Kathy Acker

by Kathy Acker

  LOTRINGER: Is that what fascinated you with S&M, the aspect of pain in relation to consciousness?

  ACKER: I think I have a fascination with power and sex. Is there a fascination with pain? I’m fascinated by the body, and pain’s part of the body, but I don’t find a fascination with pain unusual. Most people have been…It’s like the opposite of pleasure—I mean it’s not the opposite, but there’s something really interesting, especially when you work legs. There’s a certain curl that’s very painful to do, and as a bodybuilder you have to learn to get through pain. I mean, you don’t get through it, but you have to learn to just live through it. You can’t do it otherwise. Okay, your body feels this, you can deal with your body in a certain way. And at the other extreme your body feels pleasure, you’ll deal with your body in a certain way. So where your mind goes when your body feels these various things, and how the mind works with the body, is really interesting—at least to me. Is that S&M? I don’t think that’s S&M.

  LOTRINGER: S&M is also a challenge to pain, but at bottom, it’s a crash form of therapy. Self-induced shock-treatment.

  ACKER: Yeah, all those games. All that business about piercing every part of the body, it doesn’t really interest me at all. I think it’s sort of kooky. S&M is definitely a narrower category. I just get hooked on people telling me what to do, if you want to know the truth. I’m a bloody wimp, that’s what I am. Anyone tells me what to do…And then I get angry. [laughs] There’s a flaw in my character or something.

  LOTRINGER: It’s a way of exploring something, isn’t it?

  ACKER: It can be, if you make an agreement with someone.

  LOTRINGER: It could take you places you don’t want to go either.

  ACKER: Well, so does writing. So does everything else. I’ve never understood when people get majorly hurt, or into death, or any of that stuff. So I don’t know about it. And I don’t know if I have much curiosity. I have curiosity about death and pain and power relationships, but I don’t have much curiosity about, you know, what kind of bloody ribbons people can allow themselves to be beaten into, or the eating of shit, or whatever.

  LOTRINGER: There’s something very ritualistic about S&M. It’s like what I was telling you about Bataille. You really have to be—or have been—religious…

  ACKER: I’m not religious. If anything, as I said, I’m a bit of a primitive, that’s all. I mean, there’s a really stupid part of me that loves musclemen, that loves Abbott and Costello, that loves these guys in the gym that go “Huhu!” [laughs]

  LOTRINGER: S&M has also a lot to do with power. Delegating power to inflict pain over you for a purpose.

  ACKER: Well, it’s about control of the body. But are you controlling it? I used to think that bodybuilding was about controlling the body, now I’m wondering. Obviously it is in one way, but the body’s so rich: Who’s controlling it? What’s the relation between mind and body? I mean, it’s like text. When you write, are you controlling a text? Well, I’d say when you’re really writing you’re not. You’re fucking with it. And I’d say the same thing with bodybuilding when you’re going through that pain. Today I was losing stamina, so I had to learn how to work through stamina problems, fatigue. And it’s really interesting because you’re putting such pressure on your body, learning about all different ways it can fit. What you do, when you bodybuild, is work to failure. You put a frame around specific muscle groups, and you work each group to failure. Actually, I want to work past failure, which is negative work. And I think you’re doing exactly the same thing with the text.

  LOTRINGER: What’s “past failure” for a text?

  ACKER: To go into the space of wonder.

  LOTRINGER: So the artwork has become the body. You get the same kind of feedback from both.

  ACKER: Yeah. When I saw tattooing, I thought it was like the most fabulous artwork because it was so direct, it was on someone’s body. And to ask some artist to do their artwork on your body, to me it’s like, what trust! Jesus, that’s incredible art.

  LOTRINGER: On your part? On their part? On both?

  ACKER: On both. It’s a relationship.

  LOTRINGER: So you don’t even have to translate things from the artwork to the writing anymore. The writing on your body is it.

  ACKER: Yeah. Tattoo means writing. It’s how they used to write in Tahiti.

  LOTRINGER: So you got written.

  ACKER: Yeah. Someone wrote on me, which is pretty incredible.

  LOTRINGER: Do you have the same feeling that you’re transposing what the artist was doing, or saying, into writing with this kind of body-writing?

  ACKER: Well, of course. You know, it’s all the process of making. I invented someone to help me make my body. And I had to trust that person, I have to believe I like his artwork. First of all, they do it in pencil—they can erase it, so you’re not taking a huge amount of chance. You don’t say: Hi, take your needle and a ball scribbling on me! Dennis, the main guy who’s doing the tattooing, always does it in ink on me before, and I say, Na, I don’t like that, or Yeah, I like that. Uh, I forgot what the point was.

  LOTRINGER: Transposing…

  ACKER: Oh, transposing…We’re always transposing ourselves. We’re always transforming ourselves, which means we’re transforming ourselves in culture. In contexts. That’s what media is, right? We transpose the information from media to ourselves. When women read women’s magazines, and they look to these anorexic models and they eat this diet and dress this way, they’re transposing. And I feel I’m of that age, since I’m no longer in my twenties and I don’t have to worry if I’m sexually attractive to men since society has told I’m not, being forty, I can do what I want with my body. And I’m having a ball doing it. I don’t think I would have had the guts to do that when I was twenty. Because there was too much on me: be pretty, be this, be that. Society’s told women: when you’re over thirty, you don’t exist.

  THE ON OUR BACKS INTERVIEW: KATHY ACKER

  BY LISA PALAC

  ON OUR BACKS

  MAY/JUNE 1991

  PALAC: Did you ever do any full-length porn films?

  ACKER: I did everything. I did voice-overs for porn films. That was the funniest part. I was supposed to be sucking someone’s cock, and I’d be sitting there gossiping with the other women instead. The director would say, “Hey! You’re supposed to be giving a blow job now!” So we’d say, “Oh, shit we can’t gossip anymore.” So we’d have to do all the slurping sounds after the fact.

  PALAC: Why did you finally quit the business?

  ACKER: The big money started coming in. Suddenly they wanted everything hard core. No more lesbian sex without heavy penetration. They started to show some hard-core S&M stuff, and there were hints that there were some bad things going on. And I don’t know…I think our business at that time was getting busted. I mean, when I started doing it, it was kind of a giggle.

  PALAC: You’ve lived in New York, London, lots of places in between, and now San Francisco. What do you like about this city?

  ACKER: San Francisco is safe. It allows plurality. It allows different sorts of lifestyles. I don’t see where else I would live in the United States. The U.S. is moving in a very utilitarian direction; frankly, the normal culture is frightening. I think that people are incredibly moralistic. They’re reactionary, violent, acting on their opinions with no thought. For example, if you don’t look mainstream, or if you’re a woman over thirty years old and you don’t have a baby, I believe you’re really in danger. San Francisco is a little haven in the midst of a really terrifying culture.

  PALAC: We hear the words censorship and obscenity so often now, we almost tune them out. Why do you think so many works that contain sexual content are under attack right now?

  ACKER: In England, it seemed more clear—censorship was used to shut out political speech. The first thing they censored was the IRA. As a matter of fact, you weren’t allowed to say the words “IRA.”

  I fear that sexual censorship here is a guise for
political censorship. I fear that the movement against sexual representation here is a movement against gay people and women. Women have been relegated to sexual fields for centuries. We were allowed to survive by use of our genitals and our sexual organs. We were prostitutes or wives. Very few women were able to survive in any other way. Economics was very deeply tied to the sexual field.

  Censorship always comes at a time when women are starting to get power. And when women start to get power there seem to be two movements. First, they want to deny their own sexuality because it is a very problematic thing. They say, “We’re not just ovaries. We’re not just cunt. We’re more than that.” This is what we saw in the first waves of feminism—women who did not want to talk about sex. Now you have women wanting to reclaim sexuality. Women saying that sexuality isn’t dirty; sexuality isn’t something that should be X-rated. Sexuality is something that we were defined by, and now we want to define it. Every time there is a wave of censorship this is what I think it is about. It’s not against sexuality—it’s against women wanting to reclaim sexuality and therefore be truly equal with men.

  PALAC: Do you watch video porn?

  ACKER: No, I don’t like visual porn. I’ve never really liked shots of genitals. I like soft core. Written porn, I love. I read all the porn I can get.

  PALAC: What’s your opinion on this new wave of women’s erotica?

  ACKER: Theoretically, it’s terrific. But most of the stuff I see isn’t very good. The writing is very flowery and soft-core and not very well written. I’m more interested in the actual writing than I am in what’s being written about, or I see the two as coming together. Just because it’s by a woman and it’s about sex isn’t enough. There’s a great piece in the new High Risk anthology by Ana María Simo. It’s the first time I’ve heard of her. It’s about jealousy.

  PALAC: Hey, I heard a rumor that all the writers in that book have been denied funding by the NEA.

  ACKER: [laughs] Oh that’s bullshit! My piece isn’t even about sex! It’s about Mayor Koch.

  PALAC: Oh, what about Mayor Koch?

  ACKER: You’ll have to read it…[giggles]

  PALAC: On the definition of S&M, you’ve been quoted as saying: “The word means nothing! Zilch!” Well?

  ACKER: What I meant by “It doesn’t mean anything” is that the word “S&M” covers a variety of practices. And sometimes what is one person’s idea of S&M is definitely not another’s. S&M covers a whole lot of fetishes—including ones about shit. That particular practice—I’m appalled. I mean, it’s fine if other people do it, but not me, thank you very much.

  PALAC: But you’re into leather?

  ACKER: Yeah, I like leather.

  PALAC: And bodybuilding?

  ACKER: Yes. A few years ago, I started to go to a gym with my friend Joann. I hated aerobics. She said, “Let’s try lifting weights.” So I tried it and I loved it, and did it sporadically for a number of years. Then there came a point in my life where disaster hit from every front and I had to deal with the pain. I wasn’t good at dealing with pain. I was running away from anything that was painful. I became very interested in the body because I didn’t trust the intellectuals. I knew that this was a way to start learning about the things I really had to learn about…about the body, about pain, so I got a trainer and started taking it very seriously.

  Bodybuilding is an obsessive form of meditation. It’s about body systems, about aging—estrogen-versus-testosterone-balance as you get older. I like how my body is now. It’s functional. It’s terrific. I like to work with it and it works with my mind.

  PALAC: Would you ever compete?

  ACKER: Compete? Maybe…if I were twenty years younger I would! It’s a little like a strip routine, you know wiggling around almost naked. It brings me back to the good old days.

  PALAC: Do you like women with muscles?

  ACKER: I think bodybuilding for women is fabulous. There’s no other way about it. I think we’ve been taught to run away from our bodies. We’re not allowed to talk about our bodies. We never talk about menstruation. It’s considered dirty. Our bodies are forbidden territory. When you start bodybuilding seriously, you have to learn about your body. Your diet gets so precise. You learn the relation of yourself to any piece of shit or piss or anything. So that’s great.

  I think when women get strong it changes their relation to the world and how they feel about being on the streets. For instance, say you’re sitting somewhere on a subway or a bus. Most of the women are sitting with their legs crossed in very clenched-up positions. The men have their legs wide open and their arms are taking up two seats. That’s partly because we don’t recognize that physical space is ours. We have a right to occupy this space. And to see women who think that they have just as much right to occupy physical space as men is wonderful. So yeah, I think bodybuilding is great.

  PALAC: Do women who pump iron turn you on?

  ACKER: I love looking at women bodybuilders. I don’t know if it turns me on sexually, looking at women bodybuilders. I’m trying to think of the kinds of women that turn me on…usually no, it’s not bodybuilder types at all. I’ve never gone to bed with a woman who looks like that.

  I like sailors…sailors and boxers, especially if they have no hair on their head. I go for people with bald heads.

  PALAC: What’s this movie you’re in? The Golden Boat.

  ACKER: It’s a film by Raúl Ruiz. I have a bit part. It’s about this guy who’s a mass murderer, and I’m one of the people who gets murdered. I’m a philosophy teacher, and I say something dumb like “X is Y is Z,” and then I get murdered while I’m in the bathroom. I’ve never seen the scene, so I don’t know if it’s any good.

  PALAC: What kinds of questions are you asked most, during an interview?

  ACKER: Most people ask why I lived in England; they ask about the porn. Most of the time they’re appalled by my books because there’s so much sex and violence in them. “Why are you so violent?” they always ask.

  PALAC: Why are you so violent, Kathy?

  ACKER: Because I’m so open and honest. With you, we talked mainly about the structure of my novels, but most people are confused about the content, so they always ask about the sex and violence. And they always want to ask the forbidden question.

  PALAC: Which is?

  ACKER: Are you into S&M? But they don’t dare utter those words.

  KATHY ACKER

  BY ANDREA JUNO AND V. VALE

  ANGRY WOMEN (RE/SEARCH, 1991; JUNO BOOKS, 1999)

  Born in 1948, avant-garde novelist Kathy Acker hung out in New York with the Fluxus group and underground filmmakers in the sixties. At Brandeis University she studied with Herbert Marcuse, following him to UC San Diego. Back in New York she studied with Jerome Rothenberg and hung out in the early punk rock scene while writing art criticism, book reviews, and prose pieces. Her libretto, The Birth of a Poet, was produced as an opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

  In the past two decades, Kathy Acker has written thirteen novels, whose sexually explicit language, multiple personas, plagiarism, and sheer linguistic inventiveness embody a subversive sensibility: The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula; Florida; I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac: Imagining; The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec; Hello, I’m Erica Jong; Kathy Goes to Haiti; Blood and Guts in High School; Great Expectations; Don Quixote; My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini; Empire of the Senseless; In Memoriam to Identity; and Hannibal Lecter, My Father. During most of the eighties Kathy lived in London and Paris. Currently she lives in the Bay Area and teaches performance at the San Francisco Art Institute.

  JUNO: How has sexism affected your life?

  ACKER: All things are sexist! Pornography is sexist, books are sexist, magazines are sexist. For many historical reasons, there is this fear of sex—in women. It was a big step when women said, “We’ll start making pornography; we’ll take over those areas.” It’s fantastic that women are doing this! And men just can’t deal with it—that’s what all this
recent censorship is about: the men are freaking out!

  JUNO: In your writing, an inversion of gender sometimes occurs, where you become the male role. Can you talk about that?

  ACKER: Actually, it’s different in different books. In early books, the characters (to the extent that they were “characters”) changed gender a lot: I never got “his” and “her” right! And the dumb reason was: I just didn’t remember, I didn’t care, it meant nothing to me. Until I met Sylvère Lotringer [Semiotext(e) editor], I didn’t understand a lot of the reasons I wrote the way I did. I did things without any theory—I did whatever just seemed intuitively “right.” But I think the reason was probably my hatred of gender…a hatred of the expectation that I had to become my womb. My hatred of being defined by the fact that I had a cunt. And as a kid I really resented the fact that I couldn’t be a pirate! There were these great lesbian or bisexual pirates who would disguise themselves as men—like Anney Bonny, whose gender was only discovered after her death.

  VALE: How did you actually lose your virginity?

  ACKER: I grew up during the days of the double standard, so you weren’t supposed to have sex. But what happened was, all the boys we dated (who went to boys’ schools) would go to Europe and get seduced by older women, then come back and seduce us. I was easily seduced—it didn’t take much! I was thirteen.

  My parents were so anti-sex that they never gave me any sex education—how I avoided getting pregnant I’ll never know. I remember the time this boy and I were fucking in a cemetery. I was having my period and he thought he had taken away my virginity, so he got all romantic. I couldn’t tell him otherwise, because he was really into this High Romance of Virginity. But that was my first orgasm—right away I understood: “Wow this is what it’s all about! Shit!”