Chance encounters: Flâneur and détraquée in Breton's Nadja

New Formations - ISSN 0950-2378
Volume 1990 Number 11

Chance encounters: Flâneur and détraquée in Breton's Nadja
Victor Burgin pages -

Abstract

A discussion of the regressive fantasies that form the ‘plot’ of Andre Breton’s Nadja, which exposes the mechanisms whereby the surrealists’ celebration of the ‘chance encounter’ and their desire for social revolution, ‘outsider’ experience and desire itself were superimposed one upon the other to produce a highly charged imaginary that throws light on the formation and functioning of the psyche. By means of a dialogue with psychoanalytic sources, and in looking at the tragic fate of Nadja herself, Breton’s eventual ‘liberation’ from his outsider fixation is shown to have been bought at a certain cost: the death of the other.

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To cite this article
Victor Burgin (1990) Chance encounters: Flâneur and détraquée in Breton's Nadja, New Formations, 1990(11), -

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