So Ya Wannabe A Surrealist? Part 3.
Surrealsplaining and 'favourite surrealist syndrome'
I thought I'd stay in grumpy mode just a little longer... It might actually be my default mode as I shuffle towards old age.
You are no doubt familiar with a term that has become popular over the last decade or so, 'mansplaining'. And if you are a woman I am sure you don't need me to tell you that it refers to a phenomenon where men all too often feel a need to explain something to a woman who has absolutely no need for that explanation, having a full grasp of the subject and in many cases being an expert on it. There seem to have been several cases where a woman scientist has been 'corrected' on her statements regarding her specialism, the field she actually works in, by a man who has a superficial knowledge of that subject, and whose source turns out to be a book that she wrote! I hate to think of it, but I am pretty sure that, at some point I must have done this myself, although certainly not with the intent to condescend so crassly, but it does happen. At best it is a failure of awareness and self-knowledge.
Although mansplaining is clearly embedded in sexism and even misogyny, the urge to 'splain would seem to be wider, and possibly even a universal phenomenon. In the wake of mansplaining, we saw the term 'blacksplaining' emerge where white people have found it necessary to explain to people of, primarily African, but also other ethnicities, the oppression they have experienced, apparently unaware that such explaining is, in itself, a kind of oppression, or at the very least an expression of racism, however well meaning.
When I say there is a phenomenon that I call 'surrealsplaining' I mean that it is parallel to such manifestations as mansplaining and blacksplaining and it is mostly based on the belief that an opinion has the same weight as actual knowledge. So here's the grumpy bit, my annoyance at people who think that what I might have to say on the subject of Surrealism pales into insignificance compared to an opinion gleaned from a three minute You Tube video or a review of an exhibition in a newspaper. Usually, that annoyance is mixed with amusement, and that is a blessing, otherwise I'd have exploded with rage long ago, and that would be messy.
In a previous post I mentioned something that frequently occurs, which goes like this:
Fan: “I love X, X is my favourite surrealist!”
X: “I am not a surrealist, I don’t much like surrealism.”
Me: “X is not a surrealist”
Fan: “You are SOOO narrow-minded!”
For instance, somebody once approached me, referring to Francis Bacon in this way. But Bacon seems to have had a low regard for Surrealism, possibly, in part, because he was turned down from exhibiting in the London International Surrealist Exhibition in the 1930s. Bacon was not a surrealist, he makes scant reference to Surrealism and in general his attitudes are quite different to those of most surrealists, artistically, philosophically and politically. But the fan insists that Bacon is a great surrealist and doesn't look beyond the label being denied by the nasty man.
However, I'd like to claim a rather more nuanced attitude than simply dividing the world into those who can be labelled surrealist and non-surrealist. I think that at several levels and junctures Bacon is potentially relevant to a surrealist painter, for instance, in his use of chance (inspired partly by Duchamp) and perhaps also in how this meshes with issues of embodiment and questioning the grand tradition of painting, for instance his metamorphosis of Velasquez's 'Pope Innocent X'.
We could also consider Bacon's long friendship with Michel Leiris, once a member of the Surrealist Group and long after with friendly relationships in that quarter, another case of not actually being a surrealist, at least formally for most of his life, but with a definite relationship to the movement, and we can even consider his work to always exist in relation to Surrealism. What can't be done is simply collapse everything into the rubric of Surrealism presented as a simplistic and easy to digest catch-all. That falsifies both the various artists, writers and political activists and falsifies Surrealism.
But to return to the issue of surrealsplaining, a large number of people do seem to want to explain their opinions with very little reference to facts of any kind. A while ago I found myself in this situation online where pointing out that I was a scholar of Surrealism elicited the response that he was referring to Surrealism, not academia, so I pointed out that I had 30 odd years as a surrealist activist, he responded that I was "acting as a gatekeeper". Thing is, I was doing no such thing, but simply pointing out that he had his facts wrong. He'd rather become abusive and accuse me of all sorts of things than consider, even for a minute, that he might be wrong.
When I started a study of philosophy years back, my tutor told us "Nobody is interested in your opinion." She was not trying to be crushingly dismissive and rude about anything we might say, but pointing out that mere opinions have no structure of argument, and what is interesting in thinking is how we might employ facts in an argument in order to support a position, or change our position in the light of new facts or a better argument. Sadly, some people never even consider such a possibility, preferring the safety of static and dead opinions. I'm sure I must sometimes be guilty of this as well, it would seem to be distressingly common throughout humanity, so why should I be immune? However, as I am aware of the issue of having an argument that might change my mind, perhaps I'm not wholly hopeless. How about you?
