Dali and Postmodernism: This Is Not an Essence

Demonstrates that Dali's Surrealism anticipates postmodern tactics, and inaugurates "New Dali Studies" by offering an original interpretation of his relationship with the Surrealist canon.

By taking Dali's "paranoiac-critical method" to the delirious extents Dali himself recommended, LaFountain demonstrates that Dali's Surrealism anticipates tactics practiced by postmodern and poststructural critics. In particular, LaFountain advances the notion that "phantom meaning" displaced Surrealism's "phantom object," thereby creating a crisis of the subject and the object far in excess of that sought by Surrealist revolutionaries. Focusing on Dali's magnificent painting, Endless Enigma, LaFountain inaugurates "New Dali Studies" by offering an original interpretation of Dali's close, yet strained, relationship with André Breton and the Surrealist canon.