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The Animal Surreal situates Surrealism within the burgeoning field of Animal Studies by examining Surrealist representations of nonhuman animals through the lens of Darwinian theory. Unlike Marx and Freud, Darwin was rarely cited by name as a source for the Surrealists, and yet his influence is present in various ways, such as the frequent inclusion of "natural history" imagery and the exploration of themes of mutability and mutation. Animals and our relationship to them furthermore constitute a significant source of inquiry for Surrealism, as evidenced by Max Ernst's human-bird alter-ego Loplop, their avid interest in the praying mantis, the adoption of the Minotaur as emblem, and the frequently recurring birds, insects, horses, dogs, cats, giraffes, elephants, lions, and cows, among others, represented in Surrealist poetry, painting, and film. The Animal Surreal proposes that the Surrealists portrayed such animals as if they were literal embodiments of Surrealist themes such as the marvelous and the uncanny, and it documents the numerous ways in which the Surrealists willfully engaged the politics of the animal other in ways that implicitly, and on occasion explicitly, challenged what Freud would call "human narcissism."
List of contents
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: An Introduction to Animals, Darwin, and Surrealism
Chapter 2: The Darwinian Uncanny
Chapter 3: A Darwinian Marvelous
Chapter 4: Les Espaces des Animaux: The Politics of Space in Human-Animal Relationships
Chapter 5: Hybridity, Variability, and Mutation
Chapter 6: Max Ernst, Loplop, Totems, and Taboos
Chapter 7: Les Animaux et leurs femmes, les femmes et leurs animaux
Chapter 8: Madness, Animals, Automatons, Automatism
Chapter 9: Human Animality: Natural and Sexual Selection in the films of Luis Buñuel
Chapter 10: The Other Darwinism: Surrealism and Social Darwinism
Chapter 11: Animality, Documents, and the Early Bataille
Chapter 12: Humans, Animals, and Sacrifice in Bataille's Later Writing
Notes on Surrealist Participants
Works Cited
Author and Artist Index
Subject Index
About the author
Kirsten Strom is a professor of art history at Grand Valley State University where she was a recipient of the Pew Teaching Excellence Award. She has published articles and book chapters on a range of topics including postmodern design, "dance anthropology," animal studies, and Surrealism.
Summary
The Animal Surreal explores the varied ways that Darwinian theory affected Surrealist thought, primarily through an exploration of Surrealist representations of nonhuman animals as kin to humans. It considers other animals as embodiments of the marvelous and the uncanny, and it addresses the politics of their implicit critique of anthropocentris
