Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

Surrealism is an artistic movement that Kelley defines as “a living, mutable, creative vision of a world where love, play, human dignity, an end to poverty and want, and imagination are the pillars of freedom” (158). While primarily an art movement, surrealism is concerned with all aspects of human life and society. In this essay, Kelley details both how Black radicalism influenced the creation of surrealism and how surrealism has influenced Black radicalism.

In the section entitled “Surrealism and Us,” Kelley describes how surrealists in Europe began to take more radical political stances beginning around 1925, inspired both by anticolonial movements in North Africa and by Black art and politics. They also looked to folk cultures in Africa, Asia, and the Americas to inspire their work. For example, Kelley connects the surrealist practice of automatic writing to shamanistic folk practices.

The European (mostly French) surrealists were also inspired by Black American music, especially jazz and the work of Thelonious Monk, which turned traditional rules of music on their head. The blues was also valorized as a form of poetry that articulates desire, fantasy, and freedom, values that resonated with the surrealists who were interested in sexual liberation and eroticism.