Scum Manifesto

The focus of this edition is not on the nostalgic appeal of SCUM. Rather, in a characteristically brilliant and erudite introduction, renowned scholar Avita Ronell reconsiders Solanas's infamous text in light of the social milieu in which it was written, and reinterprets its status as a cult classic. Ronell writes, "Maybe the Solanas tract was payback: it was clocked to strike the time of response to all shameless woman-hating manifestos and their counterparts, the universalizers." She conjures Derrida's "The Ends of Man" (written in the same year), Judith Butler's Excitable Speech, Nietzsche's Ubermensch, and the notorious feminist icons from Medusa, Medea, and Antigone, to Lizzie Borden, Lorenna Bobbitt and Aileen Wournos, illuminating the evocative exuberance of Solana's dark tract. "IsSCUM ever marches, it will be over the President's stupid, sickening face; if SCUM ever strikes, it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade..." - Valerie Solanas "Sometimes you have to scream to be heard." - Avital Ronell