Dada as Politics

Abstract European Dada can be read as a political force in its own right. A stubborn contradiction has been at work in Dada studies: European Dada has been institutionally framed with models derived from the socially relatively stable late nineteenth century, but consensus also has it that Dada emerged in times of instability and contingency. The cultural instability of Zurich and Berlin forced Dada, and Richard Huelsenbeck in particular, to operate in a sphere that was both literary and political. The texts and poetics of Dada reveal its cultural project: to reclaim literature's social status in times of extreme politicisation.