Claude Cahun

Claude Cahun: Cancelled Confessions (or Disavowals) returns to print as a radical and playful exploration of identity, selfhood, and resistance. Originally published in 1930, this work defies the conventions of the memoir, dismantling the notion of a fixed, singular “I” and reconstructing it in a kaleidoscope of forms: aphorisms, letters, dialogues, fables, dreams, hymns, and proclamations. Through these fragments, Cahun interrogates desire, love, gender, sex, faith, vanity, and fear, creating a literary space that is at once mischievous, profound, and defiant.

In Cancelled Confessions, the instability of self becomes a tool of liberation. Cahun refuses to conform to prescribed identities, instead multiplying and shifting their presentation across text and image. The book mirrors the artist’s famous photographic self-portraits, in which she appears in elaborate costumes, androgynous attire, or masked, often reflecting or doubling herself to question the very notion of coherence in identity. Each page of the memoir is a provocation: a playful yet incisive invitation to reconsider the boundaries imposed by society, art, and the self itself.

This edition thoughtfully recreates the spirit of the original book, enriched with the 1930 preface by Pierre Mac Orlan and contemporary essays by scholar Amelia Groom and translator Susan de Muth. These contextual contributions illuminate Cahun’s prescience, highlighting how her inquiries into gender fluidity, performativity, and defiance of norms resonate with today’s cultural and political conversations. Nearly a century old, the work remains urgent, asserting that resilience requires transforming defeat into power, and that liberation often emerges through imaginative rebellion.

Born in France in 1894, Claude Cahun collaborated closely with Marcel Moore to create a body of work that spans photography, writing, and activism. Celebrated today as a pioneer of queer and feminist expression, Cahun’s art and life reflect audacity, wit, and the courage to challenge oppressive regimes and artistic orthodoxies alike. Cancelled Confessions (or Disavowals) is not only a literary and visual milestone but also a manifesto of imaginative freedom, inviting readers to embrace multiplicity, uncertainty, and the radical potential of the self.