Abstract
A form of poetic manifesto rooted in the avant-garde tradition is construed here as a performative project of the future. This temporal quality links it with the Derridean notion of “democracy to-come”. The presented paper attempts to trace an (im)possible connection between poetic manifestos and democracy in Poland after 1989. In pursuance of this objective, the paper briefly presents the only four 21st‑century Polish manifestos that attracted some critical and/or artistic attention: Meblowanie główww, Manifest Neolingwistyczny v. 1.1, Manifest poezji cybernetycznej and Manifest Rozdzielczości Chleba v. 1.7.
Highlights
A form of poetic manifesto rooted in the avant-garde tradition is construed here as a performative project of the future
The kinship of poetic manifesto and democracy might not be evident at first glance, it might be elusive even at the second
Democracy forces one to be confronted with a model of discourse that is intentionally and overtly inclusive, a model that strives to account for all differences – not to dialectically sublate them but to think all differences in a potential realm where they co-exist in an abundance of mutual tensions
Summary
The kinship of poetic manifesto and democracy might not be evident at first glance, it might be elusive even at the second. Democracy is understood here no longer as a project but as an event, not the idea of future, but the future of idea This temporal structure is what affiliates democracy with manifesto and, at the same time, what symmetrically opposes them. In his book Poetry and the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos and the Avant-Gardes, Martin Puchner used the speech act theory to identify the fundamental manifesto aporia: it aims to gain agency and to effect in significant change by a pure document; it can achieve it only by resorting to theatrical and performative devices which have to assume their future efficacy This is why the figure of manifesto is prolepsis, speaking in future perfect tense (cf Puchner, 2006).
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