Unexpected Organs: The Futurist Body and Its Maternal Parts

Abstract

In Mafarka il futurista, F.T. Marinetti creates his new Futurist body by obscuring the role of the maternal function. By considering the specific aggression against what Marinetti codes as maternal, I offer a new way of thinking about the gender dynamics of the novel and Futurism’s relation to the reproductive female body. I suggest that the maternal function—as the ability to give life—is a necessary capability that the Futurist must acquire. However, as the protagonist approximates maternal reproductivity, the female body takes on Futurist properties, namely virility, pleasure in the risk of death, and the capacity for physical violence. A hypersexualized female body acts as a decoy to obscure the presence of female reproductivity and its potential to undermine Marinetti’s Futurist project. A closer look at Marinetti’s confusion of the reproductive and digestive systems reveals the Futurist’s dependency on an unacknowledged maternal technology of reproduction.