Scum Manifesto
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Book Overview
First circulated on the streets of Greenwich Village in 1967, the SCUM Manifesto is a searing indictment of patriarchal culture in all its forms. Shifting fluidly between the worlds of satire and straightforward critique, this classic is a call to action--a radical feminist vision for a different world. This is an update of the essential AK Press edition, with a new foreword. "To see the SCUM Manifesto's humor, to let it crack you up page after page, is not to read it as a joke. It's not. The truth of the world as seen though Valerie's eyes is patently absurd, a cosmic joke. Humor such as this is a muscle, a weapon... It was the truth, and the truth is so absurd it's painful." --Michelle Tea "Unhampered by propriety, niceness, discretion, public opinion, 'morals', the respect of assholes, always funky, dirty, low-down SCUM gets around... You've got to go through a lot of sex to get to anti-sex, and SCUM's been through it all, and they're now ready for a new show; they want to crawl out from under the dock, move, take off, sink out." --Valerie Solanas Valerie Solanas was a radical feminist playwright and social propagandist who was arrested in 1968 after her attempted assassination of Andy Warhol. Deemed a paranoid schizophrenic by the state, Solanas was immortalized in the 1996 film I Shot Andy Warhol. In Oakland, California on March 24, 2015 a fire destroyed the AK Press warehouse along with several other businesses. Please consider visiting the AK Press website to learn more about the fundraiser to help them and their neighbors.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1849351805
ISBN13:9781849351805
Release Date:October 2013
Publisher:AK Press
Length:80 Pages
Weight:0.15 lbs.
Dimensions:0.3" x 4.3" x 6.3"
Customer Reviews
2 ratings
Unfortunately Necessary Reading
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 18 years ago
Like some of the other reviewers, I treated Solanas' work light-heartedly. In some ways, it felt like the only way that you could read it! There is certainly no lack of logical fallacies and unvalidated assertions, nor could I see any sort of authentic argument at all. However, the reason I give this 5 stars, and I've titled this review "Unfortunately Necessary Reading," is what I learned about Valerie Solanas in the short bio following the manifesto. This book BROKE MY HEART. And I hope it breaks yours too. I went from having had an enjoyable read to tears. Her life must have been so full of misery and utter loneliness! Convinced of and advocating for such a misguided cause, beaten, abused, and used by the men she loved the most, and to top it all off, the end to her life as cruel and barbarous as could ever be designed. . . This isn't the SCUM Manifesto, this is one of the most honest exposés on the destruction of a fragile human being who was never loved by any one. I'm not a feminist nor a conservative, and I think attempts to understand it or critisize it from any political ideology are missing the larger point on compassion and reaching out to those in need. Please read it. Buy it for that matter.
An Essential Volume for all Educated People
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
The SCUM Manifesto is a brilliant work. Valerie Solanas, in forty or so swift pages, answers intelligently, cogently, and, most important, passionately 2000 years of misogynist writings which comprise the majority of the western history canon. She emulates both the rhetorical and the rational argumentative styles of all of the great men of history who have had far worse things than what is in SCUM to say about women. Lest we not forget: Aristotle: Women are Mutilated Men, Plato: Women are halfway between man and beast, Kant: Women should not be moral agents, Nietszche: Women, at best, are cows, Freud: Women can be understood completely in terms of the penis they lack. This list barely scrathces the surface of some of the horrible, awful things our most revered figures of history have had to say about women. When read against this background, the SCUM Manifesto no longer seems to be a frivolous, hateful call to violence, but rather an intelligent, thoughtful reflection on the unfortunate relationship between women and western history. Again, it is an unquestionably brilliant work which should be read and re-read by any serious scholar of history, philosophy, political science, gender studies and by all educated people; it is an instant contemporary classic!
SCUM Manifesto Mentions in Our Blog
Warhol's Horde
Published by Terry Fleming • March 22, 2022
With the debut of Ryan Murphy's The Andy Warhol Diaries on Netflix, Andy Warhol is in the spotlight again. But while this docuseries focuses on Warhol's romantic and artistic life (with excerpts taken from his actual diary, which has a 25th anniversary edition coming out in May), we wanted to highlight some of the powerful personalities who moved in and out of Warhol's life, lending their own magnetism to his mystique.
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