In this essay I examine how identity is created in William S. Burroughs two early novels Junky andQueer. The theoretic starting points are Lacans psychoanlytic concepts ”ideal ego”, ”egoideal” and the ”superego” and also queertheory as presented by Tiina Rosenberg in her book Queerfeministisk agenda. The examination contains an analysis of how Burroughs creates identity in both Junky and Queer with main focus on the second novel. I look at how the desire in the maincharacter Lee is described and what the desire is aimed at. In Junky Lee has a need for drugs and in Queer the desire is aimed at sexual contact with other men. I examine how the desire switches between the novels and how it affects his identity. There is a difference in how Lee sees himself and how the people around him sees him. He sees himself as the masculine homosexual man but the society has antoher view of how homosexual men should act and look like, that is the effiminate man. There is a conflict between Lees ideal ego and the ego-ideal wich has great impact on how his identity is formed. There is a gap between his interpretation of himself and how other sees him wich creates a disintegration in his identity. This essay tries to describe how this disintegration in Lees identity appears and how he handles it. Burroughs is wellknown for his so called ”routines”. These are crazy and imaginative monologues created by the maincharacter Lee. In this essay I present these routines as a way for Lee to take back control of his own identity, he uses them as a way to convince his surroundings that he is the masculine homosexual guy with control not the feminine man that other people sees him as. I also examine how the maincharacter Lee reflects Burroughs as his ideal ego. Ginsbergs have said that Queer is ”Burroughs heart laid bare” and that is a central point throughout my essay.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:26:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2011-09-12Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:13:29Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 encinas_lfc_me_mar.pdf: 428853 bytes, checksum: 7c30dd0cb34d306a24545b2793d64fc2 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Como consequência da experiência histórica, as formas de dominação ganharam cada vez mais espaço na produção literária, até se constituírem num dos principais temas do romance ao longo de todo o século XX. Vários escritores configuraram esteticamente o problema do poder, desenvolvendo uma narrativa cujo tema central é a dominação; dominação essa perpetrada pelos totalitarismos de direita e esquerda. Mas é na obra do escritor norte-americano William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) que os mecanismos de dominação ganharão um novo estatuto, em especial na obra Almoço Nu (1959), na qual aparecem configurados os novos modos de dominação que emergiram a partir da Segunda Grande Guerra: monopólios, burocracias, estruturas de controle, etc. Outras características formais, não menos relevantes, acompanham a emergência das novas temáticas, principalmente os signos de dissolução e aleatoriedade que percorrem o livro de Burroughs, abolindo em definitivo qualquer exigência de unidade configuradora ao instaurar uma nova combinação entre forma de expressão e forma de conteúdo. De qualquer modo, um estudo do romance de Burroughs que leve em consideração todas essas particularidades exige um aparato conceitual apropriado. Neste sentido, a obra de Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) fornece alguns elementos teóricos para a análise de Almoço Nu, a exemplo da noção de sociedades de controle, retirada da obra de Burroughs. Assim, o presente estudo busca apreender de que forma o romance Almoço Nu nos aponta as transformações temáticas e composicionais no romance da segunda metade do século XX correspondentes à experiência histórica na qual o problema da dominação veio a ocupar lugar de destaque nas produções literárias / As a consequence of historical experience, forms of domination have gained more space in the literary production, even if they constitute one of the main themes of the novel throughout the twentieth century. Several writers have shaped the aesthetic problem of power, developing a narrative whose central theme is domination, domination perpetrated by the totalitarian regimes of right and left. But it is the work of American writer William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) that the mechanisms of domination will gain a new status, especially in the work Naked Lunch (1959), in which they appear set new modes of domination that emerged from the Second World War: monopolies, bureaucratic structures, control, etc. Other formal features, not less relevant, accompanying the emergence of new themes, especially the signs of dissolution and randomness that run through the book of Burroughs, ultimately abolishing any requirement to establish a unit set up by combining new form of expression and form of content. In any case, a study of the Burroughs novel that takes into account all these specific requires a conceptual apparatus appropriate. In this sense, the work of Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) provides some theoretical elements for the analysis of Naked Lunch, like the notion of societies of control, withdrawal from work of Burroughs. Thus, this study seeks to learn how the novel Naked Lunch points out the thematic and compositional changes in the novel of the second half of the twentieth century, corresponding to the historical experience in which the problem of domination came to occupy a prominent place in literary productions

My thesis explores the role of religion and spirituality in the work of the Beat Generation, a mid-twentieth century American literary movement. I focus on four major Beat authors: William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Gregory Corso. Through a close reading of their work, I identify the major religious and spiritual attitudes that shape their texts. All four authors’ religious and spiritual beliefs form a challenge to the Modern Western worldview of rationality, embracing systems of belief which allow for experiences that cannot be empirically explained. They also assert the primacy of the individual—a major American value—in a society which the authors believed to encroach upon individual agency. Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Corso are also strongly influenced by established religious traditions: an aspect of their work that is currently overlooked in Beat criticism. Burroughs’ belief in a magical universe shapes his work. Ginsberg is heavily influenced by the Jewish exegetical tradition. Kerouac and Corso’s work contains Catholic themes. My study rectifies some tendencies in current criticism which I find problematic: a dismissal of the Beats as a countercultural phenomenon rather than a literary movement, a tendency to frame Beat religion and spirituality in vague language, and a tendency to focus solely on Buddhism within the movement. My study illustrates that the Beat authors’ work contains serious religious and spiritual content, that they take part in American religious and literary traditions, and that the authors engage with major social issues of the post-war period.

This thesis considers the theme of suffering and its resolution in the novels of Jack Kerouac, Leonard Cohen, and William Burroughs, three avant-garde contemporary writers. It discusses most of their work in a general way, with reference to the theme of suffering; and it also analyses in a much more detailed manner the Subterraneans by Kerouac, The Favorite Game and Beautiful Losers by Cohen, and Naked Lunch by Burroughs. Cohen envisions man as a suffering being who experiences his pain in many different ways. He criticizes the old ritual patterns in which suffering once took its form - the pattern of religion which teaches man that suffering is good, and History which teaches that the cycle of civilization operates only in terms of the torturer and his victim. He rejects, too, the contemporary form of pop art which ignores the fact that suffering is a very real and overwhelming part of man. Having lost the old ritual patterns of suffering, man feels alienated from his own personal pain. Through the magic of good art, Cohen feels, man can regain entrance to his own being, for by experiencing another's suffering in art, he can regain his own awareness of suffering. If we misinterpret or misuse our own pain, we become one of Cohen's 'losers,' for we lose the core of our being to false ritual. Cohen believes the ancient notion that suffering deepens character, and he argues that man, through an understanding of his own pain, becomes a richer and better person, more capable of recognizing the magic which exists along with pain. For magic does exist with pain, and in art we gain a momentary entrance into this world of magic. Through the investigation of self and the uniqueness of self, man comes to recognize the uniqueness and magic of all. The artist takes on the role of prophet visionary showing all men that "magic is afoot." Jack Kerouac suffered a different form of pain - a pain which originated in his desperate search for innocence. His Catholic heritage taught him that the world of mind and spirit could see God, while the physical body was the realm of the sinful and guilty. His life became a quest in search of an innocence in which man could, transcend his guilt and shame and become beatific. Kerouac named the entire beat generation beatific, but he could not evade his feeling of guilt and shame within his own life, and he fluctuated throughout life between ecstatic idealism and hopeless despair. His strong mother fixation was a major cause for the split between his sense of idealism and the life of the physical body - and his mother became associated in his mind with those aspects of consciousness he considered 'ideal.' Yet Kerouac also longed for freedom and individuality, realms of experience outside his mother's hold. He expressed his life within his art, showing his tension and anguish from the pull of these two forms of experience. Kerouac's final interpretation of suffering paralleled the Catholic vision, for art became, in his life, a means of personal confession and penance. William Burroughs' despair is expressed through fear and rage, and a figurative comparison with 'paranoia' defines the range of his suffering fairly closely. Burroughs fears persecution from society which controls man through his need, fearing especially the implosive and depersonalizing forces of society which threaten to degrade and annihilate man. Man's own body takes part in this social degradation, for it is man's body which succumbs to addictive need. Burroughs strives to preserve his sense of inner reality and freedom at all costs. He purges his own personal sense of fear through his art, and art becomes, in his use of it, a social act of exorcism. He shouts the unspeakable and becomes a priest in a cultural purification rite; he shows the absurdity of man's reality in the form of comedy and dream and these become the source of his release. He defends himself against social control by his ability to exaggerate the power of society to the point of the grotesque, and art becomes the written form of his protest. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This essay compares two influential novels from the Beat era, William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and how they use the spatial dimension of writing as a tool for resistance. The spatiality of Kerouac’s travel narrative is compared to the spatiality of Burroughs cut-up narrative, and the spaces of cities and the road are analyzed. I argue that On the Road is an attempt at a spiritual escape from Western dogmatism—dramatized through the means of a spatial journey—whilst Naked Lunch is attempting an escape from “control”, mediated through the means of a spatial destabilization in the narrative. In trying to define the term “control” used by Burroughs, I look at Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, as well as other sources, in order to determine which mechanisms of society that are being reacted against in these novels. The historical context of these two Beat writers as situated in the American postwar era is also considered – a context which is examined in relation to the concept of normality.

Master of Arts - Arts / This MA dissertation uses “queer theory” to read existing literary texts and to inform the riting of new fictional works. In the opening literary-critical essay, which functions as an ntroduction to queer theory, I give an overview of its development and conceptual formation, then go on to demonstrate how it may provide useful and fruitful readings of a writer such as William Burroughs. The central and longest section of this dissertation is a group of short fictions that engage with queer theory, using some of its insights to generate investigations of sexuality, power, social relations, and to inspire formal experiments in keeping with the spirit of queer theory. In conclusion, I look back upon this group of short fictional texts and link them to the issues raised in the essay on Burroughs and queer theory.

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Cette thèse est une étude approfondie du rapport de William S. Burroughs au cinéma. William S. Burroughs, en collaboration avec Antony Balch, a produit entre 1961 et 1972 des courts-métrages expérimentaux aux formes de montage et de figuration radicales. Ces films, largement ignorés, constituent un pan essentiel du cinéma expérimental. Leur étude met en lumière l'évolution d'une pensée politico-esthétique de l'image chez Burroughs, une pensée voisine de celle de Guy Debord et qui influencera celle de Gilles Deleuze .Burroughs a également travaillé en tant qu'acteur : l'analyse de ses apparitions est ici pensée en fonction de leur rapport à l’œuvre écrite de Burroughs et à son versant biographique, l'écrivain déconstruisant les personnages qu'il joue de la même manière qu'il déconstruisait le cinéma. Un ensemble de films, répondant plus ou moins fidèlement à l’appellation d'adaptations, constituent un aspect important de notre corpus. Ces œuvres, qu'elles travaillent les écrits dans un rapport fondé sur la reproduction, le décalage, ou l'éclatement, produisent des formes inédites. Cette étude est complétée par un retour sur l'influence de Burroughs sur trois auteurs majeurs du cinéma nord-américain contemporain, Cronenberg, Van Sant et Lynch. Tous trois réinvestissent l’œuvre et la pensée de Burroughs dans le cadre de leur propre production, que ce retour se concentre sur l'apparition de la voix, le lien entre signature visuelle et présence ou la fragmentation de la narration classique. En mettant en relation expérimentations, présences et contaminations de l'écrivain au cinéma, ce travail vise la réhabilitation de ce versant de l’œuvre de William S. Burroughs. / This work is an exhaustive study of William S. Burroughs' interest in cinema. Burroughs, in collaboration with Antony Balch, produced between 1961 and 1972 a series of experimental short films with radical editing and visual styles. These widely ignored films are an essential part of experimental cinema. Their study highlights the evolution of the author's political and aesthetic vision, close to those of Guy Debord or Gilles Deleuze. Burroughs also worked as an actor. The analysis of his cinematographic apparitions is linked to their relation to Burroughs' written work and its biographical aspects: the writer deconstructs the characters he plays in the same way as he deconstructs the mise-en-scène.A set of films, which can loosely be said to be adaptations, are another important part of the corpus of this study. These works, in a relation to the written word based on reproduction, shift or blow-out, produce original cinematographic images.This study is completed with a flash-forward to Burroughs' influence on three important north-american filmmakers: David Cronenberg, Gus Van Sant and David Lynch. These three authors reinvest Burroughs' work within the framework of their own production, focusing on the apparition of the voice, the link between visual signature and the notion of presence or the shattering of a conventional narrative.Linking experimentations, presences and contaminations of the writer in the cinematographic art, this thesis aims to rehabilitate this part of Burroughs' work.

Bibliography: p. 313-324. / xii, 324 p., [31] leaves of plates : col. ill. ; 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, School of Humanities, 2005

<p>"The Uses of Literature: Gilles Deleuze's American Rhizome" puts four writers - Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, George Jackson and William S. Burroughs - in conjunction with four concepts - becoming-democratic, belief in the world, the line of flight, and finally, control societies. The aim of this study is to elaborate and expand on Gilles Deleuze's extensive use of American literature and to examine possible conjunctions of his philosophy with contemporary American literary criticism and American Studies. I argue that Deleuze's interest in American writing not only productively complicates recent historical accounts of "French Theory's" incursion into American academia, but also provides a compelling way think about the relationship between literature and history, language and experience, and the categories of minor and major that organize national literary traditions. Beginning with the concept of the "American rhizome" this dissertation approaches the question of rhizomatic thought as a constructivist methodology for engaging the relationship between literary texts and broader social movements. Following an introduction laying out the basic coordinates of such an approach, and their historical relevance with respect to the reception of "French Theory" in the United States, the subsequent chapters each take an experimental approach with respect to a single American writer invoked in Deleuze's work and a concept that resonantes with the literary text under consideration. In foregrounding the question of the use of literature this dissertation explores the ways literature has been appropriated, set to work, or dismissed in various historical and institutional arrangements, but also seeks to suggest the possibility of creating conditions in which literature can be said to take on a life of its own.</p> / Dissertation