Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947 [disputed] – November 30, 1997) was an American experimental novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, critic, performance artist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that dealt with complex themes such as childhood trauma, sexuality, language, identity, and rebellion. Her writing incorporates pastiche and the cut-up technique, involving cutting-up and scrambling passages and sentences; she also defined her writing as existing in the post-nouveau roman European tradition. In her texts, she combines biographical elements, power, sex and violence.
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Kathy Acker in the context of Postmodern literature
Postmodern literature is a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, and intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues. This style of experimental literature emerged strongly in the United States in the 1960s through the writings of authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Philip K. Dick, Kathy Acker, and John Barth. Postmodernists often challenge authorities, which has been seen as a symptom of the fact that this style of literature first emerged in the context of political tendencies in the 1960s. This inspiration is, among other things, seen through how postmodern literature is highly self-reflexive about the political issues it speaks to.
Precursors to postmodern literature include Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605–1615), Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1760–1767), James Hogg's Private Memoires and Convessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), and Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957), but postmodern literature was particularly prominent in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 21st century, American literature still features a strong current of postmodern writing, like the postironic Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), and Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad (2011). These works also further develop the postmodern form.
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