Two Sounds of the Virus: William Burroughs’s Pure Meat Method
A Culture for Growing Viruses
I. General Semantics (Count Alfred Korzybski) & the Orgone Theory (Wilhelm Reich)
A. Associated with the first phase of the virus.
1. Informed his books, observations and images in his letters
2. Accompanied by 2 closely related bodies
3. Identified through its main functions
B. 1st body: undifferentiated (immature, embryonic or primitive) protoplasmic (contents of a living cell) body found in the theories of Korzybski and Reich.
1. Theories: discrete boundaries between the bodies and their environment, and bodies and its cellular components were diminished by the flow of energies and -
2. Consequent prioritization of function over location
a. So the virus could exist at the cellular level, or the societal level
C. 2nd body: derived from Burroughs’s own experience
1. The function of the energy of the organism is driven by need.
a. Desires for junk and sex in his writings
D. the 1st and 2nd bodies were fused together and formed the first phase virus from the idea of schlupping bodies – the fusion of one body to another.
1. Represented with images of homosexual love – “to become the other person”
2. Can be identified through its predominant functioning.
II. Dianetics (L. Ron Hubbard)
A. Emergence of 2nd phase of the virus
1. Underwent a major mutation: became highly differentiated, more virulent, and widespread
2. Shift from junk and sex need of the first virus, to language based proclivities
a. Parallels Burroughs’s shift in life from an uncertain standing as a writer to dedication to writing with the fame from Naked Lunch
3. Correlates to the 3rd organismic theory he encountered – L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics
a. Hubbard reworked Korzybski’s theories to extend their pathogenic (disease causing capabilities) scope
4. Burroughs’s virus began to operate through specific means
a. Operating at a miniature scale and –
b. Developing the capacity for language.
c. Existed parasitically as another body inside the organism controlling a person’s thoughts and words
B. Both viruses made sounds and were made of sounds
1. For the first phase virus – the sound is schlup
2. For the second phase virus – it was irrepressible speech of the Dianetic Demon.
a. “A surrogate self speaking with words previously recorded by the “reactive mind” – the pathogenic unification of accumulated trauma recorded at the cellular level."
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