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Article Excerpt
"Read my manifesto and it will tell you what I am."
--Valerie Solanas
IN 1966, VALERIE SOLANAS PENNED her first play, Up Your Ass (technically titled Up Your Ass or From the Cradle to the Boat or The Big Suck or Up from the Slime), a text that would later catalyze her transition from militant writer to homicidal inpatient. She wrote the following introduction to the play, showcasing not only her strict reliance upon herself as the sole textual authority over her work but also the power of her ironic character:
I dedicate this play to ME a continuous source of strength and guidance, and without whose unflinching loyalty, devotion and faith this play would never have been written, additional acknowledgements: Myself--for proof-reading, editorial comment, helpful hints, criticism and suggestions and an exquisite job of typing. 1--for independent research into men, married women and other degenerates. (1)
Given her intense self-reliance, there is a notable irony in the fact that Solanas, when remembered at all, is almost always identified as the woman who shot Andy Warhol. Indeed, one of the most substantial resources on Solanas is the film, I Shot Andy Warhol. (2) When her authorship of the SCUM Manifesto is cited as her primary achievement, the Warhol shooting is never far behind. When the Warhol shooting of 1968 is cited as Solanas's fifteenminutes of fame, the SCUM Manifesto, originally self-published in 1967, serves as its footnote. The main function of this coupling, something I work to refute here, is to resolve any form of contradiction that may arise when comparing her life and work. This generally happens such that the contradictions inherent in the manifesto are explained by the Warhol shootings. (She also shot Mario Amaya and Fred Hughes.) These shootings become evidence of Solanas's instability, insanity, and unreliability. Therefore, any contradictions in the manifesto can be dismissed without examining their textual significance. In sum, the contradictions between the manifesto and Solanas's life, between theory and practice, are masked by the overly reductive formulation of Warhol Shooting = SCUM Manifesto in practice.
I am interested in taking these contradictions seriously and showcasing both Solanas's ironic character as well as feminist (mis)appropriations of her work. My central argument is that although Solanas's contradictions alienate her from the feminist movement (and consequently elicit a dismissive or reductive reaction to her work and actions), they also exemplify the power and importance of radical thought, both on a textual level and through the interplay between radical work and gender politics. Part I of this essay examines the discursive space between Solanas's literal body and the body of her text--a space that lays the groundwork for "radical feminism" as it was first defined. (3) By viewing Solanas as one who consistently contradicted herself, one can better understand the unusual relationship she formed between herself and her text. If we examine her contradictions, particularly with regard to her relationship with the manifesto, her ideas about sexuality, and the context of the Warhol shootings, it becomes possible to see Solanas's ironic character as something she herself champions. Contradiction that resists reduction may indeed open a critical space for discourse, one which acknowledges the expansive possibilities for radical cultural transformation. Within this framework, Solanas's radicalism, uniqueness, and importance should be acknowledged, as she purposefully constructs contradictions between herself and her manifesto, as she refuses to be assimilated into a culture that wants to market her as a circus-show-lesbian-schizophrenic-feminist, as she remains staunchly anti-movement, and as she makes room for the slippages between one's actions and one's intellect, imagination, and radical theories.
In response to the claims presented in Part 1, Part 2 illuminates the problem of assimilating Solanas's text. I investigate the manifesto's publication history, showcasing Solanas's attacks on the publishing industry and her outrage at its assaults on the manifesto. I then examine the complicated politics of claiming Solanas for the feminist movement by analyzing the various ways she has been introduced, framed, anthologized, and canonized by feminist scholars. At the heart of such discussion lie the pivotal questions: Why should we take Solanas seriously, and what does she offer to the project of (radical) feminism? Here I claim that Solanas redefines the center of feminist scholarship by speaking from an extreme margin. She arouses the central anxieties of feminism itself. She asks: Is there a difference between theory and practice? Can the project of "man-hating" (something that is constantly--and publicly--rejected by most modern feminists) be useful, even on a theoretical level? What happens if we accept, rather than eradicate, contradiction?
PART I: "OUTCAST AMONG OUTCASTS"
To understand the subversive power of Solanas's embracing of contradiction, it is essential to examine not only the contradictions within the text and within her identity as a woman, but also the contradictions between the two. By attempting to cleanse the manifesto of its various contaminants (the intrusions of her publishers, the misappropriations of various media outlets, and so forth), she succeeds in creating a "pure" authorial voice for herself. At the same time, however, her identity-and in particular, her body-became ever more subject to the constraints of various biopolitical institutions (for example, prison, mental hospitals). By creating the SCUM Manifesto, which aims to cleanse society of men as its primary contaminant, and by then defending its authorial integrity, Solanas paradoxically constructs a "pure" hypothetical position even as she progressively becomes more of a deteriorated and contaminated bodily figure. Discursively, then, she asserts that one's life does not have to mirror one's art and that the context of the self need not predict or limit the range of one's artistic and intellectual reach.
Solanas's comfort with irony and contradiction appears throughout the SCUM Manifesto. As a means to open a particular kind of discursive space, Solanas begins the manifesto by focusing on the genetic inferiority of men: "The male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient and emotionally limited." (4) By framing male inferiority as a "natural" rather than socially constructed state, she sidesteps the feminist argument that patriarchy is the problem and instead situates male worthlessness as a function of their inferior Y chromosome. This assertion lessens the space between theory and body and instead roots male inferiority as a fundamental premise. The decision to associate maleness with genetic deficiency frames her argument for male genocide. This absolute reliance upon the superiority of women--from birth and the insistence upon male genetic inferiority and deficiency allow Solanas to build an inviolable text that asserts the need to destroy the male sex from the outset. At the same time, however, she comfortably contradicts herself by acknowledging the worth of certain men:
Men in the Men's Auxiliary are those men who are working diligently to eliminate themselves, men who ... are playing ball with SCUM. ... Men who kill men; biological scientists who are working on constructive programs, as opposed to biological warfare; journalists, writers, editors. publishers, and producers who disseminate and promote ideas that will lead to the achievement of SCUM's goals; faggots who, by their shimmering, flaming example, encourage other men to de-man themselves and thereby make themselves relatively inoffensive. (5)
The message is thus twofold: (1) Men are genetically inferior and should therefore not exist; (2) certain men are acceptable.
Solanas's focus on purifying society of men does not result in a total glorification of women or even of life itself. Unlike other manifestos, hers does not advocate for Utopian ways to live and does not describe a linear narrative of progress; instead, her contradictions represent a worldview that progresses toward nihilism. Much of the manifesto focuses on eliminating men, who are responsible for all the problems of the human race; this, however, leads to questions about the necessity of continuing the human race at all. Solanas asks: "Why produce even females? Why should there be future generations? ... Why should we care what happens when we're dead? Why should we care that there is no younger generation to succeed us?" Solanas's two primary goals in the manifesto--to create a Utopia where women can rightfully reign and to create the conditions for women to stop reproducing altogether, thereby slowly eliminating themselves--seem to embody the contradictory movement from revolution to nihilism. She states, "Eventually, the natural course of events, in social evolution, will lead to total female control of the world and, subsequently, to the cessation of the production of males and, ultimately, to the cessation of the production of females." (6) The politics of the SCUM Manifesto are anarchist but are much less communal than the typical anarchist text. The momentum of the SCUM Manifesto leads to the end of the human race altogether, a total annihilation of both community and individual efforts at self-preservation.
Solanas's distrust of community efforts at societal change, even of those communities who claim to be radical, reveals yet another contradiction, as she is resistant toward all assimilation efforts, even those made by her supposed allies within the radical feminist movement. The harshness of the dichotomy Solanas creates between herself and the enemy affords her a means to detach herself from feminism and become an "outcast among outcasts." (7) She argues for the elimination of men, yet refuses to join...
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