Knowledge runs down.

So I have this plot.

I’m going to read a bunch of manifestos, write my own, and document and reflect on the modern manifesto, the genre, and question its place in communication.

Glitch Feminism was the first in a series of manifestos I collected (or dug out of my TBR pile) after reading Females.

And it was a bit exhausting to read. Author Legacy Russell starts off so strong, especially in her writing. The first chapters, most of my notes are just underlining her verbs and turns of phrase: “subversion … via digital remix,” “unconsented visibility,” “aggressively contingent,” “rupture,” “indecipherable,” “nonperformance,” “fantastic failure,” “fissure,” “failure to function,” “calculated failure,” “occupation of the digital,” “machinic mutiny,” “positive irregularities,” “rebellion against the binary body,” and “glitch.”

Some of her phrasing I recognized from my study of critical theory via the Harry Potter podcast, Witch Please. (Yes, it actually does teach you theory, plus the hosts have great banter.) They have weighted, studied, and theorized meanings.

Legacy doesn’t often write out these theory-based definitions, but she does define “glitch”… over and over and over again.

The structure of the manifesto is twelve chapters describing different characteristics or traits of a glitch. Throughout, “glitch” is interchangeably a verb, a noun, and a modifier of “feminism.”

“Glitch” is a future-focused conceptualization of how identity, and especially gender identity, is formed and created.

One core of the author’s definition is a stance against all binaries and a demand to fuck with systems that rely on binaries. That includes pretty much every facet of our society, since the gender binary is baked into nearly every aspect.

I fundamentally agree with and appreciate Legacy’s take on the many modes of “glitching” that the internet uniquely enables.

Still, about halfway through, I got tired reading about more and more innovative artists. Although their works are good models for how we might complicate our binary world, I wish Legacy had offered more guidance about how the reader might try glitching themselves.

Inherent in the idea of glitching is the fact that Legacy could never instruct the reader on how to glitch. It is a singular process that each individual takes to self-define over and over. (Ideally, in community with other glitchers and even with the larger still-binary community at times.)

Legacy’s most compelling later-chapter idea was that of existing inbetween – in tears, cuts, and wounds to the fabric of the current binary, limiting status quo. I’m much more curious about how we might know when we are inbetween rather than upholding existing modes of oppressive limitation.

This may be a me problem. I am realizing recently how challenging it is for me to identify what I really want moment-to-moment. So maybe other people don’t need tools to identify where they are. Or don’t want to know exactly where they are.

This concept of living not just in a different future world but in the crack between possible worlds is compelling but difficult for my mind to translate into reality (online or AFK).

Glitch Feminism does acknowledge the tension between breaking apart the world and existing in the world. The desire to be both creative from within and without the existing paradigms might be met in those cracks that are both of and opposite to the current power structures.

I also may be undereducated for the text. I am not as familiar with the concept of “problematizing” a text as I would like. Nor do I have the same emotional or cultural knowledge as Legacy, a queer Black woman.

I expect a manifesto to instruct. Glitch Feminism points you down a path but the path branches in every possible direction.

Although you could take that as any path is a good path, I don’t believe that and I doubt Legacy does, either. There are clear wrongs, even within the fantastical world of glitching. Glitching is fundamentally a stance against certain values. It is anti-conformity, anti-oppression, pro-choice, and pro-fucking with systems of power.

For me, the instructions I read are:
– Write your zine, bitch!
– Put stickers for radical causes in public places.
– Keep writing.
– Don’t define yrself or choose any action based on external powers. That means composting the binary bullshit and other societal inputs into something you can be proud of and feel at home with.
– Change every day.
– Embrace your restlessness and expansiveness.
– “Both and” every situation

Love and Walt Whitman is problematic but a fave,
Jordie

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
– Walt Whitman