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.