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
- Chapter 22 The DJ
- Chapter 23 The Screenwriter
- Chapter 24 The Performer
- Chapter 25 The Horror Writer
- Chapter 26 The Guerrilla Warrior
- Chapter 27 The Visual Artist
- Chapter 28 The Muse
- Part V Science, Medicine, and Technology
- Postscript
- Index
- References
Chapter 26 - The Guerrilla Warrior
Manifestos and Provocations
from Part IV - Modes of Creativity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2026
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
- Chapter 22 The DJ
- Chapter 23 The Screenwriter
- Chapter 24 The Performer
- Chapter 25 The Horror Writer
- Chapter 26 The Guerrilla Warrior
- Chapter 27 The Visual Artist
- Chapter 28 The Muse
- Part V Science, Medicine, and Technology
- Postscript
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter positions William Burroughs within the radical tradition of avant-garde manifesto writing, arguing that his cut-up experiments, pamphlets, tape texts, and prose manifestos from the late 1950s through the early 1970s exemplify the genre’s urgency, performativity, and call to action. Drawing on the lineage of Marx, Futurism, and Dada, Jimmy Fazzino explores how Burroughs weaponized language and media to dismantle structures of “Control” through techniques of textual sabotage and sonic disruption. Works like Minutes to Go, The Exterminator, BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS, and The Revised Boy Scout Manual are read not only as aesthetic provocations but as revolutionary acts aligned with the manifesto’s historical function. Addressing Burroughs’s contradictions – including the inflammatory rhetoric of his guerrilla texts – Fazzino examines how Burroughs redefined literature as a site of resistance, merging art and life in a performative praxis designed to make things happen.
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- William Burroughs in Context , pp. 338 - 348Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
References
Works Cited
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