Kathy Acker: Dead Doll Humility

GET RID OF MEANING. YOUR MIND IS A NIGHTMARE THAT HAS BEEN EATING YOU: NOW EAT YOUR MIND.

I saw Kathy Acker’s name fly by in a tweet yesterday. Her name carries power for those who remember it. Alternative and transgressive literature blossoms in today’s Internet-powered cultural scene, but there was a time (back when Ronald Reagan was President and a lot of things were lamer than they are today) when Kathy Acker was the only young punk writer in the world with any amount of fame. That was a lonely era for a serious indie voice of the streets, but Kathy Acker played her role with style and class.

She died of cancer in 1997, when she was only 50 years old and had a lot more writing to do. Looking back at her body of work today, it seems clear that empowerment was always her mission. Her literary role models were men — William S. Burroughs, Charles Olsen, Jerome Rothenberg — but her influence seems to be most strongly felt among woman writers who heard her call for empowerment via unapologetic self-expression. Her influence can be traced through many voices that have dared to be brash over the years, from Patti Smith, Mary Gaitskill, Tama Janowitz and Maggie Estep to JT Leroy, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Porochista Khakpour, Paula Bomer. Every one of these controversial writers must have had to dig deep within to find the confidence to write without fear. They may not have followed Kathy Acker’s direction, but they did walk in her trail.


Acker may be best remembered for writing very frankly about painful topics like child rape and prostitution. But she was also a blazingly original theorist with a constant urge to liberate classic fiction/poetry texts from any sense of ownership, property or meaning. She called herself a “pirate” and freely spliced together texts belonging to other writers, acting decisively upon the impulse that would eventually find expression in David Shields’ Reality Hunger. One example of a literary cut-up that did not get Kathy Acker into trouble was her novel Don Quixote, in which a terrified young woman lying on a bed in an abortion clinic transforms herself into the knight Don Quixote, and eventually selects a dog as her Sancho Panza. This book didn’t get Kathy Acker into trouble because Miguel de Cervantes was long dead.

But she did get in trouble when she cut up a comically commercial sex scene from a Harold Robbins bestselling potboiler into her own transgressive novel, and her account of the agony she went through when Harold Robbins demanded an apology (and her own publisher refused to stand behind her) stands today as a vivid, pained document of the agony of a struggling writer drowning in a world of misunderstanding. This account, titled Dead Doll Humility, may be the most accessible thing she ever wrote. If somebody wants to read one thing by Kathy Acker, this piece would be a good choice. It begins in screaming caps:

IN ANY SOCIETY BASED ON CLASS, HUMILIATION IS A POLITICAL REALITY. HUMILIATION IS ONE METHOD BY WHICH POLITICAL POWER IS TRANSFORMED INTO SOCIAL OR PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS. THE PERSONAL INTERIORIZATION OF THE PRACTICE OF HUMILIATION IS CALLED ‘HUMILITY’.

CAPITOL IS AN ARTIST WHO MAKES DOLLS. MAKES, DAMAGES, TRANSFORMS, SMASHES. ONE OF HER DOLLS IS A WRITER DOLL. THE WRITER DOLL ISN’T VERY LARGE AND IS ALL HAIR, HORSE MANE HAIR, RAT FUR, DIRTY HUMAN HAIR, PUSSY.

As the piece progresses, the author’s voice becomes tentative and weak following the repeated application of public disapproval and apathy. Dead Doll Humility presents the losing struggle of a writer clinging desperately to the right to write, against all opposition:

Want to play. Be left alone to play. Want to be a sailor who journeys at every edge and even into the unknown. See strange sights, see. If I can’t keep on seeing wonders, I’m in prison. Claustrophobia’s sister to my worst nightmare: lobotomy, the total loss of perceptual power, of seeing new. If had to force language to be uni-directional, I’d be helping my own prison to be constructed.

There are enough prisons outside, outside language.

The Los Angeles Times article by Carolyn Kellogg that caused Kathy Acker’s name to fly happily before my eyes yesterday offers some good news: a new book of letters between Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark called I’m Very into You: Correspondence 1995–1996 has just been published by Semiotext(e), which describes the correspondence as “a Plato’s Symposium for the twenty-first century, but written for queers, transsexuals, nerds, and book geeks”.

A Plato’s Symposium for the twenty-first century is a tall order. But there’s no doubt that our current epoch can use more Kathy Acker.

3 Responses

  1. Well, of course! Punk was
    Well, of course! Punk was the first step (the “first” of many in history, but the first with genuine population pressure mounting, literally forcing it to the surface).

    Something like that. Yes, kill your mind and start over. Makes sense.

  2. Poor Kathy Acker. It’s not
    Poor Kathy Acker. It’s not right that anyone goes away that soon, that early.

    I still can’t get over Joe Strummer dying at 50.

    I gave Kathy Acker a big benefit of the doubt. More than that, I went in to her books enthusiastically, thinking there would be something there.

    But, no. I did not like her writings.

    When she repeated paragraphs three times it seemed a gimmick or even worse, a filler.

    No malice toward her or her memory. Her writing just didn’t do it for me.

  3. The are no first steps only
    The are no first steps only first supposedly recognized first steps. Punk was no more forced by population pressure than was beat writing or numerous other forms of music. Population pressure forced jazz in its mainstream relevant days to the forefront as did public pressure forced rock-roll to its pinnacle .

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