Unfinished revolutions: A study of the surrealist (1948 - 1965) and situationist (1957 - 1972) movements

• Grant number: 23/13271-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: May 01, 2025
• End date: August 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Modern and Contemporary History
• Principal Investigator: Gabriel Ferreira Zacarias
• Grantee: Cristiano José Steinmetz
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This doctoral project proposes a study of two unique 20th century movements that did not seek to present themselves as aesthetic avant-gardes in a process of gradual evolution of art, but as artistic-political avant-gardes with distinct revolutionary intentions. A study of the Surrealist (1948-1965) and Situationist (1957-1972) movements is thus undertaken, based on a corpus of documents mobilized by the groups themselves in the chronological periods in question. The historical moment of the emergence of these movements, or their resurgence in the case of surrealism, enabled them to develop two distinct artistic-political dimensions that will be analyzed here in a relationship of closeness and distance in terms of how they understood, reacted to and influenced the historical condition of capitalism in the post-World War II period. By demonstrating how the artistic-political dimensions of the Surrealist and Situationist movements can be understood as socio-cultural phenomena that confront certain notions of modernity, it is hoped that, at the end of this research, these same movements can be re-presented as unique moments of anti-capitalist critique that identified, each in their own way, historical aspects relating to the transformation of culture and society, as well as the form of modern consciousness and subjectivity. (AU)