"I mean, they censor your work when they're scared of it"
About this Quote
Censorship is framed here less as moral policing than as a panic reflex: power flinching when it feels itself being touched. Acker’s line has the offhand cadence of someone who’s seen the machinery up close - “I mean” as a shrug that doubles as an accusation. It’s not a lofty defense of free expression; it’s a street-level diagnosis of institutional fear. The punch is in the reversal: the censored work isn’t dirty or dangerous because authorities say so; it becomes “dangerous” precisely because it reveals what those authorities can’t comfortably manage.
The subtext is strategic. Acker, whose writing spliced pornography, plagiarism, feminist theory, and punk sabotage, treated the page like a place to commit social disobedience. When she says “your work,” she’s recruiting the listener into that posture: if they’re trying to stop you, you’ve hit a nerve. It’s an insult to the censor and a dare to the artist.
Context matters because Acker’s era wasn’t just about government bans; it was about gatekeepers - publishers, obscenity laws, funding bodies, moral crusaders - deciding what kinds of bodies and desires were allowed to be legible. Her work made the female voice abrasive, explicit, unmanageable. That’s exactly what fear looks like in cultural institutions: not always a dramatic prohibition, often a quiet refusal to distribute, review, teach, or bankroll. The line works because it strips censorship of its usual self-justifications and exposes it as a tell: if they’re scared, you’re not irrelevant.
The subtext is strategic. Acker, whose writing spliced pornography, plagiarism, feminist theory, and punk sabotage, treated the page like a place to commit social disobedience. When she says “your work,” she’s recruiting the listener into that posture: if they’re trying to stop you, you’ve hit a nerve. It’s an insult to the censor and a dare to the artist.
Context matters because Acker’s era wasn’t just about government bans; it was about gatekeepers - publishers, obscenity laws, funding bodies, moral crusaders - deciding what kinds of bodies and desires were allowed to be legible. Her work made the female voice abrasive, explicit, unmanageable. That’s exactly what fear looks like in cultural institutions: not always a dramatic prohibition, often a quiet refusal to distribute, review, teach, or bankroll. The line works because it strips censorship of its usual self-justifications and exposes it as a tell: if they’re scared, you’re not irrelevant.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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