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Dada's Subject and Structure argues that Dadaist praxis was far more theoretically incisive than previous scholarship has indicated. The book combines theoretical frameworks surrounding ideological subject formation with critical media and genre histories in order to more closely read Dadaist techniques (e.g. montage, irony, nonsense, etc.) across multiple works. These readings reveal both Dada's preternatural focus on the discursive aspects of subject formation-linguistic sign, literary manifesto, photographic image, commodity form/aesthetics, which comprise the project's chapters-and on Dada's performative sabotage and subversion of them. In addition to highlighting commonalities between Dadaist works, artists, and chapters previously imagined disparate, the book shows how Dada simultaneously prefigured structuralist theories of subject formation and pre-performed post-structuralist critiques of those theories.
List of contents
Introduction: Taking Dada and Ideology Seriously.- Chapter 1. "A Constant Problem and Preoccupation": Dada and/as Sign.- Chapter 2. "A Spectre is Haunting Dada": Dada and/as Manifesto.- Chapter 3. "We Need Only Take Scissors": Dada and/as Photographic Image.- Chapter 4. "So Its Useful Significance Disappeared": Dada and/as Commodity.- Conclusion.
About the author
J. Brandon Pelcher is Lecturer of German at Tufts University in Boston (USA).
