When the Sick Rule the World by Dodie Bellamy

When the Sick Rule the World by Dodie Bellamy

A writer takes on subjects as varied as vomit, Kathy Acker's wardrobe, and Occupy Oakland, in lyric explorations of illness, health, and the body.

A moving meld of essay, memoir, and story, When the Sick Rule the World collects Dodie Bellamy's new and recent lyric prose. Taking on topics as eclectic as vomit, Kathy Acker's wardrobe, and Occupy Oakland, Bellamy here examines illness, health, and the body-both the social body and the individual body-in essays that glitter with wit even at their darkest moments.

In a safe house in Marin County, strangers allergic to the poisons of the world gather for an evening's solace. In Oakland, protesters dance an ecstatic bacchanal over the cancerous body of the city-state they love and hate. In the elegiac memoir, "Phone Home," Bellamy meditates on her dying mother's last days via the improbable cipher of Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Finally, Bellamy offers a piercing critique of the displacement and blight that have accompanied Twitter's move into her warehouse-district neighborhood, and the pitiless imperialism of tech consciousness.

A participant in the New Narrative movement and a powerful influence on younger writers, Bellamy views heteronormativity and capitalism as plagues, and celebrates the micro-revolts of those on the outskirts. In its deft blending of forms, When the Sick Rule the World resiliently and defiantly proclaims the "undeath of the author." In the realm of sickness, Bellamy asserts, subjectivity is not stable. "When the sick rule the world, mortality will be sexy," Bellamy prophesies. Those defined by society as sick may, in fact, be its saviors.

Bellamy, Dodie: - Dodie Bellamy is a novelist, nonfiction author, journalist and editor, known for her non-traditional use of sexuality, politics, and narrative experimentation. Her work is frequently associated with that of Dennis Cooper, Kathy Acker, and Eileen Myles. She is one of the originators in the New Narrative literary movement, which attempts to use the tools of experimental fiction and critical theory and apply them to narrative storytelling. Her Ugly Duckling chapbook BARF MANIFESTO was named best book of 2009 under 30 pages by Time Out New York. Other books include the buddhist, ACADEMONIA, Pink Steam, THE LETTERS OF MINA HARKER, and CUNT-UPS, which won the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award for poetry. Recent projects include CUNT NORTON (Les Figues, 2013), in which she takes the second edition of the Norton Anthology of Poetry and sexualizes it in the language of porn and desire; NEW NARRATIVE: 1975-1995, a Nightboat Books anthology she's editing with Kevin Killian; and When the Sick Rule the World, her third collection of essays, forthcoming from Semiotext(e). Her reflections on the Occupy Oakland movement, The Beating of Our Hearts, was published as a chapbook in conjunction with the 2014 Whitney Biennial, and THE TV SUTRAS was released by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2014.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781584351689
ISBN 10	1584351683
Title	When the Sick Rule the World
Author	Dodie Bellamy
Series	Semiotext Active Agents
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Autonomedia
Year published	2015-08-21
Number of pages	248
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.