<p>This dissertation is concerned with the relationships between experiments in literature, science, and politics in twentieth-century United States culture. I argue that the three can be considered together by understanding "experimentation" as a set of processes rather than a method, and highlighting the centrality of writing and reading to experiments in all three arenas. Drawing on scientist Ludwik Fleck's concept of "valuable experiments," I read specific experiments in each field in conversation with the others, highlighting the ways in which science and politics require aesthetic structures, the ways in which science and literature reconfigure politics, and the ways in which politics and literature can intervene in and reconfigure scientific practices. Ultimately, I try to develop a reading practice that can make visible the shared transformative capacities of science, literature, and radical politics.</p><p>In the course of three chapters, I analyze the formal and conceptual innovations of writers such as William Burroughs, Ralph Ellison, and Carson McCullers, who were intimately affected by the uses of experimental science in corrective institutional practice. In doing so, I develop a concept of "experimental literature" that is distinct from avant-garde literature and can account for the investments that these writers share with scientists such as Albert Hofmann, Albert Einstein, and Margaret Mead. I argue that experimental writers denature literary genres that depend on coherent subjects, transparent reality, and developmental progress in order to disrupt similar assumptions that underpin positivist science. By understanding valuable experimental science and writing as continuous challenges to standardized scientific knowledge, I show how these writers contribute to ongoing radical social projects of queer and black radical traditions--such as those of George Jackson and the Combahee River Collective--which are grounded in knowledge as an aesthetic and political practice.</p> / Dissertation

Bibliography: leaves 396-399 / 399 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English Language and Literature, 1993

In the latter half of the 20th-century and into the 21st, William Burroughs, Samuel Delany, and bioartists such as Oron Catts, Orlan, and Stelarc have all attempted to create works which respond to the increasing biopoliticization of contemporary society. The biopolitics of today seek to regularize life and structure it according to the imperatives of economic thought, a process by which the human becomes the Foucauldian homo oeconomicus. This restricted logic of biopolitics desperately tries to cover the explosive excess of the world today, what Bataille calls general economy. The artists under consideration in this work attempt to uncover this state of excess. While they are typically seen as exploring fantastic realms of the transgressive or, in the case of bioartists, attempting to emulate science fiction, in fact it is their realism which provokes. These artists reveal the heterological body, that which cannot be contained or described by the biopolitical regime. In so doing, they rewrite our standards of taste and point the way to understandings of the human that have been otherwise unavailable to us. William Burroughs in Naked Lunch highlights the manipulability of affect in contemporary society through the reduction of the human to bare life. He uses the figure of flesh/meat as a way of depicting the heterogeneous body and to generate a counter-affect, or free-floating affect, which unlike typical affect, is not worked up into emotion. Samuel Delany, too, describes the heterogeneous or destabilized body in the heterotopia of his novel Dhalgren. While Burroughs is unable or unwilling to gesture towards the potentially radical implications of the heterogeneous body, Delany proposes a new model of community that rests upon the revelation of the heterogeneous body, a community which acts as one informed by an affirmative biopolitics. Bioart, a somewhat vexed genre of art, attempts to construct artworks that both utilize and critique new science and technology of the body. The life sciences are complicit in the rise of the biopolitical state and further the view of the human as constrained by its material substrate. Fetishistic bioart problematically reproduces a fascination with the life sciences and advanced technology. However, the bioart which I call sacred has a demystifying effect and attempts to use the knowledge gained by the life sciences to expand our understanding of the human, going beyond the bounds of that very knowledge itself. / English

Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-21T14:54:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ANDERSON COSTA.pdf: 744727 bytes, checksum: 0a870df2ba609fe6781ab8c7c1114add (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-07-02 / This text, besides being a thesis, is an account of a personal journey. The academic aim is to reflect on the possibilities of the Cut-Up Films produced by Antony Balch and William S. Burroughs as elements that destabilize perception in the context of the North-American society of the 1960s. In theoretical terms, this society finds itself in a crisis of meaning, triggered by the decadence of disciplinary spaces and by the appearance of systems of control, concepts here understood in the perspectives of Michel Foulcault and Gilles Deleuze. My hypothesis is that by the change in the perception we have of society, we go through a change in consciousness that is fundamental if we want to take more complex social changes into account. This possibility dialogizes with the beatnik ideals present in the countercultural movement that underlies the work of Burroughs and Balch. On the other hand, this work is also a personal journey in search of my own experiences. It is about a trip in search of an old car, which is a pretext for a parallel discussion on how attitudes can contribute, somehow, for a rupture in patterns of behavior and the dominating market laws. / Este texto é, além de uma dissertação de Mestrado, um relato de uma jornada pessoal. O objetivo acadêmico é refletir sobre as possibilidades dos Cut-Up Films produzidos por Antony Balch e William S. Burroughs, enquanto elementos desestabilizadores da percepção no contexto da sociedade norte-americana de meados dos anos 60. Em termos teóricos, essa sociedade encontra-se numa crise de sentido, desencadeada pela decadência dos espaços disciplinares e pelo início dos sistemas de controle, conceitos aqui entendidos pelas perspectivas de Michel Foucault e Gilles Deleuze. A hipótese considerada é que pela mudança na percepção que temos da sociedade, passamos por uma transformação da consciência, que é fundamental para se pensar mudanças sociais mais complexas. Essa possibilidade dialoga com os ideais beatniks do movimento contracultural que dá cenário ao trabalho de Burroughs e Balch. Por outro lado, este trabalho também é uma jornada em busca das minhas próprias experiências. Trata-se de uma viagem em busca de um carro antigo, o qual serve de mote para uma discussão paralela, sobre como atitudes podem contribuir, de alguma forma, com a ruptura dos padrões de comportamento e leis dominantes de mercado.

Créée en 1959 par William S. Burroughs et Brion Gysin, la technique du cut-up repose sur le découpage et le réagencement de fragments de textes d’origines diverses. Burroughs l’applique notamment dans la « trilogie Nova », composée de The Soft Machine (1961), The Ticket That Exploded (1962) et Nova Express (1964). Ce procédé de collage littéraire, qui donne à lire un texte extrêmement fragmenté, met en jeu des questions d’ordre esthétique, poétique et politique, révélatrices des évolutions socioculturelles occidentales. Ce travail consiste en une lecture historique du cut-up, qui permet d’éclairer les mutations du collage littéraire au XXe siècle. Ainsi, le cut-up trouve ses origines dans les collages de Tristan Tzara, T.S. Eliot et John Dos Passos, mais s’en distingue à bien des titres, soulignant les caractéristiques du collage littéraire moderniste. Par ailleurs, cette technique d’écriture s’apparente, notamment sur le plan de la réflexion politique, aux travaux de ses contemporains lettristes et situationnistes dans les années cinquante et soixante. Enfin, l’émergence de prolongements du cut-up dans les années soixante-dix et quatre-vingt, aussi bien en Europe qu’aux Etats-Unis, s’observe dans des champs allant de la musique populaire à la littérature, en passant par la poésie sonore. Le cut-up s’inscrit donc dans des espaces intermédiaires, entre le pictural et le littéraire, le modernisme et le postmodernisme, l’avant-garde et la contre-culture, l’Europe et les Etats-Unis. Par les questions qu’il pose, le cut-up apparaît également comme une réflexion sur le langage et plus généralement, comme une nouvelle image de la pensée : en ce sens, il révèle ses affinités conceptuelles avec les philosophies de Jacques Derrida et de Gilles Deleuze. / Pioneered in 1959 by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, the cut-up technique consists in cutting and rearranging text segments from various sources. Burroughs uses this technique most notably in The Nova Trilogy composed of The Soft Machine (1961), The Ticket That Exploded (1962) and Nova Express (1964). This literary collage process, which results in an extremely fragmented text, challenges issues of an aesthetic, poetic and political nature, and reflects the Western socio-cultural evolutions.This dissertation consists in a historical analysis of the cut-up technique, highlighting how collage methodologies used in literature have evolved during the 20th century. The cut-up method is inspired by the collage techniques used by Tristan Tzara, T.S. Eliot and John Dos Passos, but differs from them in many ways, showcasing the attributes of modernist literary collage methods. At the same time, this writing technique is related to the works by the contemporary Lettrist and Situationist movements from the fifties and the sixties, especially from a political point of view. Finally, the emergence of an extension of cut-up techniques during the seventies and the eighties, both in Europe and in the United States, can be observed in various fields, from popular music to literature, including sound poetry. Therefore, this writing technique takes its place in intermediary areas, between the pictorial and literary worlds, modernism and postmodernism, avant-garde and counterculture, Europe and the United States. Through the questions it raises, the cut-up technique also appears as a reflection on language and, more generally, as a new image of thought, and thus it reveals some of its conceptual affinities with Jacques Derrida’s and Gilles Deleuze’s philosophies.

Este trabalho apresenta uma proposta de discussão sobre a questão dos métodos aplicados à pesquisa científica na área das ciências humanas. Buscou-se identificar os pontos de aproximação e distanciamento entre ciência e arte, para analisar de que forma a produção artística pode contribuir com a pesquisa, de que modo estes dois campos do saber dialogam e quais são as suas possíveis interseções. Mais especificamente, esta dissertação propõe o uso do método do cut-up, formulado por William Burroughs, e da estética dos fanzines como afirmação das potências do falso e do simulacro, conceitos da filosofia de Gilles Deleuze. O trabalho se baseia também na noção de montagem cinematográfica e na sua relação com o cut-up, já que ambos podem operar como mecanismo articulador fundamental que justapõe imagens e textos para priorizar os efeitos de choque visual, de fragmentação, de imagens sujas e borradas que são comuns aos fanzines e a uma certa produção cinematográfica. / This work presents a discussion proposal for the question of the methods applied to scientific research in the human sciences field. The attempt was to identify the points of approach and distance between science and art, to analyze how artistic production may contribute to research, how this two fields of knowledge dialogue and which are their possible intersections. More specifically, this master thesis prompts the use of cut-up method, formulated by William Burroughs, and fanzines aesthetics, as an affirmation of the powers of the false and the simulacrum, concepts of the philoshophy of Gilles Deleuze. The work is also based on the notion of movie editing and its relation with cut-up, as both of them may operate as a prime joining mechanism which juxtaposes imagens and texts to stress visual impact, fragmentation, dirty and blurred image effects common to fanzines and a certain cinematographic production.

Este trabalho apresenta uma proposta de discussão sobre a questão dos métodos aplicados à pesquisa científica na área das ciências humanas. Buscou-se identificar os pontos de aproximação e distanciamento entre ciência e arte, para analisar de que forma a produção artística pode contribuir com a pesquisa, de que modo estes dois campos do saber dialogam e quais são as suas possíveis interseções. Mais especificamente, esta dissertação propõe o uso do método do cut-up, formulado por William Burroughs, e da estética dos fanzines como afirmação das potências do falso e do simulacro, conceitos da filosofia de Gilles Deleuze. O trabalho se baseia também na noção de montagem cinematográfica e na sua relação com o cut-up, já que ambos podem operar como mecanismo articulador fundamental que justapõe imagens e textos para priorizar os efeitos de choque visual, de fragmentação, de imagens sujas e borradas que são comuns aos fanzines e a uma certa produção cinematográfica. / This work presents a discussion proposal for the question of the methods applied to scientific research in the human sciences field. The attempt was to identify the points of approach and distance between science and art, to analyze how artistic production may contribute to research, how this two fields of knowledge dialogue and which are their possible intersections. More specifically, this master thesis prompts the use of cut-up method, formulated by William Burroughs, and fanzines aesthetics, as an affirmation of the powers of the false and the simulacrum, concepts of the philoshophy of Gilles Deleuze. The work is also based on the notion of movie editing and its relation with cut-up, as both of them may operate as a prime joining mechanism which juxtaposes imagens and texts to stress visual impact, fragmentation, dirty and blurred image effects common to fanzines and a certain cinematographic production.

Este trabalho apresenta uma proposta de discussão sobre a questão dos métodos aplicados à pesquisa científica na área das ciências humanas. Buscou-se identificar os pontos de aproximação e distanciamento entre ciência e arte, para analisar de que forma a produção artística pode contribuir com a pesquisa, de que modo estes dois campos do saber dialogam e quais são as suas possíveis interseções. Mais especificamente, esta dissertação propõe o uso do método do cut-up, formulado por William Burroughs, e da estética dos fanzines como afirmação das potências do falso e do simulacro, conceitos da filosofia de Gilles Deleuze. O trabalho se baseia também na noção de montagem cinematográfica e na sua relação com o cut-up, já que ambos podem operar como mecanismo articulador fundamental que justapõe imagens e textos para priorizar os efeitos de choque visual, de fragmentação, de imagens sujas e borradas que são comuns aos fanzines e a uma certa produção cinematográfica. / This work presents a discussion proposal for the question of the methods applied to scientific research in the human sciences field. The attempt was to identify the points of approach and distance between science and art, to analyze how artistic production may contribute to research, how this two fields of knowledge dialogue and which are their possible intersections. More specifically, this master thesis prompts the use of cut-up method, formulated by William Burroughs, and fanzines aesthetics, as an affirmation of the powers of the false and the simulacrum, concepts of the philoshophy of Gilles Deleuze. The work is also based on the notion of movie editing and its relation with cut-up, as both of them may operate as a prime joining mechanism which juxtaposes imagens and texts to stress visual impact, fragmentation, dirty and blurred image effects common to fanzines and a certain cinematographic production.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T20:21:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Wander Wilson Chaves Junior.pdf: 4677188 bytes, checksum: 1e766a16295097c3df5665183cc24c3b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-02-20 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / William Burroughs was a beat writer known by his intense relation with psychoactive substances and by his effusive critics over values with universal claims. Together with his beat friends, he invented a lifestyle that confronted the United States society of his days by certain material divestment and the incorporation of cultural elements and social types considered morally reprehensible, rejected or stigmatized such as junkies, gays, blacks and indigenous people. Among the beats, friendship was a way of life invention. Burroughs presents his courage of truth by clashing with the prohibitionism, attacking the medical concept of addiction and elaborating a life from knowledges and techniques of the users of psychoactive substances. In literature, he has been known by an intense experimentation of forms of writing and by his reflections about virus, control and language. Writing has gone through his life, first as a way of transforming the horror at the accident that culminated in his wife Joan Vollmer s death, passing by the transformation of the subject in Junky and as everyday exercises to elaborate a thought by images and a space-silence writing. He elaborated a life against controls and viruses. This research deals with Burroughs s scripture-life by means of the genealogy and the Michel Foucault s notion of aesthetics of existence from two issues: drugs and language. It is an analysis about the life elaboration of William Burroughs and a work from his existence / William Burroughs foi um escritor beat que ficou conhecido por sua intensa relação com substâncias psicoativas e por desempenhar uma crítica voraz a valores com pretensão universal, como os conceitos de vício, drogas e crime. Junto aos seus amigos beats, inventou um estilo de vida que afrontava a sociedade estadunidense de seu tempo, a partir de certo despojamento material e incorporação de elementos culturais e tipos sociais considerados moralmente reprováveis, rejeitados ou estigmatizados como os junkies, os gays, os negros e os indígenas. Entre os beats, a amizade era uma forma de invenção de vida. Burroughs apresenta uma coragem da verdade ao entrar em choque direto com o proibicionismo, agredindo o conceito médico de vício e elaborando uma vida a partir de saberes e técnicas dos usuários de substâncias psicoativas. Na literatura, ficou conhecido por uma intensa experimentação de formas de escrita, e pelas reflexões sobre vírus, controle e linguagem. A escrita atravessou a sua vida, primeiro como forma de transformar o horror pelo acidente que culminou na morte de Joan Vollmer - com quem era casado -, perpassando a transformação do sujeito na escrita de Junky e como exercícios cotidianos para elaborar um pensamento por imagens e uma escrita espaço-silêncio. Elaborou uma vida contra controles e vírus. Esta pesquisa se debruça sobre a escritura-vida de Burroughs por meio da genealogia e da noção de estética da existência de Michel Foucault a partir de dois temas: drogas e linguagem. Trata-se de uma análise sobre a elaboração de vida de William Burroughs e um trabalho a partir de sua existência

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T14:54:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Wander Wilson Chaves Junior.pdf: 4677188 bytes, checksum: 1e766a16295097c3df5665183cc24c3b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-02-20 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / William Burroughs was a beat writer known by his intense relation with psychoactive substances and by his effusive critics over values with universal claims. Together with his beat friends, he invented a lifestyle that confronted the United States society of his days by certain material divestment and the incorporation of cultural elements and social types considered morally reprehensible, rejected or stigmatized such as junkies, gays, blacks and indigenous people. Among the beats, friendship was a way of life invention. Burroughs presents his courage of truth by clashing with the prohibitionism, attacking the medical concept of addiction and elaborating a life from knowledges and techniques of the users of psychoactive substances. In literature, he has been known by an intense experimentation of forms of writing and by his reflections about virus, control and language. Writing has gone through his life, first as a way of transforming the horror at the accident that culminated in his wife Joan Vollmer s death, passing by the transformation of the subject in Junky and as everyday exercises to elaborate a thought by images and a space-silence writing. He elaborated a life against controls and viruses. This research deals with Burroughs s scripture-life by means of the genealogy and the Michel Foucault s notion of aesthetics of existence from two issues: drugs and language. It is an analysis about the life elaboration of William Burroughs and a work from his existence / William Burroughs foi um escritor beat que ficou conhecido por sua intensa relação com substâncias psicoativas e por desempenhar uma crítica voraz a valores com pretensão universal, como os conceitos de vício, drogas e crime. Junto aos seus amigos beats, inventou um estilo de vida que afrontava a sociedade estadunidense de seu tempo, a partir de certo despojamento material e incorporação de elementos culturais e tipos sociais considerados moralmente reprováveis, rejeitados ou estigmatizados como os junkies, os gays, os negros e os indígenas. Entre os beats, a amizade era uma forma de invenção de vida. Burroughs apresenta uma coragem da verdade ao entrar em choque direto com o proibicionismo, agredindo o conceito médico de vício e elaborando uma vida a partir de saberes e técnicas dos usuários de substâncias psicoativas. Na literatura, ficou conhecido por uma intensa experimentação de formas de escrita, e pelas reflexões sobre vírus, controle e linguagem. A escrita atravessou a sua vida, primeiro como forma de transformar o horror pelo acidente que culminou na morte de Joan Vollmer - com quem era casado -, perpassando a transformação do sujeito na escrita de Junky e como exercícios cotidianos para elaborar um pensamento por imagens e uma escrita espaço-silêncio. Elaborou uma vida contra controles e vírus. Esta pesquisa se debruça sobre a escritura-vida de Burroughs por meio da genealogia e da noção de estética da existência de Michel Foucault a partir de dois temas: drogas e linguagem. Trata-se de uma análise sobre a elaboração de vida de William Burroughs e um trabalho a partir de sua existência