Philosophy for Spiders

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 <i>Philosophy for Spiders</i> 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.