Politics of Kathy Acker

Emilia Borowska lectures in American Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London and is a former visiting research fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. She has published articles on Kathy Acker and her recent essay, 'Politics, Passion and Abstraction in Kathy Acker’s “Russian Constructivism”', was awarded a special commendation by the Contemporary Women’s Writing journal, Oxford University Press.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction 1. ‘The Revolution Glitters’: Revolutionary Terrorism in the 1970s Works2. (K)night Time: Cynicism in Don Quixote3. Politics, Passion and Abstraction in ‘Russian Constructivism’4. ‘Beneath the Paving Stones’: The Politics of Proximity in Empire of the Senseless and the Situationist Avant-Garde5. Searching for the Subject: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune in In Memoriam to IdentityConclusionNotesSelect BibliographyIndex

Borowska skillfully analyses Acker’s shrapnel-like thoughts through study of her readings about the revolutionary ideas manifested in the events of May 1968, from which radiate political and literary reverberations of other key moments of political crisis in modern history. This is a deeply learned exploration of Kathy Acker’s political-philosophical quest.