Reimagining Life: Philosophical Pessimism and the Revolution of Surrealism

In Reimagining Life, Raihan Kadri presents a pioneering critical history of the epistemological and theoretical origins of the Surrealist movement and its subsequent legacy. The book contains extensive examination and new interpretations of the oft-neglected theoretical writing of Surrealists such as Louis Aragon, Antonin Artaud, André Breton, and Salvador Dalí, in order to demonstrate how Surrealism embodied a sensibility connected to a broader lineage of philosophical pessimism--involving such figures as Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Arthur Rimbaud--which Kadri argues represents a particular strain of modernism aimed at breaking human thought away from the constraint of various forms of idealism, expanding the possibilities for knowledge and human freedom. This innovative, wide-ranging study deftly traverses fields of art, politics, philosophy, psychology, and literature. Reimagining Life redefines Surrealism’s place in modern intellectual history and offers a new vision of how Surrealist discourse can be connected to contemporary debates in cultural, critical, and theoretical studies.

Raihan Kadri has taught in the areas of philosophy, art history, and comparative studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz and University of Essex.