Manifestos as constituent power: Performing a feminist revolution

Abstract

Women use a multiplicity of forms and methods to articulate harms and claim political spaces. Among these are manifestos.1 Women’s manifestos are concomitant with both political convulsion and the enduring, mundane inequalities faced by women; they play a key role in feminist attempts to achieve political and legal ends.2 Manifestos are overtly political acts of legal/political performance; they are in dialogue with each other, with counter and anti-manifestos, and with the legal-political infrastructures they inhabit.3 Manifestos seek to fracture traditional understanding and practices of law, often in the guise of claiming constituent power and political space.