Philosophy for Spiders

Philosophy for Spiders

On the Low Theory of Kathy Acker

  • Author: Wark, McKenzie
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • ISBN: 9781478013754
  • eISBN Pdf: 9781478021988
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2021
  • Month: August
  • Pages: 216
  • Language: English
It's time to recognize Kathy Acker as one of the great postwar American writers. Over the decades readers have found a punk Acker, a feminist Acker, a queer Acker, a kink Acker, and an avant-garde Acker. In Philosophy for Spiders, McKenzie Wark adds a trans Acker. Wark recounts her memories of Acker (with whom she had a passionate affair) and gives a comprehensive reading of her published and archived works. Wark finds not just an inventive writer of fiction who pressed against the boundaries of gender but a theorist whose comprehensive philosophy of life brings a conceptual intelligence to the everyday life of those usually excluded from philosophy's purview. As Wark shows, Acker's engagement with topics such as masturbation, sadism, body-building, and penetrative sex are central to her distinct phenomenology of the body that theorizes the body's relation to others, the city, and technology.
  • Cover
  • Contents
  • Part I. The City of Memory
    • The First Resort
    • Bestiary
    • Woolloomooloo
    • Spider_cat
    • I’m Very into You
    • San Francisco, 1995
    • The Concept of the Body
    • Body and Body: Flesh
    • Dildocentrism
    • Kathy’s Girl, In and Out
    • Further Outings
    • Wardrobe
    • Transitive
    • Mouth of Truth
    • New York, 1995
    • Bridge and Tunnel
    • Topping (1)
    • Topping (2)
    • Ring
    • Noise
    • Memory Is Redundant
    • The Viewing Room
    • New York, 2000
  • Part II. A Philosophy for Spiders
    • Null Philosophy
      • Spiders
      • Philosophy
      • Selving
      • Wonder
      • Writing
    • First Philosophy
      • Exteriority
      • Emotions
      • Memory
      • Time
      • Narrative
      • Eye
      • Boredom
      • Solitude
      • Dreams
      • Imagination
      • Body-work
      • Hand-jobbing
      • Hand-writing
    • Second Philosophy
      • Inheritance
      • Fathers
      • Mothers
      • Library
      • Desire
      • Sex
      • Penetration
      • Misandry
      • Rape
      • Masochism
      • Women
      • Engendering
      • Love
      • Death
    • Third Philosophy
      • Cities
      • Sex-work
      • Art-work
      • Fame-work
      • Capitalism
      • Post-capitalism
      • History
      • Politics
      • Culture
      • Agency
      • Girls
      • Revolution
      • Holes
      • Fiction
      • Détournement
      • Myth
      • Nature
  • Afterword. Dysphoric
  • Acknowledgments
  • Reading List
  • Index

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER

By subscribing, you accept our Privacy Policy