Algeria: A Series of Invocations Because Nothing Else Works

by Kathy Acker

Novel of Kathy Acker Translated by Omid Shams

32 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1984

About the author

Born of German-Jewish stock, Kathy Acker was brought up by her mother and stepfather (her natural father left her mother before Kathy was born) in a prosperous district of NY. At 18, she left home and worked as a stripper. Her involvement in the sex industry helped to make her a hit on the NY art scene, and she was photographed by the newly fashionable Robert Mapplethorpe. Preferring to be known simply as 'Acker' (the name she took from her first husband Robert, and which she continued to use even after a short-lived second marriage to composer Peter Gordon), she moved to London in the mid-eighties and stayed in Britain for five years.

Acker's writing is as difficult to classify into any particular genre as she herself was. She writes fluidly, operating in the borderlands and junkyards of human experience. Her work is experimental, playful, and provocative, engagingly alienating, narratively non sequitur.

Reviews

[Amirsaman · Rating 3 out of 5]

ادبیات مقاومت چگونه باید باشد؟ نه تنها از ترور به مثابه دفاع حرف می‌زند، که باید شرایطی را به تصویر بکشد که آدم‌های مستعمره‌نشین را روانی کرده. اما این به تصویر کشیدن، (هنرِ کتی اکر این‌جاست)، در خودِ شیوه‌ی روایت کردن اتفاق می‌افتد؛ این پس و پیش و پریدن و بازگشتن. مقاومتی نسبت به هر دو گفتمانی که در آن زن‌ها چیزی نیستند بیش از آلت تناسلی، و مردها/پلیس‌ها هرزه‌هایی چشم‌چران. این مقاومت با نمایش رادیکال بُعد غیربورژوایی و نامتمدن --از نظر غربِ-- سکس، تاثیر ضداستثماری‌اش را عریان‌تر از هر ادبیاتی بر خواننده باقی می‌گذارد.

[Narjes Dorzade]

آناییس نین اروتیک را برای اروتیک می‌‌نوشت؛اینکه زن هم ابراز کند میل را و خود متن هم به لمسِ تنانه‌‌‌گی برسد و‌ از انقیاد مرد‌سالاری یا فی‌الواقع توصیفِ مرد سالار زن رها شود. اما در اَکر قضیه متفاوت است؛ بدنِ توصیفیِ اَکر بدنی سیاسی و زخم خورده و در پی رهانیدن خود است‌.بدنی به تقریب مرد سالار که بسیار شکننده است و تلاش می‌کند که از این سلطه رها شود؛ولی صرفا بدل می‌شود به یک صدا؛سانتاگ در جایی نوشته که کارکرد متن همین است که صدا را آشکار کرد و جرعه‌ای نور به آن بتاباند. کارِ اَکر دقیقا همین است تاباندن نور به بافتِ بدن زن تا خودش را به منزله‌ی آوایِ غریقی در حال احتضار بشنود و برای رهایی از این زخمِ لجام‌گسیخته تلاش کند

[Maryam Shahbazi · Rating 2 out of 5]

همه‌ی آدمهایی که ما ازشان می‌ترسیم، که رویاهای زمردین و رشک برانگیز ما را نابود می‌کنند، که هلال ظریف لبخندهایمان را می‌شکنند، آنها که هیچ سوالی از ما ندارند، اما ما سوالهای عجیبی از آنها داریم:
آنها کی هستند؟

[Jack Rousseau · Rating 4 out of 5]

The following may contain coarse language and mature themes. Readers discretion is advised.

ALGERIA
A SERIES OF INVOCATIONS
BECAUSE NOTHING ELSE WORKS

THE LAND IN ALGERIA IS PINK
LIFE IN THIS AMERICA STINKS

CUNT

1979, RIGHT BEFORE THE ALGERIAN REVOLUTION BEGINS, THE CITY IS COLD AND DANK...

1
THE STUD ENEMY

I am fucking you and you are coming you have a hard time coming you breathe hard you have periods when you strain to come then your cock withers you strain to come again. I hear you I see you I don't feel I am doing anything to help you the rhythm is so steady I come jagged to your steady rhythm my coming is insignificant compared to your building. You gasp. You are three laps away. Oh I am coming again. My coming is always so unexpected. I want you to come. I want you to come. I want you. I want you. When you come I never come you are unable to move it is always so unexpected.
I leave Kadar because I live in New York City and Kadar lives in Toronto. In New York I feel I''m a jagged part skin walking down the street. I feel part of my being no longer is. That is disgusting. That is an outrage.
I have to leave the man I love because I have no money and he has no money. I want to bust up the government to destroy every government that's telling me what to do, controlling the me that I most want to be me, bust up the society that causes government, the money that denies feeling and irrationality I hate.
Separation from Kadar makes me have to fill that separation with nothing, makes me grab at everyone, makes me hate everyone for me every single thing is equal to every other single thing: I have to get to you. I have to get to you.
I HATE equals I LOVE YOU.
Here in New York, every morning I wake up, I don't want to be awake. I have to persuade myself to wake up. I have to use my will to get food in my mouth because my heart sees no reason for anything. I don't feel unhappy. I don't think my life's repulsive even though I have no money for food I have to beg friends for food. I don't care about poverty. I want.
Kadar and I write each other a lot. I write Kadar I'm a terrorist which is obviously a lie. Kadar writes me he's waiting on a subway platform when the subway comes he doesn't know whether to throw himself under it or walk into it when he gets home sticks a knife into his own hand beats his head against the wall. I write we're not going to see each other again because we live in separate cities and we have no hope of attaining money. Kadar wirtes me if he doesn't see me soon he'll go crazy.
The Algerian revolution began on May 8, 1945, in Setif, a largely Muslim town 80 miles west of Constantine. The town inhabitants were preparing to celebrate the Nazi capitulation to Western European forces of the previous night. The Algerians had always passively resented their French occupants. The newly formed nationalist movement Parti du Peuple Algerien (P.P.A.) was the first occasion for direct Algerian anger. Right before the anti-Nazi celebration, the French sent the leader of the P.P.A., Messali Hadj, to jail. The Muslim population of Setif wanted the anti-Nazi celebration to become a strong suggestion that the French leave Algeria tot he Algerians.
Actually there was no such important rational plan. All people are hungry, wanting. Hungry people do not act by rational plans, but by instinct. During the anti-Nazi celebration, a French policeman saw a beautiful Algerian boy, got a hard-on, couldn't tell what he should do. The Algerians were carrying their green-and-white national flag and banners saying "Long Live Messali" "Free Messali" "for The Liberation Of The People, Long Live Free And Independent Algeria!" Instead of fucking him up the ass, the cop shot the beautiful Algerian boy in the stomach. People act in accordance with the energy levels of their situations. The Muslims jumped the Europeans. Anger was out on the streets.
The next week the Europeans murdered 45,000 Muslims.
Over the phone I tell Kadar to come to New York. He phones me he's planning to come he doesn't have any money he needs to find free rides each way and some free money. We're both feeling desperate.
Kadar says he'll come to New York he'll borrow the money. I tell him if he can't get hold of the money, he's not old enough to have me. I'm forgetting who Kadar is. My forgetting get me scared cause I'm desperate to have someone else in my life.
I decide as if the decision is no part of me I stick with Kadar. I ask him when are you coming to New York? Kadar says he'll be here in three days because he's been able to borrow the money. I love him. I don't want him to come here, break into my isolation. My body desperately wants a cock insider her.
Before and after Setif, the French colonists were controlling more and more of Algeria and decimating more and more Algerians. By 1954 an average European in Algeria owned ten times the land an average Algerian owned and earned 25 times as much moola. The French pumped the Algerians full of penicillin and other antibiotics so the Algerians would have more kids. All these kids had no way to eat so they'd do anything for money. They were dispossessed de-everything-ed. The French Arab Culture ministers told the Arabs they'd have to stop speaking and writing their language, Arabic. They told the Arab women their Arab men had made them into slaves.
Over half-a-million Algerian Muslims a year fled to France to the garbaged cities in which they worked for French bosses for almost nothing though to them it was a lot because in Algeria the average Muslim worker earned twenty-two cents a day if he was lucky one-ninth of the population was unemployed and earned nothing.
I, Omar, live alone in a room. I almost never leave my room. I am lonely out of my mind sometimes. A lot of this time I worry a lot about money because for the last three months I have owned about ten dollars a week I am two months behind on rent I hate all other people; I am unable to fuck I am horny; I see nobody I am scared I am in danger kill kill; I am unable to kill my grandmother who is rich many people kill many people in wars I hate myself because I do not kill; because I do not walk out of my room.
Whenever a cock enters me every night three nights in a row, I ask myself regardless of who the cock belongs to should I let my SELF depend on this person or should I remain a closed entity. I say: I'm beginning to love you I don't want to see you again. The man thinks I'm crazy so he wants nothing to do with me.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SEX
BECAUSE IT BREAKS THE RATIONAL MIND

The French police fastened the gégène (an army signals magneto) electrodes to the Algerian rebel's ears and fingers. A flash of lightning explodes next to the man's ears he felt his head racing in his breast The cops turned up the electricity. Instead of those sharp and rapid spasms, the Algerian felt more pain, convulsed muscles, longer spasms. The cop placed the electrodes in his mouth. The currents plastered his jaws against the electrodes. Images of fire luminous geometric nightmares burned across his glued eyelids. While the Algerian longed for water, they dumped his head into a bucket of ice-cold liquid until he had to breathe again. A fist big as an ox's ball slammed into his head. The screams of other prisoners were all around him. He no longer knew he was in pain, pain was wrong, living wasn't a constant fire of torture and disgust The moment before the Algerian went crazy and accepted horror as usual, his greatest fear and torment was this consciousness that he, the Algerian, is about to go crazy, has to give up his mind which is anger and accept the horrible inequality, the French way of living he is fighting against.

THE PROBLEM OF WE THE COLONIZED

All those people of whom we are afraid, who crush the jealous emerald of our dreams, who twist the fragile curve of our smiles, all those people we face, who ask us no questions, bu to whom we put strange ones:
Who are they?
What can our enthusiasm and devotion and madness achieve if everyday reality is now a tissue of lies, a tissue of cowardice, a tissue of contempt for human mentality?
The degree of alienation of the people who gave me this world seems frightening to me. Alien to alienation, we now have to live depersonalized or....
Right no there is no difference between a legal and a criminal act. Lawlessness, inequality for the sake of desire, muli-daily murders of human beings have been raised to the status of legislated middle-class principles.
This social structure negates our beings, makes us who are without into nothings. If we hope: if we talk of or search for love, this hope is not an open door to the future, bu the illogical maintenance of a subjective attitude in organized contradiction with reality.
Beneath the lousy material way we live, beneath our petty crimes, we want to eat food without roach-eggs and we want to love people. I think a society that drives its members to desperate solutions is a non-viable society, a society to be replaced.

HOW CAN I WHO AM DISINHERITED ACT?

I have to make Kader here even if he isn't here. I talk to Kader on the streets. I write down the conversations I have with Kader over the phone. I use Kader for everything. I can't write down what I think I should be writing Kader's thoughts keep interrupting me. I have to fuck I have to fuck I have to fuck I
I think that for a kid American family life is so bad (cause the parents, taking shit from their parents, bosses, the media, etc., have only their kid to dump on), that all a kid can do these days by the time he has his first chance to try to control a little of his life is find some decent parents so maybe he can grow up. Each young person is desperately trying to find a parent. Since there are no adults now, there are no other relationships.
Kader is in New York now. I don't feel anything for him.
[...]

[Ehsan · Rating 1 out of 5]

just waste of time