Surrealism, Chance and the Extended Mind
Distributed Cognition in Victorian Culture and Modernism September 1, 2020 Kerry Watson
The Surrealists used techniques such as automatic drawing, exquisite corpse, collage, frottage, and decalcomania to bypass conscious thought and artistic skill, aiming to access the unconscious mind as defined by Freud. Their practice of 'objective chance' reflected a belief that unconscious truths could only be reached indirectly. This chapter interprets these methods through theories of distributed cognition, enactivism, embodiment, and the extended mind, linking the Surrealists' search for universal truth to the philosophical question of where the mind ends and the world begins.