SURREALISM’S AMERICA: NOTES ON A VERNACULAR EPISTEMOLOGY by Kate Khatib A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Baltimore, Maryland October 2013 Abstract “Surrealism’s America” is an intellectual history of an important but largely unknown political and artistic underground active in the United States from the mid-1960s until the present day: The Chicago Surrealist Group. Founded in 1966 by artist-revolutionaries Franklin and Penelope Rosemont, the Chicago Surrealist Group has the distinction of being the only indigenous American surrealist formation welcomed into the International Surrealist Movement by founder André Breton. Active participants in the 1960s countercultural milieu, the Chicago Surrealist Group, who coined the now-ubiquitous phrase “Make Love, Not War,” were the first to develop a mode of surrealist praxis steeped in, and born out of, a quintessentially American context. On the basis of independent archival research and personal interviews with Franklin and Penelope Rosemont, and other surviving members of the Chicago Surrealist Group, this dissertation traces the origins of this interesting configuration of activity, providing short biographies for the Group’s major players, and devoting significant work to understanding and explaining the political, theoretical, and artistic precursors whose influence helped to shape the nascent movement in its earliest years—figures ranging from the great urban anthropologist St. Clair Drake, who taught many of the Chicago surrealists at Roosevelt University in the 1960s, to Walter Benjamin, whose suggestion that the past be treated “politically” the surrealists took to heart, to the IWW martyr and labor hero Joe Hill, whose life Franklin Rosemont would later chronicle in his Joe Hill book. Through a series of close readings of key texts, as well as conversations with the surviving surrealists, the author zeros in on the writing of history as a central concern for the Chicago surrealist group, who took up this project as it was originally conceived by Breton and Louis Aragon in 1920s France with great skill and fervor, turning Breton’s preoccupation with the reordering of events and individuals into a central methodological principle for political and theoretical action. This project seeks not only to explain this principle, but also to demonstrate the unique value of the historical project of the Chicago Surrealist Group by understanding the group’s history as they, themselves, composed it. ii Acknowledgements “Surrealism’s America” is a book more then ten years in the making, originally conceptualized as a thesis project under the direction of Hent de Vries and Mieke Bal at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, then revised and refined over the course of countless conversations with colleagues at Johns Hopkins University and members of the Chicago Surrealist Group. As such, it has become something of a collaborative project in my mind, though any errors, omissions, or obstinacies are wholly my own. First and foremost, this project could not have been completed without the encouragement and involvement of the Chicago surrealist group, and especially Franklin and Penelope Rosemont and Paul and Beth Garon. Over the past ten years, this remarkable group of people have welcomed me into their homes and their hearts, sharing their ideas and ideals, their memories of the past and their dreams for the future. I count myself as extraordinarily lucky to have found my way into their sphere of influence, and I am honored every day to call them my friends and comrades. The death of Franklin Rosemont in 2009 was a heavy blow to the international surrealist movement, and took its toll on all of us; I am grateful for the time I was able to spend with Franklin in the years before his death, though, and I can’t help but smile every time I think of his response to an early outline for this project: “It seems that Kate knows us better than we know ourselves.” If that is true, then it is only because of the willingness of Franklin, Penelope, Paul, and Beth to bring me into their world and help me to understand. I have been fortunate over the course of my academic career to have remarkable teachers and mentors without whose guidance and encouragement I would certainly never have made it this far. I cannot express enough my gratitude to Neil Hertz, my dissertation supervisor, for his willingness to work on this project with me, and his ability to see and make clear the things that I had overlooked; this project has improved immeasurably thanks to his suggestions and edits. Hent de Vries took me in as a Masters student at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, supported me through my MA and MPhil, and ultimately encouraged me to come to Johns Hopkins to pursue my PhD. It is thanks to his seminars that I first began to understand the idea of treating the past politically, an insight that forms the central basis for this work. I am deeply grateful to Mieke Bal, Richard Macksey, Simon During, Peter Jelavich, Ron Walters, Jean-Michel Rabaté, and especially Craig Saper for their seminars and after- class discussions at Johns Hopkins University, the Universiteit van Amsterdam, and the University of Pennsylvania. Thanks too are due to Paul Buhle, David Roediger, Ron Sakolsky, Peter Linebaugh, George Caffentzis, Silvia Federici, Jane Bennett, William Connolly, and Lester Spence, all of whom provided essential encouragement and moral support at various points during the composition of this project. Key portions of this text were supported by a series of writing grants: the summer fellowship program in Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Johns Hopkins University provided necessary support during my research into Toyen’s concept of surrealism as a “community of ethical views”; research on surrealism’s early race politics and on the work of Aimé Césaire was supported by a grant from the Center for Africana Studies at JHU. A Dean’s Teaching Fellowship allowed me to develop a curriculum around “Surrealist Narratives,” which iii formed the basis for the analysis of Aragon’s Paris Peasant and other surrealist texts on the city. And, finally, at least a third of this dissertation was composed during a retreat at the Blue Mountain Center, organized by Dara Greenwald, Josh MacPhee, and Malav Kanuga, on the topic of “Cultural Workers and the Commons.” Dara Greenwald, who invited me to participate in the program at Blue Mountain Center, lost her battle with cancer at the age of 40 less than two years after that retreat, but I will be forever grateful to her for convincing me not to give up on this project. Dara wasn’t a surrealist, but she embodied surrealism’s playful and inquisitive spirit in every aspect of her life, and I, like so many others, am a better person for having known her. My personal and professional world is filled with a lively cast of characters who inform and educate me every moment of every day: the Red Emma’s collective infuriates and inspires me in equal measures, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I owe a debt of gratitude to the AK Press collective, with whom I have worked for the past five years, for helping me to hone my editing skills so that I might turn them on my own writing, and for allowing me the flexibility I needed to take time off to write at various points. Countless collaborative rants and brainstorms with my friend and fellow traveller Margaret Killjoy have helped to continuously fuel the fires of anarcho-surrealist excitement over the past eight years. And without the love, the support, and the constant encouragement of my immediate family, I would have given up long ago and moved on to something else. Yet no one individual has influenced the composition of this project more than my partner, John Duda. Every insight in this book has been shared with John at various points over the years, and most have been debated, discussed, and further developed over the course of our conversations. From the formation of the Philadelphia Radical Surrealist Front to our first meeting with the Chicago surrealists, from Philadelphia, to Amsterdam, to Chicago, to Baltimore, and all points in-between, John has been my chief interlocutor and constant companion, playing cheerleader and challenger with equal measures of care. It is impossible to quantify the contribution he has made to my intellectual and political development, but I’m sure he will recognize more than a few of his own ideas and insights peeking through in the pages that follow. iv Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………….…………………….……..……...1 Part One: Toward a Transmutative Practice…………………….……………………...8 Chapter One: American Surrealism…………………….…….……………….………….....9 Chapter Two: Surrealism’s Critical Epistemology…………………..….…………………..46 Chapter Three: Automatic Theologies, Profane Illuminations……….…………….………69 Chapter Four: The Alchemy of the Everyday…………………….….…………………….92 Part Two: Toward a Vernacular Surrealism………………….….……………….…...117 Chapter Five: Surrealism’s Other America ………………………………………………118 Chapter Six: Vernacular Surrealism and Urban Anthropology………….………………...148 Chapter Seven: A Hobo’s Theory of History…………………………….…………….....181 Epilogue………………………………………………………………….……………....205 v List of Illustrations Page 41: Make Love Not War button designed by the Chicago Surrealist Group, 1965 (image courtesy of Creative Review) Page 53: The Surrealist Map of the World, 1929 (image courtesy of Race Traitor) vi Introduction Anyone who has spent time with the inimitable co-founder of the Chicago Surrealist Group, Franklin Rosemont, has probably heard the story of Rosemont’s exchange with Nelson Algren: “Surrealism? In Chicago?” the novelist laughingly replied to Rosemont’s invitation to participate in the Chicago Group’s activities. “You’re going to need a lot of luck!”1 It was 1975, and Algren was about to leave the city for a new life in Paterson, New Jersey; the Chicago Surrealist Group had already been active for almost a decade.