Philippe Soupault’s Cultism

Abstract

This article aims to rethink Philippe Soupault's attitude towards cinema, literature and the Surrealist group in the light of the notion of cultism. Cultism is first defined as an aesthetic attitude characterized by irrationality, subversion and irony, and historically situated in film criticism and the taste for so-called cult films. This is followed by a review of Soupault's discourse on cinema, particularly during the Surrealist period. Finally, a cultist reinterpretation is offered of the writer's relationship to avant-garde sociality and to Lautréamont's Les Chants de Maldoror, one of the Surrealists' cult books.