It's hypothetical. No, hypothetical is the wrong word. It's just a literary device. There's no organization called SCUM. . . . It's not even me . . . I mean, I thought of it as a state of mind. In other words, women who think a certain way are SCUM. Men who think a certain way are in the men's auxiliary of SCUM.
This is a quote from a Valerie Solanas interview in The Village Voice (1977). Breanne Fahs wrote an excellent article on Solanas in Feminist Studies 34, no. 3 (2008), in which she, among other things discusses the contradictions of Valerie Solanas, the real human being, and the SCUM Manifesto. She discusses the question whether the manifesto is to be taken as a hypothetical text, and whether Solanas' propagation of violence is literary performance or performed reality. Fahs discusses the way Solanas' work has been discredited using the Warhol shooting as proof of the text's being "insane". Fahs argues there are more fruitful approaches than this one. She talks about the inseparability of madness and non-madness.
At best, then, the Warhol shootings were simply an anomalous glitch, a concrete attempt at revenge for mistreatment and neglect of Solanas's most sacred belongings. At worst, the shootings destroyed SCUM'S political potential, as she unknowingly handed over most of her (limited) power to the forces of institutionalization and was from then on simply at their mercy (603).
Fahs also discusses the complexities surrounding authorship, reception and canonization. She ponders on Solanas' uncomfortable relation to the printed library version of her manifest. "A new
preface hy Vivian Gornick serves as a brilliant commentary and introduction to this new edition—and adds to the point of view of today's Women's Liberation militants..." Solanas scribbled on the cover: flea. Valerie Solanas resisted assimilation with the feminist movement, with sexual labels, with social roles - but she also resisted assimilation with the publishing industry. This, of course, adds another level to the question of what is the "true" Valerie Solanas. (One interesting question concerns SCUM itself, is it SCUM as in scum or S.C.U.M. as in society for cutting up men?) One of the copies of SCUM Manifesto I've held in my hand had a razor on its cover, and the other had a picture of Solanas arrested by a policeman. This says a lot about how her work is viewed. Solanas - the spokesperson for gruesome violence. Solanas - the criminal, the killer. The first time I read the text I read it on the Internet, and it was unclear to me to what extent the typos etc. were supposed to be there. Fahs correctly concludes there can be no single answer to what is to count as a "true" version of the text or as a true representation of Valerie Solanas.
There are a bunch of interesting issues that Fahs touches upon. One of them concerns how Solanas' text is to be read so that it is not falsificated. There has been attempts to make the manifesto palatable, a witty contribution to feminist history, something to be read among other texts from different historical situations, a diatribe fully comparable to Weiniger's Dialectic of Sex or Nietzsche's advice about the whip.
Several introductions to Solanas' text emphasize that the SCUM is a movement without following. I think Stridsberg, Swedish writer, says that it is Valerie, not even Valerie, that is the sole follower. But not all of these introductions makes this point to disqualify the text. To say that the SCUM manifesto is not a blueprint for a mass movement is to say something about what the reader is confronted with. As Fah also writes, Solanas' text is outspokenly anti-movement. The movement is epitomized by genteel ladies in a demonstration rally, hippies glorifying Nature, conformism. SCUM is fuck-up rather than the construction of Stalwart Utopia.
"Can an antimovement text actually inform a movement like feminism? How can such texts preserve their authority and power if they are couched in terms that soften their blow?" This is a good question, even though it risks to take for granted some connotations of what it means for feminism to be a "movement" (an agenda, some founding principles, a clearly formulated idea, a program of action).
Solanas demands a more certain absolute and a more distant extreme. She laughs in the face of apologetic, we-don't-really-hate-men, we're-not-leshians, we-shave-ourarmpits, we're-not-offensive feminism. She arouses the central anxieties of the feminist movement, picking fights and inciting us to call out our theoretical and practical differences. Indeed, she provokes us to consider a different kind of absolute, and even if we situate ourselves in opposition to such ideology, it is nevertheless considered (613).
I would argue that this hint of a certain form of absolute is not to be softened into more reasonable or "feasible" political thinking. It is important to acknowledge what this sense of the absolute in Solanas is about. I would say her text reveals an absolute sense of hope, a sense of hope that goes beyond "why future generations?", daddy's girls and Males. The manifesto expresses the hope that the world could be different (as she writes, magic, a world of love).
And that hope can never be formulated into terms that would fit a movement.
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