Surrealpolitik by John Schoneboom: A Review

 

John Schoneboom's new book Surrealpolitik: Surreality and the National Security State is by turns a frustrating, occasionally annoying, sometimes fascinating and, in concept at least, a quite necessary book, but not, to my mind, the book it should have been. Let's break this down slightly.

Frustrating because, although Schoneboom is clearly advocating a surrealist "mode of enquiry", and he obviously has some understanding of surrealism, he nevertheless falls short of developing this thesis into something really concrete. Rather, he tends to describe the "National Security State" in terms of dream, fascism and antifascism, paranoia, black humour, despite giving examples of surrealist and pre-surrealist writing, he ends in each case by suggesting that a surrealist mode of enquiry could be fruitful.

Annoying, partly because he sometimes seems to chant "National Security State" and "surrealist mode of enquiry" like mantras, which I must admit I find a bit irritating. He also seems at times to be rather uncertain as to who the surrealists are, he names Boris Vian as a surrealist for instance. As far as I know, Vian never participated in surrealist activities and never subscribed to specifically surrealist ideas. He was, of course, a prominent member of OuLiPo, which does have some connections with surrealism at  a distance, but simply can't be thought of as a surrealist group. See below for a further discussion of this problematic attitude.

Fascinating because Schoneboom provides a lens to view to contemporary political world that exposes its meanness and monstrosity and the obscuration of truth and he is often a lively and cogent commentator.

Necessary because surrealists should be writing books like this and getting them out into the world. They should be, but often are not. I include myself in this accusation. My excuse is a lack of access to publishing beyond the surrealist echo chamber, whatever its faults, Surrealpolitik addresses, if not quite the world, at least a broader public than most surrealist publications can achieve, and I am increasingly convinced that this is essential for our future. It often seems to me, not that surrealism has become too inward-looking so much as too inward-publishing and discussing, the echo-chamber I mentioned earlier.

Schoneboom seems to waver between quite a good understanding of who and what is surrealist and a confusion that depends far more on the critics (academic or otherwise) than on the surrealists themselves:

"My reference to the term "surrealism" is not intended to be limited specifically to Andre Breton's historical movement and its ever-shifting (and usually dwindling) formal membership. Rather, proceeding from the notion that "a state of mind survives" the surrealist school (Blanchot 1995 [1949], p. 85), I'm trying to locate an affinity within a more generously defined, yet still coherent, set of ideas and practices, predominantly originating in surrealist thinking but inclusive of related ideas from the movement's heirs, precursors, renegades, critics, competitors, and  usurpers."  

(http://www.surrealpolitik.org/posts/view/22) Accessed 28/4/23

He often discusses writers like Conrad or Chesterton at greater length than he does Breton or Aragon and apparently conflates Baudrillard's 'hyperreality' with surreality:

"For example, when Jean Baudrillard describes a hyperreality that "can no longer dream" because images have become indistinguishable from the real "as though things had swallowed their own mirrors" (Baudrillard 2008, p. 4), one can, without going so far as to theorize a grand unified neo-surrealism, identify a certain specular resonance with Louis Aragon's statement in A Wave of Dreams, that "[t]he only way to look at Man is as the victim of his mirrors." (2010 [1924]). (Ibid)

I also find Schoneboom's range of surrealist references oddly narrow. I found ten surrealists in a bibliography that stretches over 30 pages, and only arrived at that number by including Bataille, who although not actually a surrealist as such, did at least participate at times and helped define the surrealist spirit.  He refers to Terry Gilliam (his film Brazil) but not Jan Svankmajer, who is both surrealist and relevant to Schoneboom's arguments, but as he considers the surrealist movement a thing of the past, which, of course, it is not. Now, one might feel inclined to criticise the state of the surrealist movement, many do, including surrealists, but it has never ceased to exist, despite as Breton remarked, 'gravediggers' announcing the death of surrealism almost as soon as the Manifesto of Surrealism was published.

Schoneboom believes that "But isn't surrealism dead? Yes and no. Certainly the original movement rose, sustained itself, and fell in close parallel with the original fascist movement" (Schoneboom, 2022. P.6.) and he speaks "therefore not of resuscitating the exquisite surrealist corpse, but of adapting some of its surviving virtues in order to inform a particularly appropriate way of interrogating the incongruities and delusions of our present political condition." (Ibid. p.6). So here's the problem, claiming that the surrealist movement in non-existent is, quite simply wrong, he doesn't know what he is talking about at this point. He could claim that the present surrealist movement either lacks its historical prestige, or a cogent position on the problems of our time, or even many great artists, and one could argue about this, but he either chooses to ignore the existence of a contemporary surrealist movement that exist in continuity with the historical movement (which is to say, not a half-arsed revivalism) or he is simply ignorant.

Another problem is that although Schoneboom sets out his chapter headings with bold surrealist themes such as dreams, paranoia and black humour, much of the content appears to derive from postmodernism, which he believes "...can fairly be described as a descendent of surrealism, with both endeavours engaged principally in the disruption of semiotic systems." (Ibid. P.6) and goes on: "One suggested term for a post-postmodernist surrealism-plus-simulacra is hyper-surrealism....which has a certain appeal but may not add anything that wasn't already there. Ultimately, of course, the label is not as important as what's in the can." (Ibid. P.6) On that last point a least, I can agree, but the rest of it is pointless fluff.

It's this level of misconception that holds the book back, take out all references to surrealism and "a surrealist mode of enquiry" and you have almost the same book, a bit shorter, giving a more-or-less postmodern account of the "national security state". The latter seems to be his equivalent of the Spectacle or of the coming together of surveillance-fascism-capitalism. I'd have thought that enlarging on Debord's concept of the Spectacle would have been very relevant to Schoneboom's argument, but Debord does not appear in his bibliography and Vaneigem only as the author of the utterly wretched "Cavalier History of Surrealism" and the situationists have a stronger relationship to surrealism than most of the authors discussed in this book, despite their somewhat fractious attitude to surrealism back in the day. 

I hope I have conveyed my sense of this book being, above all, a missed opportunity. It's not that it should be an entirely surrealist account of the political problems that beset us (although, actually, why not?) but I do think that when one employs the word 'surrealism' it should mean surrealism and not something close to its opposite. (Postmodernism might be described as, in some senses as a descendent of surrealism, but, for better or worse, an illegitimate one, not only the wrong side of the blanket, but a different blanket!) By all means employ surrealist terms and concepts, but don't relabel non-surrealist concepts as surrealist. By all means go beyond the strict purview of the surrealist movement, but be clear about it, such confusionism helps nobody.

I would also suggest that although his chapter headings reflect areas of surrealist concern, they are very far from comprehensive. The ones I have mentioned, dream, paranoia and black humour are accompanied by anti-fascism and 'spectacular crime'. I have no issue with any of these, but suggest that, for a possible future project on might add desire, automatism, dialectic, analogy, wandering, atopia - I could go on, but all of these add both to an appreciation of both the surrealist view of daily life and of the bigger political picture. The National Security State is indeed oppressive and needs to be combatted, both critically and practically, but it is only one facet of a bigger problem which is why I mentioned both The Spectacle and Capitalism and all are ways in which corporations and the state come together, the very definition of fascism given by Mussolini.

Perhaps this somewhat half-arsed book can provide sufficient provocation to help develop a renewed critique from the surrealists and their allies. Anybody who reads this review should be in no doubt that it is greatly needed. 

The great thing about blog entries is that they can remain a bit rough and, if necessary, can be revised and polished later. The less good thing can be that the revision and polish can be a consequence of reactions and criticisms of the original article, and that can be sometimes sadly lacking. I hope that I might have cause to revise this, or add comments...let's see.

References:

Schoneboom, John (2022) SURREALPOLITIK: Surreality and the National Security State. Wincester UK and Washington USA. Zero Books.

Surrealpolitik website @  surrealpolitik.org