hatstuck snarls comments on Mina Loys 'mary-festo'

Mina Loy sitting on the lap of Djuana Barnes.

Hatstuck Snarls has a great long article about Mina Loy and her mary-festo (manifesto)
quote a bit here, but its very worth a read... "This lack of an “I” is an important feature of the “Feminist Manifesto.” Current scholarship surrounding the manifesto takes the presence of the manifesto’s narrator for granted, without discussing the absence of an “I” (or a “we”) or without attempting to discuss the position of the narrator herself. This is perhaps understandable in light of the narrator’s forceful tone, which itself seems to mark the speaker as a figure of authority, but, it remains important to note that the authority of this speaker comes into being simultaneously with the utterance of her many demands. This factor might be rooted in part in the fact that Loy’s narrator does not appear to be creating a social movement and thereby has no scaffolding or context, or other persons, backing her. But even this point is debatable, as the last lines of the manifesto reference the possibility of “an incalculable & wider social regeneration,” thus marking the manifesto as a revolutionary discourse meant to bring about social change through the reformation of consciousness. But just as this notion of regeneration marks the potential of reformulating consciousness as the narrator outlines, the limits of the narrator’s claims, which could also be read as evidence of their seeming visionary status, are reflected by the last lines of the manifesto, in which Loy orders women to detach themselves from the assumed impurity of sex, “Another great illusion that woman must use all her introspective clear-sightedness & unbiased bravery to destroy—for the sake of her self respect is the impurity of sex[.]” But after making this command, Loy’s narrator once again rejects her audience by rejecting their ability to follow through on her demands, “the realization in defiance of superstition that there is nothing impure in sex—except the mental attitude to it—will constitute an incalculable & wider social regeneration than it is possible for our generation to acquire” (Lost 156). While presumably Loy’s narrator turns her back on the audience once again because has managed to grasp the notion that “there is nothing impure in sex,” this sense of the narrator’s superiority is not able to maintain a stable presence throughout the manifesto.

Rachel Blau DuPlessis, as will be further discussed, examines the “Feminist Manifesto,” in relation to Loy’s Love Songs, in order to argue that “feminine consciousness is a specter haunting the poem” (“Seismic” 52)."

girrls look up...out, across, on a Saturday arvo

Been thinking about multiple-maryfesto's all week. This is partly inspired by reading through the list of recommendations for the Ada Lovelace list of women distinguished in technologies that is been posted on netbehavior, its now very very long and rich as. What were these women thinking I wonder, what was their frame of inspiration, how broad was their maryfesto? and how close or far from achieving it was their work as we now know it. Is what we take to be their work ....'THE' work. Women's achievements in the arts is a marginalized & subversive force. (how exciting) ... but am wondering what others think about re-visiting the manifesto as a testing-ground for ideas, applying some of the best from theirs and others maryfesto's to their own 'means' of making creative mischief.

I've recently re-read a manifesto of Allan S Weiss
Ten Theses to Subvert a Work (A Manifesto)
Theatre Journal - Volume 58, Number 3, October 2006, pp. 393-394...that has generous play spaces, that are focused on 'open-ness' for creative work. Many that I realize I play out in my own work, I'll outline it here, so as to compare it with last Saturdays maryfesto...always a work in progress.

1) Multiply origins
2) Neutralise techniques
3) Accept interferences
4) Confuse genres
5) Valorize polyphonies
6) Exacabate paradoxes
7) Excavate voids
8) Condense givens
9) Love mannerisms
10) Dissociate significations

fair bit of potential frame shifting and making mischief in that sack of tools...

Mina Loy wrote one, a maryfesto, that she was unable to show to others except Mabel Dodge...a great outline of it and her project are here at hatstruck snarl
I'll quote a tiny bit of a good read from that blog here...
"Mina Loy’s “Feminist Manifesto,” dated November 1914 by Roger L. Conover, was not published until after her death, and, indeed, it appears that during Loy’s lifetime the sole copy of this radical text was read only by Loy’s friend and ally Mabel Dodge, to whom Loy sent her manifesto that same year. Loy’s reluctance to circulate her manifesto is often considered in relation to her anxiety about the clash between her own feminist ideology and that of her culture. As Carolyn Burke notes of Loy’s own reaction to her writing of this time, particularly the scandal surrounding her sexually-explicit Love Songs, “Mina worried about her literary reputation, as if replaying the psychic tangle of her student days—when her teachers’ notice meant her parents’ disapproval. Although writing about the sex war was bound to be controversial, it was one thing to be provocative and another to learn that some considered her writing ‘pure pornography.’” (“Becoming” 191) Loy’s unrest concerning the relationship between her brand of feminism and that of the outside world is further revealed in a letter, to her agent Carl Van Vechten, dated soon after her drafting of the manifesto, “‘What I feel now are feminine politics,’ she told Carl, ‘but in a cosmic way that may not fit in anywhere.’” (qtd. in Burke “Becoming” 187)."

Donna Haraways Cyborg manifesto, click here
1995 ed. is a good read. Long though. I like an essentialized list, just my preference, hers is very long. I guess lists leave a lot of room for interpretation and slipping between ideas, that's always good moves for a maryfesto creative. Take Allen's list playing with the creative spaces that a 9), 7) and 4) strategy for instance offer up...makes my creative juices bubble.

Where are others? The Mad Manifesto by Cynthia Kitchen was a real find!!
we will not go mad!
we will not eat cows!
we will not support the golden arches!
we will not ordain ourselves burgher kings!
we will not excrete the brainwashed masses!
we will not stake our future on beefed up charges!
we will not kow-tow to the meat industry!

instead:

we will become vegetables!
we will juice ourselves!
we will stick to our celery roots!
we will reek our garlic breaths into the onion-skinned mouths of our lovers!
we will pepper our thoughts with salty kisses!
we will lose ourselves in the Garden of Eden!!!

Cynthia's plotted plan has a particular green and luscious spin.

Jenny Holzer's list of 'Truisms' is another that also has a delicious ring of maryfestos about it, I like the long long listing, lulling lubricating effect they have on my creative genius.

'you must have one grand passion...'

is a great one.. so are these

'you must know where you stop and the world begins

you can understand someone of your sex only

you owe the world not the other way around

you should study as much as possible

your actions are pointless if no one notices...'

I'm revisiting the famous VNS MATRIX maryfesto this week, for a look to see how it reads now, more about that next Saturday arvo...