“Shift Linguals – Cut Word Lines”: Viral Topology and the Cut-Ups of William Burroughs

Abstract

William Burroughs perceived the method of collage as a way towards a rebellion – an insurrection against the system of control inherent in language itself. In this article, a vision of language as a parasitic life-form presented by Burroughs in books such as The Ticket That Exploded and Nova Express is examined. The method of collage (or, as Burroughs calls it, the cut-up) is analyzed as an opportunity to tear down the oppressive structures of meaning self-reproducing themselves through our adherence to sociolinguistic rules. The very notion of struggling with parasites of meaning is connected with Roland Barthes’s conceptualization of myths as layers of meaning that envelop and parasitize signs in order to further their own agendas. I endeavor to reformulate Barthes’s dyadic model of myths into a triadic one (following Peircean semiotics), which I then relate to Jeffrey Elman’s text on language as a dynamic system, which allows for an in-depth perception of the way in which the parasite of language is described by Burroughs.