure.
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45
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60949369317
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University of California Press: Berkeley
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In Dalí and Buñuel's opening sequence, a bourgeois overvaluation of perception and vision is undercut through the violation of the eye, while it is necessary to the (heterosexual) erotic implications of this violent penetration/ castration that it be a woman's eye that is broken. In general, my reading of Un Chien andalou is indebted to Linda Williams's analysis in Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of surrealist Film (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1992), p. 88.
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(1992)
Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film
, pp. 88
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Williams, L.1
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46
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0012271014
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No More Play
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MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass
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Rosalind Krauss, 'No More Play', in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1985), p. 63. To the extent that the object is phallicized, the cloud might also signify ejaculate.
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(1985)
The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths
, pp. 63
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Krauss, R.1
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47
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34250614524
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Castration or Decapitation?
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trans. Annette Kuhn in Russell Ferguson, Martha Gever, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Cornel West (eds.)The New Museum of Contemporary Art/MIT Press: New York/ Cambridge, Mass
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In her 1976 article 'Le Sexe ou la tête?', Hélène Cixous wrote about the male/female opposition that, in her view, has ordered western culture for far too long: 'ever her moon to the masculine sun, nature to culture, concavity to masculine convexity, matter to form, immobility/inertia to the march of progress, terrain trod by the masculine footstep, vessel ...'. Cixous, 'Castration or Decapitation?', trans. Annette Kuhn in Russell Ferguson, Martha Gever, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Cornel West (eds.), Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures (The New Museum of Contemporary Art/MIT Press: New York/ Cambridge, Mass., 1990), p. 347. In her view, of course, the psychoanalytic theory of a sexual difference oriented around the castration complex helps perpetuate such dualities.
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(1990)
Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures
, pp. 347
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Cixous1
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48
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Granted that, contra Freud, female fetishism is possible
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Granted that, contra Freud, female fetishism is possible.
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61249284864
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The Mise en Scène of Desire
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ICA: London
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It is interesting in light of this discussion that the only one of Cahun's many photographic self-portraits to be published in her lifetime is an anamorphic portrait published in Bifur in 1930, in which her shaven head becomes a phallic projection (Fig. 2). That is, even though unveiled (i.e. bald), she represents herself not as the nothing that woman supposedly is in Lacanian psychoanalysis, but as a phallic woman. The confusion of genders here is enhanced by the fact that, while she is bald (as she is in many of her other self-portraits), she wears a garment that bares her shoulders in a typical display of femininity; although both are acts of unveiling, their effect is disturbing and contradictory. David Bate discusses the anamorphic portrait as phallic projection in 'The Mise en Scène of Desire' in Mise en Scène (ICA: London, 1994), p. 10, in relation to the psychoanalytic notion of the masquerade.
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(1994)
Mise en Scène
, pp. 10
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Bate, D.1
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It might be worth quoting the penultimate paragraph of Cahun's Les Paris sont ouverts here, since she describes a poetic strategy that is simultaneously one of rupture and relation, in keeping with surrealist strategies in general, and with her own object: 'Language being an agent of conflict, in other words of liaison in the relationship of man with himself, of men with each other and, consequently, of men and nature; science being oriented towards the direct knowledge and philosophy towards the indirect knowledge of the universe, poetry intervenes here, there and everywhere, provoking short-circuits in this human coming to consciousness - carnal love and extreme suffering also share the "secret" of these "magical" shortcuts.' Cahun, Les Paris sont ouverts, p. 32.
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Les Paris Sont Ouverts
, pp. 32
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Cahun1
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53
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33645371618
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Medusa's Head
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trans. James Strachey The Hogarth Press/The Institute for Psycho-Analysis: London
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Sigmund Freud, 'Medusa's Head', trans. James Strachey, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, vol. 18 (1920-1922) (The Hogarth Press/The Institute for Psycho-Analysis: London, 1955), pp. 273-4. Freud's article, written in 1922, was not published until 1940.
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(1955)
The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works
, vol.18
, Issue.1920-1922
, pp. 273-274
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Freud, S.1
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54
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0346326242
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Medusa's Head: Male Hysteria under Political Pressure' (1983), with response from Catherine Gallagher and his own reply to her
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Hertz, Columbia University Press: New York
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Neil Hertz, 'Medusa's Head: Male Hysteria Under Political Pressure' (1983), with response from Catherine Gallagher and his own reply to her, in Hertz, The End of the Line: Essays on Psychoanalysis and the Sublime (Columbia University Press: New York, 1985), pp. 160-215.
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(1985)
The End of the Line: Essays on Psychoanalysis and the Sublime
, pp. 160-215
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Hertz, N.1
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55
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0003695010
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Routledge: London
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Gallagher, in her response to Hertz's article, wished for a more positive interpretation of the vagina, which would perhaps look at men's fear of women's 'generativity' rather than focus exclusively on an absence of the phallus, i.e. on lack. Barbara Creed has more recently attempted to develop a feminist theory of the vagina's symbolic resonance (as castrating or devouring rather than castrated) which is in my opinion unsatisfactory: Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Routledge: London, 1993).
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(1993)
The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis
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Creed, B.1
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56
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61149682988
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Gallimard: Paris
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In his own study of the Medusa figure, Jean Clair writes: 'What the mask of Medusa reveals to us, and in revealing, unmasks in us, is surely that what looks at us does not resemble us. What confronts us so openly and directly, and which we supposed was so close to us, is in fact the most radically different.' Jean Clair, Méduse: Contribution à une anthropologie des arts du visuel (Gallimard: Paris, 1989), p. 57. Although Clair also discusses Baubô, the other figure for the vagina in classical culture, it is clear that sexual difference is at issue in the passage quoted here.
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(1989)
Méduse: Contribution À Une Anthropologie des Arts du Visuel
, pp. 57
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Clair, J.1
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57
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One of the central images of Un Chien andalou is a severed hand, which an androgynous female figure pokes with a stick on a busy street, and which is the final image in a series of displacements: from the famous hand crawling with ants caught in a doorway thus both 'severed' from its body, and pierced by a stigma, a hole around which ants swarm, in an image in which the open hand functions not as a sign of masculine power, but of femininity, to a woman's armpit, to a sea urchin, to the severed hand in the street. Not only castration, but the changeability of the signs of sexual difference are manifestly what are evident and what are at stake in these images, as Dalí and Buñuel subject the sign systems of western culture to a sustained and poetic critique in a contesting of the cultural order. Cahun's object too functions in this way
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One of the central images of Un Chien andalou is a severed hand, which an androgynous female figure pokes with a stick on a busy street, and which is the final image in a series of displacements: from the famous hand crawling with ants caught in a doorway (thus both 'severed' from its body, and pierced by a stigma, a hole around which ants swarm, in an image in which the open hand functions not as a sign of masculine power, but of femininity), to a woman's armpit, to a sea urchin, to the severed hand in the street. Not only castration, but the changeability of the signs of sexual difference are manifestly what are evident and what are at stake in these images, as Dalí and Buñuel subject the sign systems of western culture to a sustained and poetic critique in a contesting of the cultural order. Cahun's object too functions in this way.
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58
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0012290849
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by Lord Auch (1928)trans. Joachim Neugroschel City Lights Books: San Francisco
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Georges Bataille, Story of the Eye, by Lord Auch (1928), trans. Joachim Neugroschel (City Lights Books: San Francisco, 1987), pp. 82-4.
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(1987)
Story of the Eye
, pp. 82-84
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Bataille, G.1
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59
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0003639812
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MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass.note 15
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Hal Foster notes Freud's various discussions of primal fantasies in Compulsive Beauty (MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1993), p. 244, note 15.
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(1993)
Compulsive Beauty
, pp. 244
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60
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0003628774
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ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans, Sheridan W. W. Norton & Co: New York
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Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (1973), ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan (W. W. Norton & Co: New York, 1978), p. 77.
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(1978)
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (1973)
, pp. 77
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Lacan, J.1
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61
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0006114718
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The Uncanny' (1919)
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trans. Alix Strachey, in Freud, ed. Albert Dickson (Penguin Books: Harmondsworth
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Sigmund Freud, 'The "Uncanny"' (1919), trans. Alix Strachey, in Freud, Art and Literature, ed. Albert Dickson (Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, 1985), p. 340.
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(1985)
Art and Literature
, pp. 340
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Freud, S.1
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64
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quoted in Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty, p. 196. Foster discusses the relation between the concepts of the outmoded and the uncanny on pp. 163-4 and 193-8.
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Compulsive Beauty
, pp. 196
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Foster, H.1
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66
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85033495798
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trans. Richard Howard,Grove Press: New York
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André Breton, Nadja (1928), trans. Richard Howard (Grove Press: New York, 1960), p. 52 (translation modified). The found objects described by Breton include a bronze glove and a three-dimensional half-cylinder that turned out to be a no-less-strange device for measuring population.
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(1960)
Nadja (1928)
, pp. 52
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Breton, A.1
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67
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Editions du carrefour: Paris
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Although the oblivion into which Cahun's reputation fell for fifty years is partly due to a lack of attention by historians and critics to so-called minor figures, Cahun had an extremely ambivalent relation to success, and a good part of her disappearance was self-willed. As we have seen in her critique of Aragon, in refusing the métier she also refuses to take a professional attitude towards her work, in the belief that the expression of poetry has moved beyond such considerations. And in effect, she practises what she preaches, insisting on the avant-garde position of a 'poetry made by all' before the practical conditions for its realization have been arrived at. In living the exemplary life, she slips from view when such a position is no longer viable; rather than return to the fold as a prodigal daughter, with all that that would imply in social and psychical terms, she renounces any public activity, and in a certain sense ceases to exist, her refusal intact. And so she remains the (figurative) virgin of the Aveux non avenus, who refuses to surrender before God. Claude Cahun, Aveux non avenus (Editions du carrefour: Paris, 1930), p. 189.
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(1930)
Aveux Non Avenus
, pp. 189
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Cahun, C.1
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68
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Georges Bataille: Story of the Eye
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Musée national d'art moderne/Centre Georges Pompidou: Paris
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In August 1928, Breton wrote to his wife Simone: 'In the same collection as Aragon's book, a book has appeared by Bataille, by Georges Bataille: Story of the Eye, by Lord Auch, which is absolutely marvelous. Not only is it the most beautiful erotic book that I know of, but it's also one of the seven most beautiful books, more or less, that I've read. ... The intellectual event of the year.' Cited in André Breton: La beauté convulsive (Musée national d'art moderne/Centre Georges Pompidou: Paris, 1991), p. 188. Bataille, Aragon, and Benjamin Péret all contributed anonymously to a clandestine series of sophisticated pornographic texts in the late 1920s, in the tradition of Sade, Apollinaire, and a number of symbolist writers. Breton's remarks here were made, of course, before the antagonism between the two writers was established in the pages of Documents, in the Second Manifesto of Surrealism, and in the 'Cadavre' published by Bataille and a number of dissident surrealists that replied to the Manifesto.
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(1991)
Cited in André Breton: La Beauté Convulsive
, pp. 188
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Bataille1
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69
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79956792038
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Leperlier, Claude Cahun, p. 217. Leperlier calls attention to all three of the sources I have discussed in relation to Cahun's object, although my discussion differs substantially from his.
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Claude Cahun
, pp. 217
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Leperlier1
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71
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79956809226
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This inscription surrounds a photomontage of a series of self-portraits that forms part of the image inserted between the eighth and ninth sections of Aveux non avenus (p. 212). It recalls, of course, the theory of the masquerade, except that, as I stated at the outset of this article, Cahun is not interested so much in constructing a fiction as a necessary task - as, in fact, the task of femininity - as she is in relativizing any possible identity through play. It incorporates as a consequence of such play an understanding of the sense of vertigo that it induces.
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Aveux Non Avenus
, pp. 212
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79956818107
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Such an understanding is nowhere explicitly stated in Cahun's work, although she does include a brief homage to Freud on p. 157 of Aveux non avenus. Yet it informs both her pictorial and her written work, as this article seeks to prove
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Such an understanding is nowhere explicitly stated in Cahun's work, although she does include a brief homage to Freud on p. 157 of Aveux non avenus. Yet it informs both her pictorial and her written work, as this article seeks to prove.
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73
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The Poverty of Philosophy
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Marx,ed. David McLellan,Oxford University Press: Oxford
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Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, in Marx, Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1977), p. 204 (text originally written in French). This citation politicizes what would be more properly described as a metaphysics of revolt in Aveux non avenus, prior to Cahun's adoption of a revolutionary political position in the early 1930s.
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(1977)
Selected Writings
, pp. 204
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Marx, K.1
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74
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0013181219
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Indiana University Press: Bloomington
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See Michael Riffaterre's discussion of the glace sans tain in his Semiotics of Poetry (Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 1978), pp. 32-9. The motif of the mirror appears in symbolist poems by Verlaine, Laforgue, and O.V. de L. Milosz, as well as in surrealist poetry by Eluard, Desnos, and Péret (not to mention the section of Breton and Soupault's Les Champs magnétiques entitled 'La Glace sans tain', or Cocteau's use of the mirror in his 1930 film Le Sang d'un poète).
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(1978)
Semiotics of Poetry
, pp. 32-39
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Riffaterre, M.1
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75
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Fayard: Paris
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Jacques Duclos, Mémoires, vol. 2 (Fayard: Paris, 1969), p. 51.
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(1969)
Mémoires
, vol.2
, pp. 51
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Duclos, J.1
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76
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79956824845
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Political history of la Marseillaise
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Pierre Nora (dir.), Realms of Memory,: Symbols, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman, trans. Arthur Goldhammer,Columbia University Press: New York
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See also Michel Vovelle's political history of La Marseillaise, 'La Marseillaise: War or Peace', in Pierre Nora (dir.), Realms of Memory, vol. 3: Symbols, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Columbia University Press: New York, 1998), pp. 28-74.
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(1998)
La Marseillaise: War or Peace
, vol.3
, pp. 28-74
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Vovelle, M.1
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77
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79953437076
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See the untitled declaration published in the newspaper L'Oeuvre on 24 May 1936, and reproduced in Pierre, Tracts surréalistes, p. 301. Note that the incorrect date of 24 March 1936 is given after the text, while the notes give the correct date of 24 May.
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Tracts Surréalistes
, pp. 301
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Pierre1
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78
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79956518792
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Edition de l'auteur: Bruxelles
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I initially thought Cahun was reworking the French penal code, but a reading of Marcel Mariën's memoirs Le Radeau de la Mémoire brought to my attention Mariën's use of the identical phrase 'La loi punit le contrefacteur des travaux forcés', in a text on counterfeiting first published in 1944. See Marcel Mariën, Le Radeau de la Mémoire (Edition de l'auteur: Bruxelles, 1988), p. 155.
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(1988)
Le Radeau de la Mémoire
, pp. 155
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Mariën, M.1
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79
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85088347443
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Krause Publications: Iola, Wis, no date
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th ed. (Krause Publications: Iola, Wis., no date), vol. 2, pp. 121-4.
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Standard Catalog of World Paper Money, 7th Ed
, vol.2
, pp. 121-124
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Pick, A.1
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80
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79956818070
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'Travaux forcés à perpétuité' is a fixed expression, but the 'à perpétuité' modifies the preposition from 'de' to 'des'. I owe an understanding of these distinctions to Alice Cotton, who has also improved my translations on a number of occasions
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'Travaux forcés à perpétuité' is a fixed expression, but the 'à perpétuité' modifies the preposition from 'de' to 'des'. I owe an understanding of these distinctions to Alice Cotton, who has also improved my translations on a number of occasions.
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81
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79956827815
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Cahun, 'Prenez garde aux objets domestiques', p. 45. Although I have translated 'chaîne' as 'shackles' here, it is more literally an assembly or production line. If, however, Cahun makes the shackles singular here (and the labour 'hard'), she docs so to indicate that penal servitude and ordinary factory labour are not qualitatively different; at the same time, she establishes a poetic relation between chains and bridle.
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Prenez Garde Aux Objets Domestiques
, pp. 45
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Cahun1
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83
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79956809117
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Roughly half of Breton's address remained unpublished until its inclusion in Breton
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Gallimard: Paris
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Breton had an understanding of the workings of ideology that was quite sophisticated for his day. This is revealed particularly well in his address to the Association des Ecrivains et Artistes révolutionnaires in February 1933, 'A propos du concours de littérature prolétarienne organisé par L'Humanité', a substantial portion of which was published in Le Surréalisme au service de la Révolution, no. 5, 15 May 1933, following its refusal by L'Humanité. (Roughly half of Breton's address remained unpublished until its inclusion in Breton, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2 (Gallimard: Paris, 1992), pp. 1494-1502.) In his address, it is a question of combatting workers' education and their reading habits - which infiltrate even the best proletarian writing - with a counter-pedagogy that will enable workers to understand the conditions and possibilities of writing in their time, and thus escape the ideological limitations of the sources and models of writing (whether textbook, newspaper, or catechism) that they have been exposed to in the course of their lives. Breton's participation on a jury evaluating examples of proletarian literature, and the surrealists' attitude towards proletarian literature in the early 1930s, are issues that I cannot pursue here, although I discuss them extensively in Chapter 2 of my dissertation, 'Sister to the Dream'.
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(1992)
Oeuvres Complètes
, vol.2
, pp. 1494-1502
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L'Humanité1
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84
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Several of the non-surrealist members of Contre-Attaque, including Jean Bernier, Pierre Kaan, and Bataille himself, had belonged to the dissident Cercle communiste démocratique, and had written for its journal La Critique sociale, edited by Boris Souvarine; the journal looked closely at developments in the Soviet Union from a well-informed critical perspective that was devastatingly critical of Stalin. While remaining Marxist in orientation, it attempted to open up a number of assumptions to critical scrutiny, in an effort to prevent communism from congealing into the dogma it was already becoming in the Soviet Union and the various national Communist Parties
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Several of the non-surrealist members of Contre-Attaque, including Jean Bernier, Pierre Kaan, and Bataille himself, had belonged to the dissident Cercle communiste démocratique, and had written for its journal La Critique sociale, edited by Boris Souvarine; the journal looked closely at developments in the Soviet Union from a well-informed critical perspective that was devastatingly critical of Stalin. While remaining Marxist in orientation, it attempted to open up a number of assumptions to critical scrutiny, in an effort to prevent communism from congealing into the dogma it was already becoming in the Soviet Union and the various national Communist Parties.
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L'Exotisme intérieur
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Paris musées/Jean-Michel Place: Paris
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The title of Cahun's book Aveux non avenus ('Abrogated Vows') also has legal implications. The phrase 'non avenu', which at one time was used to mean 'did not occur', survives today only in the legal phrase 'nul et non avenu' ('null and void'). Significantly, this legal term has been appropriated by Cahun for other uses. The photograph of an open road that concludes the book may be one such instance, as a visual and bilingual pun that is antithetical to the term's proper meaning. If I think that 'abrogate' is the best word to translate 'non avenus', it is because this too is a legal term meaning to repeal, cancel, or abolish a law or legal contract. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the following quotation in this regard, from Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique, 1553: 'They abrogate suche vowes as were proclaimed to be kept.' What Aveux non avenus promises in terms of self-revelation is blocked or checked at every turn, as François Leperlier notes in 'L'Exotisme intérieur', in Claude Cahun photographe (Paris musées/Jean-Michel Place: Paris, 1995), p. 9.
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(1995)
Claude Cahun Photographe
, pp. 9
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Leperlier, F.1
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86
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Aragon, Roger Caillois, René Char, Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí, Paul Eluard, and Alberto Giacometti are all examples of one-time surrealists who later re-emerged as authority figures embracing the traditions they once so vigorously contested. Artaud, Breton, Cahun, or Benjamin Péret are counter-examples of those who refused to arrive and take up the categorical status assigned to them by a culture to which they always bore an equivocal relation
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Aragon, Roger Caillois, René Char, Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí, Paul Eluard, and Alberto Giacometti are all examples of one-time surrealists who later re-emerged as authority figures embracing the traditions they once so vigorously contested. Artaud, Breton, Cahun, or Benjamin Péret are counter-examples of those who refused to arrive and take up the categorical status assigned to them by a culture to which they always bore an equivocal relation.
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