Hackers

by Aase Berg, Johannes Göransson (Translator)

“This is a threat.” That’s how Hackers, Swedish writer Aase Berg’s seventh book of poetry, begins. Hackers is a furious, feminist book about wanting to “hack” the patriarchal system―both in the physically violent sense and in the sense of computer hacking. But Berg also reveals the ‘hag’ behind the ‘hack,’ channeling the non-compliant rage of Glenn-Close-as-bunny-boiler from Fatal Attraction. The world Berg “hags” back at is a world of sexist, capitalist, environmental, globalized violence. The fury of the hacker/hag/captive/revenger is constantly boiling up on the edges of Berg’s compounds and highways, threatening to infiltrate the center. In these spectacular battle scenes and hacked pastorals, where nature is besieged by the highways of progress and the animals don’t give a damn about the humans, the hag rises.

Genres: Poetry, Sweden, Womens, Swedish Literature

216 pages, Paperback

First published August 14, 2015

About the author

Poet, fiction writer, critic, translator, and one of the founding members of the Stockholm Surrealist Group.

Reviews

[Bjorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Cyber" i "cyberpunk" betyder "rörelse". "Punk" betyder "ta tillbaka".

Vem är vems stalker.
Konsonantkollission. För helvete.

"Langoljär" som adjektiv. Den rörelse, de möjligheter som ligger frusna, outsagda, osynliga i tingens Ordning, men som finns där.

Vem delade ut rätten till Mr Hyde-zoner?

Den ökända hästen från Troja; Natascha Kampusch och Chelsea Manning som Burroughska virus. Ta över cellerna inifrån, maskera, vänd utåt.

Låt oss kröka!

Kontrollen Berg har över språket.

Det är bara att luta sig tillbaka och åka med.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“There are three ways of handling danger:

Fight,
Flight
or Play Dead

We made different choices
This is just the beginning

Fight:
playing dead
is not the same thing
as being dead.

You ARE dead.”

[Heather Gibbons · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote a mini-review of this book for Tarpaulin Sky: https://tarpaulinsky.com/2018/03/heat...

[Ayco · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mid

[boocia]

cw: transmisogyny(?), kidnapping + abuse

i read it probably 2.5 times. i think i was esp. generous with its first-pass incomprehensibility off the back of donna harraway - there's a lot of grotesque fusions, cyborgs, and infestations in this book. and it very much feels like a book, in that i don't think each individual poem stands alone at all; they definitely are a continuous piece, with callbacks and building layers of meanings, and mutations of meanings, with each poem.

in short this book is about "female freedom", which aase berg seems to explore as this paradoxical series of relations: between being a "host" (infested w men, bad ideas), being a "horse" (a symbol of freedom that is itself domesticated), being natascha kampusch/bibiana (an actual person who was kidnapped at age 9 to 19 and afterward seemingly vociferously pushed back against perceptions of stockholm syndrome). what i found really addictive about this book was the mutations - by the end the speaker(s) are instead trojans inside a wooden horse, then there are centaurs; and the host transforms herself into some sort of hacker, inverting the relationship of infiltrated and infiltrator. in general i fuck with ideas of 'freedom' and 'power' that are about grotesque repurposing as opposed to full escape. the hacker/centaur vs harraway's cyborg is a v spicy synergy.

i also specifically think the taking of the masculinized role of 'hacker' is v evocatively post-modern(?)/late-capitalist; when literally everything (bodies, relationships) is information, systems, boundaries, the definition of hacker should be expanded.

my only v small complaint is that some of the poems made me a teensy bit nervous. not a big fan of explicitly 'women/feminist' poetry that feels a little too embodied, and in general the poems are explicitly not like, cis-body-only-body as a whole. but there's like, one v worn for 2018 vagina reference. there's also the line 'if men were smart they would try to become real women ... no ... imitation of an imitation ... ' and three pages later 'Private Manning trojanizes, then changes sex in jail where she will spend the rest of her life ... There is a female freedom'. i think respectively the lines are supposed to be (1) 'women' being the privileged revolutionary identity when deployed correctly and (2) an example of a woman infiltrating the masculine military informatics regime? but the proximity of these lines just ended up creating this unintentional sense of like policing how trans women should be to not be 'imitation of an imitation'. it feels like an accident on berg's part tho.

anyway read this collection but maybe read the cyborg manifesto first or it'll just be a little obnoxious and weird maybe

[Des Bladet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bilingual (Swedish/English) post-surrealist feminist poetry engaged with, among other things, technology. Hovers, as surrealism is meant to, around the edges of making emotional imagistic sense without appealing to reason; Berg apparently used to be a more orthodox surrealist but has tried with a great deal of success to nudge her idioms in more political/socially critical directions. I'd give it more stars if I could and if it is also the kind of thing you like you will also like it very much.

[Becky Robison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’d been slowly reading this book of poetry ever since I went to Sweden back in February, but for various reasons—including leaving it in another state—it took me a while to finish it. Berg’s mostly short poems appear in Swedish on one side of the page and in English on the other, so I used the opportunity to teach myself vocabulary and practice pronunciation (poorly, I’m sure). I suppose most Swedish language beginners don’t use ferocious feminist poetry as a textbook, but I’m not most Swedish language beginners. Overall I liked it, even if I didn’t fully understand it.

This review was originally published on my blog.

[Nicholas Trandahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aase Berg’s interconnected long poem Hackers is a rebellious discourse on violently reactive femininity, unraveling the patriarchy one jarring poetic fragment after another. Like Berg’s collection Dark Matter, I don’t believe Hackers reaches the singular perfection as With Deer, but this collection is still fantastic.

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 3 out of 5]

I missed a lot on my first read-through. The translation is excellent, seeming to maintain the energy and linguistic creativity (from endnotes and looking at original in this dual language edition). A quick read that will likely reveal more with subsequent re-reading. Initial rating 3.5.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is happening here, I have only snatches of ideas. Lol. I'm into the Trojan horse motif rolling throug here, and--much like Jaderlund's "Which Once Had Been Meadow"--this book creates mystery out of a small universe of concrete objects.

[Sophia Mautz · Rating 3 out of 5]

there are so many references / double images that add a lot of nuance and meaning to the text and i love the poetic project and hybridity but overall i found the poetry a bit too obscure (unproductive obscurity) and lacking in emotional import

[mallory payne · Rating 5 out of 5]

“cat-soft from / toxoplasma/ schizosex / Endorphia / never kills / its host world”

quite different from “with deer” and “dark matter” but not unwelcome. aase berg has this incredibly controlled way of writing about the apocalypses of life that i really enjoy.

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm excited by works like this, that take a strong tone, brash and bold in critique, but are experimental, full of unique characters and horses amidst this lush language that holds a lot of ideas, even if sometimes cryptic it gives me ideas and inspires me to think more and in new ways.

[Taylor Napolsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stimulant of a book, but it sucks your blood at the same time while you don't notice.

[(jessica) · Rating 4 out of 5]

[3.5/5]

[intet_]

kattmjuk av
toxoplasma,
schizosex

Euforinen
dödar aldrig
sin värld

p. 63

[Courtney Leblanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick fun, feminist read. Loved that both translations were shared for each poem.

[VM · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jag antar att detta innehåller viss intelligens och en rå, intensiv drivkraft i form av feministisk vrede, men det är tyvärr alldeles för politiskt simpelt för att vara intressant överhuvudtaget.

[Epifras]

vi är aonyonymous vi är legion vi förlåter aldrig vi glömmer aldri förvänta oss

[rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

"the drone will boil"

[Coco · Rating 3 out of 5]

Det fanns delar av den här boken jag tyckte så mycket om. Som sa saker jag inte visste att jag ville eller behövde höra. Men delar av den kändes som att de tappade bort sig själva. Som att de, likt någon trängd och frustrerad, snubblade runt i ett språk som knöt knutar ännu hårdare att ta sig ifrån. Och det kanske var meningen. I så fall var den här boken bättre än vad jag känner just nu.

Som det är är vi nog fortfarande lite vilsna för varandra.

[Caroline Pralin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Berg breaks down the border between reality and poetry in this manifest à la SCUM. Amazonian mutilations, kidnapped girls, intestinal parasites - this is a threat, expect us always.