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Dalí’s Fascism; Lacan’s Paranoia
Author(s) -
Greely Robert Adèle
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8365.00278
Subject(s) - paranoia , alienation , nazism , art , ideology , bourgeoisie , relation (database) , psychoanalysis , persona , politics , allegiance , literature , philosophy , art history , humanities , law , psychology , political science , database , computer science , psychotherapist
In February 1934 Breton summoned Salvador Dalí before a Surrealist ‘court’ on charges of Nazi sympathizing. In Breton’s mind, Dalí’s fascination with Hitler threatened to bring about the ‘ruin of Surrealism’ by exposing the ideological flaws in existing Surrealist attempts to distinguish between right‐wing and left‐wing politics in relation to aesthetic production. To Breton’s dismay, Dalí seemed to take literally Breton’s call in the First Surrealist Manifesto to produce works ‘outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations‘. Yet in directing Surrealist attention to Hitler, I argue, Dalí analysed the ‘hitlerian phenomenon‘ as an apocalyptic symptom of the alienation and auto‐aggression afflicting bourgeois society. In so doing, he relied heavily upon a dialogue he had struck up with Jacques Lacan concerning paranoia – what Lacan termed ‘autopunition‘, and their relationship to the fascist persona.