Built for speed: The manifesto as a migratory mode

Loud, direct, and uncompromising, built for speed and impact, manifestos truly get around. Over more than a century the genre most closely associated with the avant-garde has migrated vast distances, both literally and conceptually: from the cabarets of Europe to the platforms of the attention economy. In the wake of the Futurists’ initial provocations before the First World War, manifestos spread like wildfire across Europe, seeding new avant-garde networks in cities from Lisbon to Stockholm and then globally. The manifesto has also migrated across categories: not only from war and politics to art, literature, architecture and design, but also across social movements, activisms of all kinds, academic disciplines, business and advertising, influencing and self-help. It has migrated across the political spectrum, from the radical left to the far right. It has also migrated across media, making the leap from offline pamphlets, posters and performances to online memes, listicles and viral videos (and back again, in resurgent analogue forms such as zines). It has proved highly adaptable while still retaining its core recognisable features: the preamble, the list of tenets, the call to action. This paper traces the migratory patterns of the manifesto, stopping off at several key junctions or turning points along the route. It will also reflect on the current state of the manifesto in our turbulent times, drawing in part on a recent public conversation with fellow manifesto scholar Breanne Fahs. The concluding section will present work in progress from a manifesto-based European project, Futures of Europe.