SCUM MANIFESTO contexts 43

SCUM is “the rage of all women condensed to the point of ex-plosion” 13. And yet, what strikes the reader is the well-reasoned na-ture of her delirious argument, which unfolds a lucid critique of systems of domination. Solanas blurs the western dichotomy con-structing “logos” and “pathos” as two distinctive, mutually exclusive categories. In her text, “reason” (represented in collective imagi-nation as masculine and superior) and “affect”, “the body” (under-mined as pertaining to nature, animality, femininity and perceived as something that needs to be domesticated) echo one another.

SCUM Manifesto is a visionary text rooted, very early on, in a queer rhetorical practice, echoing zaps (political direct actions that began in the 1970s in the United States). Solanas’s “rhetorical zap” 14 is paradoxical for it is individualistic and solitary. Her subversive use of humour becomes a weapon against patriarchy. Resorting to excess and the obscene becomes a political and creative strate-gy. SCUM aims at unsettling, at provoking violent reactions in or-der to better disrupt dominant discourses whose effects are, on the other hand, very real.

One of the normative discourses that Solanas distorts and overthrows is that of gender differentialism — the essentialising of men and women as two different, homogenous, and complemen-tary categories, leading to the superiority of “Man” over “Woman”.

“Being an incomplete female, the male spends his life attempt-ing to complete himself, to become female. He attempts to do this by constantly seeking out, fraternizing with and trying