Strange Dreams: A Manifesto for Dada and Surrealism in Composition

For ENG 782 (Visual Narrative), we're reading a lot about Dada and Surrealism at the moment, and I'm fascinated -- though I admit those subjects are not my main line of interest. I have done some work on photomontage (in relationship to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band), but for the most part I'm flying blind here.

I do, however, have a lot to say about this stuff, particularly the ideas presented in David Hopkins' Dada and Surrealism. Basically, his main idea is that Surrealism and Dada both tried to resist conventions of the status quo, particularly against the backdrop of the years between the World Wars. Despite their similar critiques of the "traditional" views of art -- specifically "art for art's sake"-- Hopkins holds that Dada and Surrealism did so differently. That is, according to Hopkins, Dada was much more "politically engaged" in that it resisted the status quo by incorporating mass-produced images, objects, and the like, to expose the realities of existence. Surrealism, on the other hand, largely remained true to the bourgeois values and understandings of art; it did not turn to the popular in order to demonstrate the shortcomings of the traditional values embedded in art. Instead, it used these conventions in order to make other things evident, to explore the possibilities therein.

My interest lies in how we can use these ideas in our writing classrooms. How come no one in the field --at least as far as I know-- has turned to Dada and Surrealism in their own right, as potential theories for understanding, and teaching, composition? Scholars have adopted offshoots of Dada and Surrealism by exploring "automatic writing" or "collaging" techniques (and even these are not as serious as they could be). Still others have explored the potential possibilities of popular culture and or "everyday life" in theories about critical composition pedagogy, but I am still wondering why no one has engaged in serious explorations of the relationship among the everyday (a la Dada/ Surrealism, which, I argue, must have influenced de Certeau), Dada, Surrealism, and the writing classroom. I see tons of possibilities here, both in terms of content -- getting students to read this stuff -- as well as engaging in these kinds of activities themselves. Perhaps asking our students to do some sustained critical analysis of montaged images, for example, or asking them to adopt a particular set of conventions in order to critique/expose them, might enhance the field of composition pedagogy for the better.
Note: As renegade/radical/just plain silly as I might be, I'm not suggesting that students should produce collages as final products. I'm merely saying that these kinds of activities --with sustained, careful analysis of them as processes (in a classroom for a few days)-- would be highly beneficial in developing the kind of skills we're looking for in their essays, and would also better illuminate their (critical) relationship to the world (another goal). I'm also not suggesting that the values on clear and eloquent communication, and or the ability to write a paper, should be ignored (though I do recognize the potentially problematic ideological assumptions attached to those values as well. Since we're in the university, we should prepare our students for life in it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't engage what they already know, do, and critique outside the university's walls.

Really, at stake here is the ways we go about teaching and thinking about composition. The everyday must play much more of a part in the ways we teach, write, and discuss composition. Underlying my argument here is the fact that the everyday activities in which we all participate constitute a much larger role in formulating our ideas, beliefs, and discursive understandings than we give them credit; that is, our students in particular too rarely asked to think about, and reflect upon, those things that truly define them. Thus, the everyday, and the ways in which it can work to uphold, critique, resist, or anything in-between, the discourses and ideologies of our existence, need to come to the fore in composition studies... otherwise, what's the point?