SCUM MANIFESTO Echoes 73

Solanas’s Manifesto also addressed the organic, the biologi-cal. When Catherine turns round, her back open up alongside her spine, transformed by a large, vulva, latex prothesis.

The images that are not easily identifiable and projected be-hind Matmos’s performance are undoubtedly organic 12, hesitating between the animal or the human? Plastic-gloved hands manip-ulate and fiddle this wrinkled and flexible lump, which dissolves into a rose whose petals are opened by the same fingers, blurring yet again another boundary — this time between the human and the plant. Throughout the works, visual and sound motifs circu-late, as resonances of words or gestures: tanks, firearms, knifes and bodies — pierced, cut and opened up —, which are substituted by blooming flowers and fruits; out-of-step sounds, varying between a hammering crash and a humming whisper…

Without dwelling on the expected provocation of Houelle-becq’s postface 13, Avita Ronell’s preface 14 — even though it also clashed with a certain kind of feminism —, it acknowledged Sola-nas’s intuition: “she anticipated cloning” 15, inviting us to surpass the old dichotomies challenged by Donna Haraway, among oth-ers: female/male, nature/culture, living/artefact, human/animal. Catherine Corringer also underlines the relevance of the Scum revolution with the advent of post-humanism, going beyond gen-der. Another “seismic” response to the Scum revolution deserves attention to conclude by opening up the discussion. Women’s vid-eo practice in India at the end of the 1990's shows a movement of

12 It is a uterus, a vagina of cow handled by two hands gloved with latex.

13 “L’Humanité, stade second”, first French edition of SCUM Manifesto. ed. Mille et une nuits, 1998 → http://bibliotheque.centrelgbtparis.org/opac_css/index.php?lvl=author_see&id=3039.

14 Deviant Payback: The Aims of Valerie Solanas, Verso Books, 2004.

15 Ronell, p. 73. See the preface to the Verso Books edition of Deviant Payback: The Aims of Valerie Solanas.