Length:  650 words or equivalent

Due dates:   7.28 (proposal), 7.29 (draft),  7.31 (final)

As the rhetorical description was to the image, the manifesto is to voice:  an attempt to channel in writing the power and the capabilities of another expressive medium.  The manifesto is a genre of interruption, disruption, intervention—an assertion of a set of principles for change, in the face of apathy, despair, hopelessness, and the status quo.  Historically it has often but not always been a politically oriented genre; specifically, it is a genre label most often applied to statements made by groups outside of the mainstream, or at least groups that view themselves as being outside of the mainstream (which in the context of 21st century American politics might well encompass more or less everyone).  Writing a manifesto is a way of raising one’s voice, of speaking loudly and assertively and jarringly enough to get noticed, where other articulations of the same points might not otherwise get noticed or make any headway against the status quo.  Manifestos are thus a more intrinsically creative (and perhaps also destructive) form than the unit we just completed, although they certainly draw from the rhetorical awareness we aimed to cultivate in recent weeks.  This should be some of the most adventurous, experimental, attention-grabbing writing you’ve done this summer, if not ever.  These qualities can be a product of style, tone, structure, presentation, typography, visual design, etc.—any number of which ought to reinforce the novelty and importance of the principles you are proposing.  Your writing and design should be as loud, as noticeable, as expressive as the ideas and principles being expressed; both your ideas and your expression of those ideas should make some noise.  This is not the time to be cold, dry, and analytical; it’s the time to summon all of your rhetorical aptitude, your command of the magic that is the rhetorical use of language (say some words, and poof, something happens!), to change something in the world (big or small) for the better.  This is the time to believe in the force of your words.

The main tasks of the manifesto are a) to carve out a rhetorical space for your particular intervention (by shaking your fist at the status quo in a way that people are inclined to notice and listen to—the “mad as hell” that inspires others to open their windows and shout), b) to plausibly establish the principles by which you mean to change the status quo, and c) to spur your audience to further action, via things like emotional appeals and the cultivating of a collective (rather than merely individual) energy. Think of your manifesto as the seed of something new, out of which a more desirable—and in some way radically different—future might grow.  Channeling the imagistic powers we explored during rhetorical description, it paints two images:  the undesirable, constricting, anxious scenario you and your audience are stuck in now, and the radical, disruptive change promised by the new ideas and principles you are articulating.