RUS: What did they come up with?
KA: Well, they looked at tribal models and how they dealt with sexual stuff and sacrifice and property -- the joys that aren't based on economic accumulation and the workaday world, but based on giving it all up -- not having that specific, controlling, imprisoning "I." He wasn't a Freudian. He was much more interested in the tribal model where everything is on the surface and you deal with sexual stuff the same way you deal with economic stuff and social stuff.
He was a very proper person, a librarian. Bataille's main enemy was Jean Paul Sartre -- Bataille wasn't an upper-class intellectual and he took a lot of pressure because of that. Sartre wrote this really horrible article about Bataille and sort of kept his work from getting recognized.
RUS: When you sit down to write, do you empty your mind to see what comes up?
KA: Lately I've been working on narrative, so I don't do it that way now. But I'm starting to worry about self-censorship -- that I might be internalizing some shit. I might be writing what people expect me to write, writing from that place where I might be ruled by economic considerations. To overcome that, I started working with my dreams, because I'm not so censored when I use dream material. And I'm working at trying to find a kind of language where I won't be so easily modulated by expectation. I'm looking for what might be called a body language. One thing I do is stick a vibrator up my cunt and start writing -- writing from the point of orgasm and losing control of the language and seeing what that's like.
KA: Oh, everybody knows that you're a sexist pig, R.U. Bikini Kill is cool! When I was in Seattle, this group had me judge a poetry reading contest and pick out somebody to do a reading with me. So there's this really cute, hot girl. So I said, "Yeah, man, her!" I asked her, "What are you doing poetry for? You should start a band." So she started Bikini Kill. She was cool.
RUS: I've always advocated replaceable parts.
KA: Girls packing are so sexy. And girls going down on girls. Every man's gonna get off on seeing some girl packing -- and every girl's gonna get off. I saw this video that teaches girls how to ejaculate. So now we can just come on some guy's face and say, "Eat it! Smudge it in."
RUS: I guess that covers writing then.
KA: Right.
"Dead Doll Humility" -- in Postmodern Culture, an electronic journal.
"Obsession" -- in Postmodern Culture.
GRRRLS WITH COCKS
RUS: We've got to do something about this San Francisco wild girl scene. It's like Burroughs' wild boys turned out to be wild girls! I think there's something here that's even cooler than Riot Grrrls. Riot Grrrls are really PC.
But Tribe 8 is really rad. It's way beyond Bikini Kill. I mean, for years we've had all this feminist crap of "It's not fair" or "We want the power," and here comes along some girls who don't give a shit, don't dislike men, have a good time and are for total revolution -- and also, like, "We've got cocks too!"
I mean, packing is gonna make a major revolution! And the only thing guys have to learn is that there's nothing wrong with dicks and cocks, but don't think you've got the only cocks in the world.
Works by Kathy Acker on the Net
"The Language of the Body" -- in CTHEORY, an electronic review of theory, technology and culture.