Manchester University Press
5 Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto and the texts of aggression
Abstract
This chapter analyses Valerie Solanas's deployment of language as a tool to wield aggression for the feminist imaginary. Solanas's SCUM Manifesto gives women permission to reject the imperative to mirror the value of patriarchal culture and remake dominant images of woman. A castrating text, the SCUM Manifesto systemically undercuts the prestige bestowed upon masculinity. Solanas demonstrates her affinity with Freudian narratives and categories early in the manifesto. It is easy to see the handwritten marks Solanas made on the Olympia Press edition of the SCUM Manifesto as the scribbles of a monster. But they must be set in relationship to the typewriter and the role it plays in Solanas's history. Like Nancy Spero typing out passages from Artaud's work on the Bulletin typewriters she described as 'big old monsters,' Solanas made the typewriter a manifestation of her feminist commitments.
Abstract
This chapter analyses Valerie Solanas's deployment of language as a tool to wield aggression for the feminist imaginary. Solanas's SCUM Manifesto gives women permission to reject the imperative to mirror the value of patriarchal culture and remake dominant images of woman. A castrating text, the SCUM Manifesto systemically undercuts the prestige bestowed upon masculinity. Solanas demonstrates her affinity with Freudian narratives and categories early in the manifesto. It is easy to see the handwritten marks Solanas made on the Olympia Press edition of the SCUM Manifesto as the scribbles of a monster. But they must be set in relationship to the typewriter and the role it plays in Solanas's history. Like Nancy Spero typing out passages from Artaud's work on the Bulletin typewriters she described as 'big old monsters,' Solanas made the typewriter a manifestation of her feminist commitments.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of figures viii
- Acknowledgements xv
- 1 Introduction 1
-
I Writing the ‘I’ otherwise: telegraphing black feminism in the work of Adrian Piper and Angela Davis
- 2 Adrian Piper’s textual address 29
- 3 Letters from an imaginary enemy, Angela Davis 72
- 4 Writing the drives in Nancy Spero’s Codex Artaud 107
- 5 Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto and the texts of aggression 146
- 6 Rewriting maternal femininity in Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document 186
- 7 Feminist desires and collective reading in the work of Laura Mulvey 232
- 8 Conclusion 267
- Bibliography 269
- Index 286
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of figures viii
- Acknowledgements xv
- 1 Introduction 1
-
I Writing the ‘I’ otherwise: telegraphing black feminism in the work of Adrian Piper and Angela Davis
- 2 Adrian Piper’s textual address 29
- 3 Letters from an imaginary enemy, Angela Davis 72
- 4 Writing the drives in Nancy Spero’s Codex Artaud 107
- 5 Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto and the texts of aggression 146
- 6 Rewriting maternal femininity in Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document 186
- 7 Feminist desires and collective reading in the work of Laura Mulvey 232
- 8 Conclusion 267
- Bibliography 269
- Index 286
