WRIT 1702 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Hacker Manifesto, Purple Prose, The Communist Manifesto
WRIT 1702
January 24, 2018
Writing Manifestos/The White Rose
Manifestos
● Idea - central question/problem/point
● “How do you wake people up, how do you get people to care about unjust things
because there’s plenty of them going on”
● “Issues of social justice… issues of inequality”
● Society is better off when we are all active, informed, and engaged
● If you are going to wake up to the injustice, that’s most likely to happen when you find
something that you are passionate about (what resonates)
● This includes a component of social justice: it questions how authorities use power
○ The more power you get the more corrupt you tend to be
○ This waking up takes a lot of courage, the process of waking up is an ongoing
one
○ Nothing undermines the nobility of protest, it is always worth protesting. There
is honor and value in standing up and being heard.
○ Sometimes it’s not succeeding, sometimes it’s standing up and being counted
● Characteristics of a Manifesto
○ A public declaration of something, other people should see it
○ Organized, clear, written statements that explain what a group’s beliefs are,
and why they hold them.
○ Sometimes a manifesto is written by an individual, still written for a group and
what a group believes
○ Can connect to politics, usually short
○ Not a rant, rants are not organized or conscious
○ All Manifestos have an idea and a preferred reading
○ Are identity statements, this is who we are
○ This makes them political, how society is organized (values) and who has
power (hierarchies)
○ (the White Rose Leaflets) have three main stylistic characteristics
■ The use vivid diction, metaphor and symbol, they avoid purple prose.
Purple Prose: overly dramatic language, often self pitying. When
vividness becomes exaggerated and insincere. It focuses on
victimization and on helpless passiveness.
■ The sides in the debate are polarized: this is right, this is what we
believe in, this is right and everything else is over there.
■ They include a solution or a program of action
○ Ex. Declaration of Independence, Communist Manifesto, Hacker Manifesto
○ Overall, Manifestos have resonance.
Political Manifestos: The Language of Resistance
● Four Pronouns: I / We / You / They
● I is implied; you think of your own role in the situation
● We creates a community of interest
Document Summary
How do you wake people up, how do you get people to care about unjust things because there"s plenty of them going on . Issues of social justice issues of inequality . Society is better off when we are all active, informed, and engaged. If you are going to wake up to the injustice, that"s most likely to happen when you find something that you are passionate about (what resonates) This includes a component of social justice: it questions how authorities use power. The more power you get the more corrupt you tend to be. This waking up takes a lot of courage, the process of waking up is an ongoing one. Nothing undermines the nobility of protest, it is always worth protesting. There is honor and value in standing up and being heard. Sometimes it"s not succeeding, sometimes it"s standing up and being counted. A public declaration of something, other people should see it.
