Confronting the liquidators

Given the drift of Durozoi's History, it is not difficult to identify minor shortcomings--needless to say, each reader will have a catalogue of heroines and villains. Apart from the limitations imposed by dint of the ambitious scope of the work what are its principal weaknesses? First, there is little analysis of factors beyond the immediate compass of the Surrealist change Surrealism did not emerge nor lay open in isolation, but in an often-acrimonious dialogue with other political, social, and cultural tendencies. Durozoi provides little background information to locate Surrealism within the connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts of French cultural history; he either assumes that the reader is already familiar with this history or that it is irrelevant to the account he not aways In part this is a practical decision, since to discuss these factors would have increased the longitudinal dimensions of an already sizable whirl but it does isolate Surrealism from important antecedents and contemporary disentanglements Second, although Durozoi is careful not to define Surrealism as an artistic or literary change in the text, the copious illustrations inadvertently privilege the artistic side of the change Although the illustrations provide an important appendix to the text, including many unfamiliar images, plus a valuable photographic documentation of the motion they are not closely integrated into the body but function independently. The divorce between image and body is a lost opportunity and refer tos a photo editor's contribution more than an extension of the argument.