"Dada wanted to destroy men's pretences at reason and rediscover the natural, unreasonable order of things. Dada wanted to replace the logical nonsense of men today by illogical meaninglessness."
But then I have to ask myself, how am I supposed to even try to understand something "meaningless"? It seems like the more I try to figure out Dada, the more confused i become.
Also am I remembering correctly that Dada is supposed to be a rejection of language as well? If so, why do all of these authors write so eloquently?
A very good point... why -do- they write so well? I think one of the driving points of DADA is it's embrace of the kind of Sisyphian act of what it is they're doing here. How can you move outside of language by using language? How can you produce work that has its meaning in meaninglessness? All confounding questions that may be more rhetorical than literal.
ReplyDeleteOne other thing: I think we have to be careful when we talk about DADA being 'nihilist.' While certainly influenced by the concepts of nihilism, DADA (IMO, anyway) doesn't embrace the basic tenant of pessimism that comes with nihilist philosophy. It would be good to think about the distinction between absurd meaninglessness (as meaning, as opportunity to explore) and nihilism here.