Les Deux Cents Familles: A Conspiracy Theory of the Avant-Garde

Abstract

1. The Attack of Two Hundred Families This essay takes as its point of departure invitation to January 21, 1936, meeting of Contre-Attaque, group founded by Georges Bataille and Andre Breton in 1935 as a reaction to rise of fascism in France. Contre-Attaque not only marked a brief moment of detente between two writers after their acrimonious split several years prior; it also represented surrealism's revolutionary attempt at participating in mass political movements of interwar era. For intellectuals who participated in Contre-Attaque, group was intended as precisely that: a counterattack, a movement that would remain on offensive against Right, appropriating fascism's tools in order to use them against it. In formulating its response to fascism, Contre-Attaque broke with other existing movements on left, deeming Popular Front's uniting of socialists, communists, and radicals as too defensive and thoroughly rejecting Communist International's insistence that intellectuals abide by a set aesthetic program preapproved by Soviet Union. Within eight months of group's founding, amid political tumult and interpersonal disagreements, it had disbanded, thereby representing just a brief chapter in political history of avant-garde. (1) The January card displays a simple drawing of a severed calf's head on a platter, over which is superimposed necessary information--time, date, and location--for session, at which Bataille, Breton, and Maurice Heine were scheduled to speak (Figure l). (2) The announcement reminds its bearer of symbolic value of meeting's date: 21 janvier 1793-21 janvier 1936. Anniversaire de l'execution capitale de Louis XVI. The interplay between text and image here comes to fore: calf's head on platter recalls decapitation of French monarch, a visual commemoration of moment when France became a people without a leader. As Simon Baker has suggested, this invitation--the only one produced in context of Contre-Attaque--ought to be understood as a visual corollary to Bataille's writings on crowds from 1930s (314). In essays like La Structure psychologique du fascisme (1933) and Front populaire dans la rue (1935), Bataille cautioned Left against reproducing model of domination and subservience that fascism enacted through its charismatic leader. Rather than channel people's energy into outmoded political parties, Contre-Attaque insisted on creation of mass political manifestations, headless crowds capable of moving swaths of individuals without offering up a new leader in place of fascist one. It was hope, in Baker's formulation, of the ability and potential of a leaderless fraternity to effect radical political action (326). [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] The double reminder inscribed on Contre-Attaque announcement of severing of a people from its leader finds even deeper resonance when one considers proposed topic for January meeting: LES 200 FAMILLES qui relevent de la justice du peuple. Les deux cents were a widespread--if today somewhat forgotten--myth of interwar era: two hundred families who controlled France from behind scenes, two hundred families whose decisions determined nation's fate. Appearing in regular editorials in popular press across political spectrum, two hundred families represented a conspiratorial view of French history, idea that certain select interests, embodied by real people, held fate of an entire nation in their hands. Articles attacking Rothschild and Mallet banking families, steel magnate Wendels, and industrialist Schneiders (to name just a few of most commonly cited families) were a commonplace in interwar political discourse; two hundred families were routinely accused of everything from corruption and price-fixing to warmongering and profiteering. …