View (1940-47), the avant-garde, and the uncertain life of ibjectscriticism as if fragments mattered
ISSN: 1137-6368
Any de publicació: 1997
Número: 18
Pàgines: 299-326
Tipus: Article
Altres publicacions en: Miscelánea: A journal of english and american studies
Resum
This article seeks to study avant-garde cultural production as a fragmentary discourse invested in exploiting the potential incongruity of objects disconnected from overarching narratives. As guiding critical models to this end, it assesses Walter Benjamin's use of montage and Roland Barthes's notion of the punctum; the object chosen for testing this approach is the discourse of the U.S. surrealist magazine View (1940-1947). Ultimately, the essay proposes an approach to the avant-garde that would incorporate avant-garde strategies into the rhetoric of criticism.