Dr David Sorfa (Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, Liverpool John Moores University)
Phenomenological Autosexuality: Touch and Imagination in Švankmajer, Brouk and Pato?ka
In 1983 the Czech animator and surrealist, Jan Švankmajer, issued a samizdat publication entitled Hmat a imaginace (Touch and Imagination) in which he collected a number of texts dealing with tactility, thought and interpretation. In this paper I wish to trace the history of analogical thinking in Švankmajer’s surrealism, by which I mean that mode of thought which sees everything as being like everything else in some way. For Švankmajer touch is like sight and both are linked in some way to or by what he calls the “imagination” which may be understood as “interpretation” more broadly (and “interpretation” becomes a central term for the Czech Surrealist Group, particularly in the experiments of the 1970s).
In this paper I particularly want to link Švankmajer’s work on touch to two previous Czech writers, the psychoanalyst Bohuslav Brouk (1912-1978) and the philosopher Jan Pato?ka (1907-1977). Švankmajer acknowledges the influence of, or at least a fondness for, Brouk’s 1934 paean to masturbation Autosexualismus a psychoerotismus but Pato?ka’s phenomenology has not been discussed in relation to the filmmaker before. What I hope to begin to explore here is the relationship between surrealism in Czechoslovakia and the simultaneous developments in Czech philosophy and psychoanalysis of the 1930s and beyond.
In this paper I particularly want to link Švankmajer’s work on touch to two previous Czech writers, the psychoanalyst Bohuslav Brouk (1912-1978) and the philosopher Jan Pato?ka (1907-1977). Švankmajer acknowledges the influence of, or at least a fondness for, Brouk’s 1934 paean to masturbation Autosexualismus a psychoerotismus but Pato?ka’s phenomenology has not been discussed in relation to the filmmaker before. What I hope to begin to explore here is the relationship between surrealism in Czechoslovakia and the simultaneous developments in Czech philosophy and psychoanalysis of the 1930s and beyond.
