Un surréaliste méconnu : Vincent Bounoure et la critique française et italienne

Abstract

This paper sums up some of the main topics of the first and only critical work on Vincent Bounoure and the developments of Surrealism after André Breton’s death (forthcoming publication both in Italian and French). The following are the two aspects particularly concerned in this essay: first, Bounoure’s centrality both in the opposition to Jean Schuster’s decision to put an end to Surrealism in 1969, and in the restarting of a surrealist collective activity in Paris, still as an organized movement with several contacts with other surrealist groups around the world (chiefly the Prague one); second, the underestimation, the absence or even the occultation of Bounoure’s practical and intellectual oeuvre in any “History of the surrealist movement”, despite its unquestionable role in Surrealism during Breton’s lifetime and afterwards. Academic rejection towards this kind of study also demonstrates that these two facets are not separable: making a critical history of Surrealism after 1969 means to challenge the history of its critiques, that is to disprove historical criticism. This is why the questions summarized here are not merely the result of an ordinary three-years typesetting of a Ph.D. thesis, but rather the scientific product of a ten-years research (even throughout neglected archives and unpublished documents) and also the reasoned explication of the as yet voluntary silence of international criticism on Bounoure.