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
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