Kathy Acker Overview

Born and raised 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,... [more]

Born and raised 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, where she worked with David Antin and Jerome Rothenberg. She accomplished 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 performer. During the 1970s she often moved back and forth between San Diego, San Francisco and New York. Acker married and divorced twice. Although most of her relationships were with men, she remained openly bisexual for at least part of her adult life. In 1979 she won the Pushcart Prize 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 80s she worked as an adjunct professor at the San Francisco Art Institute for about six years and as a visiting professor at several universities, including the University of Idaho, the University of California, San Diego, University of California, Santa Barbara, the California Institute of Arts, and Roanoke College. Acker died in Tijuana, Mexico, aged 50, 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' 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, such as power, sex and violence in an intoxicating cocktail. Indeed, critics often compare Acker's 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 appreciation of tattoos. [1] Accordingly, she dedicated her novel "Empire of the Senseless" to her tattooist. Although associated with generally esteemed artists, Acker's most recognized novels, 'œBlood and Guts in High School,' 'œGreat Expectations,' and 'œDon Quixote,' have received mixed critical attention. Nonetheless, critics acknowledge Acker's skilled manipulation of plagiarized texts from writers as varied as Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, and Marquis de Sade. Her understanding of poststructuralist theory as well as her profound familiarity with literary history is undeniable. 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 has 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, 'œPolitics,' 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, 'œThe Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula: Some Lives of Murderesses,' under the pseudonym Black Tarantula. In 1974 she published her second novel, 'œI Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac: Imagining.' In 1979 Acker finally received popular attention when she won the Pushcart Prize for her short story "New York City in 1979". She did not receive critical attention, however, until she published 'œGreat Expectations' in 1982. The opening of 'œGreat 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 Pierre Guyotat's violent and sexually explicit "Eden Eden Eden." That same year, Acker published a chapbook titled 'œHello, I'm Erica Jong.' Despite the increased recognition she got for 'œGreat Expectations,' 'œBlood 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 primarily from Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'œThe Scarlet Letter,' 'œBlood and Guts'”'œ 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 denounced it for being demeaning toward women. Germany and South Africa banned it completely. In 1984 Acker published 'œMy Death My Life' by Pier Paolo Pasolini and a year later published 'œAlgeria: A Series of Invocations Because Nothing Else Works.' In 1986 she published 'œDon Quixote,' which would join 'œGreat Expectations' as 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 Panza, Don Quixote attacks the sexist societies while simultaneously deflating feminist mythologies. [show less]