ABSTRACT
Recent years have seen an increase in the publication of manifestos that address potentials of technology and artificial intelligence to forward causes of queer and feminist theorising and activism. Discussing a select number of these manifestos, including Laboria Cuboniks's The Xenofeminist Manifesto: A Politics for Alienation (2018) and Legacy Russell's Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (2020), the chapter identifies a disjuncture between the disruptive agendas of these manifestos, their emancipatory rhetorical promises, conceptual innovations, and the critical claims they purport, on the one hand, and the repetitiveness of the generic conventions that they mobilise, on the other. The contribution highlights a contradiction resulting from the authors’ use of the manifesto as form: while they use it to posit newness and call for disruption—and thus update the manifesto formally and propositionally—the critical potential of the genre itself is simultaneously diluted by its iterative and citational use, not least in light of its recent great popularity. The repetitive mobilisation of the genre counters the explosive power of the manifesto; the iterative use of the form undermines the queer and feminist promises the texts formulate.
