What Are (Breton's) Women for

revolutionary action (to change life, transform society). One can see in this contradiction the source of its paradoxical glory (surrealism will survive in spite of suggesting once and for all the conditions for a revolutionary art). But one also sees here the cause of surrealism's downfall, betrayed as much by those who preferred their own work as by those who subordinated their work to political engagement. Whichever the case, only Breton would have understood the seriousness of this conflict; only Breton would have remained faithful to an ethic: surrealism is Breton, all Breton, and nothing but Breton. This is certainly ironic, for he who is recognized for his desire not to succeed is in the the only name that still remains. Should one conclude then that Breton has been retrieved thanks to the wiles of History? I don't believe so (and don't know, moreover, what the term retrieve really means, nor what an unretrieved artistic practice would look like), and I would like to demonstrate that Breton's is a thoroughly bookish operation, one of transmission that requires the book itself in order to be made manifest. I don't mean to say that Breton's hidden desire, like that of all writers, was for his books to be found later on in a library, even if this turns out to be an inevitable result of his endeavors. The act of transmission envisaged here is intended to be absolute. It exists beyond the book, although the book itself must necessarily remain. Disqualified as an end in itself, the work of art remains behind as the indispensable witness of an activity of transmission that appears to be situated outside the work: in a place wherein lies the ethic proper to surrealism, and in which I see a version of Mallarme's complete book (that is to say, perhaps nothing) marked, no doubt, by a misreading. In any case, one finds in Breton considerable fascination for an immediate and totally efficient discourse that represents a pure effect of

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