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Chapter 14 - Surrealism and Schizoanalysis

from Part III - Applications: Heterodoxies and New Worlds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 July 2021

Natalya Lusty
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
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Summary

This chapter critically reevaluates the Surrealist technique of splitting up and rearranging figures and dolls into mythopoetic concoctions, often featuring androgynous and machinic bodies. This tendency continues in contemporary art. At the root of these artistic experiments is a desiring imagination that reaches beyond “normal” bodies. This complements queer theories that aim to deconstruct, and see beyond, everyday heteronormativity. Deleuze and Guattari’s “schizoanalysis” also suggests that this process of splitting up is fundamentally creative and life affirming. Against traditional psychoanalysis, schizoanalysis looks to the example of the schizophrenic, who initiates a spontaneous creativity, splitting and reassembling normative codes and conventions. From the Greek, skhizein (“split”) and phrēn (“mind”), schizophrenia features the splitting of social and mental cohesion. The chapter suggests how it is possible to analyze this Surrealist process of ‘splitting’ using different levels of description: queer, schizoanalytical, and politico-aesthetic.

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Surrealism , pp. 259 - 271
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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