July 22, 2014
Solitary Confinement
Feminism folded itself into the wings of history; Solanas refused to budge.
Solanas’s legacy is hard to qualify. She has been alternately reviled and adored, and ultimately beatified, by radical feminists; anxiously decried by mainstream liberal feminists; and dismissed by everyone else. Though SCUM has been published in several editions over the years with prefaces by figures including Michelle Tea, Vivian Gornick, and Avital Ronell, Solanas’s life and work have remained largely unexamined, functioning more as a cautionary tale than anything else.
