What is Dada?

Abstract

It has become a cliché that Dada is “nihilistic”, “destructive”, “negative”. Such generalized descriptions trivialize the very specific and penetrating attack on post‐Renaissance Humanist culture undertaken by Dada and obscure the movement's positive aspirations. This article hopes to rectify this imbalance and falls into three sections: In the first part, the five main points of the Dada critique of culture will be enumerated and discussed; in the second part, the essential nature of the Dada état d'esprit will be described and the metaphysic implicit in several of the major Dadaist writers discussed; in the third part, the assumptions behind the production of Dada artefacts will be identified and their paradoxical status as the simultaneous embodiments of critique and remedy established. This article will move across national boundaries and between the literary and visual products of Dada.