Chapter 21 - Subcultural Receptions of Surrealism in the 1960s International Underground Press

Summary

This chapter examines the role of surrealism in a network of underground publications produced in the United States, England, and France during the 1960s, including: The Rebel Worker (Chicago, 1964–66), Resurgence (New York City, 1964–7), Black Mask (New York City, 1966–8), and Surrealist Insurrection (Chicago, 1968–72). By moving beyond aesthetic, literary, commercial, and institutional legacies of surrealism in the postwar period, and investigating the reclamation of surrealism by radical factions of the American and British ultraleft during the 1960s, it becomes apparent that surrealism was not entirely absorbed by the process of academic musealization that assailed most of the early twentieth century avant-gardes. The broad assortment of subcultural mimeographed and printed journals, broadsides, and leaflets that emerged during the era of the student movement and the counterculture reveal that surrealism influenced and was actively incorporated into leftist and activist struggles for civil rights, free speech, anti-war, anti-statist and anti-capitalist efforts.