Empire Of The Senseless - Kathy Acker

EMPIRE OF THE SENSELESS – KATHY ACKER

There is a scene in Lars von Trier's film Anti-Christ where Willem Dafoe is in the woods and he pulls back some undergrowth to reveal a fox disembowelling itself. In slow motion the fox then lifts its head and in a guttural voice says to Dafoe “Chaos reigns”. This one scene, essentially, sums up Kathy Acker's Empire Of The Senseless.

Kathy Acker ended up living in England and being the partner of writer Charles Sharr Murray before passing away in 1997 from cancer. Before this she had gained the reputation of being the enfant terrible of the New York art set and being feted by various critics for pushing the envelope of post-modern experimental writing. Kathy Acker's books were – and remain to be – shocking in terms of explicit sex and violence. The sex she wrote about being perverse and taboo, often concerning father/daughter incest and sadomasochism. The twist and consequently the turn of the screw was that it was all written by a woman and from a woman's point of view, though not in the voice of woman as victim but of a woman who enjoys and is even empowered by such things.

Empire Of The Senseless is – as it says in the title – senseless. It's a whirlpool of extreme thoughts that have no apparent connection to each other. It's a picture of delirium captured in words and flung down onto the page where those words refuse to sit still and instead wriggle and squirm around almost as if in a bid to break free from that same page. Or even as something trying to break free from the words. There is no discernible narrative, no normal grammar, and no lineage. It's an alphabet collage. A riot of words.

The obvious influence, of course, is William Burroughs, of whom Acker was once a self-confessed acolyte, and that's all well and good but it must be said that Burroughs did it better. At least in his books there was sometimes a semblance of a storyline and from his cut-ups there would often appear beautiful and even poetic descriptions and phrases. Empire Of The Senseless has none of these things though that's not to dismiss it out of hand because the best art often initially repels and confuses and often takes time for it to be understood.

There is something obviously going on within these pages that Acker was trying to capture and reveal. Something beyond words and beyond language. Whether or not she fully succeeded, however, is the question. Her words are like brambles that need to be cut through to see what lies behind. Burroughs on the other hand was of such genius that he revealed the hidden meaning of language to the reader without them even realising. In Lars von Trier's Anti-Christ, Willem Dafoe simply pulled back the undergrowth. Perhaps all that Acker was trying to reveal was the chaos? To show that behind everything is nothing but chaos? That everything indeed is chaos? An empire of the senseless? Perhaps it's all really that simple?

I don't know. I'm just curious of mind and just because I read Kathy Acker it doesn't mean I understand her. But at least I try.

John Serpico