SCUM Manifesto

SCUM Manifesto
Author: Valerie Solanas
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 92
Release: 2016-04-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1784784419

Classic radical feminist statement from the woman who shot Andy Warhol “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.” Outrageous and violent, SCUM Manifesto was widely lambasted when it first appeared in 1968. 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. But for all its vitriol, it is impossible to dismiss as the mere rantings of a lesbian lunatic. 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. In this edition, philosopher Avital Ronell’s introduction reconsiders the evocative exuberance of this infamous text.

SCUM Manifesto (English Edition)

SCUM Manifesto (English Edition)
Author: Térésa Faucon
Publisher: Naima
Total Pages: 89
Release: 2020-04-14T00:00:00+02:00
Genre: Art
ISBN: 2374401006

SCUM Manifesto is a digital book bringing texts and archives about the videotape of Carole Roussopoulos and Delphine Seyrig restored and available in full in the book. The videotape filmed in 1976 is a staged reading of extracts from Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto then out of print in French translation. Delphine Seyrig translates some passages to Carole Roussopoulos who types them in the machine. In the background, a television broadcasts live images of the TV news which let us hear the apocalyptic news. Like the book, the film is a pamphlet against society dominated by the “male” image and “virile” action.

Valerie Solanas

Valerie Solanas
Author: Breanne Fahs
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2014-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 155861849X

The authoritative biography of the 60s countercultural icon who wrote SCUM Manifesto, shot Andy Warhol, and made an unforgettable mark on feminist history. Valerie Solanas is one of the most polarizing figures of 1960s counterculture. A cult hero to some and vehemently denounced by others, she has been dismissed but never forgotten. Known for shooting Andy Warhol in 1968 and for writing the infamous SCUM Manifesto, Solanas became one of the most famous women of her era. But she was also diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and spent much of her life homeless or in mental hospitals. Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto, a sui generis vision of radical gender dystopia, predicted ATMs, test-tube babies, the Internet, and artificial insemination long before they existed. It has sold more copies and been translated into more languages than nearly all other feminist texts of its time. And yet, shockingly little work has investigated the life of its author. This book is the first biography about Solanas, including original interviews with family, friends (and enemies), and numerous living Warhol associates. It reveals surprising details about Solanas’s life: the children nearly no one knew she had, her drive for control over her own writing, and her elusive personal and professional relationships. Valerie Solanas reveals the tragic, remarkable life of an iconic figure. It is “not only a remarkable biographical feat but also a delicate navigation of an unwieldy, demanding, and complex life story” (BOMB Magazine).

Females

Females
Author: Andrea Long Chu
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 113
Release: 2019-10-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1788737393

One of today’s most original thinkers on gender offers a provocative take on the current feminist movement, exploring “desire as the force shaping our identifies, the paradoxes of liberation politics, and her own gender transition” (Bookforum). “[Females] is always smart, sometimes sincere, and unpredictable about when it will pinch your arm or clutch its nails around your heart.” —Vice Everyone is female, and everyone hates it. Females is Andrea Long Chu’s genre-defying investigation into sex and lies, desperate artists and reckless politics, the smothering embrace of gender and the punishing force of desire. Drawing inspiration from a forgotten play by Valerie Solanas—the woman who wrote the SCUM Manifesto and shot Andy Warhol—Chu aims her searing wit and surgical intuition at targets ranging from performance art to psychoanalysis, incels to porn. She even has a few barbs reserved for feminists like herself. Each step of the way, she defends the indefensible claim that femaleness is less a biological state and more a fatal existential condition that afflicts the entire human race—men, women, and everyone else. Or maybe she’s just projecting. A thrilling new voice who has been credited with launching the “second wave” of trans studies, Chu shows readers how to write for your life, baring her innermost self with a morbid sense of humor and a mordant kind of hope.

Valerie

Valerie
Author: Sara Stridsberg
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2019-08-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374720614

A fever dream of a novel—strangely funny, entirely unconventional—Valerie conjures the life, mind, and art of American firebrand Valerie Solanas In April 1988, Valerie Solanas—the writer, radical feminist, author of the SCUM Manifesto and would-be assassin of Andy Warhol—was discovered dead at fifty-two in her hotel room, in a grimy corner of San Francisco, alone, penniless, and surrounded by the typed pages of her last writings. In Valerie, a nameless narrator revisits the room where Solanas died, the courtroom where she was tried and convicted of attempting to murder Andy Warhol, the Georgia wastelands where she spent her childhood and was repeatedly raped by her father and beaten by her alcoholic grandfather, and the mental hospitals where she was shut away. A leading feminist in Sweden and one of the most acclaimed writers in Scandinavia, Sara Stridsberg here blurs the boundaries between history and fiction, self-making and storytelling, madness and art, love and tragedy. Through imagined conversations and monologues, reminiscences and rantings, she reconstructs this most intriguing and enigmatic of women, reaching back in time to amplify her voice and bring her powerful, heartbreaking story into new light.

I Shot Andy Warhol

I Shot Andy Warhol
Author: Mary Harron
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 1996
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780802134912

I Shot Andy Warhol is the script of the art-house film telling the story of Valerie Solanas, the radical feminist and author of the SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto, who made headlines in 1968 when she attempted to kill Andy Warhol.

Close to Home

Close to Home
Author: Christine Delphy
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2016-09-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1784782513

Classic analysis of gender relations and patriarchy under capitalism Close to Home is the classic study of family, patriarchal ideologies, and the politics and strategy of women’s liberation. On the table in this forceful and provocative debate are questions of whether men can be feminists, whether “bourgeois” and heterosexual women are retrogressive members of the women’s movement, and how best to struggle against the multiple oppressions women endure. Rachel Hills’s foreword to this new edition explores how Christine Delphy’s analysis of marriage as the institution behind the exploitation of unpaid women’s labor is as radical and relevant today as it ever was.

Intercourse

Intercourse
Author: Andrea Dworkin
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2008-08-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0786722363

Andrea Dworkin, once called "Feminism's Malcolm X," has been worshipped, reviled, criticized, and analyzed-but never ignored. The power of her writing, the passion of her ideals, and the ferocity of her intellect have spurred the arguments and activism of two generations of feminists. Now the book that she's best known for-in which she provoked the argument that ultimately split apart the feminist movement-is being reissued for the young women and men of the twenty-first century. Intercourse enraged as many readers as it inspired when it was first published in 1987. In it, Dworkin argues that in a male supremacist society, sex between men and women constitutes a central part of women's subordination to men. (This argument was quickly-and falsely-simplified to "all sex is rape" in the public arena, adding fire to Dworkin's already radical persona.) In her introduction to this twentieth-anniversary edition of Intercourse, Ariel Levy, the author of Female Chauvinist Pigs, discusses the circumstances of Dworkin's untimely death in the spring of 2005, and the enormous impact of her life and work. Dworkin's argument, she points out, is the stickiest question of feminism: Can a woman fight the power when he shares her bed?

Burn It Down!

Burn It Down!
Author: Breanne Fahs
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2024-02-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1788735390

"A must-read, an antidote to powerlessness, a literary companion for the ages." –Michelle Tea, author of Against Memoir "Editors' Choice" –New York Times Book Review A comprehensive collection of feminist manifestos, chronicling rage and dreams from the nineteenth century to the present day A landmark collection spanning two centuries and four waves of feminist activism and writing, Burn It Down! is a testament to what is possible when women are driven to the edge. The manifesto—raging, demanding, quarreling and provocative—has always been central to feminism, and it’s the angry, brash feminism we need now. Collecting over seventy-five manifestos from around the world, Burn It Down! is a rallying cry and a call to action. Among this confrontational sisterhood, you’ll find the Dyke Manifesto by the Lesbian Avengers, The Ax Tampax Poem Feministo by the Bloodsisters Project, The Manifesto of Apocalyptic Witchcraft by Peter Grey, Simone de Beauvoir’s pro-abortion Manifesto of the 343, Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female by Frances M. Beal, and many more. Feminist academic and writer Breanne Fahs argues that we need manifestos in all their urgent rawness, for it is at the bleeding edge of rage and defiance that new ideas are born.

The Faculty of Dreams

The Faculty of Dreams
Author: Sara Stridsberg
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2019-03-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0857054732

In April 1988, Valerie Solanas - the writer, radical feminist and would-be assassin of Andy Warhol - was discovered dead in her hotel room, in a grimy corner of San Francisco. She was only 52; alone, penniless and surrounded by the typed pages of her last writings. In The Faculty of Dreams, Sara Stridsberg revisits the hotel room where Solanas died, the courtroom where she was tried and convicted of attempting to murder Andy Warhol, the Georgia wastelands where she spent her childhood, where she was repeatedly raped by her father and beaten by her alcoholic grandfather, and the mental hospitals where she was interned. Through imagined conversations and monologues, reminisces and rantings, Stridsberg reconstructs this most intriguing and enigmatic of women, articulating the thoughts and fears that she struggled to express in life and giving a powerful, heartbreaking voice to the writer of the infamous SCUM Manifesto.