Kathy Acker was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
experimentalExperimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style.-Early history:...
novelist, punk poet,
playwrightA playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, essayist,
postmodernistPostmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
and sex-positive feminist writer. She was strongly influenced by the Black Mountain School,
William S. BurroughsWilliam Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
,
David AntinDavid Antin is a United States poet and critic. In the late 1960s, Antin began performing extemporaneously, improvising "talk poems" at readings and exhibitions...
,
FrenchThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
critical theoryCritical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
,
philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, and
pornographyPornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
.
Biography
The daughter of Donald and Claire (Weill) Lehman, a wealthy Jewish family, Kathy Acker was born in New York City on April 18. There is some question as to her year of birth, however: the Library of Congress lists her birth year as 1948, a few sources have listed 1947, but most obituaries state that she was born in 1944. The pregnancy was unplanned, and Donald Lehman abandoned the family before Kathy was born; Acker’s relationship with her domineering mother even into adulthood was fraught with hostility and anxiety because Acker felt unloved and unwanted. Her mother soon remarried, a union that Acker later characterized as an essentially passionless marriage to an ineffectual man, and Acker was raised in her mother and stepfather’s respectable upper-middle-class Jewish home on New York’s Upper East Side.
As a girl, Acker was expected to act with ladylike propriety in this oppressive, well-to-do environment, yet she was fascinated by pirates, a fascination that continued until the end of her life. She wanted to grow up to be a pirate, but she knew that only men could be pirates. Thus Acker experienced early the limitations of gender. However, she found that reading about pirates was a way of running away from home, and she turned to books as her reality. She associated reading and writing with bodily pleasure and remained a voracious reader throughout her life.
Acker took her last name from her first husband, Robert Acker; though named Karen, she was known as Kathy by her friends and family. She studied classics as an undergraduate at
Brandeis UniversityBrandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
and aspired to write novels but moved to San Diego to further pursue her studies. Acker's first work appeared in print as part of the burgeoning
New YorkNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
literaryLiterature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
underground of the mid-1970s. She claimed that her early writings were profoundly influenced by her experiences working for a few months as a
stripperA stripper is a professional erotic dancer who performs a contemporary form of striptease at strip club establishments, public exhibitions, and private engagements. Unlike in burlesque, the performer in the modern Americanized form of stripping minimizes the interaction of customer and dancer,...
. She remained on the margins of the literary establishment, only being published by small presses until the mid-1980s, thus earning herself the epithet of literary terrorist. 1984 saw her first
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
publication, a
novelA novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
called
Blood and Guts in High SchoolBlood and Guts in High School is a novel by Kathy Acker. It was written in the late 1970s and copyrighted in 1978. It traveled a complex and circuitous route to publication in 1984. It remains Acker's most popular and best-selling book. The novel is also considered a metafictional text, which is...
. From here on Acker produced a considerable body of novels, almost all still in print with
Grove PressGrove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1951. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative book press in the United States. The Atlantic Monthly Press, under the aegis of its...
. She wrote pieces for a number of
magazineMagazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
s and
anthologiesAn anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
, and also had notable pieces printed in issues of
RE/SearchRE/Search Publications is an American magazine and book publisher, based in San Francisco, founded and edited by Andrea Juno and V. Vale in 1980. It was the successor to Vale's earlier punk rock fanzine Search & Destroy , and was started with $100 from Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti...
,
Angel ExhaustAngel Exhaust is a British poetry magazine founded by Steve Pereira and Adrian Clarke in the late 1970s. Andrew Duncan took over as editor in 1992, and by 1993 it was one of the first poetry magazines to appear regularly on the internet.-Editors:...
and
Rapid Eye. Towards the end of her life she had a measure of success in the conventional press—the
GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
newspaper published several of her articles, including an interview with the
Spice GirlsThe Spice Girls were a British pop girl group formed in 1994. The group consisted of Victoria Beckham , Melanie Brown, Emma Bunton, Melanie Chisholm and Geri Halliwell. They were signed to Virgin Records and released their debut single, "Wannabe" in 1996, which hit number-one in more than 30...
, which she submitted just a few months before her death.
Acker's formative influences were
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
poets and
writers (the
Black Mountain poetsThe Black Mountain poets, sometimes called projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or postmodern poets centered on Black Mountain College.-Background:...
, especially
Jackson Mac LowJackson Mac Low was an American poet, performance artist, composer and playwright, known to most readers of poetry as a practioneer of systematic chance operations and other non-intentional compositional methods in his work, which Mac Low first experienced in the musical work of John Cage, Earle...
,
Charles OlsonCharles Olson , was a second generation American modernist poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance...
,
William S. BurroughsWilliam Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
), and the
FluxusFluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
movement, as well as
literary theoryLiterary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes—in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense—considerations of...
, especially the French feminists and
Gilles DeleuzeGilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
. In her work, she combined
plagiarismPlagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
,
cut-up techniqueThe cut-up technique is an aleatory literary technique in which a text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. Most commonly, cut-ups are used to offer a non-linear alternative to traditional reading and writing....
s,
pornographyPornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
,
autobiographyAn autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fiction elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction...
,
personaA persona, in the word's everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. The word is derived from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask. The Latin word probably derived from the Etruscan word "phersu", with the same meaning, and that from the Greek πρόσωπον...
and personal essay to confound expectations of what fiction should be. She acknowledged the performative function of
languageLanguage may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
in drawing attention to the instability of female identity in male narrative and literary history (
Don Quixote), created
parallelismParallelism may refer to:* Angle of parallelism, the angle at one vertex of a right hyperbolic triangle that has two hyperparallel sides* Conscious parallelism, price-fixing between competitors in an oligopoly that occurs without an actual spoken agreement between the parties* Parallel computing,...
in characters and autobiographical personas and experimented with pronouns, upsetting conventional syntax.
In
In Memoriam to Identity, Acker draws attention to popular analyses of Rimbaud's life and
The Sound and the FuryThe Sound and the Fury is a novel written by the American author William Faulkner. It employs a number of narrative styles, including the technique known as stream of consciousness, pioneered by 20th century European novelists such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Published in 1929, The Sound and...
, constructing or revealing social and literary identity. Though she was known in the literary world for creating a whole new style of
feminist proseÉcriture féminine, literally "women's writing," more closely, the inscription of the female body and female difference in language and text, is a strain of feminist literary theory that originated in France in the early 1970s and included foundational theorists such as Hélène Cixous, Monique...
and for her
transgressive fictionTransgressive fiction is a genre of literature that focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual and/or illicit ways. Because they are rebelling against the basic norms of society, protagonists of transgressional...
, she was also a
punkPunk ideologies are a group of varied social and political beliefs associated with the punk subculture. In its original incarnation, the punk subculture was primarily concerned with concepts such as rebellion, anti-authoritarianism, individualism, free thought and discontent...
and feminist icon for her devoted portrayals of
subcultureIn sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
s, strong-willed women, and
violenceViolence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
.
In April 1996 Acker was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a double mastectomy. In January 1997 she wrote about her loss of faith in conventional medicine in a
Guardian article, "The Gift of Disease." In the article she explains that after unsuccessful surgery, which left her feeling physically mutilated and emotionally debilitated, she rejected the passivity of the patient in the medical mainstream and began to seek out the advice of nutritionists, acupuncturists, psychic healers, and Chinese herbalists. She found appealing the claim that instead of being an object of knowledge, as in Western medicine, the patient becomes a seer, a seeker of wisdom, that illness becomes the teacher and the patient the student. After pursuing several forms of
alternative medicineAlternative medicine is any healing practice, "that does not fall within the realm of conventional medicine." It is based on historical or cultural traditions, rather than on scientific evidence....
in England and the United States, Acker died a year and a half later from complications of breast cancer in an alternative cancer clinic in
TijuanaTijuana is the largest city on the Baja California Peninsula and center of the Tijuana metropolitan area, part of the international San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan area. An industrial and financial center of Mexico, Tijuana exerts a strong influence on economics, education, culture, art, and politics...
,
MexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. She died in
Room 101Room 101 is a place introduced in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. It is a torture chamber in the Ministry of Love in which the Party attempts to subject a prisoner to his or her own worst nightmare, fear or phobia....
, to which her friend
Alan MooreAlan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
quipped, "There's nothing that woman can't turn into a literary reference."
Literary overview
Born and raised in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, novelist, poet and performance artist Kathy Acker came to be closely associated with the
punkThe punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...
movement of the 1970s and '80s that affected much of the culture in and around Manhattan. As an adult, however, she moved around quite a bit. She received her bachelor's degree from the
University of California, San DiegoThe University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
in 1968; there she worked with
David AntinDavid Antin is a United States poet and critic. In the late 1960s, Antin began performing extemporaneously, improvising "talk poems" at readings and exhibitions...
and
Jerome RothenbergJerome Rothenberg is an internationally known American poet, translator and anthologist who is noted for his work in ethnopoetics and poetry performance.-Early life and work:...
.
She did two years worth of graduate work at
City University of New YorkThe City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...
in
ClassicsClassics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
, specializing in Greek, but left before earning a degree. While still in New York she worked as a file clerk, secretary, stripper, and
pornPorn is a common short form for pornography. It may also refer to:* Progressive outer retinal necrosis, a disease of the retina* PORN, a French industrial rock band...
performer. During the 1970s she often moved back and forth between San Diego, San Francisco and New York.
She married twice, and though most of her relationships were with men, she was openly bisexual for at least part of her adult life. In 1979 she won the
Pushcart PrizeThe Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to 6 works they have featured....
for her short story "New York City in 1979." During the early 1980s she lived in London, where she wrote several of her most critically acclaimed works. After returning to the United States in the late 1980s she worked as an adjunct professor at the
San Francisco Art InstituteSan Francisco Art Institute is a school of higher education in contemporary art with the main campus in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California. Its graduate center is in the Dogpatch neighborhood. The private, non-profit institution is accredited by WASC and is a member of the...
for about six years and as a visiting professor at several universities, including the
University of IdahoThe University of Idaho is the State of Idaho's flagship and oldest public university, located in the rural city of Moscow in Latah County in the northern portion of the state...
, the
University of California, San DiegoThe University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
,
University of California, Santa BarbaraThe University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
, the California Institute of Arts, and
Roanoke CollegeRoanoke College is an private, coeducational, four-year liberal-arts college affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The college is located in Salem, Virginia, a suburban independent city adjacent to Roanoke, Virginia...
.
Acker’s controversial body of work borrows heavily from the experimental styles of
William S. BurroughsWilliam Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
and
Marguerite DurasMarguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras was a French writer and film director.-Background:...
. She often used extreme forms of
pasticheA pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
and even Burroughs’s
cut-up techniqueThe cut-up technique is an aleatory literary technique in which a text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. Most commonly, cut-ups are used to offer a non-linear alternative to traditional reading and writing....
, in which one cuts passages and sentences into several pieces and rearranges them somewhat randomly. Acker herself situated her writing within a post-
nouveau romanThe nouveau roman is a type of 1950s French novel that diverged from classical literary genres. Émile Henriot coined the title in an article in the popular French newspaper Le Monde on May 22, 1957 to describe certain writers who experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new...
European tradition. In her texts, she combines biographical elements, power, sex and violence. Indeed, critics often compare her writing to that of
Alain Robbe-GrilletAlain Robbe-Grillet , was a French writer and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice...
and
Jean GenetJean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
. Critics have noticed links to
Gertrude SteinGertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
and photographers
Cindy ShermanCindy Sherman is an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. Sherman currently lives and works in New York City. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She is represented by Sprüth Magers Berlin London in and Metro Pictures gallery in...
and
Sherrie LevineSherrie Levine is an American photographer and appropriation artist.-Education:Levine received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1969. In 1973, she earned an M.F.A. from the same institution....
. Acker’s novels also exhibit a fascination with and an indebtedness to
tattooA tattoo is made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. Tattoos on humans are a type of body modification, and tattoos on other animals are most commonly used for identification purposes...
s. She even dedicated
Empire of the Senseless to her tattooist.
Although associated with generally well-respected artists, even Acker’s most recognized novels,
Blood and Guts in High SchoolBlood and Guts in High School is a novel by Kathy Acker. It was written in the late 1970s and copyrighted in 1978. It traveled a complex and circuitous route to publication in 1984. It remains Acker's most popular and best-selling book. The novel is also considered a metafictional text, which is...
,
Great Expectations and
Don Quixote receive mixed critical attention. Most critics acknowledge Acker’s skilled manipulation of plagiarized texts from writers as varied as
Charles DickensCharles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
,
Marcel ProustValentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
, and
Marquis de SadeDonatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle...
.
Feminist criticsFeminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or by the politics of feminism more broadly. Its history has been broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in...
have also had strong responses both for and against Acker’s writing. While some praise her for exposing a misogynistic capitalist society that uses sexual domination as a key form of oppression, others argue that her extreme and frequent use of violent sexual imagery quickly becomes numbing and leads to the degrading objectification of women. Despite repeated criticisms, Acker maintained that in order to challenge the phallogocentric power structures of language, literature must not only experiment with syntax and style, but also give voice to the silenced subjects that common
tabooA taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
s marginalize. The inclusion of controversial topics such as
abortionAbortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
,
rapeRape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
,
incestIncest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
,
terrorismTerrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
,
pornographyPornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
, graphic
violenceViolence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
, and
feminismFeminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
demonstrate that conviction.
Acker published her first book,
Politics, in 1972. Although the collection of poems and essays did not garner much critical or public attention, it did establish her reputation within the New York punk scene. In 1973 she published her first novel
The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula: Some Lives of Murderesses under the pseudonym Black Tarantula. In 1974 she published her second novel,
I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac: Imagining.
In 1979 Acker finally received popular attention when she won a
Pushcart PrizeThe Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to 6 works they have featured....
for her short story "New York City in 1979." She did not receive critical attention, however, until she published
Great Expectations in 1982. The opening of
Great Expectations is a clear re-writing of
Charles Dickens’s classicGreat Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published in serial form in the publication All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. It has been adapted for stage and screen over 250 times....
of the same name. It features Acker’s usual subject matter, including a semi-autobiographical account of her mother’s suicide and the appropriation of several other texts, including Pierre Guyotat's violent and sexually explicit "Eden Eden Eden". That same year, Acker published a
chapbookA chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...
titled
Hello, I’m Erica JongErica Jong is an American author and teacher best known for her fiction and poetry.-Career:A 1963 graduate of Barnard College, and with an M.A...
.
Acker wrote the script for the 1983 film
Variety, directed by Bette Gordon with actors including
Nan GoldinNancy "Nan" Goldin is an American photographer.-Life and work:Goldin was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts suburb of Lexington, to middle class Jewish parents whose ideas, moderately liberal and progressive, were put to the test when on April 12, 1965 their eldest...
,
Will PattonWilliam Rankin "Will" Patton is an American actor.-Life and career:Patton was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the eldest of three children. His father is Bill Patton, a playwright and acting/directing instructor who was a Lutheran minister and served as a chaplain at Duke University...
, and
Luis GuzmánLuis Guzmán is an actor from Puerto Rico. He is known for his character work. For much of his career, he has played roles largely as sidekicks, thugs, or policemen....
.
Despite the increased recognition she got for
Great Expectations,
Blood and Guts in High SchoolBlood and Guts in High School is a novel by Kathy Acker. It was written in the late 1970s and copyrighted in 1978. It traveled a complex and circuitous route to publication in 1984. It remains Acker's most popular and best-selling book. The novel is also considered a metafictional text, which is...
is often considered Acker’s breakthrough work. Published in 1984, it is one of her most extreme explorations of sexuality and violence. Borrowing from, among other texts,
Nathaniel HawthorneNathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
’s
The Scarlet LetterThe Scarlet Letter is an 1850 romantic work of fiction in a historical setting, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is considered to be his magnum opus. Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an...
,
Blood and Guts details the experiences of Janey Smith, a sex addicted and pelvic-inflammatory-disease-ridden urbanite who is in love with a father who sells her into slavery. Many critics criticized it for being demeaning toward women, and Germany banned it completely. Acker published the German court judgment against
Blood and Guts in High SchoolBlood and Guts in High School is a novel by Kathy Acker. It was written in the late 1970s and copyrighted in 1978. It traveled a complex and circuitous route to publication in 1984. It remains Acker's most popular and best-selling book. The novel is also considered a metafictional text, which is...
in
Hannibal Lecter, My Father.
In 1984 Acker published
My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini and a year later published
Algeria: A Series of Invocations because Nothing Else Works. In 1986 she published
Don Quixote, another one of her more acclaimed novels. In Acker’s version of
Miguel de Cervantes' classic, Don Quixote becomes a young woman obsessed with poststructuralist theory, taking it to a nihilistic extreme. Moreover, the Don's insanity that causes her to wander the streets of St. Petersburg & New York City was caused from having an abortion. She recognizes the world’s many lies and fakes, believes in nothing and regards identity as an internalized fictional construct. Marching around New York City and London with her dog St. Simeon, who serves as her
Sancho PanzaSancho Panza is a fictional character in the novel Don Quixote written by Spanish author Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in 1605. Sancho acts as squire to Don Quixote, and provides comments throughout the novel, known as sanchismos, that are a combination of broad humour, ironic Spanish proverbs,...
, Don Quixote attacks the sexist societies while simultaneously deflating feminist mythologies.
Acker published
Empire of the Senseless in 1988 and considered it a turning point in her writing. While she still borrows from other texts, including
Mark TwainSamuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
’s
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the plagiarism is less obvious. However, one of Acker’s more controversial plagiarisms is from
William GibsonWilliam Gibson is an American-Canadian science fiction author.William Gibson may also refer to:-Association football:*Will Gibson , Scottish footballer...
’s 1984 text ‘'
NeuromancerNeuromancer is a 1984 novel by William Gibson, a seminal work in the cyberpunk genre and the first winner of the science-fiction "triple crown" — the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy...
’' in which Acker equates code with the female body and its militaristic implications. The novel comes from the voices of two terrorists, Abhor, who is half human and half robot, and her lover Thivai. The story takes place in the decaying remnants of a post-revolutionary Paris. Like her other works,
Empire of the Senseless includes graphic violence and sexuality. However, it turns toward concerns of language more than her previous works. In 1988 she also published
Literal Madness: Three Novels which included three previously published works:
Florida deconstructs and reduces
John HustonJohn Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
’s 1948
film noirFilm noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
classic
Key LargoKey Largo is a 1948 film noir directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, and Claire Trevor...
into its base sexual politics,
Kathy Goes to Haiti details a young woman’s relationship and sexual exploits while on vacation, and
My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini provides a fictional
autobiography of the Italian filmmaker in which he solves his own murder.
Between 1990 and 1993 Acker published four more books:
In Memoriam to Identity (1990);
Hannibal Lecter, My Father (1991);
Portrait of an Eye: Three Novels (1992), also composed of already published works; and
My Mother: Demonology (1992). Many critics complained that these later works became redundant and predictable, as Acker continued to explore the same taboos in a similar fashion. Her last novel,
Pussy, King of the Pirates, published in 1996, showed signs of Acker’s broadening interests as it incorporates more humor, lighter fantasy and a consideration of Eastern texts and philosophy that was largely absent in her earlier works.
Posthumous reputation
Acker's work has been acknowledged by a number of younger writers working in an experimental style, including
Stewart HomeStewart Home is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. He is best known for his novels such as the non-narrative 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess , his re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love , and earlier parodistic pulp fictions Pure Mania, Red...
,
Mark AmerikaMark Amerika is an American artist and author.- Career :Amerika received his MFA from Brown University. After publishing two cult-novels, and , he turned his energy towards net art. His goal is to expand the concept of writing so that it includes writing in and with new media technologies. He...
, Barry Graham, Anna Joy Springer,
Tribe 8This article is about the San Francisco based lesbian punk band Tribe 8. See Tribe 8 for Dream Pod 9s post-apocalyptic fantasy role-playing game.Tribe 8 was an all-women outspoken dyke punk band from San Francisco...
singer and writer
Lynn BreedloveLynn Breedlove is an American trans man musician, writer, and performer.Breedlove was a founding member and lead singer of the San Francisco dyke screamcore band Tribe 8. The band's first single, Pigbitch, was released on Harp records, run by Gina Harp in 1991...
,
Alexander LaurenceAlexander Laurence is a writer who was born in Los Angeles, California in May 1964. He attended CSULB and studied English Literature, where he graduated in 1988. He moved to San Francisco, California in 1989 and New York City in 1996. In that time, he attended classes at SF Art Institute and the...
, Tamil novelist Charu Nivedita,
Noah CiceroNoah Cicero is an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet. He lives in Youngstown, Ohio, and is the author of six books of fiction:...
,
Travis JeppesenTravis Jeppesen , Florida is an American novelist, poet, and art critic.He grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina and moved to New York City at the age of 17. He received his B.A. from The New School, where he studied literature and philosophy...
, and
Salvador PlascenciaSalvador Plascencia is an American writer, born 1976 in Guadalajara, Mexico.The Plascencia family eventually settled near Los Angeles in the city of El Monte when he was eight years old. Plascencia holds a B.A. in English from Whittier College and an MFA in fiction from Syracuse University...
.
Kathleen HannaKathleen Hanna is an American musician, feminist activist, and punk zine writer. In the early- to mid-1990s she was the lead singer and songwriter of Bikini Kill, before fronting Le Tigre in the late 1990s and early 2000s...
of
Bikini KillBikini Kill was an American punk rock band formed in Olympia, Washington in October 1990. The group consisted of vocalist and songwriter Kathleen Hanna, guitarist Billy Karren, bassist Kathi Wilcox, and drummer Tobi Vail. The band is widely considered to be the pioneer of the riot grrrl movement,...
and
Kim GordonKim Althea Gordon is an American musician, vocalist, artist, record producer, video director and actress. She has sung and played bass and guitar in the alternative rock band Sonic Youth, and in Free Kitten with Julia Cafritz...
, co-founder of
Sonic YouthSonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...
have also acknowledged her influence.
Three volumes of her non-fiction have been published and re-published since her death. In 2002
New York UniversityNew York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
(NYU) staged
Discipline and Anarchy, a retrospective exhibition of her works, while in 2008 London's
Institute of Contemporary ArtsThe Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
held an evening of her films. Recently (2007) Amandla Publishing has re-published Acker's articles for the
New StatesmanNew Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
from 1989 to 1991.
Quotes
- "We don't have a clue what it is to be male or female, or if there are intermediate genders. Male and female might be fields which overlap into androgyny or different kinds of sexual desires. But because we live in a Western, patriarchal world, we have very little chance of exploring these gender possibilities."
- "Literature is that which denounces and slashes apart the repressing machine at the level of the signified."
- "The students who come to my class are very closely related to all the evil girls who are very interested in their bodies and sex and pleasure. I learn a lot from them about how to have pleasure and how cool the female body is. One of my students had a piercing through her labia. And she told me about how when you ride on a motorcycle
A motorcycle is a single-track, two-wheeled motor vehicle. Motorcycles vary considerably depending on the task for which they are designed, such as long distance travel, navigating congested urban traffic, cruising, sport and racing, or off-road conditions.Motorcycles are one of the most...
, the little bead on the ring acts like a vibrator. Her story turned me on so I did it. I got two. It was very cool. I'm very staid compared to my students, actually. I come from a generation where you've got the PCPolitical correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
dykes and confused heterosexuals. No one ever told me that you could walk around with a strap-onA strap-on dildo is a dildo designed to be worn, usually with a harness, during sexual activity. Harnesses and dildos are made in a wide variety of styles, with variations in how the harness fits the wearer, how the dildo attaches to the harness, as well as various features intended to facilitate...
, having orgasmOrgasm is the peak of the plateau phase of the sexual response cycle, characterized by an intense sensation of pleasure...
s."
- "Let's compare a pencil to a vagina."
Published works
- Politics (1972)
- Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula By the Black Tarantula (1973)
- I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac: Imagining (1974)
- Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec (1978)
- Florida (1978)
- Kathy Goes To Haiti (1978)
- N.Y.C. in 1979 (1981)
- Great Expectations (1983)
- Algeria : A Series of Invocations Because Nothing Else Works (1984)
- Blood and Guts in High School
Blood and Guts in High School is a novel by Kathy Acker. It was written in the late 1970s and copyrighted in 1978. It traveled a complex and circuitous route to publication in 1984. It remains Acker's most popular and best-selling book. The novel is also considered a metafictional text, which is...
(1984)
- Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream (1986)
- Literal Madness: Three Novels (Reprinted 1987)
- My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini
- Wordplays 5 : An Anthology of New American Drama (1987)
- Empire of the Senseless (1988)
- In Memoriam to Identity (1990)
- Hannibal Lecter, My Father (1991)
- My Mother: Demonology (1994)
- Pussycat Fever (1995)
- Dust. Essays (1995)
- Pussy, King of the Pirates (1996)
- Bodies of Work : Essays (1997)
- Portrait of an Eye: Three Novels (Reprinted 1998)
- Redoing Childhood (2000) spoken word CD, KRS
Kill Rock Stars is an independent record label founded in 1991 by Slim Moon and based in both Olympia, Washington and Portland, Oregon. The label has released a variety of work in different genres, making it difficult to pigeonhole as having any one artistic mission...
349.
- "Rip-Off Red, Girl Detective" (pub. 2002 from manuscript of 1973)
See also
- Delirium
Delirium is one of The Endless, fictional characters from Neil Gaiman's comic book series The Sandman.-Fictional character history:Delirium, known to the Greek culture as Mania, is the youngest of the Endless, yet still older than the rest of existence. She is usually quite short, and thin, and...
, a comic book character created by Neil GaimanNeil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
based on his friend Kathy Acker.
- Postmodern feminism
Postmodern feminism is an approach to feminist theory that incorporates postmodern and post-structuralist theory.-Origins and theory:The largest departure from other branches of feminism is the argument that sex is itself constructed through language, a view most notably propounded in Judith...
Further reading
- Kathy Acker and Transnationalism, ed. Polina Mackay and Kathryn Nicol (Cambridge Scholars, 2009)
- Lust for Life: On the Writings of Kathy Acker, ed. Carla Harryman, Avital Ronell, and Amy Scholder (Verso, 2006)
- Devouring Institutions: The Life Work of Kathy Acker, ed. Michael Hardin (Hyperbole/San Diego State University Press: 2004). DEVOURING INSTITUTIONS
- "no one can find little girls any more: Kathy Acker in Australia" (1997). Documentary film by Jonathan and Felicity Dawson. Griffith University, 90 minutes. Footage from this film is included in* Who's Afraid of Kathy Acker? A documentary by Barbara Caspar
External links