This tension between powerlessness and power makes it an enduring piece of writing.

It’s a brutal call to arms, written by a woman in a world of hurt.

“The SCUM Manifesto is a document of profound vulnerability, written in a voice of profound empowerment. The focus of this edition is not on the nostalgic appeal of the work, but on Avital Ronell’s incisive introduction, “Deviant Payback: The Aims of Valerie Solanas.” Here is a reconsideration of Solanas’s infamous text in light of her social milieu, Derrida’s “The Ends of Man” (written in the same year), Judith Butler’s Excitable Speech, Nietzsche’s Ubermensch and notorious feminist icons from Medusa, Medea and Antigone, to Lizzie Borden, Lorenna Bobbit and Aileen Wournos, illuminating the evocative exuberance of Solanas’s dark tract. In fact, the work has indisputable prescience, not only as a radical feminist analysis light-years ahead of its timepredicting artificial insemination, ATMs, a feminist uprising against under-representation in the artsbut also as a stunning testament to the rage of an abused and destitute woman. But the Manifesto, for all its vitriol, is impossible to dismiss as just the rantings of a lesbian lunatic. Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Andy Warhol, self-published this work just before her rampage against the king of Pop Art made her a household name and resulted in her confinement to a mental institution. This edition includes an incisive introduction by acclaimed scholar Avital Ronell.SCUM Manifesto was considered one of the most outrageous, violent and certifiably crazy tracts when it first appeared in 1968. In fact, the work has indisputable prescience, not only as a radical feminist analysis light-years ahead of its time, predicting artificial insemination, ATMs, and a feminist uprising against under-representation in the arts, but also as a stunning testament to the rage of an abused and destitute woman.

SCUM Manifesto was considered one of the most outrageous, violent and certifiably crazy tracts 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.

Scum manifesto first edition