ABSTRACT
The chapter argues that two key aspects of the absurd are central to Dada, the critique of Reason and the promotion of freedom of thought. The first was grounded in the violent rejection of bourgeois humanism’s belief in the infallibility of Reason, linear thought and causality, shattered by the senselessness of the war to which it had led and no longer able to mask the absurdity of the human condition. Dada’s anti-logic, anti-war, anti-art, anti-system stance was used as a weapon against Western humanism. Secondly, the absurd driving Dada was a-rational, searching via a Jabberwocky-style language for a source of new energy as the expression of resistance, promoting chance and spontaneous expression, revelling in the absurd as a means of freeing thought. Similarly, Dada (anti-)art products were an assault on traditional art forms and a tentative exploration of new artistic possibilities. The chapter argues that Surrealism instrumentalised the absurd as a means of liberation of the imagination and a sign of the unconscious. While the texts and images of both groups are based on the suppression of rational discourse, the Dadaists sought to dismantle language in their critique of rationality and logic, while the Surrealists greeted the irrational for its psychological and poetic potential.
