Empire of the Senseless: A Novel (Acker, Kathy)

by Kathy Acker

Paperback, 1994

Status

Available

Call number

813

Genres

Publication

Grove Press (1994), Paperback, 240 pages

Description

Originally published in 1988,Empire of the Senseless marked a turning point in Acker's wild, inimitable style. Considered one of her more accessible works, here Acker candidly addresses her lifelong obsessions: childhood and trauma, language and sexuality, criminality and corruption, oppression and rebellion. Abhor (part human, part robot) and her lover Thivai (a pirate) traverse Paris in a dystopian future, in search of a mysterious drug that Thivai needs in order to maintain his ability to love. Navigating the chaotic city, they encounter mad doctors, prisoners, bikers, sailors, tattooists, terrorists, and prostitutes, while a band of Algerian revolutionaries take over, and the C. I. A. plots to thwart them all. Sexually explicit, graphically violent,Empire of the Senseless resists the desensitizing of cultural consciousness and the disintegration of interpersonal communication. A timeless, prescient parable, it speaks profoundly to our social and political history as well as our present reality.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member ragwaine

Burroughs-like, more feeling, less ideas, more poetry. Surreal and absurd.

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LibraryThing member poetontheone

Acker's transgressive style and feminist overtones serve to illustrate a unique spin on the theme of futuristic dystopia. Though political themes penetrate the entire body of her work, here the plot itself is political. A more fleshed out work of somewhat larger scope when compared to Blood and

Guts in High School, but it doesn't have quite the same power in holding the reader's attention. Nonetheless, a phenomenal narrative full of the same magnificent language and surreal images, with a quite bizarre cast of characters.

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LibraryThing member nieva21

not a good read unless you are especially fond of robots, politics and terrorism.

LibraryThing member librarianbryan

I wonder if this book were afraid that wouldn't happen in this one. After discovering Acker's work, I sought this title out therefore it is harder to relate to if you are not an android. Abhor and Thivai are two terrorists who need a drug (or something) as I write this and now the book makes more

sense. They help bring about an Algerian revolution in an alternate universe Paris, and maybe that is why every thought they have is insane. It's an amazing thing.The main characters still murder the people they need the most, in case you could be published post-9/11? It is still not as wonderful as Blood and Guts and High School, but Acker's goals here are far more inhuman and as a second dose after reading about its romantisation of terrorism and its appropriation (aka copyright rape) of William Gibson's Neuromancer. I'm figuring it out to stay alive. It is hard for the reader to remember that, hey, their brains are rotting, but they never get their drug (or whatever it is) and their minds tend to come apart. We forget when they forget.

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