Rhetorical Strategies and Gender in Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto ...

NOTES
'Marjorie Perloff, TheFuturist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant-Guerre, and the Language
of Rupture [Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986) 85.
'It should be noted that Marinetti-the founder, leader, promoter, and manager of
the movement-is also to be credited with creating the new genre. In fact, he either
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 gap
between art and life: in Marinetti's own words, "una legge d'igiene mentale," "una giovane
bandiera rinnovatrice, antitradizionale, ottimistica, eroica e dinamica, che si
doveva inalberare sulle rovine del passatismo /stat0 d'animo statico, tradizionale, professorale,
pessimistico, passatista, nostalgico, decorativo ed esteta." See F. T. Marinetti,
Guerra sola igiene del mondo, Teoria e invenzione futurista: Manifesti. Scritti
politici. Romanzi. Parole in liberta [hereafter TIF), ed. Luciano De Maria (1968; Milano:
Mondadori, 1983) 235. Subsequent references to TIF appear in the text.
4See, for instance, "I1 Teatro di Varieta," TIF, 89-91.
'Marianne Martin's Futurist Art and Theory: 1909-1 91 5 [Oxford: Clarendon, 19681
may be cited as an example of the tendency to avoid ideological issues.
"uciano Caruso and Stelio M. Martini's "La fuga in avanti del futurismo" (Tavole
parolibere futuriste, eds. Caruso and Martini, 2 vols. [Napoli: Liguori, 19741 1: 1-7)
exemplifies such a mystifying approach to these issues: the Futurist linguistic revolution
(the "liberation" of language from the referential/communicative function] is
elevated to "passo ulteriore sulla strada della liberazione della realta" 14).
'See F. T. Marinetti, "Trieste, la nostra bellapolveriera," TIF, 290: "Invocare la pace
dei popoli, non significa essere avveniristi, ma semplicemente castrare le razze e fare
una coltura intensiva della vilta."
'See F. T. Marinetti, "Contro i professori," TIF, 308: "Quando, quando si finira di
castrare gli spiriti che devono creare l'avvenire? Quando si finirl d'insegnare l'abbrutente
adorazione di un passato insuperabile, ai ragazzi che si vogliono ridurre ad
altrettanti piccoli cortigiani sgobboni?"
'~ario Carli, "Arte vile e arte virile," Manifesti, proclami, interventi e documenti
teorici de1 futurismo, ed. Luciano Caruso, 4 vols. (Firenze: Coedizioni Spes-Salimbeni,
1980) 2: 131.
"Caruso 2: 180.
"See Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men [New York: Columbia U P, 1985).
'*Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon Roudiez
(New York: Columbia U P, 1982). Subsequent page references will appear in parentheses
following the passages cited.
13Corporeal waste refers to bodily fluids such as "menstrual blood and excrement,
or everything that is assimilated to them, from nail-parings to decay" (70). Kristeva
points out that corporeal waste "represents-like a metaphor that would have become
incarnate-the objective frailty of the symbolic order" (70).
14Walter Benjamin, in an often quoted passage, qualifies Marinetti's aestheticization
of war as a paradigmatic example of an alienatedlalienating aesthetic sensibility,
which is instrumental to the economic structure of imperialistic capitalism. See his
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Illuminations, trans. Harry
Zohn [New York: Schocken Books, 1969) 241.
'"De Maria, in his introduction to TIF, points out the fundamental role played by
war in Futurist ideology, andnotes theinterweaving of war and eros in Marinetti's writing.
However, he does not explore the latter issue in depth, and refers, instead, to Marinetti's
own statement on the defensive function of eros [or, rather fecundation) in war
time: "Del resto lo stesso Marinetti chiari il nesso tra erotismo e polemologia futurista: