Valerie Solanas and the Queer Performativity of Madness

Abstract

Accusations of madness have long been hurled at queer and feminist bodies, and typically when people are deemed mad, they are granted little agency. This article attempts to read madness as potentially agentic when it manifests as what we call a “queer performativity of madness.” Using the writing of and rhetoric surrounding Valerie Solanas, the infamous radical feminist known for shooting Andy Warhol, we develop the notion of a queer performativity of madness and show how historical figures like Solanas read against the binary oppositions that often create our understanding of sexuality, reason, and politics. Though madness does not always supply agency, we suggest that rethinking madness offers fruitful resources for feminist and queer theory.

Negative Affect,SCUM, and the Politics of Possibility

“…Those doing the important work of unpacking the possibility of negative affects within political practice have laid the foundation for imagining the possibilities of reframing negative affects within minoritarian populations. Specifically, I am turning toward the perceived queer madness of Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto (Rowe & Chavéz, 2011). Can the negativity of SCUM also be seen within this invocation of negativity as possibility?…”