Name: Aliens & Anorexia (Native Agents) (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)
ISBN: 9781584350019

Chris Kraus

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

Clara Olausson

lucinda ventimiglia

It's 1996, and Chris Kraus is in Berlin, seeking a distributor for her film Gravity & Grace, described alternately as 'an experimental 16mm film about hope, despair, religious feeling and conviction' and 'an amateur intellectual's home video expanded to bulimic lengths' ... It's 1942 in Marseille, and Simone Weil is waiting for the US entry visa that will save her from the Holocaust, while writing work described alternately as a 'radical philosophy of sadness' and 'immoral, trite, irrelevant and paradoxical' ... It's the late 90s, the millennium is approaching, and Chris Kraus is in Los Angeles, not eating, waiting for her s/m partner to reply to her emails ... It's 1943, and Simone Weil is in London, completing her project of transcendence by dying of starvation ... Filled with Chris Kraus' trademark wit and frankness, unfolding to reveal the lives of ecstatic visionaries and failed artists, Aliens & Anorexia is an audacious novel about failure, empathy and sadness.

Aliens & Anorexia

Nicholas Barnard

As the rope was tightening around my neck, an Alien made love to me. Belief is atechnology for softening the landscape. The world becomes more beautiful when God is in it. Here iswhat happens inside a person's body when they starve.Written in the shadow of Georg Buchner's Lenzat razor pitch, Aliens & Anorexia, first published in 2000, defines a female form of chance thatis both emotional and radical. The book unfolds like a set of Chinese boxes, using stories andpolemics 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," hervirtual S&M partner who's shooting a big-budget Hollywood film in Namibia while Kraus holes upin the Northwest Woods for the winter to chronicle the failure of Gravity & Grace, her ownlow-budget independent film.In Aliens & Anorexia, Kraus argues for empathy as the ultimateperceptive 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 thecynicism this culture hands us through its food.

Julija

First published in 2000, Chris Kraus's second novel, Aliens & Anorexia, defined a female form of chance that is both emotional and radical. Unfolding like a set of Chinese boxes, with storytelling and philosophy informing each other, the novel weaves together the lives of earnest visionaries and failed artists. Its characters include Simone Weil, the first radical philosopher of sadness; the artist Paul Thek; Kraus herself; and "Africa," Kraus's virtual S&M partner, who is shooting a big-budget Hollywood film in Namibia while Kraus holes up in the Northwest woods to chronicle the failure of Gravity & Grace, her own low-budget independent film. In Aliens & Anorexia, Kraus makes a case 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 that this culture hands us through its food. As Palle Yourgrau writes in the book's new foreword, "Kraus's rescue operation for aliens like Weil from behind enemy lines on planet Earth is a gift, if, in the end, like all good deeds, it remains -- as Weil herself would be the first to insist -- a fool's errand."

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

Reviews

Highlights