Object Oriented Surrealism: Salvador Dali and the Poetic Autonomy of Things
ABSTRACT This essay examines Surrealism in light of the realist turn in contemporary philosophy. Drawing on Graham Harman's writings on object oriented ontology, the essay argues that Surrealist interest in objects (articulated most famously by Walter Benjamin) is best apprehended not through the writings of Andre Breton and Georges Bataille, but rather those of Salvador Dali. The essay demonstrates that Breton and Bataille, despite their long catalogued differences, are united in adhering to an anti realist ontology in which the world of objects is only ever comprehended in relation to the subject's mental experience of them. By contrast, Dali's writings articulate fully object oriented ontology wherein the human subject is understood as a mere thing among other things in the world.