Jed Rasula’s history of Dada, “Destruction Was My Beatrice,” dispenses with a few old chestnuts of art history, chief among them the chronological fixation on Dada as a precursor to Surrealism, or a younger sibling of Futurism. The ordering by art critics of 20th-century avant-garde movements has required that they be both recognizable and dead. This has made them convenient and marketable, while draining away their revolutionary content. The art market embraced the products of every “ism” as soon as it recognized its distinct style. 

The only avant-garde that escaped the zombie line is Dada.