ABSTRACT
Part II of the study changes focus from how and why Acker makes a punk writing, to what she does with it in terms of sociopolitical critique—her tropology of fin-de-siècle America with the punk girl as the heroine. Chapter 5 discusses Acker’s breakthrough novel, Blood and Guts in High School to examine its engagement with the legacy of the sexual revolution for women. Using a mutant genre of women’s desire comprised by the American teen novel and the novel of women’s quest for sexual liberation, Acker fictionalises the training of Janey the punk girl for the deregulated circuits of sexually liberated America. Janey’s Bildung exposes the underlying dynamics of heterosexual desire for women through the motifs of high school, sadomasochism, and slavery.
