MANIFESTOS: AESTHETICS AND POLITICS IN QUEER TIMES L E GUY PhD 2017 MANIFESTOS: AESTHETICS AND POLITICS IN QUEER TIMES Laura E. Guy A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Manchester Metropolitan University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design, Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University 2017 Abstract How have manifestos circulating in queer social movements articulated desires for futures in the present? How might the temporalities of the manifesto form offer possibilities for writing alternative histories of queer struggle? This thesis turns to the manifestos produced in the context of queer social movements growing out of New York from the late 1960s onward. Considering the aesthetic dimensions of the form alongside the material characteristics of print ephemera, it needles at the way that accounts of queer politics appear through manifestos. In order to do so, the thesis is constructed from a series of discrete studies that are organised around the historic claims to self-determination made through manifestos associated with the Gay Liberation Front New York (1969-1972); the numerous instances that Valerie Solanas’s ‘SCUM Manifesto’ has been invoked to disturb mechanisms of social reproduction in art since she self-published the text in 1967; the meshing of art and politics, grief and urgency, in manifestos written by artists associated with ACT UP in the context of the AIDS crisis; and a series of collective reading of Zoe Leonard’s ‘I want a president’ manifesto that remakes a claim to political legitimacy from 1992 for contemporary political struggles. Occupied with the way that each of these examples invests in the manifesto form for its disruptive force, the study presents a shifting terrain of queer identity that comes into focus here alongside histories of feminist and, to a lesser degree, Marxist and anti-racist politics. Negotiating the wishes of manifestos to eschew the conditions of the present, this thesis considers the worlds produced through manifestos and the queer lives they sustain. Writing at a time when manifesto writing appears renewed within contemporary queer struggle, I consider what it is that we risk if we neglect the ephemeral, but no less material, claims of manifestos in accounts of queer history and what demands they might make of us in the present. 3 Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................. 3 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... 5 List of Illustrations ............................................................................................................ 6 Note ................................................................................................................................... 8 1. INTRODUCTION: MANIFESTOS ARE MATERIAL ................................................................................. 11 West 4th St to 15th St Prospect Park ....................................................................................... 11 material is ephemeral ............................................................................................................... 18 aesthetics and politics .............................................................................................................. 35 futures past ............................................................................................................................... 45 manifestos: queer clutter .......................................................................................................... 51 2. RADICAL AESTHETICS: MANIFESTOS OF THE GAY LIBERATION FRONT IN NEW YORK .................... 63 Liberation manifestos .............................................................................................................. 63 coming out in print ................................................................................................................... 73 with our discussion .................................................................................................................. 83 play time .................................................................................................................................. 95 radical aesthetics .................................................................................................................... 106 3. SCUMMY SCORES: SOLANAS UNSETTLED, 1967 – INFINITY ............................................................. 112 The scummy ‘60s ................................................................................................................... 112 the scummy ‘70s .................................................................................................................... 124 the scummy ‘90s .................................................................................................................... 137 the scummy times we’re in .................................................................................................... 149 postscript ................................................................................................................................ 167 4. CHRONIC INTERVENTIONS: ART HISTORY IN THE TIME OF AIDS POLEMICS .............................................. 172 Read my lips .......................................................................................................................... 172 the time of AIDS polemics .................................................................................................... 180 left wanting ............................................................................................................................ 190 future sex acts ........................................................................................................................ 197 AIDS in the time of art history .............................................................................................. 202 5. EPILOGUE: ZOE LEONARD’S ‘I WANT A PRESIDENT’ IN THE FUTURE TENSE ............... 210 1992/2015 .............................................................................................................................. 210 out from the cold .................................................................................................................... 215 queer translation ..................................................................................................................... 223 that which we cannot not want .............................................................................................. 231 history in the future tense: conclusion ................................................................................... 239 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 248 Acknowledgements My deepest gratitude to my Head of Study, Simon Faulkner, whose rigour as a supervisor is matched only by his generosity as a colleague, from lecture theatre to picket line. Stephanie Boydell, Rosemary Shirley, Myna Trustram and Jane Webb have lent expertise, critical insight and invaluable support to this project. I have also been grateful for the friendship of my peers in my research centre, MIRIAD, especially Gary Bratchford, Samantha Colling, Leanne Green and Mary Ikoniadou. Sarah Smith at Glasgow School of Art, has been a supportive manager in the final months of writing up. Malin Arnell, Kajsa Dahlberg, Zoe Leonard, John Lauritsen, Laura Parnes, Simon Watney and Nicola White were patient enough to answer my many questions. Catherine Grant stepped in as an external supervisor at a late stage in the project but without her writing on the generative possibilities of feminism’s queer pasts, this project would never have began. The financial support of a full departmental scholarship from MIRAD, Manchester School of Art, made it possible for me to undertake doctoral research. The Research Degrees Fund at MMU, the Research Awards scheme in my former department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and additional support from the FRAN Trust enabled me to undertake several research trips to New York between 2012 and 2016. I have felt privileged to develop this project in dialogue with others at the Postgraduate Feminist Reading Group, London; Feminist Durations: A Reading Group on Feminisms, Consciousness-Raising and Leave-Taking, London; the Social Reproduction Reading Group, Edinburgh; and Other Feminist Readers, Glasgow. At these meetings Alice Brooke, Victoria Horne, Mason Leaver-Yap, Kate Random Love, Sam McBean, Ros Murray, Helena Reckitt, Irene Revell and Amy Tobin help me to understand what it is to live a feminist life. Hannah Abbo, Emily Curtain, Rose and Rosalyn Clout, Jessie Flynn and Sandy Smith (and their friend Jamie Kenyon), Ralph Ghoche, Jeremy Lecomte, Mary Ikoniadou and Gözde Naiboğlu have been gracious hosts as I travelled between cities over the past few years. It was my mother who first took me to New York in the last weeks of 2000. There she encouraged me to take one the of cellophane wrapped sweets that glitter like stars within Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s installations, starting me off with the constellation of ideas that continue to inform my encounters with art and politics. My on-going navigation of these spaces