Investigating Sex: Surrealist Discussions. This item is unavailable.Investigating Sex: Surrealist Discussions

In January 1928, the surrealists initiated their remarkable "researches into sexuality" with a series of round-table conversations involving key figures such as André Breton, Yves Tanguy, Louis Aragon, Man Ray, Max Ernst and Antonin Artaud. The transcripts, in all their bizarre and fascinating detail, are presented here. While there is plenty of humor-not all of it intentional-the speakers were trying scrupulously to record every aspect of sexual love, cataloging preferences and positions, quality and quantity. This book is a unique historical record of sexual practice and ethics; a fundamental text for understanding the surrealist movement and, for all its idiosyncrasies, a document that still retains an extraordinary vitality today.

José Pierre was a playwright, novelist and art historian. He belonged to the postwar Paris surrealist group that formed around André Breton. He was a member of Actual, an archive for the dissemination of the secret history of surrealism.

JoAnn Wypijewski is a writer and editor based in New York. From 1982 to 2000, she was an editor at the Nation magazine. She has written for the magazine, as well as for Harper's, CounterPunch, the New York Times Magazine, the Guardian, and other publications. She is on the editorial committee of the New Left Review. She was the co-editor with Kevin Alexander Gray and Jeffrey St. Clair, of Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence.