-  amerikan. Feministin  -

 

geb.   9. April 1936   -   gest.  1988  in San Francisco
 

Valerie Solanas walked into the Factory, Warhol's studio, in 1968, pulled out a gun, and fired into the chest of America's most famous artist. Warhol never fully recovered and in 1987 died prematurely. Solanas had once been a member of his crowd, and had even appeared in his films. Neither jealous lover, nor disgruntled employee, Solanas was the founding member and front-line warrior for SCUM, The Society to Cut Up Men - dt. Manifest der Gesellschaft zur Vernichtung der Männer.

Solanas was abused as a child and put herself through college by working as a prostitute. She had a short career with her college newspaper, where she wrote columns arguing that females can reproduce without males and should do so. Solanas seems to have been quite gifted and studied psychology at an honors level. After graduation she headed for New York, where she turned tricks and slept on rooftops with her trusty typewriter at her side. She wrote plays and gave readings of her material in luncheonettes.

"Sex is the refuge of the mindless" proclaimed Solanas. And famous for his asexuality, the cultivatedly passive Warhol agreed with her. For publishing her manifesto she was prepared to make him head of SCUM's Male Auxiliary: "men who are working to eliminate themselves."

Warhol finds her an interesting, and perhaps even a kindred spirit, and she writes a play hoping that Warhol will produce it. When she handed the play to Warhol he praised her typing . . . but then the precious playscript (entitled Up Your Ass) got lost among the chaos at the Factory. This annoyance, along with the mocking she received from Warhol's acquaintances no doubt riled Solanas into taking violent action.

But someone as intense as Solanas was probably not overly compatible with a filmmaker who, to quote one description, made four-hour movies of "someone eating a mushroom", and in the end she shoots a ghost of a man, proving herself to be no more than a ghost herself.

Her SCUM manifesto was published shortly after the shooting and became a seminal text of the worldwide feminist movement that followed. Her life has been recently documented in the highly acclaimed film I Shot Andy Warhol by Mary Harron.

Though deranged, Solanas was outrageously lucid in her hostility, and arguably had a good sense of humour. The sheer energy of her ravings bring some very important truths to the surface, and these deserve to be taken seriously. However, because her ideas are mere ravings, they cannot rightly be called thoughts, and consequently not truths either. Intuitive insights, undeveloped and unplaced, remain just that. Any truth to be gleaned from her words must come from ourselves.

Solanas died of pneumonia in a welfare hotel in San Francisco in 1988.