SOURCE: "'Now Eat Your Mind': An Introduction to the Works of Kathy Acker," in Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 9, No. 3, Fall, 1989, pp. 37-49.

In the following essay, Friedman provides an overview of the intellectual, cultural, and literary contexts in which Acker's fiction, according to Friedman, is "designed to be jaws steadily devouring—often to readers' horror and certainly to their discomfort (which is part of the strategy)—the mindset, if not the mind of Western culture."

GET RID OF MEANING. YOUR MIND IS A NIGHTMARE THAT HAS BEEN EATING YOU: NOW EAT YOUR MIND.

      —Kathy Acker, Empire of the Senseless

In A 1984 Artforum article, "Models of Our Present," Kathy Acker summarizes some current models of time and knowledge in theoretical physics and applies them to personal time and personal knowing. These theories, including the principle of "local causes," quantum mechanics, and the Clauser-Freedman experiment, interrogate, according to Acker...