Surrealism’s Secret Societies

This article examines the complicated ways in which the avant-garde intersects with secret societies in some of the foundational texts of surrealism. Rather than a mere fantasy, the model of the secret society helps articulate a theory and practice of the group, with the manifesto serving as an almost paradoxical vehicle for declaring the renewal of an occult and hermetic tradition. In invoking the political mythology of secret societies to define itself as a revolutionary movement, surrealism simultaneously opens itself up to the critique that it represents an outdated form of aesthetics and politics.