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

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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:
'Noi futuristi, barbari raffinatissimi, ma virilissimi [. . .] parliamo in nome della razza che esige maschi accesi e donne fecondate. La fecondita, per una razza come la nostra, 6,in caso di guerra, la sua difesa indispensabile' " (TIF, XLVI-XLVIII. Marinetti's eroticization of war has been emphasized, in particular, by Alice Kaplan, who views it as an instance of the affinities between Futurist and fascist propaganda. See her "Futurism and Fascism: Reflections on the 70th Anniversary of the Trial of Mafarka the Futurist," Yale Italian Studies 1.3 (1981): 18. 16F. T. Marinetti, Taccuini 1915/1921 [Bologna: I1 Mulino, 1987) 242. Subsequent page references will be given in parentheses after the passages cited. "See, for instance, the section "Bombardamento," in Zang Tum b Tumb (TIF, 775- 778). In these parole in liberta, the chaos of battle is figured as a cacophonic theatrical performance and the triumphal march of the Futurist bombardment as a dominant leitmotif. 18Cf. Kaplan, "Futurism and Fascism" 47; Reproductions of Banality: Fascism, Literature, and French Intellectual Life (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986) 86. Kaplan's work is the single most important influence on my essay. I object, however, to her reading of Marinetti as "the 'clean' fascist modernis[tIu (Reproductions 108), and to her qualification of Futurism as "a fascist lobby" (Reproductions 75). I find the relationship between textual phenomena and dominant ideology more problematic, indirect, and diffuse. 19~or a discussion of the Lacanian concept of suture, its function in the development of a logic of the signifier and in cinematic discourse, see Stephen Heath, "Notes on Suture," Screen 18 (1977-1978): 48-76. 20L~igi Peirone (Lo strumento espressivo di Marinetti [Genova: Tilgher, 19761 27- 28) notes that this mathematical logic is more rigid than the syntactical one. "See Peirone 22-25, and leffrey Schnapp, "Politics and Poetics in Marinetti's Zang Tumb Tuuum," Stanford Italian Review 5.2 (1985): 75-92. 22Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven and London: Yale U P, 1985). Page references to this text will appear in parentheses following the passages cited. 23See the following passage, a moment of the Futurists' journey to Asia: "Enrico Cavacchioli sonnecchiava e sognava ad alta voce: '10 sento ringlovanire il mio corpo ventenne! . . .lo ritorno, d'un passo sempre piu infantile, verso la mia culla . . . Presto, rientrero nel ventre di mia madre! . . . Tutto, dunque, mi e lecito! . . . Voglio preziosi gingilli da rompere. . . Citta da schiacciare, formicai umani da sconvolgere! . . .Voglio addomesticare i venti e tenerli a guinzaglio . . .Voglio una muta di venti, fluidi levrieri, per dar la caccia ai cirri flosci e barbuti' " (TIF, 181. ''See F. T. Marinetti, "Lo splendore geometric0 e meccanico e la sensibilita numerica," TIF, 98-107.
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