The Dispassion of Surrealism: Or, Why I'm Not Voting in the Election

3:42 pm - Fri, Oct 19, 2012: 33 notes

The Dispassion of Surrealism: Or, Why I’m Not Voting in the Election

One of the things that has never clicked with me about Breton and surrealism is its investment in political discourse. Granted, it posits poetry as political discourse, even as this is an absurd proposition. What clicked for me (again) this morning is that my attraction to surrealism is part and parcel of my ambivalent political attitude. (Or is my attitude about politics ambivalent because of surrealism?)

I have never voted and have no intention to. The easy explanation is that it makes no pragmatic or moral sense to me. What’s at stake is vastly overstated. The presidential election will make little concrete difference largely because of the debilitating effect of the two-party system. In fact, by voting in the context of a two party system, one is feeding the paralysis that makes change practically impossible.

But the larger issue is philosophical, metacognitive, existential—political language (by definition) assigns positive or negative value to everything that comes within its reach. And American politics has a disgustingly far reach and an insatiable appetite.

Perhaps the most attractive thing about surrealism is its resistance to political interpretation—because it resists moral and even psychological value judgements and distances the reader from familiar frames of references, and thus evaluation. In the best of surrealist praxis there is a resilient neutrality that vigilantly counteracts the all-consuming passion for moral-political categorization. It is human to seek justice and goodness, but justice also entails an obligation to treat the world with integrity, to leave unspoken what cannot be said: “What we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence.” —or, at least, to leave open what cannot be closed, complex what cannot be made simple. The banality of political rhetoric comes from the inadequacy with which it speaks of experience. Surrealism remains a most prescient counter-example, both in its radical presentation of the world and its complex treatment of consciousness.

Thoughts?

(Emphasis ours.)

We tried to excerpt this post, but every word that the Surrealist poet behind the Uut Poetry blog has to say about voting is worth your time. Not only does he raise questions about the two-party system and noncompliance, he connects his deliberate political quietism to his surrealist aesthetics. Gosh, we like you.

Our community’s discussion on voting continues to grow (note Rohan’s latest) — and it’s always a good time to add your voice!