Review: Emilia Borowska: The Politics of Kathy Acker: Revolution and the Avant-Garde

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:

In recent years, the New York novelist, poet and post-punk-icon Kathy Acker and her writings have received increased interest and critical attention resulting in a considerable corpus of texts, informed by postmodern, poststructuralist and feminist discourses. Michael Hardin’s Devouring Institutions: The Life Work of Kathy Acker (2004) and Carla Harryman’s and Avital Ronell’s Lust for Life: On the Writings of Kathy Acker (2006) have familiarized the reader with the complexity of Acker’s literary production. Polina Mackay’s and Kathryn Nicol’s study Kathy Acker and Transnationalism (2009) has proposed a more political and cross-national approach, while Georgina Colby’s Kathy Acker: Writing the Impossible (2016) has examined Acker’s experimental use of language. Following the latter’s attempt to rethink Acker’s work outside of the territory of postmodern discourse, Emilia Borowska provides an innovative reading of Acker’s novels, which successfully tackles Acker’s radical politics and revolutionary objectives.