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Philosophy for Spiders: On the Low Theory of Kathy Acker
It's time to recognize Kathy Acker as one of the great postwar American writers. Over the decades readers have found a punk Acker, a feminist Acker, a queer Acker, a kink Acker, and an avant-garde Acker. In Philosophy for Spiders , McKenzie Wark adds a trans Acker. Wark recounts her memories of Acker (with whom she had a passionate affair) and gives a comprehensive reading of her published and archived works. Wark finds not just an inventive writer of fiction who pressed against the boundaries of gender but a theorist whose comprehensive philosophy of life brings a conceptual intelligence to the everyday life of those usually excluded from philosophy's purview. As Wark shows, Acker's engagement with topics such as masturbation, sadism, body-building, and penetrative sex are central to her distinct phenomenology of the body that theorizes the body's relation to others, the city, and technology.
216 pages, Paperback
Published September 28, 2021
31 people are currently reading
463 people want to read
About the author
McKenzie Wark
70 books464 followersMcKenzie Wark (she/her) is the author of A Hacker Manifesto, Gamer Theory, 50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International, and The Beach Beneath the Street, among other books. She teaches at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 5, 2025
Not the final word on Acker(s) but I enjoyed McKenzie’s methodology here of grouping and theming every text and treating them as multiples. Maybe some things I’d have interpreted differently but this is super valuable to me. Will buy a copy, despite it being $$$
May 31, 2022
This is KATHY ACKER Cliff notes. Which is not to say that it is not a challenging and worthwhile read. Quuite the contrary, it is the essential Ackerism's boiled down to their bas eessence. You can see the care and love (I'll be it removed) it McKenzie Wark's writing (the two were lovers).
Kathy Acker was transgressive and wrote of trans bodies in the 90s. More of a highlight on the feeeling of dysphoria in one's body and the rejection of the binary.
Kathy Acker was transgressive and wrote of trans bodies in the 90s. More of a highlight on the feeeling of dysphoria in one's body and the rejection of the binary.
May 22, 2023
Very interesting methodology. Felt like a symbiotic, interwoven reading, where Acker and Wark merged into one. Sometimes it even felt like they wrote this book together.
April 13, 2023
I picked this book up at Barnes & Noble on a whim. I'd never heard of Kathy Acker, but the title--paired with the cover image--spoke of a book too cool to pass up. And as I quickly dove into the text itself, I knew I'd found a book that would change everything.
Written by a former lover, "Philosophy for Spiders" details Acker's life and writing and how it fits into the punk, queer, and feminist movements of the 70s-80s. But in many ways, it's also a memoir about McKenzie Wark herself--her transition and gender journey--and how Acker played an important role in her life. Not only when Acker was alive, but posthumously as well.
Wark describes Acker's writing as philosophy, theory--less novels and more "big chunks of prose"--purposefully juxtaposed against the traditional "daddies" of philosopjy, like Plato. So rather than high theory, it's low. A philosophy for artists, punks, prostitutes, pirates, sailors, knights, and poets. For those on the margins.
Acker's writing is often crass and Wark doesn't shy away from this. I don't know if I'd even qualify it as startling. There's a freedom in reading about the body in a stark and unadorned manner. The margins of society--where Acker and Wark have both lived--are often viseral. And there's beauty in freely discussing the body, sex work, disease, and trauma. Acker's not afraid of subjects that are often considered taboo.
Wark isn't either. She's frank about her past relationship with Acker. Goes into quite a bit of detail, often quoting the myriad emails they exchanged over the course of their friendship. The whole book is honestly an amazing read--even if, like me, you've never read ANY of Acker's works. I found that it only inspired me to learn more about Acker, her life, and early death from cancer.
I'm not sure how to describe how reading "Philosophy for Spiders" changed me. Acker's descriptions of bodybuilding and gender really resonated. And Wark's own journey--as told through the Acker-lens--feels like a necessary viewpoint in today's anti-LGBTQ climate. It definitely wasn't an easy read (took me six months to finish) but for the first time in decades I found myself having a conversation in the margins of a text. Writing my own marginalia.
And that's not insignificant. It's practically low theory embodied. The everyday. The nobody. Figuratively and literally in the margins. I cannot recommend this book--or any of Acker's works--enough.
Written by a former lover, "Philosophy for Spiders" details Acker's life and writing and how it fits into the punk, queer, and feminist movements of the 70s-80s. But in many ways, it's also a memoir about McKenzie Wark herself--her transition and gender journey--and how Acker played an important role in her life. Not only when Acker was alive, but posthumously as well.
Wark describes Acker's writing as philosophy, theory--less novels and more "big chunks of prose"--purposefully juxtaposed against the traditional "daddies" of philosopjy, like Plato. So rather than high theory, it's low. A philosophy for artists, punks, prostitutes, pirates, sailors, knights, and poets. For those on the margins.
Acker's writing is often crass and Wark doesn't shy away from this. I don't know if I'd even qualify it as startling. There's a freedom in reading about the body in a stark and unadorned manner. The margins of society--where Acker and Wark have both lived--are often viseral. And there's beauty in freely discussing the body, sex work, disease, and trauma. Acker's not afraid of subjects that are often considered taboo.
Wark isn't either. She's frank about her past relationship with Acker. Goes into quite a bit of detail, often quoting the myriad emails they exchanged over the course of their friendship. The whole book is honestly an amazing read--even if, like me, you've never read ANY of Acker's works. I found that it only inspired me to learn more about Acker, her life, and early death from cancer.
I'm not sure how to describe how reading "Philosophy for Spiders" changed me. Acker's descriptions of bodybuilding and gender really resonated. And Wark's own journey--as told through the Acker-lens--feels like a necessary viewpoint in today's anti-LGBTQ climate. It definitely wasn't an easy read (took me six months to finish) but for the first time in decades I found myself having a conversation in the margins of a text. Writing my own marginalia.
And that's not insignificant. It's practically low theory embodied. The everyday. The nobody. Figuratively and literally in the margins. I cannot recommend this book--or any of Acker's works--enough.
August 2, 2022
++When you fuck me, I told her, I feel like a girl. "Well, it is easier to penetrate the male body with dicks than with feelings," Kathy said.++
++"But I don't need my mother's suicide to know putrescent rot when I see it. I have this society." It's not a matter of seeing mommy-daddy-me everywhere, of carrying the memory of them out into the world. It's a matter of going out in the world and then finding the world, in memory, having always been in these mother-and-father figures. How they acted as ciphers for the way gender works, or the way class works.++
++Post-capitalism adds the extraction of the value of signifieds: emotions, sensations, desires, and concepts, through the capture and ownership of signifiers. They are our feelings, lusts, needs; but owned and controlled now through their brands, copyrights, patents—through signifieds produced and distributed digitally, and that become the property of a new kind of ruling class.
This post-capitalism commodifies information rather than things. And: “Since the only reality of phenomena is symbolic, the world’s most controllable by those who can best manipulate these symbolic relations. Semiotics is a useful model to the post-capitalists.”++
++Rather than anomalies, outlaws, outliers to capitalism, the artist becomes the prototype of those subjects from whom post-capitalism extracts value in the form of surplus information. Money as information about quantity wants aesthetics as information about quality.++
++"But I don't need my mother's suicide to know putrescent rot when I see it. I have this society." It's not a matter of seeing mommy-daddy-me everywhere, of carrying the memory of them out into the world. It's a matter of going out in the world and then finding the world, in memory, having always been in these mother-and-father figures. How they acted as ciphers for the way gender works, or the way class works.++
++Post-capitalism adds the extraction of the value of signifieds: emotions, sensations, desires, and concepts, through the capture and ownership of signifiers. They are our feelings, lusts, needs; but owned and controlled now through their brands, copyrights, patents—through signifieds produced and distributed digitally, and that become the property of a new kind of ruling class.
This post-capitalism commodifies information rather than things. And: “Since the only reality of phenomena is symbolic, the world’s most controllable by those who can best manipulate these symbolic relations. Semiotics is a useful model to the post-capitalists.”++
++Rather than anomalies, outlaws, outliers to capitalism, the artist becomes the prototype of those subjects from whom post-capitalism extracts value in the form of surplus information. Money as information about quantity wants aesthetics as information about quality.++
June 21, 2025
genialna. pierwsza część książki to opis relacji Acker i Wark, a druga to skatalogowane fragmenty twórczości Acker z krótkimi wstawkami z wnioskami od Wark. wszystko przez pryzmat trans/queer teorii gender. lektura dla osób, które znają i kochają twórczość Acker.
January 30, 2026
Memoir intro is excellent and great segway to the far superior 'I'm Very Into You.' (Wark actually includes the other book's laudatory reviews in this one. Classy.) Theory bulk was a skim for me, but might return after reading a few more more Acker novels.
February 27, 2025
mad! Two favourites colliding into an academic analysis and iconic romance / fuckfest
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews