Time for a Manifesto?

I've noticed of late a little spike in things - books, ideas - being described as manifestos. This observation is entirely non-scientific, and I don't have any figures to back it up, but it seems as if the manifesto is having something of a mini-renaissance.

Firstly, there's David Shield's Reality Hunger, which seems to be causing quite the controversy a manifesto is supposed to, although it does appear to be a rather subdued controversy, mainly concerning the viewpoint that it's not-really-very-radical and thus not-really-a-manifesto. I am yet to read it, though rather itching to, as it will no doubt form quite a large part of my future studies, and more pressingly I gather there's a mention of cellphone novels in there somewhere that I have to dig out.

Secondly, there's this - You are Not a Gadget (: A Manifesto) in which the inventor of Virtual Reality Jaron Lanier decides the internet's rubbish now. I think Michael Agger may have it right in his review: "The Web hasn't lost flavor; you've lost flavor."

Thirdly - and this is what made me think there was something worth noting here - is Tony Judt's piece in the Guardian on Saturday, which in the paper version was called A Manifesto for a Brighter Future but on the net is called A Manifesto for a New Politics, which is strange, given that it's a manifesto for a traditional social democracy that realises that "radicalism has always been about conserving valuable pasts". Which may or may not be true - the piece is generally good, I think, even if it places a little too much faith in the idea of social democracy - but what is interesting is how it's called a "manifesto". Why? It isn't really, or if it is then a whole host of opinion pieces in newspapers around the world can be called manifestos. And the two books above seem to have added their colonic subtitles for reasons of provocation rather than a genuinely held belief that they are putting across something new. David Shields, perhaps, thinks he's doing that, but if some reviews are to go by, his something new is to say that non-fiction or the tinkering between it and fiction is the way forward, which isn't particularly new. And Lanier's book appears to be a collection of column articles. Which isn't new or even a coherent single piece!

And of course there's the altermodern, which had a manifesto, even if it did seem to be going through the motions somewhat.

So why manifestos? Times are rough/tough/uncertain etc, and in these sorts of times people are supposedly open to big ideas (although none so big as to actually make a difference: hence the use of the word "recovery" so often in relation to the economy), and big ideas need big statements to get them across and that means a manifesto. But it's a particularly postmodern idea of a manifesto that seems to be doing the rounds - call it a manifesto but actually aim to change very little.

Having said that, it would be exciting if we had a new age of manifestos by radical artists being published on the front page of the Daily Telegraph.