[derrida]

From the source:

Dada was one of the last two major avant-garde movements, its negative image greatly enhanced by the sense of general historical collapse radiated by World War I. Its partisans claimed, at times, to be against all "isms," including the idea of art. But painting cannot negate painting, nor can sculpture invalidate sculpture, keeping in mind that all symbolic culture is the co-opting of perception, expression and communication. [Nor can writing negate writing, nor can typing radical essays onto diskettes to assist in their publication ever be liberating - even if the typer breaks the rules and puts in an uninvited comment.] In fact, Dada was a quest for new artistic modes, its attack on the rigidities and irrelevancies of bourgeois art a factor in the advance of art; Hans Richter's memoirs referred to "the regeneration of visual art that Dada had begun." If World War I almost killed art, the Dadaists reformed it.