Refusal of the Shadow: Surrealism and the Caribbean - Edited by Michael Richardson

Contributions by André Breton, Hendrik Cramer, Aimé Césaire, Suzanne Césaire, René Depestre, Jacques La Colère, Paul Laraque, Michel Leiris, Etienne Léro, Pierre Mabille, Clément Magloire-Saint-Aude, André Masson, Jules-Marcel Monnerot, René Ménil and Maurice-Sabas Quitman

Translated by Krzysztof Fijalkowski and Michael Richardson

Published in 1996 by Verso, London, UK and New York, NY

302 pages

ISBN: 978-1859840184

In the wake of the devastation and mass death of the First World War, artists and writers of all stripes struggled with the concepts of evil and chaos as they grappled with the limits of language and visual representation. Following the conceptual development of the unconscious in psychoanalytic theory, the surrealist movement attempted to express the unconscious through various modes of visual representation, such as surrealist painting and automatic writing. Taking its lead from the Dadaist movement in the 1910s, surrealist art and literature incorporated the collision of contradictory concepts and consistently employed the element of surprise. They believed that an overreliance on rationality and bourgeois values had inevitably led the world to mass destruction, and these figures (primarily Trotskyists, communists, anarchists, and anti-fascists such as André Breton, Max Ernst, and Frida Kahlo) employed their philosophical ideas toward revolutionary ends. 

       Surrealism made waves beyond the imperial core as writers and artists at the periphery of empire started to see the emancipatory potential within the movement. On the French colonial islands within the Caribbean, revolutionary scholars and writers combined the concepts of surrealism with the ideas of the growing black radicalism movement, especially on the island of Martinique. This transformation of surrealism within an Afro-Caribbean context opened up new avenues for anticolonial struggle, as Caribbean writers, artists, and scholars utilized surrealism to critique and combat French colonialism.

       In 1932, a small group of Matinician revolutionary thinkers published Légitime défense, a singular journal issue that rallied against the colonial government and sought to establish political agency and define Martincian identity. While the French government immediately banned it, this provocation sparked an immense cultural exchange between the surrealist movement and the Caribbean world. Less than a decade later, another journal titled Tropiques was published, featuring the work of Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, René Ménil, Lucie Thésée, Aristide Maugée, and other Martincians across the island, as well as André Breton, the leader of the Surrealist movement in Europe. Tropiques was likewise censored by the Vichy government, as they refused to allocate rations of paper to the periodical for it to be printed because of was viewed as a “revolutionary, radical, and sectarian” work. 

       The decades of the early-mid twentieth century saw a great exchange of ideas between the Surrealism and Negritude movements, as black anti-colonial thinkers in the Caribbean fostered dialogues and relationships with the avant-garde artists on the European continent. Black radicalism was steadily growing within the Caribbean and the surrealists were front and center in fostering a spirit of revolution, leading to the 1946 overthrow of Haitian dictator Élie Lescot in 1946. This 1996 volume, titled Refusal of the Shadow: Surrealism and the Caribbean, brings together many of the central texts that define this critical interaction between anti-colonial Caribbean thought and the work of the Surrealists. These works, many of them previously untranslated, present the reader with a wide range of radical writers and artists as they grapple with the implications of surrealist art within an Afro-Caribbean context. 

Overview: 

       Composed of essays by a wide range of Caribbean and European artists, writers, and ethnographers, Refusal of the Shadow illustrates the various attempts to bring the Surrealist movement into the Afro-Caribbean political, social, and cultural contexts. In the wake of the First World War, these writers sought to “refuse the shadow” of either suicide or madness, choosing instead to utilize surrealist thought to break the grip of Western hegemony and struggle for emancipatory ends. Writers from the black radicalism movement saw that Surrealism’s focus on dreams, the unconscious, irrationality, and the rupture of the unexpected served as fertile ground for reevaluating a post-colonial Caribbean cultural identity. 

       Part One consists of the contents of Légitime défense, which was “the first publication in which colonized blacks collectively sought to speak with their own authentic voices” (4-5). Blending surrealism with a Marxist, militant, and anti-colonial tone, the publication was effectively banned by revoking the grants of the students who contributed to the volume, as well as by blocking its distribution. In surrealism, these black revolutionaries saw white Europeans critiquing their own culture’s cruelty and barbarity. Thus, these writers appropriated the forms and language of two European frameworks -- Marxism and Surrealism -- to attempt to polemically undermine colonial hegemony from within and establish political agency. This was a far-reaching and impactful manifesto, as it signaled one of the first instances of the colonized utilizing and weaponizing the colonizer's language to “talk back” and chart their own trajectory as a collective.  

       Part Two, by far the largest portion of the book, consists of several essays from Tropiques, which was a publication from the island of Martinique that ran from 1941-1945. Like Légitime défense, the periodical was also banned by the Vichy government due to its radical content. Headed by Aimé Césaire and René Ménil, the periodical blended philosophy and poetry to confront what they saw as a “cultural void” within Martinique. While Césaire found a poetic and moral resonance within Surrealism, his wife, Suzanne, and Ménil saw the philosophical underpinnings of Surrealism as a tool to analyze their own context on the island of Martinique. These essays would go on to inspire the thoughts of Frantz Fanon and others within the growing Négritude and black radical movements. 

       Part Three consists of a handful of essays that detail European Surrealists’ dialogue with the works of Césaire and Ménil. The leader of the Surrealist movement, André Breton, offers a poetic reflection on the geography and flora of Martinique, as well as an appraisal of his relationship with Aimé Césaire and his poetry. Furthermore, ethnographer Pierre Mabille's essay, “The Jungle,” which was also published in Tropiques, also appears here. Mabille, a head surgeon at the hospital in Port-au-Prince and later appointed French cultural attaché, offers his perspective on Wifredo Lam’s 1943 painting "The Jungle” in relation to French history and the Caribbean. For Mabille, surrealism and Caribbean culture share a common collectivity free from hierarchy.  represents surrealism's non-hierarchical collectivity. Comparing Lam’s painting against the West, Mabille writes in this 1944 essay, 

Wifredo LamThe Jungle (La Jungla)1943; https://www.moma.org/collection/works/34666

For my part, I see a total opposition between this jungle where life explodes on all sides, free, dangerous, gushing from the most luxuriant vegetation, ready for any combination, any transmutation, any possession, and that other sinister jungle where a Führer, perched on a pedestal, awaits the departure, along the neoclassical colonnades of Berlin, of mechanized cohorts prepared, after destroying every living thing, for annihilation in their turn in the rigorous parallelism of endless cemeteries. (212) 

       Part Four offers several essays detailing André Bréton’s famous visit to Haiti and its impact on the Haitian revolution of 1946. Bréton, the leader of the surrealist movement, was a personal friend of Aimé Ceasire and painter Wilfredo Lam. They often visited one another in Paris and various places throughout the Caribbean as they exchanged ideas and artistic techniques. On December 20th, 1945, Bréton gave a rousing speech on surrealism at the packed-out Rex Theater in Port-au-Prince. After a brief introduction by Mabille, Bréton took the stage and gave an electrified speech to a crowd of young Haitians. The President of the Republic, Élie Lescot, and other high-ranking civil and military officials were also there, although they had no prior knowledge of either Bréton or surrealism as a movement. Bréton utilized this opportunity to connect surrealism to Marxism and the radical black emancipation movement on the island. Afterward, he left the stage to a standing ovation and refused the custom of paying respects to the President. This blatant snub made Bréton an even more respected figurehead among these radical groups, as the revolutionary left-wing Haitian publication La Ruche dedicated their December issue to Bréton and the surrealists. Incensed, the Haitian authorities banned the publication and arrested several of its leaders. Public demonstrations against police violence and general strikes followed, leading to Lescot’s ouster from the government.

       Finally, in Part Five, the book ends with a handful of ethnographic accounts of vodou rituals from Pierre Mabille and Michel Leiris. These writers provided a sociological and anthropological framework for the Surrealist movement, taking inspiration from Haitian myths, folklore, and Vodou. Since the practice of vodou was practically banned by the Catholic Church, most rituals had to occur in rural areas and along the mountains, to deafen the sounds of chanting and drums. Mabille and Leiris provide first-person accounts of traveling to a vodou ritual site (with plenty of sidetracks and foibles along the way), as well as the particulars of the sacrificial ritual itself. Here, both authors allude to how vodou practices blur the lines between sacred and profane and highlight the role of multiplicity and paradox, which prove to be fertile ground for Surrealist thought. 

Commendations: 

       Several dimensions of this volume are well worth commending. First of all, Refusal of the Shadow is a necessary collection of essays from the surrealist movement in the Caribbean during the first half of the twentieth century. From a historian’s perspective, this volume provides a wide range of primary sources for scholars of art history, aesthetics, existentialism, political theory, and anti-colonial discourses. Ménil and Césaire work diligently to avoid the trap of constructing a romanticized, imaginary vision of Africa as a primal and quasi-mystical place, which was common among some of their contemporaries, most glaringly Senghor. Throughout these essays, we see the small disputes and contradictions between various writers as they attempt to utilize the surrealist style for emancipatory ends within a Caribbean context. 

       Additionally, it is also immensely valuable to witness the collaboration between avant-garde artists in Europe with revolutionary black leaders in Martinique and Haiti. The volume highlights the cultural exchange and interaction between the historically important artistic, literary, and scholarly movements of black radicalism and Surrealism, which served as an inspiration for the burgeoning Négritude movement of the mid-twentieth century. This collection is a brilliant example of how fluidly ideas are exchanged and how those ideas are molded and shaped by specific cultural contexts. Caribbean artists and writers saw Surrealism as a modality in which they could articulate and crystalize a form of black consciousness. In contrast, European avant-garde artists found inspiration in Caribbean culture and vodou rituals for their reputed focus on dreams, myths, and trance-like states of consciousness, which Europeans saw as vanishing from the Western world of modernity. These movements informed and shaped one another in a symbiotic mutual relationship, and this volume illustrates the socio-political condition of the Caribbean during the era. 

       While I found myself predominantly enjoying Ménil’s essays throughout the volume, the most beautifully cutting and impactful essays are by a Césaire: not Aimé, but Suzanne. Her writing teems with a bubbling urgency, an indignant and righteous rage, and crystal clear prose, which make for some of the most satisfying reading in this volume, by far. In this respect, I could not help but make a comparison between Sartre and de Beauvoir. Similarly, Aimé and Suzanne’s relationship seemed to truly be a marriage of equals, yet her writing is much more biting and resonates within the mind and soul. Even if their husbands have been historically elevated in our collective memory, I personally much prefer the writing and ideas of Suzanne and Simone. 

       Even though these essays detail the discourses and experiences of artists and writers in the Caribbean during the early twentieth century, many of the central ideas are still incredibly prescient to our own era and socio-political context. We are still working through the process of decolonization, and in order to effect long-lasting change, we need to understand the historical contexts and developments of these discourses. Therefore, these previously untranslated essays are a valuable addition to the scholarship around decolonial thought and the history of black radicalism.

Critique: 

       On the other hand, Refusal of the Shadow has a few shortcomings. First of all, for the average reader, the language of these essays can often be dense and not easily accessible. Due to Surrealism's speculative and poetic nature, the essays vacillate between esoteric, poetic language, philosophical discourses, and discussions of aesthetic theory. If the reader has no prior knowledge of surrealism or the history of literary movements in the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, then many of the debates and references throughout this text might not be fully understood. 

       To the collection’s credit, this is also purposeful, as to pass through the censorship of the Vichy government, the authors of Tropiques often wrote obtusely and in quasi-coded prose instead of straightforward language, adding to the density of this collection. While this begins to slowly untangle with careful reading and a greater understanding of the historical context, many of the debates and contours within this volume might seem distant in some regards. Many of the nuances of these essays can be easily missed by a reader who is both geographically and historically distant from these discourses and debates. 

Additionally, as with any collection of essays, Refusal of the Shadow can be a bit uneven, with some resonating strongly and others falling away in the memory. Adding to the ideological slant of the volume, each section of the book is introduced by short essays that Ménil wrote in the 1970s. While this helps situate each section, the reader must keep in mind the departure between Césaire and Menil, the latter of whom became a consistent critic of the Negritude movement. These introductions, while useful, can also color the presentation and legacy of these essays in a particular light. Despite this, while it is easy to critique some aspects of a few essays, this is only because we have the benefit of hindsight. On the whole, they serve as an important glimpse into the thoughts of these artists, poets, and intellectuals.

Conclusion:

Overall, Refusal of the Shadow is an immensely valuable collection of historical essays that reveal the philosophical underpinnings of Surrealism, as well as its radical political uses in the Afro-Caribbean context of the early twentieth century. While some of the finer nuances of these discourses might be muddled to the contemporary reader, this volume serves as an indispensable addition to the historical literature around decolonization and Surrealism. These fiery and fiercely beautiful essays have been brilliantly translated for the benefit of English-speaking scholars and are essential for anyone interested in the history of Afro-Caribbean literature and philosophy. By shifting our attention to the Caribbean, this work effectively decenters Europe from the discourses of Surrealism, art, literature, and modern philosophy. The debates that raged in these exchanges are still incredibly relevant to our own time as we navigate the contours of post-colonialism and continue to struggle against the powers of imperialism and cultural hegemony.