Kathy Acker

Diane Fare (Independent Scholar - Europe)
Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error

When reading Kathy Acker's fiction one is asked to partake in a surreal textual experience which refuses to fulfil the critical desire for coherency, “sense” and meaning. She is a poststructuralist whose works register the overt influence of poststructuralist theories. The integration of fiction and theory is by no means a coherent enterprise, and this accounts for the complexity of her works. She narrativises poststructuralist theory, and so her thematic concerns are decentralisation, the liberatory potential of unrepressed desire, and the relationship between power and sexuality, and language and representation. Her aesthetic concerns are decidedly political: like William Burroughs, whose cut-up method she emulates, her strategies of juxtaposition, paradox, contradiction, the…

2310 words

Citation: Fare, Diane. "Kathy Acker". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 October 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12, accessed 19 March 2024.]

12 Kathy Acker 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.