SEXUALITY AND POLITICS IN KATHY ACKER’S BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL
Kathy Acker is a Punk, Queer, Novelist, Experimental writer and Feminist theorist of the late1970s. Her novels possess the richness of the intellectual and serious commitments and explore the issues of sexuality and political powers in the late twentieth century America. Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School has testified a lot of thematic studies such as feminism, Marxism, sexuality, political struggles and radical feminism etc. This paper aims to investigate the concept of sexuality and political struggles in Acker’s novel Blood and Guts in High School. Janey, in which the protagonist travels towards her self-destruction, her oedipal relationship and finally ability to find her own voice. The novel replicates the psychosexual struggles in the western civilization. This paper focuses on the events of western civilization, the forms of oppressions including such as patriarchy, racism and heteronormativity. Her novel seeks to destroy the visual history of femininity that has been constructed by male-driven literary culture and oppression of capitalism. Acker has become a rebellious feminist icon of contemporary American fiction. Her punk feminism can be seen as modified continuation of revolutionary feminism in punk literature. Many contemporary writers draw inspiration from her works.
Sexuality, Slavery, Capitalism, Politics, Death