SCUM Manifesto Revisited: The Verso Podcast with Juliet Jacques, Ray Filar and Sophie Mayer

“Solanas suggests that civil disobedience is more or less the most useless thing you can do. It's the classic radical or ‘extremist’ argument that suggests that a reformist approach to a system is the worst to take because it upholds it. I think that's something that's disappeared from a lot of radical writing — that refusal to collaborate with a system that you find abhorrent.” — Juliet Jacques

“Women are not supposed to say violent things about men — it's supposed to be the other way round.” — Ray Filar

Originally self-published in 1968, Valerie Solanas' incendiary SCUM Manifesto called for a Society for Cutting Up Men and declared war on capitalism and patriarchy.

Today, the controversial tract has a complex relationship with contemporary landscapes of feminism and gender politics. Juliet Jacques and Ray Filar join Sophie Mayer to discuss the treatise from critical and contemporary perspectives. Taking a historical view on its problematic elements, they discuss the text's violence and gender and biological essentialism in light of feminist and queer discourses since it's first publication — as well as Solanas' visions of work and automation, and why the text still thrills today.

To mark the new paperback edition of this book, SCUM Manifesto, along with all Verso's feminist reading, is 50% off on our site until June 6th. Full details here.