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11/15/11Kathy Acker Empire of the Senseless

-born Karen Alexander to well-to-do, upper middle class Manhattan Jewish family inApril 1947

-raised by mother and stepfather (father abandoned pregnant mother)

-abused/raped by stepfather-adept liar-poor relationship with mother

-attended prestigious private girls schools in Manhattan, later attending Brandeis(studied with Herbert Marcuse)

-dropped out after two years and followed Marcuse to UC San Diego, got a degree inClassics

-briefly married to Robert Acker-moved to San Francisco and joined mail art community (collaborating and sending

artwork through mail)-1973- moved to New York and found out she was known for her mail art

-1973/74- met William Burroughs, Sylvaire Latrouge, Jerome Rothenberg, CindySherman, Sherri Lavigne

-influenced by visual art, burgeoning punk scene-cohabitated with Alan Sondheim

-performed in strip clubs, posed for pornography-The Blue Tape- made with Sondheim, video of sexual experimentations

-Politics, 1973-The Childlike Life by the Black Tarantula, 1975

-The Other Life of Toulose Lautrec-cut-up experiments, rewriting experiments, collage

-plagiarism and appropriation of established, canonical images-Barbara Kruger and Richard Prince

-discovered work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guitarre (Anti-Oedipus )-text as found object

-split identity vs. central identity-difficulty establishing I, What is I?, narrator

-pirate or outlaw figure (as I)-1984- Blood and Guts in High School

-1986- moved to England, Blood and Guts banned in Germany-1988- Empire of the Senseless

-1996- Pussy King of the Pirates, last book, diagnosed with breast cancer, underwentdouble mastectomy

-abandoned conventional medicine and treatments-attempted alternative treatments for a year before dying in Tijuana, Mexico

-1997- Bodies of Work, published posthumously-largely influenced by Marquis de Sade and Freud

-Empire- society not defined by Oedipal taboo-Jean Genet

-1978- Kathy Goes to Haiti, popular porn novel-Empire Haiti

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-Haiti as colonized and decolonized space, hub of slavery-Zombie figure, representing colonial violence

-national belonging and political exclusion-CLR The Black Jacobins

-The Battle for Algiers

-Joan of Arc-Neuromancer-Steal everything you can William S. Burroughs

-Piracy, plagiarism, theft-Plague, AIDS, STDs

-cyborg narrative (Abhor)-global sexual pandemic

-Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV)-All humans and animals now sail on the same seas, Acker, Empire

-Center for Disease Control, 1982, coined term GRID for HIV Gay RelatedImmunodeficiency, or 4H Disease (homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroine users, and

Haitians)-pg. 110, Paris as a glass city

-pg. 134, problem of writing in postmodern complex

www.rolandcollection.com

-youtube interview with William S. Burroughs-Whos Afraid of Kathy Acker?