Empire of the Senseless

Empire of the Senseless (1988) is Kathy Acker’s transgressive take on the cyberpunk genre, published four years after William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Dedicated to the author's tattooist, the narrative breaks traditional norms as it follows Abhor, a part-robot "construct," and Thivai, a pirate and occasional terrorist, through the ruins of a post-revolutionary Paris that has been seized by Algerian insurgents. Acker uses her signature technique of appropriation, remixing texts from Gibson to the CIA’s history of "Operation Midnight Climax," in an attempt to critique the patriarchal structures of language and capitalism. Like Burroughs, Acker treats narrative itself as a form of control, and she disrupts it accordingly.

Review copy. First printing with publisher's publicity sheet laid in.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. New York: Grove Press, 1988. ISBN: 0802110797. #11256.
Fine in fine dust jacket.