Aliens & Anorexia (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents) - Softcover

Kraus, Chris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1584350016 ISBN 13: 9781584350019

Publisher: MIT Press, 2000

Synopsis

As the rope was tightening around my neck, an Alien made love to me. Belief is a technology for softening the landscape. The world becomes more beautiful when God is in it. Here is what happens inside a person's body when they starve.Written in the shadow of Georg Buchner's Lenz at razor pitch, Aliens & Anorexia, first published in 2000, defines a female form of chance that is both emotional and radical. The book unfolds like a set of Chinese boxes, using stories and polemics to travel through a maze that spirals back into itself. Its characters include Simone Weil, the first radical philosopher of sadness, the artist Paul Thek, Kraus herself, and "Africa," her virtual S&M partner who's shooting a big-budget Hollywood film in Namibia while Kraus holes up in the Northwest Woods for the winter to chronicle the failure of Gravity & Grace, her own low-budget independent film.In Aliens & Anorexia, Kraus argues for empathy as the ultimate perceptive tool, and reclaims anorexia from the psychoanalytic girl-ghetto of poor "self-esteem." Anorexia, Kraus writes, could be an attempt to leave the body altogether: a rejection of the cynicism this culture hands us through its food.

About this title

Review:

"Aliens & Anorexia is a tantalizing, messy, wildly associative and often brilliant book that leaps effortlessly between autobiography, art criticism, philosophy and fiction. [...] There are more ideas on every page of Aliens & Anorexia than in most books published in the last year. It is an exciting and courageous work." Ben Ehrenreich, L.A. Weekly, (19 January 2001)

Book Description:

The searing sequel to Chris Kraus's bestselling cult classic I Love Dick

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1584350016
• ISBN 13: 9781584350019
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 244