Making History

In Making History, Kirsten Strom investigates the Surrealists' radical critique of history and historical authorship. Locating Surrealism firmly within the culture wars of France in the 1920s and 30s, Strom examines the construction of a Surrealist anti-canon, one which would corrupt the contents of conventional artistic and literary canons, while simultaneously exposing the ideological biases of histories purportedly based on transcendent, timeless, and universal aesthetic truths. Indeed, through their celebration of the scandalous and the marginalized, as exemplified by figures including the Marquis de Sade, "outsider" artist Ferdinand Cheval, and unknown child poet Giselle Prassinos, the Surrealists would reveal that history can be not only a form of oppression, but a form of protest as well."