Scum Manifesto [Paperback]

Valerie Solanas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1991

The focus of this edition is on Avital Ronell’s incisive introduction.

SCUM Manifesto was considered one of the most outrageous, violent and certifiably crazy tracts when it first appeared in 1968. Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Andy Warhol, self-published this work just before her rampage against the king of Pop Art made her a household name and resulted in her confinement to a mental institution. But the Manifesto, for all its vitriol, is impossible to dismiss as just the rantings of a lesbian lunatic. In fact, the work has indisputable prescience, not only as a radical feminist analysis light-years ahead of its timepredicting artificial insemination, ATMs, a feminist uprising against under-representation in the artsbut also as a stunning testament to the rage of an abused and destitute woman.

The focus of this edition is not on the nostalgic appeal of the work, but on Avital Ronell's incisive introduction, "Deviant Payback: The Aims of Valerie Solanas." Here is a reconsideration of Solanas's infamous text in light of her social milieu, Derrida's "The Ends of Man" (written in the same year), Judith Butler's Excitable Speech, Nietzsche's Ubermensch and notorious feminist icons from Medusa, Medea and Antigone, to Lizzie Borden, Lorenna Bobbit and Aileen Wournos, illuminating the evocative exuberance of Solanas's dark tract.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A stylish new hardcover edition from Verso....recent world events suggest the book's time has come. -- A.S. Hamrah, Boston Globe, 30 May 2004

Her anger is a raw, seductive call to arms for any woman scorned. -- Rachel Kramer Bussel, The Village Voice, 21 June 2004

Verso has published a top-of-the-line, sexy new edition....Verso's SCUM Manifesto is a chic little object. -- Claire Dederer, The Nation, 14 June 2004 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Avital Ronell teaches at New York University, The European Graduate School and Paris VIII, and is the author of many books including The Test Drive. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 24 pages
• Publisher: A K Pr Distribution (March 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0948984031
• ISBN-13: 978-0948984037
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 4.6 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,354,590 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Scummy Dross of the Movement, November 5, 2002

By 

"stenerin1" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: SCUM Manifesto (Paperback)

Enjoyment of Valerie Solanas' infamous SCUM MANIFESTO is completely dependent upon how you approach it. When I first read it, I had no idea of Solanas' other, more lethal activities, and took it to be a modern day social critique in the mode of Swift's brilliant A MODEST PROPOSAL. Taken this way - with a few shovels full of salt - Solanas' work shines as a hilarious work of satire. Unfortunately, when one becomes acquainted with the TRUE Solanas, it becomes sadly obvious that she means every single hateful, spiteful word she fills this tiny little pamphlet with. That knowledge doesn't make the humor any less entertaining, but it does add a harder edge to the proceedings than otherwise.

Reading through the SCUM MANIFESTO, it's fairly evident that Solanas was determined to hate Man, at a cost of all common sense. Her ideas are stupefyingly ridiculous - the sort you'd expect from a mind literally curdling in rage - and though I won't ruin any surprises for those who've yet to read, believe me when I say you simply can't help but laugh at her many of her anti-man assertions. Even so, throughout it all, her keen-edged fury is almost palpable and literally wafts off the pages in a pungent rush of angry words and ideas, distinct evidence of her talent as a writer. And yet, the innate foolishness of it all is inescapable. Try as you might to see this as work of high satire, Solanas meant this as God's Own Truth, a call to arms for her fellow feminists. That one fact makes completion of the SCUM MANIFESTO a bittersweet thing indeed, leaving the reader with a distinctly bad taste in his or her mouth, and pity for the poor, furious woman who wrote this angry little pamphlet.

How sad.

21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Darkly funny, yes. Radical? Hell no., November 11, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: SCUM Manifesto (Paperback)

The Scum Manifesto divides its readers in a truly amazing way: according to who you read, it's either a classic wind-up lesbian farce (like Hothead Paisan) or it's incomprehensible hate speech. You can get it on the web for free, last time I checked, so you need not shell out cash to AK Press to find out what the commotion is about. What you will find is that it is a conservative's dream: feminism revealed as a man-hating conspiracy of idiotic slogan-shouting lesbians, scenarios lurid and laughable but extremely dangerous... and nothing more.
The people running AK Press (the publisher) and Chris Kraus (who glowingly reviews this book on this site) are anarchists whose opinions I generally respect, and it completely baffles me that they see this work as thoughtful or radical in any way. Solanas is just another fundamentalist ready to inflict "collateral damage" for her cause. Don't pay money for it.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars it's a manifesto. not a monograph., March 27, 2003

By 

Andi Marquette "Tierra de Andi" (Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: SCUM manifesto; (Paperback)

Indeed, Solanas's work is a diatribe. It's a manifesto. Consequently, you will not find citations and more often than not, you probably won't find much to hang your hat on for solid ideas. You will, however, find broad generalizations and "ranting." What's important about Solanas' work is that she wrote it in concert with what she felt and saw around her during the late 1960s, the time of the nascent radical feminist movement. Her manifesto is an extreme expression of some of the frustration and, in some cases, rage that women involved in the movement felt about institutionalized and personalized sexism. The SCUM Manifesto, therefore, is best considered as part of the primary documentation that emerged from that historical period. Even things readers might consider odious or vile are valuable because they provide insights to the more extreme aspects of issues which are always tied to mainstream movements.

Solanas herself was a deeply troubled woman who struggled throughout her short life with the remnants of abuse that she suffered during her childhood (I suspect sexual abuse, given her deep-seated rage against men). She was quite prolific, writing short plays during the 60s that she would perform at impromptu venues. She eventually attracted the attention of Andy Warhol, who probably found her intense, bright, and with an acidic sense of humor. He agreed with some of her views about sex, but ended up losing one of her play manuscripts (her only copy) and this may have set her off to commit a more violent act. In 1968, Solanas shot Warhol with a .32 caliber pistol, prompted by her own demons and what she may have perceived as ridicule from Warhol and his associates. Warhol survived; Solanas was sentenced to 3 years in prison; the SCUM Manifesto was eventually published in 1971 as a result of media attention surrounding the shooting. Following her prison term, she seems to have dropped out of the public eye and continued with her life, heading west. She died in 1988 of pneumonia in a welfare hotel in San Francisco.

The Manifesto is a reflection, therefore, of Solanas' own past but also offers some insight into what she perceived around her as the power of men over women, institutionalized and expressed sometimes in violence against women. For its reflection of one woman's experience (as deranged as she herself may have been) with the transformations going on in 1960s American culture, it should not be dismissed. But it should absolutely be taken with a pound of salt.