Language games with ‘Manifesto’

ABSTRACT

What happens when ‘manifesto’, as the emblem of a committed artistic or political action, is used as the title of consumer products such as perfume? What do critics mean when they say that a certain work is ‘a manifesto’ rather than literature? When does this label appear as a superlative, and when, in contrast, is it a form of denunciation? What does J. L. Austin mean when he wishes, in the conclusion of ‘How to Do Things with Words’, that his work is not seen as ‘an individual manifesto’? The variations of the word ‘manifesto’ in popular discourse are one of the things that makes the manifesto, as Luca Somigli asserts, ‘notoriously so difficult to define’. Following Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of ‘language game’ and the rich scholarly literature on the manifesto genre, this essay offers a reflection on ‘manifesto’ as a multilayered, performative concept which enables multiple cultural agents to perform various discursive actions. Examining its contemporary pragmatic and rhetorical meaning in light of its history helps in understanding how the term ‘manifesto’ is actually manifested.

KEYWORDS:

• Manifestos
• language games
• rhetoric
• pragmatics
• modernism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In a conversation I had with the editor in April 2012, when I asked her what her criteria were for choosing texts for the anthology, she said that she just chose texts she liked. Indeed, personal preferences of thinkers and authority figures also have a significant effect on the inclusion of texts in genre frameworks or their exclusion from these frameworks. Other anthologies such as Danchev (2011) and MacKenzie (2014) demonstrate the same diversity and elusiveness of the genre.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nana Ariel

Dr. Nana Ariel is a lecturer and researcher in the Faculty of Humanities at Tel Aviv University, in the fields of rhetoric, cultural studies and the science of learning. Previously she was a Fulbright visiting scholar at Harvard University. Her book Manifestos: Restless Writings on the Brink of the 21st Century, is the first full research book in Hebrew about the manifesto genre. Her articles have appeared in various journals and in international magazines such as Aeon. She is involved in initiatives that promote adventurous pedagogy in the Humanities.