Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures

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Unexpected Organs: The Futurist Body and Its

Maternal Parts

Amanda Recupero

To cite this article: Amanda Recupero (2020) Unexpected Organs: The Futurist Body and Its
Maternal Parts, Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, 74:4, 205-218, DOI:
10.1080/00397709.2020.1819586

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00397709.2020.1819586

Published online: 29 Oct 2020.

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SYMPOSIUM
2020, VOL. 74, NO. 4, 205–218
https://doi.org/10.1080/00397709.2020.1819586

Unexpected Organs: The Futurist Body and Its

Maternal Parts
Amanda Recupero
Romance Studies Department, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
In Mafarka il futurista, F.T. Marinetti creates his new Futurist body by Futurism; maternal function;
obscuring the role of the maternal function. By considering the spe- reproductivity; reproductive
cific aggression against what Marinetti codes as maternal, I offer a organs; consump-
tion; ingestion
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 cap-
ability 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 sys-
tems reveals the Futurist’s dependency on an unacknowledged
maternal technology of reproduction.

On October 8, 1910, future war veteran, Fascist, and original Futurist poet F.T. Marinetti
took the stand to defend his novel, Mafarka il futurista. The novel, charged with
“offending public decency,” tells the story of a hero who rises above his bad behavior to
become an artist. Mafarka shows his heroic qualities at first by killing his uncle Bubassa in
battle and seizing the throne. But Marinetti’s hero only reaches his lofty potential by creat-
ing a mechanical son. Using his masculine will and a collection of stolen parts, Mafarka
gives life to the ideal Futurist. Gazurmah, whose body resembles an airplane more than a
human, combines male virility and vigor with the latest modern technology to realize
Marinetti’s fantasy initially sketched in the “Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo.”1
Not by accident does Gazurmah’s birth occur without any female participation.
Overcoming the laws of biological reproductivity is part and parcel of Mafarka’s heroism
in this act of artistic (pro)creation. As Marinetti states in his defense at the trial,
“[Mafarka] vuol creare e crea, in una lotta sovrumana contro la materia e le leggi
meccaniche” (“Il processo” 7).2 To supersede the human, it would seem, the Futurist must
overcome the human body and the ways it is reproduced. Marinetti’s statement euphemis-
tically echoes what Mafarka says in the text itself, that “i difetti che provengono dalla
vulva” predispose the body “alla decrepitezza e alla morte” (Mafarka 209).3 Put differently,

CONTACT Amanda Recupero ajr284@cornell.edu Romance Studies Department, Cornell University, K161 Klarman
Hall, 232 East Ave, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
ß 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
206 A. RECUPERO

Mafarka’s claim to be a Futurist depends on his parthenogenetic ability to give life “senza
il concorso della vulva” and, in so doing, to thwart mortality imagined as a byproduct of
female birth (Mafarka 163).4 Not just any human body must be overcome, then, but the
female body in its reproductive inflection as maternal. As a body against which the
Futurist must position himself as male (but to which he aspires for its reproductive abil-
ity), the maternal body threatens to feminize him as a competing but similarly creative
entity. Through an unexpected exchange of organ functions, as Mafarka approximates this
reproductivity, the maternal body takes on identifiably Futurist properties—virility, pleas-
ure in the risk of death, and the capacity for physical violence.
Despite the centrality of the threat it poses, the maternal body scarcely occupies the
position of adversary. Instead, a hypersexualized female body appears as the main target
of male aggression and violence. Marinetti’s sexualization of women and the violence
against the feminine work as rhetorical strategies to distract the reader (and perhaps
himself) from recognizing the danger of the maternal body. By reducing the female
body to desirable parts, Marinetti draws attention away from the reproductive threat
that lies behind them.5 Emphasis on woman as a sexual and permissive being, coupled
with grotesque language and graphic descriptions of violence, act as a decoy to obscure
the presence of female reproductivity and its potential to undermine Marinetti’s
Futurist project. Following the coincidences of these rhetorical elements, I trace the rela-
tions between male and female bodies in three significant scenes where Marinetti’s over-
emphasis on sexed parts attempts to hide an anxiety provoked by them. What comes to
light is the threat that Marinetti refuses to recognize as maternal: a virile reproductive
female body that confronts the male with the depletion of his creative capacity. In add-
ition, my reading opens the possibility that Marinetti’s Futurist rhetoric relies on a gen-
dering of violence, where masculine violence appears as fragmentation and mastication,
and feminine violence appears as contamination and draining. Such gendering of action
allows Marinetti to construct a masculine Futurist identity, one that, however, does not
preclude a feminine version despite his intentions. Marinetti’s vision of a Futurist sub-
ject may not be as undeniably autarchic as he would have us believe. Instead, it relies
on the consumption of the maternal into the imagined Futurist body.
Before moving directly to the novel, a word on Marinetti’s rhetorical use of bodies
and the figure of the woman in other early texts is needed. In the “Fondazione e
Manifesto del Futurismo,” Marinetti positions the literary figure of woman alongside
other institutions like libraries and museums as symbols of the past. The Futurist diag-
nosis of the Italian literary tradition identifies “l’immobilit
a pensosa, l’estasi e il sonno”
as a chronic illness that precludes innovation (“Fondazione” 10).6 This rhetoric associ-
ates women with such tropes as sentimentalism, romance, and love and thereby with
Decadentism as a contagion that threatens the future.
Marinetti’s cure offers to modernize literary creation in part by replacing the woman
as muse with another inspiring beauty: speed, sought first in the automobile and later
in the airplane. This radical shift in poetics that Futurism provokes is intimately tied to
the desire for a fortified, machinic male body that is a recurring image in many of
Marinetti’s writings following Mafarka. For example, in “L’uomo moltiplicato e il Regno
della macchina,” Marinetti expresses the desired qualities of the ideal Futurist and the
necessary changes the body must undergo to get there:
 SYMPOSIUM 207

Il tipo non umano e meccanico, costruito per una velocit
a onnipresente, sar
a naturalmente
crudele, onnisciente e combattivo.
Sar
a dotato di organi inaspettati: organi adattati alle esigenze di un ambiente fatto di urti
continui. [ … ]
L’uomo futuro ridurr
a il proprio cuore alla sua vera funzione distributrice. Il cuore deve
diventare in qualche modo, una specie di stomaco del cervello, che si empir
a
metodicamente perche lo spirito possa entrare in azione. (256–57)7
The machine is not only the new love-object of Futurist literary imagination, but also the
body to which every modern man should aspire.8 It is important to note that this machinic
transformation of the male body hinges on a reimagining of the rhythm and functioning of
vital organs. The ideal body operates in accordance with the velocity of modern life and
accomplishes a mechanical repetition of motions.9 Significantly, the heart no longer houses
emotion but is reduced to its functional utility as a “stomach” for the brain. By distancing
the heart from its literary identity as the figure of sentimentalism and reclaiming it as a
mechanized element, Marinetti inscribes his poetic aspirations onto the idealized Futurist
body in a gesture that mimics the construction of his hero in Mafarka.10
The figure of the woman, imagined as a pathogenetic counterpoint to the Futurist,
allows man to be the bearer of life, energy, modernity, and speed. Marinetti identifies
Futurism with “il movimento aggressivo, l’insonnia febbrile, il passo di corsa, il salto mor-
tale,” and exalts wakefulness, pursuit of violent death, and ballistic action as antithetical
to the sleepy movement of decay and infection (“Fondazione” 10). In Mafarka, however,
the deadly femininized pull of the past shifts to an active obstacle barring the Futurist
from realizing his reproductive project. Women now threaten to spread the disease of
mortality and challenge men with their creative, maternal potential. If this is the case,
why target the sexualized female body rather than a body figured as maternal? The
answer, I believe, has to do with Marinetti’s unusual organization of the Futurist body
and his confusion of its reproductive and digestive organs. As Marinetti builds his super-
human Futurist, he mingles the properties of such organs as the stomach and the womb
by making consumption a strictly male ability. Consumption of both exotic delicacies and
women through sexual violence appears as an act of virility available only to men. The
Futurist distinguishes himself by demonstrating his ability to control these sexual and
gastronomic appetites in the service of more creative pursuits. What Marinetti does not
account for, and what I believe both he and his hero fail to see, is the same confusion of
organ functions in the maternal body. In the maternal body, the vulva and womb adopt
the masculine ability to consume and so confront the male Futurist with a female body
not so different from his own. The maternal threat lies in the combination of masculine
violence and feminine gluttony, where the ability to consume goes unchecked by the will.
It is to this maternal threat in Mafarka that I now turn.

Consumable goods
The first chapter that initiates Mafarka’s heroic trajectory also establishes Marinetti’s
preferred gender politics as a relation of consumption between men and women. In
these first pages, men objectify women as foodstuffs and attribute gastronomic terms to
sexual encounters. Women are characterized as exotic indulgences to be consumed and
208 A. RECUPERO

likened to goods Italy would have absorbed from colonial holdings in Africa such as
sugar and vanilla.11 While Marinetti’s racialization of women assists in assigning value
to certain bodies over others, his excessive sexualization of female bodies contributes
significantly to the gender dynamics of the novel. Described almost exclusively through
their sexualized parts, women appear as licentious and incapable of restraint. This strat-
egy has two significant effects: the substitution of the vulva for woman underscores
Marinetti’s projection of sexuality and insatiability onto the figure of the woman. It
additionally collapses the difference between gender and sex, thereby condensing
Marinetti’s fear of the feminine to this one hypersexualized organ.
The “vulva,” which names only the external sexual organs, might more appropriately
be heard in its valance as a sexed organ, characterized by its capacity for possessing
pleasure and distinction from the reproductive functions of the internal organs, namely
the womb. The vulva is secondly sexed in its metonymic signification of a particular
biological category. Marinetti’s use of the word alone signals his desire to separate the
ability to give birth from sexual difference. Making the vulva stand in for woman
undermines the maternal function as a female power, thereby driving a wedge between
sex and the female ability to give birth, between pleasure and reproduction.
The figure of the vulva appears in numerous places, but never so audaciously as in
the first chapter. Titled “Lo stupro delle negre,” it narrates in grotesque detail the mass
rape of captured women following Mafarka’s battle.12 Marinetti’s strategy here is
grounded in his association of the woman as muse with canonical Italian literature.
Taking aim at the venerated female body of poetic tradition, he anticipates the shock
value of this sexual violence and counts on the disgust and contempt it would incite. In
his defense of the chapter—the very same which provoked the novel’s sequestration—
the author highlights the necessity of this imagery and language:
Scrissi dunque Lo stupro delle negre, perche da una gran fornace torrida di lussuria e di
abbrutimento potesse balzar fuori la grande volont
a eroica di Mafarka.
La descrizione cruda, e i particolari osceni, le parole che possono suscitare disgusto sono di
una necessit
a assoluta nel mio poema.
Ho potuto, cos
ı, produrre secondo una legge di contrasto e direi quasi “di trampolini” il
balzo dello spirito umano (“Il processo” 8)
For Marinetti, this horrendous scene works as a backdrop against which his hero may
distinguish himself from other soldiers who might have been Futurists but could not
overcome the gravity of their lust. Unlike Mafarka, the rapacious men succumb to their
violent tendencies and indulge their sexual impulses. Dazed by alcohol and the sugared
poison of women, they behave as if mindlessly lost in a trance. They have lost all logic
and strength, their limbs weak with pleasure and flailing uselessly. At issue here is the
use of their creative capacities, which Marinetti maps onto both the male intellect and
reproductive organs. Sexual indulgence appears as a bodily distraction from the wakeful
work of the mind; if the soldiers are intoxicated with lust, then they cannot control
their will or actions. Intemperance of this kind is additionally wasteful in that the sol-
diers do not conserve their vital reproductive forces for worthier pursuits. “[L]a grande
volont
a eroica di Mafarka” stands out as willpower over the incredible pull of sexual
desire and the desire for rest seen in the inebriated soldier.
 SYMPOSIUM 209

Amidst this harangue of ugliness and carnage, a single female voice interrupts the
narrative. Biba expresses an alternative, female perspective in a short passage that
appears in the middle of the rape scene. The passage in question undoubtedly suggests
a troubling reading. The quasi-pornographic language used by Biba and in the descrip-
tion of her enjoyment suggest that she and the other women take pleasure in the hein-
ous instance of their own rape. This depiction furthers Marinetti’s claim that women
strive only for self-satisfaction and corporeal gratification as opposed to the intellectual
and creative ambitions of the Futurist male. Mafarka stands out as exceptional from
both the soldiers and the women through his self-control and elevated desires.
However, it is important to acknowledge the distinct, if marginal, perspective Biba offers
here, namely that of a virile feminine.13 In her brief speech, Biba celebrates the unin-
tended pleasure of this violence and suggests that she gains something from it:
—Mahmud, ya Mahmud! … uccidimi! … Oh! tu mi riempi d’un piacere caldo! … Tu colmi
di zucchero e di hallahua la bocca della mia gattina! … Ed essa
e felice d’essere
rimpinzata, cos
ı, di dolciumi! … Le sue labbra succhiano ora un grosso pezzo di zucchero
ardente, che si fonder
a fra poco, ad un tratto! (Mafarka 29)
What erupts along with Biba’s avalanche of enjoyment is no simple, nor simply sexual,
matter. Without lessening the violence and the revolting suggestion Marinetti inscribes
here, what comes to light is Biba’s adoption of a virile and masculine voice. In spite of
Marinetti’s intentional figuration of women as licentious and cowardly, Biba appears to
exhibit what Marinetti will later name as true Futurist characteristics—joy in the face of
death and a capacity for physical violence. Here, Biba consumes “dolciumi” and melts
“zucchero.” She adopts the position of the male who, in most other instances, enjoys
women as luxurious sweets. Biba consumes like a man and so opens the possibility of a
feminine virility that challenges Marinetti’s prescribed gender dynamics.
Marinetti’s rhetorical strategy here is to draw attention away from Biba’s virility and
embrace of sexual violence by deliberately constructing an atrocious, revolting scene out
of which it is admittedly difficult to argue for any sort of counter-perspective to the
male’s. And yet, we would be amiss to discredit the scene entirely on account of its vul-
garity and horrific content given the import Marinetti attributes to it for the novel’s cre-
ative project and the precedent it sets for gender relations in the text. Biba’s speech is
the strongest instance in which a woman’s voice adopts the vulgarity and virility that
the male’s violent sexual act attempts to communicate. She not only openly enjoys her-
self but drains the male’s “vital forces” in the process, much the same way men con-
sume women throughout the novel. While rape superficially appears as the prominent,
if not singular, relationship between male and female figures throughout the novel,
Biba’s surprising outburst puts that relation into question. Are women truly the con-
querable prey of unchecked male virility that Marinetti leads us to believe? Might they
too pose a virile threat to men? And if so, of what does this threat consist? The answer
is not articulated until four chapters later in “Il Ventre della Balena.”

The vulva as decoy

Before relocating there, it is worth noting that Marinetti uses “ventre” for both men
and women in the novel. As one definition suggests, the meaning is dependent on the
210 A. RECUPERO

sex of the person to whom it refers, since it may mean: “addome, parte cava del corpo
contenente gli intestine e lo stomaco e, nella femmina, anche gli organi della rip-
roduzione” (Garzanti 985). Marinetti may have used a number of more specific terms
to designate the particularity of the womb but often reverts to “ventre,” or even
“viscere,” which has a wider suggestion of inner organs and does not specify where or
to whom they belong.14 Neither the slippage between stomach and womb nor the
obfuscation of the womb as a reproductive organ are a coincidence within the corporeal
context of Marinetti’s Futurist body. The choice of two equally vague signifiers to refer
to the same specific referent intentionally obscures the figure of the womb in its
delineated singularity. No longer a distinct organ with a particular function, the womb
is subsumed into the general location of the lower body. Whereas in most cases, the
ambiguity of “ventre” is isolated to phrases involving a female, the ambiguity here goes
both ways, inflicting uncertainty onto the male stomach as well as the female womb.
Such uncertainty of organs and bodies abounds in the space of the fourth chapter. In
the belly (or womb) of the whale, we join Mafarka and his supporters for a feast in his
now overthrown uncle’s submarine banquet hall. A corridor lined with stalagmites remin-
iscent of teeth opens onto a dim room lit by torch with piles of cushions for lounging.
This monstrous vaginal opening, while unintelligible to Mafarka, initiates a series of
repeating image clusters that join the feminine to the lethal and the reproductive to the
digestive. For Mafarka, though, these conjoining spaces evoke the digestive tract more
than the female reproductive system. In describing his exile to this very place, Mafarka
calls himself a “diamante inghiottito” that was “esiliato nel ventre di Bubassa” only to ree-
merge from his uncle’s excrement causing terrible pain along the way (Mafarka 108, 107).
The confusion of digestive and reproductive functions in this chapter plays a central role
in how Mafarka imagines overcoming the female threat and co-opting the maternal ability
he needs to create his son.15 The male stomach becomes capable of absorbing the mater-
nal function from consumed female bodies and giving birth as if it were a reproductive
organ. Marinetti figures women as food to ingest through sexual encounters, and so com-
bines the digestive properties of the stomach and the reproductive properties of the womb
to create a superhuman organ tailored to the Futurist’s needs.16
Both the spectacle of violence and the hypersexualized women appear as significant
distractions for the Futurist and reader. The belly of this edifice boasts an aquarium
that looks into the open ocean and doubles as a trap for large aquatic carnivores. Its
grandeur lies in the proximity it affords guests to such large, deadly creatures without
risk. The juxtaposition of danger and comfort, of risk and pleasure foreshadows a piece
of the female threat already expressed in the toothed corridor. Mafarka encourages the
others to wonder at the spiked, scaly bodies of these sea monsters and even treats them
(and the sharks) to a gastronomic spectacle of two traitors being thrown into the water
and the ensuing meal. The sharks are not the only ones to eat; the host offers an
extravagant feast which the guests devour without restraint:
Mangiavano golosamente, con un languido oscillar del corpo, pronunciando rare parole
alternate con grugniti di piacere.
A quando a quando, le loro mani dalle unghie tinte di rosso s’immergevano tutte insieme
nel piatto di mezzo, come galline che beccassero tutte in una sola scodella.
(Mafarka 103–04)
 SYMPOSIUM 211

The supporters of the general-turned-king stuff themselves silly with food, wine, and
show, enjoying the sharks’ dinner as much as their own.17 In the process, their words
and food muddle together in a mouthy promiscuity that reinforces the confusion
between food and figures and amongst organs. Both the banquet and the sharks’ violent
eating satisfy the bodies of those present. While the unrestrained consumption of food
satiates the stomach and lower organs, the show appeases the mind as entertainment.
Such indulgent relaxation renders the guests inarticulate, lazy, and unsuspecting of
potential dangers nearby.
Following the gastronomic activities, Mafarka calls in two dancers to liven up the
crowd. He instructs the slaves to blow out the torches and the musicians to stop
playing; the women are to choose the men “pi
u forti e pi

u belli” from among the
guests guided by “[l]’istinto della [ … ] vulva” (114). What follows is a confusing turn
of events that, judging by the guests’ vocal protests, none could have imagined. As
one of the dancers descends on Mafarka in the dark, his emotional and physical
responses unexpectedly imply revulsion tinged with fear. What could possibly be so
terrifying about a half-naked, desiring dancer? The passage in question merits citation
at length:
Ad un tratto, Mafarka si sent
ı scivolare fra le braccia un corpo di donna ardente e gelido a
un tempo … Non era il ventre squamoso di uno dei pescicani dell’acquario, scomparsi al
declinare della luna?
Ma la bocca ignota che si addormentava sulla sua era soave e sinuosa, ed egli si sent
ı
sconvolte le viscere dalla delizia e dal terrore. [ … ]
—Maledizione! Maledizione! … Come le farfalle e le mosche, voi avete delle trombe, per
pompare le forze e il profumo del maschio! … Come i ragni, voi vi colorite [sic] cos
ı da
somigliare a bocciuoli di rose, ed esalate persino dei profumi inebbrianti per attirare insetti
come noi, ghiotti di fiori! (114–15)
From afar, the dancers appeal visually with their scant clothing and mesmerizing move-
ments, but a closer, physical inspection reveals a shocking aspect. Mafarka’s confusion
of the body of the dancer for the body of the shark is telling of a more significant simi-
larity between the two. As he claims, the women have instruments to suck out “le forze
e il profumo del maschio,” not unlike the shark who previously eviscerated the traitor-
ous generals. The same stealthy, predatory instinct prevails in both the women and the
sharks, the only difference being how each consumes its dinner. Mafarka compares the
women to butterflies, flies, and spiders, suggesting that it is not teeth so much as
mouths that are the concealed instruments of depletion.
The passage leaves open the possibility that the organ in question is not a mouth at
all, but actually a vulva. We recall that the game Mafarka initiates is one in which the
vulva plays a central role; as instinctual guide, much like the shark’s sense of smell, it is
supposedly meant to sniff out the strongest man and extract the most valuable sub-
stance. The pairs of contrasting words—“ardente,” “gelido,” “soave,” “sinuosa,” “delizia,”
“terrore”—evoke the changing and duplicitous nature of the vulva-mouth.18 Mafarka
accuses women of masking the true purpose of the vulva in paint and perfume to
attract permissive men. Such a figuration suggests that the vulva is not a pleasure-seek-
ing device but a ravenous mouth. The feigned appearance of licentious desire hides the
malicious and reproductive intention of the vulva. Acting as a decoy to make men
212 A. RECUPERO

believe they engage this organ on a plane of sexuality, the vulva schemes to drain men
of their reproductive resources.
The gendering of eating practices points to Mafarka’s underlying anxiety around the
reproductive female body. That the mouth pumps out (“pompare”) instead of chews
(“mordere”) again points to the ultimate purpose of this organ. Given his comparison
of women to insects, Mafarka fears being drained more than being eaten or killed. Men,
as “ghiotti di fiori,” consume women through a breakdown into pieces—vulva, hips,
waist, breasts. What the vulva threatens, however, does not affect the integrity of the
male body but instead drains it of useful resources and leaves an empty shell. As a
method of extraction that resembles transfusion more so than masculinized mastication,
depletion stands out as an alternative form of ingestion. This threat results from
Marinetti’s own tinkering with organ functions. In enabling the male stomach to act
reproductively, he also allows the womb to operate as a stomach, thereby opening the
possibility of a vulva-mouth that consumes.

A maternal futurist
Up to this point, I have focused on female bodies that threaten the male unexpectedly
and on Marinetti’s rhetorical strategies of concealing such hazards from his imagined
Futurist project. The threats we have seen so far in a number of women—female virility,
pleasure in death, and the ability to consume—come together in the single character
Colubbi, who presents herself as a maternal figure. Unlike the other female characters,
Colubbi does not sustain any sexual violence by Mafarka or other men despite openly
challenging Mafarka in his role as progenitor of Gazurmah.19 In fact, she too, like
Mafarka, welcomes death by Gazurmah who crushes her with his weight. As Mafarka’s
ex-lover, Colubbi fittingly emerges from the night barely clothed and “lavato dal ricordo
di un chiaro di luna goduto nell’infanzia lontana” (Mafarka 182). Mafarka’s reaction is
telling and suggests a number of potential traps at work in this single character:
Il mondo, i secoli, la luce … tutto cominciava con quella voce che lo palpeggiava
amorosamente[ … ].
Non desiderava pi
u nulla al mondo, poiche gli pareva d’aver fra le mani, come un tesoro,
la gioia, la gioia delle gioie [ … ].
E infatti si vide piccolo, non pi

u grande di un frutto, entro la bocca di quella donna, tra i
suoi denti, che ella mostr
o ad un tratto, come si estrae un pugnale dalla guaina. E fu come
se ella avesse mostrato uno dei cantucci pi
u ghiotti del suo corpo …
u segreti e pi

Mafarka fu attanagliato alla gola dalla tortura di una sete insopportabile, davanti alla
dolcezza fresca e melata di quelle labbra che si schiudevano su un po’ di volutt
a
bianca. (182–83)
Trailing behind Mafarka like a memory, Colubbi embodies Mafarka’s youthful past and
all of the indulgent pleasures that lie there. Mafarka’s immediate reaction to her appear-
ance betrays the strength of the temptation that she offers. Her voice pulls Mafarka
abruptly back to a moment when he desired nothing more than to grow old with her.
As a character meant to stand in for all women, Colubbi textually encompasses the ills
that Marinetti associates with femininity—sentimentalism, nostalgia, intemperance, and
sleep. But it is in her embodiment as the object of love par excellence that Colubbi
 SYMPOSIUM 213

quenches Mafarka’s ambition with “un sonno d’acqua gelata” (192). She contains his
Futurist aspirations by replacing them with a thirst (“una sete insopportabile”) that is a
physical desire for her. She thereby integrates the sexual distraction seen in other
women with the dream of past pleasures to personify the various threats associated with
the past. It should not surprise us, then, that she confronts Mafarka with one of the
most difficult obstacles to overcome on his heroic trajectory.
While Colubbi’s ability to stamp out ambition is formidable, it is far from the most
dangerous trait she possesses. The passage suggests that the threat of the toothed vulva
has not disappeared but is instead magnified to a full-body strategy. Marinetti often
describes Colubbi’s movements as “furtive,” her footsteps barely audible, just as her ges-
tures scarcely give away their intentions. After realizing his contentment in joining
Colubbi, Mafarka describes how he feels in relation to her. He finds himself trapped
like a fruit between her teeth, significantly described as sheathed daggers. In showing
this aspect of her mouth, it is as if she shows one of the most secret and gluttonous
crevices of her body. Again we see a confusion of the reproductive and digestive sys-
tems that this time directly jeopardizes Mafarka as a male subject and ultimately the
viability of Marinetti’s imagined Futurist body.
In Colubbi, the mouth shares its gluttony with the vulva in significant ways, namely
in the ability to consume masculinely. In transferring the consuming properties of the
mouth, revealed in the teeth, to the vulva, Marinetti combines the containing and
digestive properties of the womb and stomach in an undecipherable mixture. While this
is meant to benefit the Futurist male, the woman who now has a stomach for a womb
also possesses the ability to consume through her vulva-mouth the way men have con-
sumed women up to this point. Said differently, the danger of the maternal body that
Colubbi exposes is the inversion of established gender relations. Like Biba, Colubbi
occupies the position usually held by the male subject as the one who ingests. Like the
dancers, she exhibits a sexualized body visible in pieces. Yet, Colubbi’s identification as
a mother ultimately distinguishes her from the other women and significantly binds
together these threats before seen only in different characters. Colubbi calls into ques-
tion Mafarka’s Futurist capabilities by confronting him with another body that possesses
the combined properties he strives to consolidate in his own—virility, capacity for vio-
lence, delight in the face of death, and the ability to give birth. What Colubbi represents
that Mafarka does not quite recognize is the dual threat of being drained of life forces
and feminized as a hollowed, and now useless, container. Mafarka unconsciously fears
feminization through a process of consumption in relation to Colubbi and, by exten-
sion, all potential mothers.

Digesting the mother

In stopping to consider what insights Mafarka il futurista has into Marinetti’s early
thoughts on the exclusion of woman in Futurist rhetoric, I have pinpointed moments
where the author deliberately genders violence and violates gender to suit his discursive
needs. Men employ a fragmentary violence against women that works to undo them as
physically whole bodies. Marinetti’s hypersexualization of women marks them as intrin-
sically intemperate. Yet these two excessive responses to a seemingly innocuous figure
214 A. RECUPERO

suggest a larger threat not easily detected upon first look. What I have noted in Colubbi
as the threat of a Futurist maternal, as a female body capable of the feats of Futurist
heroism, does not become apparent to Mafarka or, I would suggest, Marinetti. Such is
the efficacy of his deception in switching the womb out for the vulva, and thereby a
reproductive threat for a sexual one, that Marinetti fools himself and his hero into
believing that only a man could occupy the creative position of self-sufficient artist.
Colubbi, however, poses a most difficult challenge to that assumption and exposes an
uncertainty at the center of Marinetti’s bodily figuration of the Futurist. What does it
mean, we might ask, that Marinetti’s conception of artistic production is inflected
toward the model of female reproductivity?
The crisis and conflation of artistic and biological production at stake in the encoun-
ters between the masculine and feminine are perhaps most clearly synthesized in the
former couple’s final confrontation. In a moment of particular rage, Mafarka uninten-
tionally voices the anxiety behind the drastic measures to eliminate the maternal threat:
Mio figlio appartiene a me solo! Io, io gli ho fatto il corpo! Io, gli do vita col solo sforzo
della mia volont
a! … E non ti ho chiamata per aiutarmi! … [Non ti ho stesa supina per
iniettarti nell’ovaia, con degli sfregamenti di piacere,] la divina semenza! … Essa
e ancora
qui, nel mio cuore, nel mio cervello! E bisogna che io sia solo, per dar la vita a mio
figlio![ … ] Vattene! Copriti il viso e non spogliarti! Nascondimi il tuo seno! (Mafarka 204)
Mafarka’s vehement insistence on being alone in the creation of his son’s body and in
the act of giving him life points to the very place where such functions normally take
place despite his inability to name it. In drawing attention to her sexual difference,
exposed in the nakedness of her maternal parts, Mafarka shows himself to be trapped
by Marinetti’s misogynist reduction of gender to sex, of the identity of “woman” to that
of “mother.” Whereas in other early texts, women are reduced to the singular ability to
give birth, here the maternal function is inescapably coded as feminine.20 Mafarka’s
claim to do what, in other instances, Marinetti tells us only women can do, suggests
that which neither can articulate—an anxiety about the sex of the maternal function.
Marinetti’s rhetorical strategy of describing masculine violence in terms of consumption,
and the implicit confusion of reproductive and digestive organs that follows, attempts
to ameliorate this through the ingestion of female bodies and, with them, the ability to
give life. The incorporation of the maternal function, then, appears to be a necessary
piece of Marinetti’s new Futurist body.
To close my analysis, let me suggest a return to the author’s defense of his novel.
Recall Marinetti’s description of the novel: “Vi ho descritto l’ascensione impressionante
di un eroe africano [ … ] [che] si innalza subitamente dall’eroismo guerresco a quello
filosofico ed artistico” (“Il processo” 7). The birth of Gazurmah as the climatic end of
Mafarka’s journey designates this as a project of (pro)creative (re)production that does
not distinguish between artistic and biological reproductivity. Mafarka’s ambition of
parthenogenesis depends on his ability to give birth without the help of a vulva, or,
more importantly, a womb. In naming the threat of the vulva, Marinetti draws attention
away from the reproductive threat that lies in wait behind it. To do so, he utilizes an
overtly misogynist perspective to insinuate one threat and cover up the possibility of
another. Mafarka fears the consequences of sexual encounters with women in an uncon-
scious attempt on Marinetti’s part to isolate the many feminine threats to that one,
 SYMPOSIUM 215

sexed organ. Futurism, in turn, depends on the exclusion of women for their association
with the past and the rigid gendering of the Futurist subject. Neither author nor hero
consequently realizes the anxiety around the appropriability of the maternal function.
Yet the ability to give life, particularly to impart something new, is vital to Marinetti’s
poetic ambitions and is reflected in the novel through Mafarka’s reproductive goals.
The centrality of this creative potential to Mafarka’s success sheds light on how the
maternal, and perhaps the feminine more broadly, figures into Marinetti’s Futurist
vision in surprising ways. We remember Marinetti’s desire to distinguish his poetry
from that of previous generations in the “Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo.” This
ability to create something radically new depends on a kind of creativity based on what,
in Mafarka, appears as the maternal capacity to give birth. Marinetti’s construction of
the Futurist identity as resolutely masculine betrays a deep anxiety around feminization
grounded in his own misogynist understanding of gender. In order to save the valuable
machinery embodied in the maternal womb from the fate reserved for other feminized
things, Marinetti separates out the creative capacity from what he imagines as its sexed
identity. The destruction of female bodies into edible pieces strips the maternal function
of its sexed properties and enables its absorption by the Futurist body. The Futurist’s
ability to generate radically new art depends on his incorporation of the maternal func-
tion as a creative technology. That the maternal function does not appear as such in
other texts of Marinetti’s should not dissuade us from considering how Futurism relies
on this conception of creativity for the construction of its own identity. Ultimately,
what is at stake are the uses to which misogyny is put, especially in attempting to
evacuate the maternal of its power. The importance of noting how and where such
strategies are at work remains central to discussions of creativity in and reevaluations of
Futurist texts today.

Notes
1. I would like to thank Amy Wyngaard and the reviewers for their careful reading and vital
suggestions. Their comments on previous versions of this essay helped enormously to open
my project to new directions of thought.
2. Marinetti used this trial as an opportunity to draw attention to the novel and Futurism.
Part of this strategy included publishing an account of the trial as an appendix to
Distruzione: Poema futurista complete with parentheses marking the crowd’s applause and
laughter. The appendix is reprinted in Mondadori’s 2003 publication of the Italian
translation. For further details regarding the trial, see Salaris, Marinetti editore 105–11.
3. The novel was originally published in French in 1909 as Mafarka le futuriste: roman
africain and translated into Italian the following year by Decio Cinti. All quotes are taken
from the Mondadori publication of Cinti’s translation.
4. Adriana Cavarero has written extensively on the association of women with mortality
through embodiment and birth. See especially Nonostante Platone, “Per una teoria della
differenza sessuale” 43–79, and “Thinking Difference” 120–29. For an introduction to the
figure of the mother in Italian feminist thought and philosophy of sexual difference, see
Casarino, Another Mother. On the politicization of female reproductivity and the association
of women with giving life and death today, see Deutscher, Foucault’s Futures.
5. Much scholarship has examined Marinetti’s misogyny across his texts. For studies on
Mafarka, see Blum, The Other Modernism 55–78; Kaplan, Reproductions of Banality 75–92;
Spackman, Fascist Virilities 49–76. While these studies likewise emphasize the destructive
216 A. RECUPERO

violence against female bodies, none analyzes its relation to the reproductive female body or
the maternal function as its target.
6. For an overview of Marinetti’s Futurist texts and their editorial history, see De Maria’s
introduction to Teoria e invenzione futurista xix–lxxi, and Salaris, Storia del futurism 30–35.
7. This quotation inspires the title of this essay. In translating “inaspettati” as “unexpected,” I
wish to highlight the unforeseen consequences of the confusion of organ functions in the
Futurist body. It is Marinetti’s blindness to the potential of certain organs that allows for a
maternal Futurist to appear and threaten the integrity of the male Futurist body.
8. For an incisive reading of Marinetti’s representation of the male body and its relation to
modern art, see Poggi 19–43.
9. Foster notes a “double logic of prosthesis” at play in Marinetti’s work. See Foster 109–50,
and Schnapp 153–78 for analyses of the body/machine complex in Marinetti.
10. On the intertextuality of Mafarka and other texts by Marinetti as a narcissistic practice, see
La Penna 133–63.
11. On the racialization of women’s bodies, see Blum, “Incorporating the Exotic” 138–62;
Spackman 49–77; Belmonte 165–82. Texts that take up colonial imagery in Italian literature
include Caponetto 25–56; Pinkus 180–93; Welch 625–53.
12. As many have noted, the decimation of female bodies calls to mind Theweleit’s study of the
Freikorps’ male fantasies, especially those that have to do with turning others into pulp.
13. Spackman’s and Kaplan’s accounts rightly highlight how this passage typifies Marinetti’s
depiction of female bodies and his interest in rendering the feminine inert. Neither study,
however, takes up the female perspective presented in Biba’s speech. For a literary example
with a first-person female perspective, see Marinetti’s and Robert’s Un ventre di donna. For
a recent study of female Futurist writings, see Sica, Futurist Women.
14. Terms such as “grembo,” “matrice,” or “utero” leave little doubt as to which organ is in
question. While “womb” is an acceptable translation of “ventre” and “viscere,” both terms
carry a multiplicity of meanings that additionally relegate the womb to a mere
undifferentiated organ of the lower body.
15. On the male appropriation of female reproductivity through consumption, see Sofia,
“Exterminating Fetuses” 47–59.
16. Blum’s psychoanalytic reading suggests that the consumption of women and the reduction
of female bodies to pieces across Marinetti’s texts “manifests an obsessive wish for absolute
control and possession” (Other Modernism 95). As “apotropaic reactions,” consumption and
reduction are meant to shore up the male’s identity against anxieties of feminization and
“the dissolution of borders sweeping away any possibility of distinction and symbolization”
(59). This position, however, does not account for the emergence of masculine Futurist
qualities in female characters, Colubbi in particular. It additionally situates women as
external, objectified others to a damaged male ego and not as subjects in their own right.
17. The literary figures of consumption and ingestion have varying functions across Marinetti’s
texts. See in particular Le Roi Bombance and “Un pranzo che evit
o un suicidio” in La
cucina futurista 9–20. On the sexualized alimentary imagery and its relation to the
temporality of the body in Marinetti’s novellas, see Cesaretti 139–55.
18. On the image of the “gaping mouth,” see Bakhtin; on the inversion and displacement
upward of the feminine “other mouth” in Italian poetry, see Spackman, “Inter musam et
ursam moritur: Folengo and the Gaping ‘Other’ Mouth” 19–34.
19. For a biographical take on Colubbi’s relationship to Mafarka, see Baldissone 114–26. Of
interest in this respect is Marinetti’s “Il fascino dell’Egitto” 963–1000.
20. For example, Marinetti states in “Contro il matrimonio:” “La donna non appartiene a un
uomo, ma bens
ı all’avvenire e allo sviluppo della razza” (319).

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Notes on contributor
Amanda Recupero is a Ph.D. candidate in the Romance Studies Department of Cornell
University. Her current research project examines how different bodies engage with and respond
to modern technology in twentieth-century Italian literature.