The aggressivity and nature of Dada violence introduced in the previous chapter was, during Zurich Dada, routinely distilled in the textual form of the manifesto writings, particularly so in the manifestos of Tzara and Serner (debatably at their most venomous owing more to the imprint of Serner than of Tzara). Following on from the consideration of Dada violence in chapter 3, the manifesto writings are here to be given priority in a chapter that takes twentieth-century philosophical routes to develop the argument for the manifestos (in form and content) as ideology critique, positing centrally the question of subjectivity (and the construction and processing of subjectivity) as the object of Dada critique. From Louis Althusser's now well-rehearsed account of interpellation, the willing submission to authority is read through Dada as that which indicts the subject, and the focus on Tzara's and Serner's manifestos gives opportunity to negotiate exits from subjectivity. The problematics of any attempt at subjecting state power and authority to direct critique are foregrounded in the writings of Jacques Ranciere; and, debating the ‘subject effect’, the writings of Alain Badiou elicit from Althusser the possibility of thinking subjectivity without a subject (to vary le rapport sans rapport, from chapter 2).

An emerging space for critique is arguably to be prised through ideology critique, the task of which is to take into account what might be (as opposed to representational models, which take into account what is). Detours in what follows here will move to more contemporary cinematic engagements – given in Fight Club and The Usual Suspects – introducing the contentious position of ‘subjective destitution’ and the radical unplugging of situational coordinates in order to attain an illusion of freedom. The work of Slavoj Žižek, the acknowledged master in the invocation of cinema in critical theory, will be introduced as observation is directed back at Rancière and Badiou. The Dada instances, I will argue, demonstrate a critical immanence resident in the Dada effect.