The article deals with surrealism at the intersection of ecocritical
humanities and epistemology. Although the strong ecological tendencies
in surrealist art have already been scientifically noted, this paper
contributes to the understanding of the mechanism and logic of surrealism
through the key process of defamiliarisation (or denaturalisation) and
the surrealist understanding of the object and nature. By means of this
novel understanding, surrealism becomes an important tool for visual
sensitisation and raising awareness of ecological issues in the current
circumstances, in which diverse and recurring crises demand immediate
and radical changes of everyday, habitual behaviour on the part of humans.
It was the avant-garde techniques of distancing and breaking with the everyday that sought to provide space for the invention of new forms and models of subjectification. More than any other avant-garde movement, surrealism revealed the richness in the visual perception of the relationship between man and nature. The surrealist view of nature is complex, magical, but also dark and extreme, marked by fragmentation as well as organicism and interconnectedness of the internal and external worlds.
After introducing the thematisation of surrealism and ecology via posthumanist and anti-anthropocentric ideas, we present the key process of formalism—defamiliarisation—and outline the central features of surrealist epistemology and the surrealist object by way of Breton’s seminal text The Crisis of the Object. Additionally, we present the significance of new epistemologies, such as visual and comparative, which importantly contribute to the construction of the understanding of the proposed eco-epistemology that features in the conclusion of the paper. The work concludes with the observation that surrealism, with its extreme visuality, develops a new perception and understanding of the object and nature; one that goes beyond the established notions and definitions in ecology, thus contributing to visual literacy in the field of environmentally conscious art and humanities.
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