In his essay, “WTFU: The Manifesto of The Nobodies,” Robert Hanna tells us that “WTFU,” pronounced “what-foo,” means wake the fuck up: and that that’s what he’s urging us all to do in this manifesto. Kantians and others will have already recognized that WTFU is a pithy, pungent contemporary equivalent of Immanuel Kant’s famous or notorious answer to the question, “What is Enlightenment?”:
Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from their own self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to make use of one’s own understanding without direction from another. This immaturity is self-incurred when its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding! is thus the motto of Enlightenment. (Kant, 1784/1996: p. 17, Ak 8: 35, translation modified slightly)
But sadly and even tragically, if you’re a card-carrying member of the global juggernaut social institution Hanna calls the mechanistic leviathan—i.e., if you’re a somebody—then it’s going to be ideologically impossible for you to do it on your own. Instead, only the nobodies will have the power to do it. In the rest of the essay, Hanna explains what he means and then argues for it.
REFERENCE
(Kant, 1784/1996). Kant, I. “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” Trans. M. Gregor. In I. Kant, Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Pp. 17-22, Ak 8: 35-42.
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