The (dis)appearance of Up Your Ass: Valerie Solanas as abject revolutionary

Abstract

Through performative writing and using Cixous' notion of écriture feminine, this piece explores how the archival and treatment of Valerie Solanas' ‘lost’ manuscript Up Your Ass marks her as an abject body. Further, this piece critiques the treatment of Solanas' works as typical of radical feminist activists.

Keywords:

• performative writing
• Solanas
• abject
• Cixous
• écriture feminine

Notes

¹ I don't remember her name anymore. I feel awful about this. You will know why by the end of the paper. You see the tendencies are in all of us – the pushing out and away.

² This would be the place where a responsible editor/reviewer/reader/critic would tell me to insert some biographical information about Valerie Solanas. But I'm going to be honest with you. I'm really tired of it. I'm tired of reiterating (Rowe 2011; Rowe and Chavez 2011) a life story of someone you should already know. Do you need someone to tell you who Warhol is? Nope. Everyone knows him. Do some work yourself – maybe you will remember longer.

 ³ Not lost as in no one knows where it is but lost as in we can not reach it. I see it – yet it is out of my grasp. I move forward and so does the text. We are never meant to be seen in public … together.

 ⁴ I never received an answer as to why Harding's (2001) piece was allowed to reproduce two pages of Up Your Ass. I did, however, find it ironic.