Obscure Objects of Desire - Surrealism, Fetishism, and Politics

This book offers a new critical approach to the political claims of the surrealist movement, asking whether it is possible to theorize a connection between the surrealists' commitment to the cause of revolutionary socialism, and the form that surrealist art and writing took. Through the analysis of narratives, paintings and objets surralistes by Breton, Aragon, Dal, and others, Malt examines how the object emerges as psychologically and historically marked in the surrealist context, functioning as both fetish and fetishized commodity. Responding to recent debates about the role of the uncanny and the representation of the body in surrealist art and literature, Malt's study offers new perspectives on familiar works such as the paintings of Salvador Dal as well as illuminating relatively neglected ones such as Breton's pomes-objets.