Rhetorical Strategies and Gender in Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto

Author(s): Cinzia Blum

Source: Italica, Vol. 67, No. 2 (Summer, 1990), pp. 196-211
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Italian
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Rhetorical Strategies and Gender
in Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto

CINZIA BLUM

Though the importance of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's contribu-

tions to avant-garde aesthetics has been a subject of controversy
since the very beginnings of the Futurist movement, critics generally
acknowledge the innovation of what Marinetti himself called "l'arte
di far manifesti." Most recently, in a remarkable study on the "lan-
guage of rupture" of the avant-garde movements prior to World War
I, Marjorie Perloff locates the originality of the Futurist manifesto in
its hybrid, multifaceted nature. As Perloff notes, the genealogy of the
Futurist manifesto can be traced back to the agonistic mode of dis-
course of the nineteenth-century political manifesto, and to the pro-
grammatic statements of aesthetic renovation, modernity, national-
ism, and heroism articulated in the manifestos of other turn-of-the-
century movements. But the Italian Futurist manifestos differ from
their precursors because of "their brash refusal to remain in the ex-
pository or critical corner, their understanding that the group pro-
nouncement, sufficiently aestheticized, can, in the eyes of the mass
audience, all but take the place of the promised art work."' Indeed,
Marinetti's famous first manifesto, "Fondazione e Manifesto del Fu-
turismo," which marks the founding of the movement in 1909, also
marks the creation of a new genre straddling poetic and theoretical
discourse-a collective statement directed at a mass audience, in
which the articulation of an aesthetic and political program is trans-
formed into a literary construct.2
The Futurist manifesto qualifies as a genre of rupture in two ways.
As the theoretical and propagandistic arena of the Futurist "global"
revolution, the manifesto is the springboard of revolutionary princi-
ples: the breakdown of barriers between the individual arts, the de-
struction of syntax, and the elimination of the psychologizing literary
subject.3 And as an art work itself, the manifesto subverts traditional
codes, obliterating boundaries between different genres and expres-
sive registers, and occasionally exemplifies the new anti-
grammatical and anti-syntactical model.4

196

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 MARINETTI'S FUTURIST MANIFESTO 197

An aesthetic of rupture which subverts literary conven

linguistic contraints may involve the undermining of hi
centralizing ordering systems predicated upon a unitary,
tive speaking and thinking subject-in other words, the m
tion of traditional assumptions about subjectivity, and abo
resentability of self and reality. Traditionally, the studie
Futurism which emphasize the novelty and importance o
experimentation have tended to avoid the terrain of
inquiry.5 Some apologetic studies touch this terrain only
to posit an unproblematic congruence between the for
ideological realms. That approach may lead the reader to
conclusions concerning the ideological stakes of the F
thetic revolution.6
It is important to recognize that anxieties about fragm
identity and confusion of codes lie at the psychological r
turist experimentation. The manifesto "I1 teatro futuris
offers an example: "la realta ci vibra attorno assalendoci
di frammenti di fatti combinati tra loro, incastrati gli un
confusi, aggrovigliati, caotizzati" (TIF, 177). The diction i
sage posits a condition of threatening confusion: "assalend
fiche," in particular, conjures up a hostile reality at war a
sieged subject. Still, it must be emphasized that the
underside of Futurist experimentation reverses doubts ab
tivity and representation into an acritical, boisterous aff
the epistemological and artistic powers of the "multiplie
man. The iconoclastic attack on linguistic conventions
by an effort to control the life of matter-a fantasy of o
and omnipotence:

Oggi, pii1 che mai, non fa dell'arte se non chi fa della guerra.
gloria non appaiono che le fronti erette a violentare il Mistero
la sfida verso le mostruosita tentatrici dell'Impossibile. (TIF,

Solo il poeta asintattico e dalle parole slegate potra penetrare

della materia e distruggere la sorda ostilitA che la separa da
52)

The object of the artist's quest is expressed in terms of negativity and

impossibility ("mostruosita," "Impossibile," "sorda ostilita," "se-
para"). In the first passage, the marked choice of negative periphrases
to affirm the artist's power reinforces the effect of the lexical choice.
But this semantics of negativity and impossibility is countered by the
semantics of sexual aggression: the Futurist artist is portrayed as a
warrior with his head raised to violate, or rape, the mystery of reality,
and as a poet with new linguistic powers to penetrate the hostile es-

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198 CINZIA BLUM

sence of matter. The sexual overtones of the

turist epistemological and aesthetic model int
which sets up an aggressive, virile subject ag
to be conquered or destroyed.
Throughout Marinetti's writing we find var
ideological construction which I call a "fiction
ist manifestos, for example, valorize avant-g
technology, war, and virility, and concomita
pacifism, and femininity. Marinetti thereby p
subject's power as a violent, compensatory re
crisis widespread in the modernist era.
Gender plays a key role in this ideological co
damental aspect of Futurist writing which ha
attention. A critical perspective focusing on g
erful analytical leverage to the purpose of ev
valences of the Futurist revolution. In particu
femininity in Marinetti's manifestos provides
the Futurist male-centered project. Such a pro
ically successive steps: 1) marking boundaries
tives to be destroyed; 2) constructing the text
tion; 3) creating new myths.
In the first step-the staging of barricades-
is associated with everything Futurism is sup
all past traditions in art (particularly sentime
mentary system, pacifism, as well as constri
tions that lead to the country's decadence whi
and courage. For instance, in "Uccidiamo il
netti writes:

Si i nostri nervi esigono la guerra e disprezzano la donna, poiche noi te-

miamo che le braccia supplici s'intreccino alle nostre ginocchia, la mat-
tina della partenza! ... Che mai pretendono le donne, i sedentari, gli
invalidi, gli ammalati e tutti i consiglieri prudenti? (TIF, 15)

The manifesto relies crucially on a rhetorical strategy that brings gen-

der into relation with political and aesthetic issues, a strategy in
which femininity works as a mark of impotence, disease, and frag-
mentation attached to those mental attitudes that contradict Futurist
hubris. In fact, the glorification of the Futurist artistic power is shored
up with a polemical discourse which is the ground for figures of sexual
degeneration: impotence, castration, and effeminacy are frequently
used as critical categories to dismiss peremptorily other artistic and
political tendencies. For example, Proustian introspective writing
("Psicologismo semi-futurista alla parigina") is stigmatized as "fram-
mentario, effeminato, ambiguo" (TIF, 173); pacifist sentiments are

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 MARINETTI'S FUTURIST MANIFESTO 199

contemptuously attacked as a form of "castration" of th

academic culture is deplored as "castration" of genius
This kind of rhetoric also recurs in the writings of Ma
lowers. Mario Carli's "Arte vile e arte virile," in particula
constructed around the topos of sexual degeneration. En
fortress of "healthy virility" ("sana e rumorosa vitalita
the Futurist artist launches a virulent attack against the
effeminate "other": ". . . l'artista immerso nella donnesca aristocra-
zia del suo ingegno, sdegnoso di rimboccarsi le maniche per una par-
tita di boxe, e preoccupato solo della delicata sottigliezza delle sue im-
magini, fragili come ricami di nuvole." According to Carli's
diagnosis, almost all of the non-Futurist artists are wretched or sex-
ually degenerate: "Se non sono linfatici, sono acidi; se non sono acidi,
sono nevrotici; se non sono nevrotici, sono pederasti."9
The obsessive preoccupation with gender distinction which lies
beneath the Futurist fiction of virile power is most explicitly ex-
pressed in Francesco Cangiullo's "La scoperta del sostantivo ana-
tomico o del sesso in esso," a text which foregrounds the relation of
language to sexuality. Cangiullo's declared concern is "femminiliz-
zare la Donna e maschilizzare il Maschio." The fundamental argu-
ment is that sexual perversion may result from linguistic perversion,
that is from the practice of naming parts of female anatomy with mas-
culine nouns and vice versa:

Insomma, si puo sapere che razza di giuoco buffo e codesto delle cose
femminili che debbono avere sostantivi maschili e, diciamo, dei cosi
maschili che debbono avere sostantivi femminili? [. .. Gli uomini di
sensibilita normale-e saranno sempre pi i-a furia di chiamare al ma-
schile quelle parti del corpo umano femminile, possono suggestionarsi
al punto da non sentire pi) la donna. E viceversa per le donne dalla
istessa sensibilita, le quali, continuando a chiamare al femminile
quelle parti del corpo umano maschile, un giorno non avvertiranno piu
l'uomo.10 (Author's emphases)

Cangiullo's solution is to straighten out the ambiguities of grammat-

ical gender, to close the "arbitrary gap" between signifier and signi-
fied, so as to exorcise sexual deviance. Although other linguistic rules
can and must be subverted in the name of artistic freedom, or rather,
of the artist's power, grammatical gender is the object of reactionary,
homophobic concerns, of an effort to restore the oldest conception of
language-that of the intrinsic relation between signifier and signi-
fied.
This is one of a number of strategies aimed at a sharply dichoto-
mized, proscriptive definition of gender distinction. In particular,
Marinetti advocated the masculinization of social ethos through

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200 CINZIA BLUM

war-a catalyst of virilizing male bonds-and

system structured to protect boys from f
might observe that there is a slippery bound
mosocial bonds and homoerotic desire." Ind
strain of homoeroticism displaced onto the m
of Futurist mythology-an "other" which off
image of the subject's desire for power. Furth
underside of violent misogyny-not so obv
comes to the surface in Mafarka il futurista,
the perviousness and uncertainty of the subj
tive valences.
Ultimately, homophobia, gynophobia, and correlated homoeroti-
cism are to be traced back to an instability of the parameters, codes,
and material conditions upon which an individual sense of identity
and power is grounded. While the manifesto's hybrid nature instan-
tiates the disruption of codes in modern chaotic, fragmentary reality,
the rhetoric and thematics of gender strive to establish more rigid gen-
der codes which provide a foundation for the integrity of the subject
and for an unwavering code of authority and subordination. In short,
barriers between genres can be broken; gender barriers cannot.
One might say that the polarization of gender functions as the bed-
rock upon which other barricades are erected. Marinetti's writing (es-
pecially in manifestos and polemical texts) seems to be controlled by
the necessity of producing a rigidly binary construction of reality.
This tendency was apparent from the very beginning of the Futurist
movement, especially with "Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo,"
the first declaration of a war to be engaged on all fronts in order to
break with the stifling past and bring Italy to the forefront of modern
progress. With a striking combination of allegory, Dionysiac intoxi-
cation, and brash oratory, Marinetti railed against the worship of tra-
dition while celebrating an anti-sentimental, virile art, and the wor-
ship of strength, heroism, and courage. The following are examples
of the peremptory divisions drawn by the manifesto:

9. Noi vogliamo glorificare la guerra-sola igiene del mondo-il mili-

tarismo, il patriottismo, il gesto distruttore dei libertari, le belle idee
per cui si muore e il disprezzo della donna.

10. Noi vogliamo distruggere i musei, le biblioteche, le accademie d'o-

gni specie, e combattere contro il moralismo, il femminismo e contro
ogni vilta opportunistica o utilitaria. (TIF, 11)

This binary structuring of reality is bound up with the structuring

of a new religion. Particularly in "La nuova religione-morale della ve-
locith," the act of setting up boundaries between the pure and the im-

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 MARINETTI'S FUTURIST MANIFESTO 201

pure clearly displays a religious value. The new cult of sp

is proposed as an alternative to a no-longer effective Chri
ity, which has lost "divinity," that is, power to contr
stincts and to further his progress:

La morale cristiana difese la struttura fisiologica dell'uomo d

cessi della sensualita. Modero i suoi istinti e ili equilibro. La m
turista difendera l'uomo dalla decomposizione determinata da
tezza, dal ricordo, dall'analisi, dal riposo e dall'abitudine.
umana centuplicata dalla velocita dominera il Tempo e lo Spaz
130; author's emphases)

La velocitai avendo per essenza la sintesi intuitiva di tutte le

movimento, e naturalmente pura. La lentezza, avendo per ess
nalisi razionale di tutte le stanchezze in riposo, e naturalm
monda. Dopo la distruzione dell'antico bene e dell'antico m
creiamo un nuovo bene: la velocitA, e un nuovo male: la lent
132; author's emphases)

Julia Kristeva's psychoanalytical and anthropological

abjection offer a theoretical framework to explain th
strategy and, more generally, the pervasive imagery of
corruption, and decay in Marinetti's texts. In particular, w
to Powers of Horror, where anti-semitism, rituals of defi
bias, and the subject's repudiation of femininity are traced
fundamental psychic process of the subject's accession
and identity." According to Kristeva, the primal process o
from, and rejection of the maternal entity results in rep
abjection-a corporeal symptom or sign, which serves to d
subject's power of identification. The abjection of cor
and, in general, of that which traverses the boundary of t
along with that power as its "other."'3 Referring to prim
ies where defilement is synonymous with supreme dang
evil, Kristeva points out that the ritualization of defileme
panied by a strong concern for separating the sexes: "[Wo
ently put in the position of passive objects, are none the
be wily powers, 'baleful schemers' from whom rightful
must protect themselves" (70). Defilement rituals and be
hibitions are supposed to ward off the danger, and, by se
arations, they lay the foundations for a social order. Such
the concomitant abjection of the feminine are traced back
of "a central authoritarian power" (70).
These observations offer some insights into the note o
which is often sounded in Marinetti's texts and cast light
ings of his misogynist strategies as a response to the cris
tural order. Such a response involves marking off bound

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202 CINZIA BLUM

gender lines between a virile self and a femini

structuring of reality which sets up an enem
fought. We are thus led to another fundam
manifesto-the second step of the Futurist pro
of the text as a site for violence, in which w
target.
Violence with its derivatives-strife, war, de
thematic focus and a most exploited seman
writing. War, in particular, is celebrated as a
6lan vital, "world's hygiene, " a necessary regen
cess, and is aestheticized as spectacle-an exh
of energies. In the representation of war, the
fering is upstaged by the beautiful performan
tai [... .] come la volata lucente e aggressiva di
dal sole e dal fuoco accelerato renda quasi tr
della carne umana straziata e morente" (TIF
pain is replaced by orgasmic pleasure: in fact,
tasized as violent defloration or forceful and
following, which appears at the end of "U
Luna!", is one of the most disturbing erotic s
theme of battle: "Ecco la furibonda copula
gigantesca irritata dalla foia del coraggio,
squarcia per offrirsi meglio al terrifico spasim
nente! E nostra la vittoria ..." (TIF, 22).
But we have already seen that as the crucibl
the omnipotent "uomo d'acciaio" war is gen
woman (TIF, 15). If war means man's liberatio
bling, enthralling influence and from the obse
we explain the fact that the feminine body is
sonify war in scenes of sexual violence? One p
such imagery, by pairing fighting and sex, d
structs a picture of war as desirable, thus perf
function. 1 A more interesting line of discus
identifying the common ground upon whic
war is posited. The attribute "informe" provi
vious link between the vehicle and the tenor o
ing to an unarticulated vision of war as shape
is the negative property shared by woman an
Three journal entries in Marinetti's recent
lend support to this interpretation. One pas
"bordello," a term which means brothel, and
sazioni di bordello. Zeppo e confuso. Rumor
non previsto. Tutto il disordine e tutta la fret
energico che contiene un'aggressiva piu for

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 MARINETTI'S FUTURIST MANIFESTO 203

be read as a gloss to the accumulation of fragmentary, ch

tions in Marinetti's representations of battle.17
The products of the brothel-like chaos of war-rubble,
crement, decomposition-are explicitly linked with fe
another entry, in which Marinetti records his impression
of his female dog, Gaby, and of a young girl searching
putrescent refuse and carrion: "Gaby & felice di dare I'as
montagne di fetori. S'incontra lassoi con una bambina go
passa anche lei le giornate a frugare nel letame sterco fan
dizie. Cosa cerca? Ci6 che le donne cercano nella vita, i de
tumi" (61). The feminine, often identified with passivity
and romantic love, is here associated with war and its pr
relationship predicated by verbs that connote activity
"cercare") and aggression ("dare l'assalto"). The fragme
ing matter linked with the feminine may be viewed as th
ter, to use Kristeva's term, that traverses the boundary of th
defining its margins and undermining its integrity.
Woman appears as the bearer of the sign of castration
emblematic moment of the Taccuini, in which Marin
the episode of a young girl exposing her genitals at the be
cola vulva" is described as a "semiaperta ferita perpen
labbra cicatrizzate" (272). From a psychoanalytical per
may argue that woman, as the image of formlessness, o
cathected by existential anxieties which are sustained by
anxieties. In other words, the feminine threat stands fo
powerment of modern man in a rapidly changing world w
existing ethical and epistemological codes. In order to ex
threat and flesh out the Futurist fiction of male power, t
repeatedly displays the feminine body in a violent act of
subjugation.
Returning to the erotic metaphor of battle, we can assert that sex-
ual violence provides a model for a wished-for relationship between
the subject and his world: the subjugation of a "shapeless" (feminine)
object by a powerful (male) subject. These considerations can also be
extended to the manifesto's aesthetic of violent rupture. Marinetti's
texts are a locus of aggression and violence, not merely on the the-
matic, but also on the syntactic level: his poetics of distruzione della
sintassi, paroliberismo, immaginazione senza fili, aeropoesia attack
linguistic conventions to produce syntactic violence. The ultimate
target is the old "I" of traditional literature, "sottoposto a una logica
e a una saggezza spaventose" (TIF, 50): "Noi distruggiamo sistemati-
camente 'Io letterario perchI si sparpagli nella vibrazione universale,
e giungiamo ad esprimere l'infinitamente piccolo e le agitazioni
molecolari" (TIF, 100).

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204 CINZIA BLUM

The epistemological implications of this rev

less iconoclastic than it might at first appear
("sparpagliamento") of the self in the universe
fast pace of modern life) is presented as a m
unity freed from the limits of human nature
sui perfidi complotti del nostro Peso, che vuo
mento la nostra velocita trascinandola in un buco d'immobilita. Ve-
locita = sparpagliamento + condensazione dell'Io. Tutto lo spazio
percorso da un corpo si condensa in questo stesso corpo" (TIF, 136-
137; author's emphases). Destroying the "I" of pass6ist literature, the
Futurist subject disperses himself to penetrate the molecular life of
matter, and, with aeropoesia, rises as a super "I" propelled by me-
chanical wings to control immense spaces in the totalizing, both de-
tached and dominating perspective allowed by the airplane.18
Just as the self is not actually dispersed in the Futurist imaginary
universe, the subject is not lost/fragmented in the chain and texture
of Marinetti's signifiers. Even at its most experimental, Marinetti's
writing displays some mechanisms of suture,19 which beget the sub-
ject's unity and ability to produce meaning: glosses that explicate the
meaning of obscure aspects of the text; mathematical signs that ar-
range the elements of discourse according to a precise logical
system;20 and parenthetic indications of tempo that direct the reading
pace. Like the subject of idealist cognition theory, the Futurist subject
is hypostatized as a self-assured center of perception and represen-
tation. This self-present, "condensed" subject regards poetic lan-
guage as an instrument of intuition (in Marinetti's words, "il prolun-
gamento lirico e trasfigurato del nostro magnetismo animale" [TIF,
104]), which must be freed from the hindrance of syntax as an instru-
ment of logic and used to conquer reality: "Metteremo in moto le pa-
role in liberta che rompono i limiti della letteratura marciando verso
la pittura, la musica, l'arte dei rumori e gettando un meraviglioso
ponte tra la parola e l'oggetto reale" (TIF, 141).
As this passage clearly indicates, the Futurist attack on linguistic
conventions, its destruction of the symbolic, is actually governed by
a mimetic desire to master the life of matter, "to penetrate it and
know its vibrations" (TIF, 105). Even the typographic revolution is
fundamentally a mimetic device and a means to gain absolute control
over the interpretation of the text.21 While the rapidly changing re-
ality of the modern industrialized world subverts the traditional way
of life and the old parameters of interpretation, the Futurist project
is to destroy in order to resymbolize, to re-affirm mastery over that
which threatens to move beyond the control of language.
Ultimately, no true ideological conflict exists between the misog-
ynist rhetoric of gender and the gestures of formal disruption: in both

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 MARINETTI'S FUTURIST MANIFESTO 205

cases, the fundamental ideological drive is not to subver

ogocentrism of the old symbolic order, but to produce
representation of self, founded on exclusive opposition a
valuation of otherness. The declared destruction of the
does not involve the deconstruction of the unitary subj
"multiplication," its transformation into a new all-powe
cordingly, modern reality in the Futurist manifesto is no
texts, a problematic world of contradictions to explore; i
a source of new myths to celebrate-a world to colonize
in a self-assertive, self-aggrandizing enterprise.
Just as Marinetti's syntactic destruction is coextensiv
constructive effort, so the theme of destructive violenc
bly bound up with the construction of new myths pred
terrain of modernity-the third step of the Futurist proj
of the multiplied, metallicized man, who will be immun
the disease of love; the celebration of technological prog
the industrial city, the "electric" war; and the exaltatio
powerful, but controllable machine, which replaces w
ideal of beauty and as the object of man's narcissistic
By focusing on the rhetorical function of gender and
rent use of erotic imagery, it is possible to investigate t
between the apparently contradictory themes of war/de
progress/creation. Marinetti's most paradigmatic and
articulation of the idea of (male) creativity was not giv
ifesto, but in the "explosive novel" 8 Anime in una
where the central idea of phallic power is expressed in a
mulas or multiplied analogies:

Formule
MEMBRO VIRILE = sverginare - vulva - fecondazione - baci sangue,
ecc.

STANTUFFO = andare venire - caldaia - industria -

PRUA = navigare - mare vento - commercio - schiu
ARATRO = aprire - terra - agricoltura - linfa, ecc.
SHRAPNEL = spaccare - corpo nemico - guerra - lag
ecc.

VOCE PENNA SCALPELLO = creare spirito - arte -

BISTURI = anatomizzare - corpo amico - chirurgia - pu
morte, ecc. (TIF, 838)

The first analogical chain refers to the action of fecu

tion. The phallic power thus evoked is then both
multiplied by the subsequent chains (in themselves m
sexual connotations), so that it is set up as the paradi
of all the other manifestations of power: industrial

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206 CINZIA BLUM

nomic expansion and trade, agricultural produ

ity, power of giving life and power of givin
multiplied analogy reverberates its violent
on the procreative act. The reproductive pow
made male, and ultimately turned into its op
struction.
The perpetrator of this violence can only be a "mechanized" man
who, having jettisoned sentiments and lust for woman, is engaged
a genital sexuality which aims solely at mechanical relief or reprodu
tion:

L'immenso amore romantico e ridotto cosi unicamente alla conserva-

zione della specie, e l'attrito delle epidermidi & finalmente liberato da
ogni mistero stuzzicante, da ogni pepe appetitoso e da ogni vanita don-
giovannesca: semplice funzione corporale, come il bere e il mangiare.
L' uomo moltiplicato che noi sogniamo, non conoscerai la tragedia
della vecchiaia! (TIF, 301)

The genesis of the multiplied man involves the introjection of the

empowering qualities of the machine-energy, precision, discipline
-and the expulsion (projection on to the other) of weakening human
qualities-sensibility, sensualism, scepticism, pessimism. This logic
of exclusion culminates in the concept of the all-male creation: Mari-
netti's manifesto-preface to the novel Mafarka ii futurista predicates
the birth of this Futurist superuomo upon the exclusion of woman
from the (pro)creative act. Having incited his "Futurist brothers" to
free themselves from the condition of "figli e schiavi miserevoli della
vulva" (TIF, 255), the poet makes the following prophecy:

In nome dell'Orgoglio umano che adoriamo, io vi annuncio prossima

l'ora in cui gli uomini dalle tempie larghe e dal mento d'acciaio figlie-
ranno prodigiosamente solo con uno sforzo della loro volonta esorbi-
tata, dei giganti dai gesti infallibili ... Io vi annuncio che lo spirito del-
l'uomo e un'ovaia inesercitata ... E noi lo fecondiamo per la prima
volta! (TIF, 255)

Thus, the Futurist discourse of destruction and creation foregrounds

gender only to exclude woman as subject in the act of male (pro)cre-
ation: the expenditure of the female principle serves the goal of mas-
culinization of creative economy, and the erotic imagery conveys the
sense of excitement and pleasure projected in these fantasies of male
progress and mastery over nature.
It is important to keep in mind that Marinetti's metaphor of sexual
violence is the radical version of a very old phallic fantasy: to expose
or unveil and penetrate the secrets of nature. In her work on gender
and science, Evelyn Fox Keller has shown how the genderization of

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 MARINETTI'S FUTURIST MANIFESTO 207

knowledge (or science) as masculine and of nature as f

historically pervasive figure in Western thought.22 She h
in particular on Bacon's metaphor of knowledge as "chast
marriage" (36) between mind and nature, which she sees as
vision of rational, "objective" thought in modern scien
phor for power and domination, designed to safeguard th
of the knower," 95). This vision of "a conjunction that re
ever disjunctive" (95), Keller argues, exposes the dual
motives underwriting the ambition to "objectivity": power
rity of the subject. Pursuing the question of the emotion
ture from which the claim to objectivity grows, Keller e
linkage among the conceptions of autonomy, masculinity
ity, and power which emerge from the child's developing
gender, and reality. She thus identifies "patterns of mal
socialization that reproduce a sexualization of aggression,
domination," lending force to the association of love w
"impotence" and of autonomy with male "power," agg
separation from the "other"-maternal love first, then hu
and nature (114). In a footnote, the connection between th
social premises and sexual violence is spelled out:
There is little question that the denial of interconnectedness
subject and object serves to nullify certain kinds of moral c
it allows for kinds of violation (even rape) of the other that
precluded by a respect for the relation between subject and
the same time, however, it ought logically also serve as a pr
against forms of violence provoked by a relation between su
object that is experienced as threatening to the subject. (96;
emphasis)
This sociological explanation indirectly squares with Kristeva's psy-
choanalytical perspective. When promiscuity (chaos) explodes, de-
stroying or threatening the "chaste and lawful marriage" between
subject and object, i.e., the subject's integrity and control, violence
also explodes-that very violence which marks the distance between
the Baconian metaphor and Marinetti's metaphor of violation and
rape. The latter entails, in fact, a display of power which hides a prob-
lematic relationship with the other, a sense of crisis that exacerbates
the need for control and the desire for domination.
Along this line of analysis we can pursue further the question of
the ideological underpinnings of the manifesto's aesthetic and epis-
temological model. The Futurist revolution is predicated upon the de-
struction of the old symbolic order by an explosion of rejuvenating
irrational forces. But the irrational is perceived as hiding feminine-
connoted threats to identity, which the Futurist fiction of power tries
to ward off.

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208 CINZIA BLUM

The clash between the fiction of powe

femininity/femininization is dramatized in
Luna!": this second manifesto of the war ag
in the form of an allegorical tale, proclaims
violent destructive/creative energy ("grand
14) against tradition (the "moribund popula
ysis and Gout). The goal of the Futurist p
young blood the world which is "rotten wi
accomplish the great Futurist project (symb
of a military railroad to the flanks of the s
poets ally themselves with the forces of th
("quei Puri, lavati gia di ogni sozzura di log
wild beasts, and the unrestrained might of
the climactic moments of the narration are
ists, after having launched a first attack aga
world, enter into the cradle of civilization as
er's womb.23 Here they will finally build t
religion, means to the ultimate victory: the
airplane. But before this can take place, an
inine threat hidden in the primitive scenar

Ad un tratto, un grido altissimo lacero l'aria; un

accorsero ... Era un pazzo giovanissimo, dagli o
fulminato sul Binario. I1 suo cadavere fu subi
fra le mani un fiore bianco e desioso, il cui pi
lingua di donna. Alcuni vollero toccarlo, e fu m
con la facilita di un'aurora che si propaga sul
ghiozzante sorse per prodigio dalla terra incres
fluttuare azzurro delle praterie, emergevano v
merevoli nuotatrici, che schiudevano sospiran
che e dei loro occhi umidi. Allora, nell'inebbria
vedemmo crescere distesamente intorno a noi
cui fogliami arcuati sembravano spossati da un
[.. .. Ma, mentre ci accanivamo, tutti, a liberar
stre braccia dalle ultime liane affettuose, senti
camale, la Luna dalle belle coscie calde, abba
sulle nostre schiene affrante. (TIF, 21-22)

Electric light is created to kill the seduct

regina verde degli amori," TIF, 22), that is,
of the irrational lurking from the depths of t
forest, so that the military Railroad can be
can be launched against the forces that resi
clearly dramatizes the meaning of the Futu
and technological imagery: the unleashed
can revitalize a decaying world-must be ch

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 MARINETTI'S FUTURIST MANIFESTO 209

tive and empowering structures-Railroad, airplane, el

exorcise the threats inherent to it. In the description of th
guistic echoes point to a relationship between the fantasi
by the moonlit scenario and the passions driving the Fut
tors: the airplanes, in fact, are imaged as "deliziose aman
tano [...] sull'ondeggiare dei fogliami" (TIF, 25), which
to mind the seductive swimmers emerging "dal fluttu
delle praterie." But in the war scene, potentially self-
drives are turned into an attack against the enemy, "l'ete
che si dovrebbe inventare se non esistesse" (TIF, 16).
The machine provides the model for the new "estet
della macchina" (TIF, 191), that aesthetic of "splendore
e meccanico" and "sensibilita numerica" which Martin
latd in a 1914 manifesto.24 Far from being reducible to a
siasm for the marvels of modern technology, this aestheti
chine betrays a deep need for a new model of order,
control: the search for a new all-male symbolic structure
the outbreak of the feminine-connoted irrational. The te
wonderworks proposed as new aesthetic models are re
embodying tremendous energy and superhuman precision
mechanical aesthetic denaturalizes man and reality, sublim
limits of the organic. The Futurist text would be a token
over these limits, in reaction against a culture which is p
being infected by decadence and which is constantly asso
images of biological decay.
Marinetti's manifestos on the Futurist syntactic revolu
proclaim a will to clear the linguistic ground by destroy
riers of traditional syntax and the old, introspective lite
order to open an infinite space for the "multiplied" indi
above the limits of nature (time, space, emotions, and de
to meet the challenges of modern reality. Woman is con
opted to construct this fiction of power and consistently e
ject. Ultimately, however, the representation of the f
produces meanings in excess of that power, exposing t
that underwrite it. In fact, virulent misogyny, homopho
eroticization of violence add up to a paranoid self-definiti
to the psychoanalytical tale hidden in the folds of the ide
tion of power: the unexpressed anxieties about the bounda
tity which recurrently cathect the blurring of gender di

THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

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210 CINZIA BLUM

NOTES

'Marjorie Perloff, The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant-Guerre, and the Lan
guage of Rupture (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986) 85.
2It should be noted that Marinetti-the founder, leader, promoter, and manager
the movement-is also to be credited with creating the new genre. In fact, he eith
wrote or presided over the writing of most of the manifestos.
3Futurism was above all a new formula of Arte-azione intended to bridge the ga
between art and life: in Marinetti's own words, "una legge d'igiene mentale," "una gi
vane bandiera rinnovatrice, antitradizionale, ottimistica, eroica e dinamica, che
doveva inalberare sulle rovine del passatismo (stato d'animo statico, tradizionale, pro
fessorale, pessimistico, passatista, nostalgico, decorativo ed esteta." See F. T. Ma
netti, Guerra sola igiene del mondo, Teoria e invenzione futurista: Manifesti. Scri
politici. Romanzi. Parole in liberta (hereafter TIF), ed. Luciano De Maria (1968; M
lano: Mondadori, 1983) 235. Subsequent references to TIF appear in the text.
4See, for instance, "I1 Teatro di Varieta," TIF, 89-91.
SMarianne Martin's Futurist Art and Theory: 1909-1915 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968
may be cited as an example of the tendency to avoid ideological issues.
6Luciano Caruso and Stelio M. Martini's "La fuga in avanti del futurismo" (Tav
parolibere futuriste, eds. Caruso and Martini, 2 vols. [Napoli: Liguori, 19741 1: 1
exemplifies such a mystifying approach to these issues: the Futurist linguistic revo
lution (the "liberation" of language from the referential/communicative function)
elevated to "passo ulteriore sulla strada della liberazione della realta" (4).
7See F. T. Marinetti, "Trieste, la nostra bella polveriera," TIF, 290: "Invocare la pa
dei popoli, non significa essere avveniristi, ma semplicemente castrare le razze e fa
una coltura intensiva della vilta."
8See F. T. Marinetti, "Contro i professori," TIF, 308: "Quando, quando si finira
castrare gli spiriti che devono creare l'avvenire? Quando si finira d'insegnare l'a
brutente adorazione di un passato insuperabile, ai ragazzi che si vogliono ridurre
altrettanti piccoli cortigiani sgobboni?"
9Mario Carli, "Arte vile e arte virile," Manifesti, proclami, interventi e documen
teorici del futurismo, ed. Luciano Caruso, 4 vols. (Firenze: Coedizioni Spes-Salimben
1980) 2: 131.
'0Caruso 2: 180.
"See Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men (New York: Columbia U P, 1985
12Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon Roud
(New York: Columbia U P, 1982). Subsequent page references will appear in parenth
ses following the passages cited.
'3Corporeal waste refers to bodily fluids such as "menstrual blood and excremen
or everything that is assimilated to them, from nail-parings to decay" (70). Kristev
points out that corporeal waste "represents-like a metaphor that would have becom
incarnate-the objective frailty of the symbolic order" (70).
14Walter Benjamin, in an often quoted passage, qualifies Marinetti's aesthetici
tion of war as a paradigmatic example of an alienated/alienating aesthetic sensibilit
which is instrumental to the economic structure of imperialistic capitalism. See
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Illuminations, trans. Har
Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1969) 241.
1'De Maria, in his introduction to TIF, points out the fundamental role played b
war in Futurist ideology, and notes the interweaving of war and eros in Marinetti's wr
ing. However, he does not explore the latter issue in depth, and refers, instead, to Mari
netti's own statement on the defensive function of eros (or, rather fecundation) in w
time: "Del resto lo stesso Marinetti chiari il nesso tra erotismo e polemologia futuris

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 MARINETTI'S FUTURIST MANIFESTO 211

'Noi futuristi, barbari raffinatissimi, ma virilissimi [... .] parliamo in n

che esige maschi accesi e donne fecondate. La fecondita, per una razza co
e, in caso di guerra, la sua difesa indispensabile' " (TIF, XLVI-XLVII). Ma
cization of war has been emphasized, in particular, by Alice Kaplan, w
an instance of the affinities between Futurist and fascist propaganda. See
and Fascism: Reflections on the 70th Anniversary of the Trial of Mafark
Yale Italian Studies 1.3 (1981): 18.
16F. T. Marinetti, Taccuini 1915/1921 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987) 242
page references will be given in parentheses after the passages cited.
17See, for instance, the section "Bombardamento," in Zang Tumb Tum
778). In these parole in libertac, the chaos of battle is figured as a cacop
performance and the triumphal march of the Futurist bombardment as a
motif.
'8Cf. Kaplan, "Futurism and Fascism" 47; Reproductions of Banality: F
erature, and French Intellectual Life (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P,
lan's work is the single most important influence on my essay. I object
her reading of Marinetti as "the 'clean' fascist modernis[t]" (Reproduc
to her qualification of Futurism as "a fascist lobby" (Reproductions 75).
lationship between textual phenomena and dominant ideology more p
direct, and diffuse.
'9For a discussion of the Lacanian concept of suture, its function in th
of a logic of the signifier and in cinematic discourse, see Stephen He
Suture," Screen 18 (1977-1978): 48-76.
20Luigi Peirone (Lo strumento espressivo di Marinetti [Genova: Tilg
28) notes that this mathematical logic is more rigid than the syntact
21See Peirone 22-25, and Jeffrey Schnapp, "Politics and Poetics in M
Tumb Tuuum," Stanford Italian Review 5.2 (1985): 75-92.
22Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Have
Yale U P, 1985). Page references to this text will appear in parentheses
passages cited.
23See the following passage, a moment of the Futurists' journey to
Cavacchioli sonnecchiava e sognava ad alta voce: 'lo sento ringiovanir
ventenne! ... Io ritorno, d'un passo sempre piil infantile, verso la mia cu
rientrer6 nel ventre di mia madre! ... Tutto, dunque, mi e lecito! . . .
gingilli da rompere ... Citta da schiacciare, formicai umani da sconvol
addomesticare i venti e tenerli a guinzaglio ... Voglio una muta di venti,
per dar la caccia ai cirri flosci e barbuti' " (TIF, 18).
24See F. T. Marinetti, "Lo splendore geometrico e meccanico e la sens
rica," TIF, 98-107.

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