>I was once told that the greatest of all the surrealists, Rene Magritte
>wrote sub-Heideggerian philosophical tracts, but I've never been able to
>confirm it. Translations would be a commercial triumph in the culture
>studies departments I suspect, though no doubt the work itself would be
>a disappointment.
"Commercial triumph[s] in the cultur[al] studies departments" are not very triumphant things, it turns out. A run-of-the-mill Verso cult stud volume sells 3,000-5,000 copies; even Zizek's Sublime Object of Ideology, something of a classic (though not really cult stud, but you get the idea) that's been out almost 10 years, has sold no more than 12,000 copies.
Doug