Rubbing Out Forever or Cutting Up? Dialectics of the Mystical and the Subversive Attitude to Language in William Burroughs’ The Nova Trilogy

ABSTRACT

The article sets out to explore what role Burroughs’ critique of language, his famous “word virus” theory plays in his overall social commentary present in his Nova Trilogy. It argues that even though Burroughs can be called a fresh social critic of his times, anticipating and being in dialogue with a number of influential cultural theories, what makes him distinct is his placing language as the ultimate foundation of whatever he satirizes or derides via his fiction. More importantly, however, the article traces how Burroughs keeps being trapped in a dialectic of two poles of countercultural approach to language. On the one hand, he yearns to go beyond language, aligning himself with the mystical tradition of the likes of Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts or Allen Ginsberg. On the other hand, his overall pessimism and skepticism throws him into the arms of the bohemian-rooted Dadaist subversion of language partly reinforced by the theory of General Semantics and exemplified in his cut-up technique. Burroughs, however, never fully commits to the subversion, working from within language and never lets go of the dream to “rub out the word forever” and “reach silence on objective levels.”

KEYWORDS:

• William S. Burroughs
• cut-up
• mysticism
• counterculture
• Beat Generation
• General Semantics
• Aldous Huxley
• language

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See for example an important study by Stephenson for a completely different take, focusing on gnostic aspects of Burroughs’ spirituality.

2. For a detailed overview of Burroughs’ anticipation of and relation to various forms of Theory see the essays collected in Schneiderman and Walsh.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bartosz Stopel

Bartosz Stopel is an assistant professor at Institute of Literary Studies, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. His research interests involve narratology, literary esthetics and American postwar counterculture.