SCUM Manifesto Revisited: The Verso Podcast with Juliet Jacques, Ray Filar and Sophie Mayer
“Solanas suggests that civil disobedience is more or less the most useless thing you can do. It's the classic radical or ‘extremist’ argument that suggests that a reformist approach to a system is the worst to take because it upholds it. I think that's something that's disappeared from a lot of radical writing — that refusal to collaborate with a system that you find abhorrent.” — Juliet Jacques
“Women are not supposed to say violent things about men — it's supposed to be the other way round.” — Ray Filar
Originally self-published in 1968, Valerie Solanas' incendiary SCUM Manifesto called for a Society for Cutting Up Men and declared war on capitalism and patriarchy.
Today, the controversial tract has a complex relationship with contemporary landscapes of feminism and gender politics. Juliet Jacques and Ray Filar join Sophie Mayer to discuss the treatise from critical and contemporary perspectives. Taking a historical view on its problematic elements, they discuss the text's violence and gender and biological essentialism in light of feminist and queer discourses since it's first publication — as well as Solanas' visions of work and automation, and why the text still thrills today.
To mark the new paperback edition of this book, SCUM Manifesto, along with all our feminist reading, is 50% off on our site until June 6th. Full details here.
Juliet Jacques is the author of Trans: A Memoir and a PhD student in Creative and Critical Writing at University of Sussex.
Ray Filar is a writer, editor and performance artist. They tweet @RayFilar.
Sophie Mayer is author of Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema, poet and a member of queer feminist curators Club des Femmes. She tweets @tr0ublemayer.
SCUM Manifesto voice: Sam McBean, academic and feminist and queer critic. She tweets @s_mcbean
Competition!
We are launching our SCUM Revisited podcast with a competition where you could win a limited edition Rosa Luxemburg tote bag containing SCUM Manifesto, Dialectic of Sex AND some special SCUM badges emblazoned with three of Solanas' key demands, ‘Overthrow the government’, ‘Eliminate the money system’ and, of course, ‘Destroy the male sex.’
To win this bundle, all you need to do is to share the podcast on Twitter mentioning @VersoBooks with the hashtag #ScumRevisited, or reblog the podcast on Tumblr using the hashtag #ScumRevisited. The competition will finish Monday 6th June, 4pm GMT and winners will be picked at random. Good luck!
50% off our feminist reading!
To mark the paperback edition of this book SCUM Manifesto, along with all our feminist reading, is 50% off on our site until June 6th. Full details here.
See also!
#Killallmen: 7 things you need to know about the SCUM Manifesto — Ray Filar, journalist, editor and performance artist, gives us the rundown of the best and the worst of Valerie Solanas' controversial SCUM Manifesto.
“Sometimes you have to scream to be heard” — Avital Ronell on the aims of Valerie Solanas
Verso's Feminist Reading List