Cramer - Words Made Flesh

Cramer '05

(Florian Cramer, "Words Made Flesh," Media Design Research, Piet Zwart Institute, 2005, http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/research/fcramer/wordsmadeflesh/wordsmadefleshpdf)

Cut-Up Literature unleashes language's viral potential

Burroughs literally links cut-ups and linguistic contagion in

what is perhaps his best-known speculation—that language is a virus.

If language is a virus, then cut-up literature is about unleashing and

applying its viral potential. For Burroughs, the affinity of language

and viruses is quite literal. It amounts to more than the idea that

viruses could be created in language or, like in Richard Dawkins’ concept

of the “meme,” that certain speech acts had contagious effects.14

Burroughs stresses that “I have frequently spoken of word and image as

viruses or as acting as viruses, and this is not an allegorical comparison.”

Burroughs’ language magic is contagious in a double respect. It has a

contagious effect and it is contagious in its very structure. It therefore

differs from Frazer’s contagious magic in which the contact is firstly

limited to one object and its bearer, and secondly not inscribed into

the system of signs itself. With his phantasmagoria of all-pervasive

infection that cannot be contained, Burroughs totally semanticizes

the mobilization of matter through symbols in the magical speech

act. This corresponds, oddly and in a non-canonical way, with older

philosophical concepts of codes permeating the cosmos.