Minotaure: On Ethnography and Animals

Abstract

The surrealist magazine Minotaure (1933–39) demonstrated a vivid interest in ethnography as it set out to explore the “human” according to an early twentieth-century ethnographic conception of universality that proposed to undercut the rule of Western culture over the definition of humanity. The surrealists, however, went even further by extending this exploration to the animal: The pages of Minotaure constantly juxtapose humans and animals and bring forth an empirical redefinition of the human through the observation of its purported other. As a result, they give shape to a nonanthropocentric ethnography that searches for the “sources” of humanity apart from familiar Western humanist presuppositions. Their endeavor raises important questions about ethnography itself as it brings us in a novel way to this fundamental question: What constitutes the human, beyond the pervasive divide between culture and nature?

Keywords:

• animal
• anthropocentrism
• ethnography
• human figure
• humanism
• Minotaure
• surrealism

Notes

1. For a critique of James Clifford, see Jamin, “L’ethnographie mode d’inemploi” 55.

2. On anticolonialism and surrealism, see Leclercq.

3. See Pierre 1: 194–95.

4. See Pierre 1: 198–200.

5. For this counter-exhibition, see Leclercq 201–12; Mileaf 239–55; Jolles 107–16; Morton 98–129.

6. See Eluard, “La vérité sur les colonies,” originally published in La Défense 30 Oct. 1931: 3, and republished in Pleine Marge 117–19; and Aragon, “La vérité sur les colonies,” originally published in L’Internationale de l’enseignement 10 (1931): 21–24, republished in Pleine Marge 121–27.

7. The surrealist direction and the struggle for predominance, although already in place from the beginning of the magazine, became concrete in the third issue, which Eluard considered the first fully surrealist one. See Eluard, Lettres à Gala, 202–3.

8. For a succinct discussion of the difference between ethnology and ethnography, see Sherman 669–703.

9. See Tythacott 167–68 and Crow 51.

10. This comment recalls the tract “Premier bilan de l’exposition coloniale” published in reaction to the Exposition Coloniale Internationale de Paris in 1931 and signed by the leading surrealists, in which the role of missionaries in mutilating tribal fetishes while promoting the confection of Christian symbols is emphasized. See Pierre 1: 198–200.

11. See Rentzou, “De la grande actualité de l’humain” 137–52.

12. Other “inventories” of the human might include Hugnet, “Petite rêverie du grand veneur,” an inventory of hands; Wolff, “Les révélations psychiques de la main,” an inventory of palms for purposes of chiromancy; or even Eluard, “Juste milieu,” in which the typeface used is a human body shaped as letters. This inventory of human forms can be enlarged to include Bellmer's “Poupée. Variations sur le montage d’une mineure articulée.”

13. See Dalí, “Apparitions aérodynamiques des ‘Etres-objets.’”

14. Jacques Delamain (1874–1953) was an amateur ornithologist who wrote popular books on birds, including Pourquoi les oiseaux chantent (1928, reprinted in 1990), translated into English as Why Birds Sing in 1933. He was very influential for Olivier Messiaen, who stayed in Delamain's country house while the latter helped him recognize the bird songs that became fundamental elements of his music.

15. On Petitjean and his sinuous political and ideological path seen within the frame of an ecological turn, see Frank-Elster.

16. On Lacan and Petitjean, see Frank-Elster 96–97.

17. For the history of ethology, see Burkhardt.

18. See Lestel.

19. See Geroulanos.

20. Malraux speaks of the “death of man” already in 1926, in La Tentation de l’Occident. In his 1946 UNESCO conference presentation, he asks in anguish: “Le problème qui se pose pour nous aujourd’hui c’est de savoir si, sur cette vieille terre d’Europe, oui ou non, l’homme est mort.” See Malraux, “L’homme et la culture artistique” 75.

21. See, for instance, Dalí, “L’Ane pourri.”

22. On simulation, see Rentzou, La Littérature malgré elle 217–20.

23. See Deleuze 297.

24. Ruoff analyses Las Hurdes as a parody of an ethnographic film, claiming that “Buñuel has made a film about the viewer, his or her preconceptions, expectations, and naïve trust”; “a parody that lays bare the formal rules of documentary” (53). One can go further and claim that Buñuel's film is also a critique of ethnography as well and not only of the documentary genre, a critique that exposes the hierarchies inherent in the ethnographic project of the 1930s.