In this edition, philosopher Avital Ronell's introduction reconsiders the evocative exuberance of this infamous text. Valerie Solanas: Valerie Solanas was a radical feminist playwright and social propagandist best known as the author of the SCUM Manifesto, which she self-published and sold on the streets of New York.In 1968, she was arrested after an assassination attempt on the life Andy Warhol, and imprisoned for three years. Whether she was kidding or not, she felt that men were the problems with. Excerpt from pages 17 and 18 of the first edition of Valerie Solanass SCUM Manifesto, a mimeograph handed out by Solanas in Greenwich Village in 1968. In fact, the work has proved prescient, not only as a radical feminist analysis light years ahead of its time-predicting artificial insemination, ATMs, a feminist uprising against underrepresentation in the arts-but also as a stunning testament to the rage of an abused and destitute woman. The title of her manifesto is almost satirical, implying she wanted to kill men. Nonetheless, Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto did fuel debate in the women’s movement, and it did give expression to the rage many women felt toward patriarchy. But for all its vitriol, it is impossible to dismiss as the mere rantings of a lesbian lunatic. Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Andy Warhol, self-published the book just before she became a notorious household name and was confined to a mental institution.
Outrageous and violent, SCUM Manifesto was widely lambasted when it first appeared in 1968.
"Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex."
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