WORKSHOP The Manifesto in the21st Century - From Art to Politics to Therapy The Indeterminacy Festival University of Malta Concordia University University of Buffalo April 25, 2022 11:00 – 2:00 pm EST DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.10421.96481 * Vincenzo Di Nicola // “The Manifesto in the 21st Century: From Art to Politics to Therapy” Since the 19th century, the manifesto has been a vehicle for protest in the form of an announcement – a manifesto – literally, a “showing” from the Italian – implicitly or explicitly of a rupture/hiatus and a call for change. We will explore the manifesto in art (Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto), in politics (Marx & Engels’ Communist Manifesto vs. Mussolini’s Fascist Manifesto), and in culture (Di Nicola’s Slow Thought Manifesto) and therapy (Di Nicola’s Slow Psychiatry/Therapy) in the spirit of community and conviviality (Illich). In tandem with these explorations, participants will be tasked with writing their own manifesto to be shared by the end of the week. Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Montreal and The George Washington University, and is on the Global Mental Health teaching faculty of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma MPhil, MD, PhD, FRCPC, DFAPA, FCPA, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, relational therapist, and philosopher of psychiatry in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, author of: "A Stranger in the Family: Culture, Families and Therapy" (New York & London: W.W. Norton) and "Letters to a Young Therapist: Relational Practices for the Coming Community" (New York & Dresden: Atropos Press) awarded the Prix Camille-Laurin of the Association des médecins psychiatres du Québec/Camille Laurin Prize of the Quebec Psychiatric Association.

1. WORKSHOP
The Manifesto in the21st Century
- From Art to Politics to Therapy
The Indeterminacy Festival
University of Malta
Concordia University
University of Buffalo
April 25, 2022
11:00 – 2:00 pm EST

2. Workshop
Leader
Vincenzo Di Nicola
MPhil, MD, PhD,
FRCPC, DFAPA, FCPA, FCAHS
Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist
Philosopher & Poet
University of Montreal
Montreal, QC, Canada

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Image courtesy of Jaswant
Guzder

4. Welcome
 Welcome workshop participants
University of Malta
Concordia University
University of Buffalo
 Present yourself, present your practice

5. Welcome
 Manifesto – “Shock of the new”
 I Protest – “Thirteen ways of looking at a
blackbird”
 II Rupture/hiatus – “Shattered vessels”
 III Call for change – “You must change your life”

6. “The
Shock
of the New”
- Robert Hughes

7. Introduction to the
21st Century
Manifesto
 The Shock of the New – Robert Hughes
 “Make it new” – Ezra Pound’s dictum

8.  Manifestos are brave and
powerful magic. They are
personal as well as political. I
love manifestos because they
are brave but also vulnerable,
fleeting, transient, constantly
shifting, reinventing. They
represent new starts, blank
slates, big dreams and fierce
masks.
– Julian Hanna, The Manifesto
Handbook

9. An Incendiary Form
 It is a genre that blends revolutionary zeal, dramatic
performance and an insatiable thirst for novelty to create a
singularly charismatic and circus-like delirium.
 All manifestos are in some sense distorted and extreme.
 Wish-lists of the overly ambitious, the public dreams of
private Napoleons ... especially the avant-garde manifesto
– Julian Hanna

10. Provocative
 Scanning the horizon, critiquing the present and pushing
forward new futures are the manifesto’s tasks.
 If provocation is the principal mode of the manifesto, and
utopian dreams are its content, failure might be its most
inevitable outcome.
 And then, what if they succeed!
– Julian Hanna

11. Minifestos – Short and not so sweet?
 “Minifesto” coined by Boaventura de Sousa Santos in
Epistemologies of the South (2014)
 “Make it new” – Ezra Pound
 Shepard Fariey’s Hope poster (2008): a one-word manifesto
 “Healter Skelter” (sic) – Manson Family (1969)
 Tabloid headlines – “Fuck Trump!” (Robert De Niro” – ”We’re
America, bitch” (Trump White House)

12.  Think of Shepard
Fairey’s Hope poster for
Obama’s 2008 campaign
the single-word
manifesto did bring hope
back to politics
– Julian Hanna,
The Manifesto
Handbook

13. I Protest
 “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
– Wallace Stevens
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

14. Wallace Stevens
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

15. Thirteen ways of looking
at a poem
 https://disquiet.com/thirteen.html

16. II Rupture/Hiatus
 “Shattered Vessels”
– Kabbalah

17. Kintsugi
 Japanese philosophy of kintsugi
 “Shattered vessels” ‫הכלים‬ ‫שבירת‬
 Shevirat HaKelim
– Kabbalah
 “There is a crack, a crack in everything,
that’s how the light gets in …”
– Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

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“There is a
crack in everything
— that’s how the
light gets in”
— Leonard Cohen
“Anthem”

19. Website - Café Ferreira – Montreal, QC.jpg

20. https://i.pinimg.com/736x/33/44/c7/3344c7593cfc400728a198fd2557
bdc3.jpg

21. III Call for change
 “You Must Change Your Life”
– Rainer Maria Rilke

22. III Change (Rilke)
 “You Must Change Your Life”
– Rainer Maria Rilke
– Peter Sloterdijk
 The mission poem as a manifesto
Rilke: “The Duino Elegies”
Letters to a Young Poet

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And we, who think of
ascending
joy, would feel the emotion
that almost dismays us,
when a joyful thing falls.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Image courtesy of Jaswant
Guzder
Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Tenth Elegy” in The Duino Elegies, trans. by A.S. Kline.
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/Rilke.htm

24. Slow thought: A manifesto
Vincenzo Di Nicola (2018)
 We need a philosophy of Slow
Thought to ease thinking into a more
playful and porous dialogue about
what it means to live
 We must imagine the course of life
differently than through speed or
milestones
 Slow Thought appeals to reflection
before conviction, clarity before a
call to action

25.  The Foundation and Manifesto of
Futurism – F.T. Marinetti (1909)
 Dada Manifesto – Tristan Tzara
(1918)
 Manifesto of Surrealism – André
Breton
 Manifesto Antropófago – Oswald
Andrade (1928)
 A Cyborg Manifesto – Donna
Haraway (1985)
 Manifesto For Contemporary Dance-
Making in a New Decade – Ananya
Chatterjee (2019)
 Pussy Riot Manifesto – Nadya
Tolokonnikova (2020)

26. Take your time: The seven pillars of slow thought
 1. Slow Thought is marked by peripatetic Socratic walks, the face-
to-face encounter of Levinas, and Bakhtin’s dialogic conversations
 2. Slow Thought creates its own time and place
 3. Slow Thought has no other object than itself
 4. Slow Thought is porous
 5. Slow Thought is playful
 6. Slow Thought is a counter-method, rather than a method, for
thinking as it relaxes, releases and liberates thought from its
constraints and the trauma of tradition
 7. Slow Thought is deliberate

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Image courtesy of Jaswant
Guzder

28. Slow thought is deliberate
 Question: ‘How does one philosopher address
another?’
 Answer: ‘Take your time.’

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Image courtesy of
Jaswant Guzder

30. Manifesto Antropófago – Oswald de Andrade (1928)
 A colonized country like Brazil should ingest the culture of
the colonizer and digest it in its own way
 Inspired by his wife’s painting: “Aboporu” (1928) by Tarsila
do Amaral
 “Tupi or not Tupi: that is the question.” (English in the
original)
 A polysemic, complex allusion, invocation, pun, performance
 Andrade “cannibalized” Shakespeare

31. Abaporu
(from Tupi, ‘the
man that eats
people’)
– Brazilian artist
Tarsila do Amaral

32. Manifesto Antropófago – Oswald de Andrade (1928)
 Manifesto Antropófago – anthropophagy
 “Only cannibalism unites us.” (Opening line)
 “Down with ...” (13 times!)
 “Down with social reality, dressed and oppressive,
registered by Freud ...” (Final line)

33. The End of Meta Narratives
(Change)
– Haitian artist Philippe
Dodard
An anti-manifesto?

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Image courtesy of Jaswant
Guzder

35.  How to Write: A Manifesto
Listen!
 There has never been a more perfect time
to write a manifesto
 Do it the hard way ... write longhand
 Write the manifesto you’ve always been
destined to write ...
 Invent a new language.
 Don’t hesitate to mess with the English.
 WE WANT COURAGE, AUDACITY, AND
REVOLT. (Without the Fascism.)
 CAUTION WILL GET US NOWHERE.
– Julian Hanna, The Manifesto
Handbook

36. Invitation to
participants to
present their
manifestos

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Image courtesy of
Jaswant Guzder

38. Reflections

39. 39
Questions
&
Comments
Image courtesy of Jaswant Guzder

40. References
 Denchev A (2011). 100 Artists’ Manifestos: From the Futurists to the Stuckists.
London, UK: Penguin Modern Classics.
 Di Nicola, V (2018). “Take your time: Seven pillars of a slow thought manifesto.” Aeon
(online magazine). February 27, 2018. https://aeon.co /essays /take-your-time-the-
seven-pillars-of-a-slow-thought-manifesto. Audio version spoken by Rex Anderson for
Curio.io.
 Di Nicola V (2019). “A person is a person through other persons”: A social psychiatry
manifesto for the 21st century. World Social Psychiatry, 1(1): 8-21.
 Hanna J (2019). The Manifesto Handbook: 95 Theses on an Incendiary Form.
Washington, DC: Zero Books.