Expropriating the canon: on Kathy Acker’s plagiaristic poetics

Abstract

This articletraces some of the key compositional strategies deployed by experimental U.S. writer Kathy Acker (1947–1997). These include citations, pseudo-citations, translations, pseudo-translations, the ventriloquistic exploitation of other authorial signatures, or their figuration within Acker’s own narrative fiction. Given its polyvocal, multi-layered and palimpsestic composition, Blood and Guts in High School(1984) provides a strong example of the poetic and political efficacy of such concerted acts of textual transgression. Conceptually motivated, these speak to a programmatic critique of the forceful authority of the Western tradition, and of Western literature in particular (both as an institution and as a history). By keying into specific moments in Acker’s work, with a particular emphasis on Blood and Guts in High School, this article aims to demonstrate the importance of textual expropriation for Acker’s sustained invectives against the regulatory ideals that definethe contemporary novel, along with those principles governing the legitimacy of literary authorship and literary creativity.