Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker (born
April 18,
1947 in
Manhattan and died
November 30,
1997 in
Tijuana,
Mexico) was an American
sex-positive feminist writer. After supporting herself as a
stripper, Acker's first work appeared in print as part of the burgeoning
New York literary underground of the mid-
1970s. 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
British publication, a
novel called
Blood and Guts in High School. From here on Acker produced a considerable body of novels, almost all still in print with
Grove Press. She wrote pieces for a number of
magazines and
anthologies, and also had notable pieces printed in issues of
RE/Search,
Angel Exhaust and
Rapid Eye. Towards the end of her life she had a measure of success in the conventional press--the
Guardian newspaper published several of her articles, including an interview with the
Spice Girls, which she submitted just a few months before her death.
Acker's formative influences were
American poets and
writers (the
Black Mountain poets, especially
Jackson Mac Low,
William S. Burroughs), and the
Fluxus movement, as well as
literary theory, especially
Gilles Deleuze. In her work, she combined
plagiarism,
cut-up techniques,
pornography,
autobiography,
persona and personal essay to confound expectations of what fiction should be. She acknowledged
language's
performative function in drawing attention to the instability of female identity in male narrative and literary history (
Don Quixote), created
parallelism in characters and autobiographical personas and experimented with pronouns, upsetting conventional syntax. In
In Memoriam to Identity, she draws attention to popular analyses of
Rimbaud's life and
The Sound and the Fury, constructing or revealing social and literary identity. Though she was known in the
literary world for creating a whole new style of
feminist prose and for her
transgressive fiction, she was also a
punk and
feminist icon for her devoted portrayals of
subcultures, strong-willed women, and
violence.
In April
1996 Kathy Acker was diagnosed with breast cancer, and began to undergo treatment. 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. What appeals to her is that instead of being an object of knowledge, as in Western medicine, the patient becomes a seer, a seeker of wisdom. Illness becomes the teacher and the patient is the student. After pursuing several forms of
alternative medicine 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
Tijuana,
MexicoBorn in
New York City, novelist, poet and performance artist Kathy Acker came to be closely associated with the
punk 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 B.A. from the
University of California, San Diego in
1968. She did two years worth of post-graduate work at
City University of New York but left before earning a degree. While still in New York she worked as a file clerk, secretary, stripper, and
porn actress.
She married twice, and divorced twice, and was openly
bisexual throughout her lifetime. In
1979 she won the
Pushcart Prize for her novel
New York City. During the early 80s she lived in London, where she wrote several of her most critically acclaimed works. After returning to the United States she worked as an adjunct professor at the
San Francisco Art Institute and as a visiting professor at several universities, including the
University of Idaho, the
University of California, San Diego, the
California Institute of Arts, and
Roanoke College. She died in
Tijuana, Mexico in an alternative cancer clinic where she was being treated for
breast cancer.
Acker's controversial body of work borrows heavily from the experimental styles of
William S. Burroughs and
Marguerite Duras. She often used extreme forms of
pastiche and even Burroughs's
cut-up technique, in which one cuts passages and sentences into several pieces and rearranges them somewhat randomly. Acker herself situated her writing within a post-
nouveau roman European tradition. In her texts, she combines biographical elements, power, sex and violence in an intoxicating cocktail. Indeed, critics often compare her writing to that of
Alain Robbe-Grillet and
Jean Genet. Critics have noticed links to
Gertrude Stein and photographers
Cindy Sherman and
Sherrie Levine. Acker's novels also exhibit a fascination with and an indebtedness to
tattoos. [
1]
Although associated with generally well respected artists, even Acker's most recognized novels,
Blood and Guts in High School,
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 Dickens,
Marcel Proust, and
Marquis de Sade. She quite clearly has a grasp on
poststructuralist theory as well as a profound familiarity with literary history. Many critics, however, find her
non-linear plots needlessly incoherent and difficult to read.
Feminist critics 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 taboos marginalize. The inclusion of controversial topics such as abortion, rape, incest, terrorism, pornography, graphic violence, and feminism 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
1978 she published a collection of three novels.
Florida parodies
John Huston's
1948 Film Noir classic
Key Largo,
Kathy Goes to Haiti details a young woman's relationship and sexual exploits while on vacation, and
The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec by Henri Toulouse Lautrec provides a fictional autobiography of the 19th century French artist.
In
1979 Acker finally received popular attention when she won the
Pushcart Prize for her novel
New York City. 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 classic 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 French pornography. That same year, Acker published a chapbook titled
Hello, I'm Erica Jong.
Despite the increased recognition she got for
Great Expectations,
Blood and Guts in High School 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 Hawthorne's
The Scarlet Letter,
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 and South Africa banned it completely.
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. 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 Panza, 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 Twain's The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the plagiarism is less obvious. 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 previously published works
Kathy Goes to Haiti,
My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini, and
Florida.
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 comprised 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.
"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." [
2]
"Literature is that which denounces and slashes apart the repressing machine at the level of the signified." [
3]
*
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)
*
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 (1984)
*
Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream (1986)
*
Literal Madness: Three Novels (Reprinted 1987)
*
Kathy Goes to Haiti*
My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini*
Florida*
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 349.
* "Rip-Off Red, Girl Detective" (2002)
*
Delirium, a comic book character created by Neil Gaiman based on his friend Kathy Acker.
*
Postmodern feminism*
welcome (back) to oblivion: Kathy Acker's CalArts website*
A narrative of Acker's death in Tijuana*
Kill Rock Stars artist page, including mp3 sample track from
Redoing Childhood*
A Conversation with Kathy Acker By Ellen G. Friedman* Kathy Acker in the
Daily Bleed Calendar
