ABSTRACT
Acker, I contend, is one of the most theoretically engaged fiction writers of the closing decades of the twentieth century. Accordingly, this chapter explores the intellectual frameworks Acker draws upon, and her mode of engagement with them in her writing and in her public persona, making her a ‘punk lay theorist’. While Colby is correct to locate Acker within the post-World War II literary avant-garde, more influential are the writers and theorists who can be described as part of an earlier European avant-garde and counter-Enlightenment tradition, such as the Marquis de Sade, Georges Bataille, Arthur Rimbaud, and Antonin Artaud, which gains renewed prominence in poststructuralism and postmodern theory of the 1970s onwards. By examining interviews and novels, I demonstrate that Acker ‘repossesses’ this largely male tradition for feminist purposes, a repossession that signifies major shifts in left-wing political paradigms.
