Abstract

By tracing the general structures of avant-garde manifestoes, this essay aims to point out how women apply specific rhetorical strategies when writing manifestoes. As a genre that derives from the historical functions of public speech (mostly shaped during the French Revolution), feminist or proto-feminist manifesto interacts with the notions of identity, citizenship, public space, imaginary and embodied autorship. The outcomes of an alternative genealogy, from Olympe de Gouges to Carla Lonzi and the most recent feminist manifestoes, challenge the universality of masculine literary canon by using parody as a subversive tool.