Book contents
- William Burroughs in Context
- William Burroughs in Context
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword: What Is the Context for William Burroughs?
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Cultural Histories and Movements
- Part II Identities
- Part III Space-Time Travel
- Part IV Modes of Creativity
- Part V Science, Medicine, and Technology
- Chapter 29 The Burroughs Singularity
- Chapter 30 The Master Addict
- Chapter 31 The Epidemiologist
- Chapter 32 The Parasite
- Chapter 33 The Virologist
- Chapter 34 The Electronic Revolutionary
- Chapter 35 The Environmentalist
- Postscript
- Index
- References
Chapter 35 - The Environmentalist
Burroughs and the Anthropocene
from Part V - Science, Medicine, and Technology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: aN Invalid Date NaN
Book contents
- William Burroughs in Context
- William Burroughs in Context
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword: What Is the Context for William Burroughs?
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Cultural Histories and Movements
- Part II Identities
- Part III Space-Time Travel
- Part IV Modes of Creativity
- Part V Science, Medicine, and Technology
- Chapter 29 The Burroughs Singularity
- Chapter 30 The Master Addict
- Chapter 31 The Epidemiologist
- Chapter 32 The Parasite
- Chapter 33 The Virologist
- Chapter 34 The Electronic Revolutionary
- Chapter 35 The Environmentalist
- Postscript
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter repositions William Burroughs as a radical environmental thinker whose apocalyptic visions and experimental prose provide an oblique but vital contribution to ecocriticism. Steen Ledet Christiansen argues that Burroughs’ work – particularly Naked Lunch, The Exterminator, and the Nova trilogy – challenges the limits of environmental representation through stylistic rupture, linguistic sabotage, and the dissolution of the human subject. Burroughs’ toxic narrative landscapes, cut-up methods, and critique of linguistic determinism reveal the entanglement of language, ideology, and environmental degradation. Far from a conventional ecological writer, Burroughs destabilizes anthropocentric frameworks and anticipates posthumanist theories by framing language itself as a viral, controlling force. His fractured narratives expose the environmental imagination to new modes of seeing and being, making him an unlikely but essential figure in rethinking literature’s role in the Anthropocene.
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- William Burroughs in Context , pp. 464 - 477Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
References
Works Cited
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