William S. Burroughs and the Language of Cyberpunk

The early works of William S, Burroughs, including Naked Lunch and the subsequent “science-fiction” texts Nova Express, The Soft Machine, and The Ticket that Exploded, embody principles of communication strategies which are central to the notion of cyberpunk writng. Burroughs ought thus to be understood as a writer of both theory and fiction in the same sense that Donna Haraway, Jean Baudrillard, Felix Guattari, and Gilles Deleuze are considered to be (Csiscery-Ronay, Bukatman). Burroughs’ attempt to integrate the generative forces of chaos into his work have strongly influenced the theory of Guattari and Deleuze and the fiction of William Gibson. Burroughs demonstrates how contact with chaos is crucial for any communication which seeks to escape the normalizing forces of cybernetically-organized systems of domination, including language itself. (BW)