March, 2008In Their Own Voices: Writings by Surrealist Women on Gender, Racial, and Economic EqualityThere is a tendency among critics to blame surrealist men of chauvinism, and common opinion holds that women surrealists were silenced and marginalized by their male colleagues. To a great extent this is true, but we may wish to reconsider our assumptions about total female submission, especially when we consider the great literary contributions female surrealist writers made in the 1930s and 1940s to surrealist publications. Many women made significant contributions to the definition of surrealism, surrealist theory, and most importantly, its dedication to the liberation of all people from all forms of oppression. Let us consider both the ideals of surrealist thought and the socio-economic climate in Europe before and during World War II. During the chaos surrounding the wars, misogyny and other forms of inequality were rampant. Women, minorities, immigrants, and revolutionary workers were targeted as scapegoats for economic hardships (Rosemont, xliv). In France, anti-birth control propaganda was widespread, and childless women were denounced as perpetrators of race suicide. Independent women who defied traditional values of family, church, and state were regarded with suspicion and hostility (Rosemont, 42). Media hostility against women was generated by two sensationalized cases1 in which female perpetrators were found guilty of murdering abusive authority figures. These stories fueled hatred of female “hysteria”. No group in France expressed support for these women except for the surrealists, who regarded them as victims: As the surrealists saw it, these young women at the very bottom of the social heap had ripped the hypocritical façade off the so-called sanctity of the bourgeois family. Scandalously affirming their right to live without concessions, the Papin sisters and Violette Nozieres hurled a red-hot monkey wrench into the moral machinery of a corrupt social order. In the fierce glare of their rage and violence, “respectability” stood exposed as a sham: brute force shielded by piety and the long arm of the law (Rosemont, 44). Considering the climate for women in Europe at the time, surrealist women fared much better than most, since the surrealist position on a number of issues coincided with feminist thought. While male surrealists might not have been feminists per se, they opposed all patriarchal institutions (church, state, capitalism, military, etc.) as well as most masculine archetypes (athlete, soldier, businessman, bureaucratic boss, etc.). Along similar lines capitalist ideals of productivity (progress, progress, racial purity, nationalism, conquest of nature, etc.) were also held in contempt. “What is exceptional about the young men who founded surrealism…is the way and the extent to which they avoided and rejected (misogyny)” (Rosemont, xliv - xlv). Furthermore, by simply being involved in the movement and assuming an attitude of non-conformity, they acted as social liberators, subversives, and revolutionaries. While they may not have felt ready to compete for the limelight with their male friends, we underestimate the enormity of this step toward autonomy (Rosemont, 9). Those women who actively used the power of the written word to promote emancipation from wage slavery, racial prejudice, and gender inequality proved to be influential forces both within the movement and in society at large. By the 1930s the number of women involved with surrealism had increased, and many became prominent voices in the surrealist sphere. Female contributors to journals such as La Revolution, Surerealiste, Minotaur, and Tropiques became central initiators of surrealist thought by formulating surrealist theory and promoting surrealism as a device for the emancipation of the working class, blacks, and women (Rosemont 41-45). Perhaps their own tangential status fueled their passion for advocating the rights of those who suffered social, economic, and racial prejudice. In utter contempt for capitalism and cultural elitism, some surrealists became aligned with the Communist party. They saw the abolition of wage slavery as a necessary first step in a revolution they hoped would go beyond politics. Freudianism merged with Marxism when Freud’s discoveries discredited the positivist rationalizations that made the world safe for capitalism and war (Rosemont, 42-45). In Surrealism and Working Class Emancipation, Claude Cahun called on the proletariat to become conscious of myths that uphold capitalist culture, and destroy them through revolutionary action. The dada-surrealist experiment, she said, would serve the cause of working class emancipation. Its dissemination among the proletariat was “the only valid revolutionary poetic propaganda of our time” (Cahun, 57-58). In her contributions to Tropiques, a widely circulated journal of poetry, surrealist thought, and revolutionary ideas, Suzanne Cesaire promoted surrealism for both economic and racial emancipation. As a black West Indian scholar from the Caribbean island of Martinique, she brought unique understandings of race, gender, and pre-capitalist societies to her writing. Her writings questioned the Euro-American attitude of dominion over non-European inhabitants of colonial outposts, asserting the surrealist anti-capitalist ideology and opposition to conventional European thought. So influential were her writings that the worldwide struggle for black equality and freedom became an integral part of surrealism (Rosemont, 123). In Discontent of a Civilization, she outlined issues of difference and inequality between whites and people of color in Martinique. Urging Martiniquans to liberate themselves from the restraints of Euro-dominant culture through surrealist thought and action, she referred to the white colonial lifestyle as something to be “triumphed over”. Noting the suffering of “ our slave forbears”, she recalls the history of slavery, degradation and prejudice in Martinique and asked why blacks should wish to assimilate into a society, alien to their true nature that tried to force them to submit to “civilization” by whipping and fear of death? (Cesaire, 129-130). She conveyed surrealist antipathy for European thinking, pointing to differences between whites and black ancestral culture. Industrious capitalists, recognizing progress and conquest of nature as good, presume the Martiniquan to be lazy, for not sharing their values. She challenged this ethnocentric point of view by comparing the Martiniquan to a “human plant”, connected to the earth and rhythms of nature who would not find it within himself to dominate nature: Citing “ancestral discontent,” she explained that the Martiniquan who does not recognize his own deep nature and tries to adapt to an alien style of existence is not truly emancipated, and will only find himself in “a state of pseudo-civilization which must be considered abnormal and monstrous”. “Surrealism,” said Cesaires, “provides hope for liberty and revolution….Now it is up to us to find others in its light…..The land of ours can only become what we want it to be” (Cesaires,132). Capitalist and imperialist culture leads inevitably to racism and white supremacy. Nancy Cunard, whose own mother was a white supremacist, distinguished herself as a critic of racism and a scholar or African Culture. An expert ethnographer, devotee of jazz and African art, and the lover of African American jazz musician/composer Henry Crowder, she was the first surrealist to systematically take up matters of racism (Rosemont, 61). Her essay, The Scottsboro Case called for revolution and racial equality in America. Crying out against the judicial inequities between race and class in the American south, she cited the frame up case of two black boys, falsely accused of rape. “No previous Negro case has aroused such a universal outcry against the abomination of American ‘law.’“ She blames this not only on politics but also on capitalist oppression and brutality. “Every Negro worker is the potential victim of lynching murder and legal lynching by the white ruling class simply because he is a worker and black”. Here again we see blame placed on capitalist society for being the root of these evils (Cunard, 64-65). In A Trip to Harlem, Cunard explains “The Negro race ”is not a problem, it is a fact.” Yet in America and all other imperialist countries, the ruling classes urge workers into thinking that the Negro, the colored race, was created by nature as a menace.” She called for communist consciousness among the black workers and Negro intellectuals, exclaiming “Up with Harlem in an all-Communist United States!” (Cunard, 66). Her self published Negro, An Anthology is a compilation of scholarly articles representing the achievements, aspirations of the Black world”. The text was a sensation that was “a landmark in public awareness to the wonders of Black culture”. In How Come, White Man? she called the white colonialists on their ethnocentric views and assumed racial superiority. Her statements reflect the surrealist distrust of machines, technology, capitalism, and colonialism. “In Africa,” you [racists] say, “the Negro is a savage, he has produced nothing, he has no history.” It is certainly true he has not got himself mixed up with machines and science to fly the Atlantic, turn out engines, run up skyscrapers and contrive holocausts. There are no tribal presses emitting the day’s lies and millions of useless volumes. There remain no written records; the wars, the kingdoms and the changes have sufficed unto themselves…Who tells you you are better off for being “civilized” when you live in the shadow of the next war or revolution in constant terror of being ruined or killed... How come white man, is the rest of the world to be reformed in your dreary and decadent manner? (Cunard, 61). Mary Low attacked patriarchy and expressed both Marxist views and feminist longings for equality in Red Spanish Notebook, the first book-length account of the revolutionary struggles in Spain. An active militant, surrealist poet, and organizer of a women’s militia, she fought alongside men in the conflict. In her essay, Women and the Spanish Revolution, Low noted that many of the women who joined the militia did so in a search for freedom, as an escape from the repression of family, marriage, and church. But on the battlefield, women were still seen by men as liabilities, not so much for their assumed inability to fight, but because of the stronghold of patriarchal thinking in Spanish culture. Quoting the comments of one such man Low states “‘They haven’t got rid of their old fashioned sense of chivalry yet…. if one of you girls get caught by the enemy, fifteen men immediately risk their lives to avenge her…It costs lives and it’s too much effort’” (Low, 96). In the first attempt by a woman surrealist to deal theoretically with women in history, Low surveyed the economic reasons behind the ancient societal shift from matriarchy to patriarchy in Women and Love through Private Property she connected the decline of matriarchy and the oppression of women to the advent of personal property (Low, 139). Private ownership became the “Pandora’s Box” of the human race and was the first step toward one group of people oppressing another. As communal societies shifted toward protecting properties, intertribal wars occurred frequently, creating for the species the need of the permanent armed force. Biologically unequipped for military work, women were now seen as inferior: Thanks to war and some advances in technology and general production, man has managed to make his woman not his equal companion, but his inferior. Through marriage woman becomes man’s slave. The invention of marriage brings with it the absurd and strange invention of sexual prejudice (Low, 139-40). When private property arrived in primitive society, the notions of prejudice began to emerge. When class inequality deepened the development of production, it became necessary to form a religious ethic or some other philosophy to justify prejudice against women and other tribes or races. A political or religious justification of prejudice resigns women to accept their inferior status to men and accept the secondary role in history. The work women are allowed to do is devalued and their wages for doing it are set lower. Similarly, when blacks are deprived of the opportunity to do intellectual or technical work, they have only unskilled labor, for which they receive starvation wages, to turn to. With a large class of unemployed, they have not choice but to accept dismal compensation for their work. From an economic (Marxist) standpoint, women and blacks are considered as nothing more than a productive force in the realm of capitalist progress and productivity (Low, 140). As an international movement that opposed all forms of social domination, surrealism was very appealing to women. The growing influence of female writers in the surrealist movement preceding and during World War II brought with it major developments in surrealist thought, particularly concerning the emancipation of women, minorities, and workers. Fusing Marxism with passion and poetry, they helped to radicalize the movement with writings that promoted anti-Eurocentricist, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist ideologies. They expressed their distrust of technology and advocated undisturbed nature and sympathy for “primitive” cultures. Many of the ideologies expressed contributed to global struggles for gender, race, and class equality. In the introduction to her anthology, Penelope Rosemont summarizes the importance of their contributions. “If civilization exists on its disastrous path -- denying dreams degrading language, shackling love, destroying nature, perpetrating racism, glorifying authoritarian institutions, i.e., family, church, state, patriarchy, military and so-called free market), and reducing all that exists to the status of disposable commodities – then surely devastation is in store not only for us but for all life on this planet” (Rosemont, xxxiv). BIBLIOGRAPHY Cahun, Claude. "How Come, White Man?", "Surrealism and Working Class Emancipation," and "The Scottsboro Case." Surrealist Women: An International Anthology. Penelope Rosemont, ed. Austin, Texas, The University of Texas Press, 1998. Cesaire, Suzanne. "Discontent of a Civilization." Surrealist Women: An International Anthology. Penelope Rosemont, ed. Austin, Texas, The University of Texas Press, 1998. Cunard, Nancy. "Surrealism, Ethnography, and Revolution" Surrealist Women: An International Anthology. Penelope Rosemont, ed. Austin, Texas, The University of Texas Press, 1998. Low, Mary. "Women and the Spanish Revolution" and "Women and Love through Private Property." Surrealist Women: An International Anthology. Penelope Rosemont, ed. Austin, Texas, The University of Texas Press, 1998. Rosemont, Penelope, ed. Surrealist Women: An International Anthology. Penelope Rosemont, ed. Austin, Texas, The University of Texas Press, 1998.
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