The Visionary

doi:10.1017/9781009554732.019

Chapter 17 - The Visionary

Yagé and Its Aesthetics

from Part III - Space-Time Travel

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2026

Marcus Boon

Edited by

Oliver Harris ,

Davis Schneiderman and

Alex Wermer-Colan

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Oliver Harris: Affiliation:
Keele University
Davis Schneiderman: Affiliation:
Lake Forest College
Alex Wermer-Colan: Affiliation:
Temple University

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Summary

This chapter traces William Burroughs’ encounters with yagé (ayahuasca) as a critical inflection point in his literary development and spiritual imagination. Marcus Boon explores the 1950s Amazonian journeys that led to The Yage Letters (1963) and its expanded edition The Yage Letters Redux (2006), arguing that Burroughs’ experiences with the vine laid the groundwork for his later explorations of language as virus, the cut-up method, and his cosmological vision of control and resistance. Intertwining Cold War paranoia, psychedelic experimentation, and postcolonial critique, Boon situates yagé not as an outlier in Burroughs’ oeuvre but as a key to understanding its epistemological and aesthetic radicalism. The chapter maps Burroughs’ legacy in the broader literary and anthropological discourse on ayahuasca, showing how his early visions resonate with – and complicate – contemporary movements for psychedelic healing, spiritual tourism, and decolonial thought. Burroughs, Boon suggests, helped carry yagé out of the jungle and into a globalized discourse of language, healing, and power.

Keywords

William S. Burroughs yagé ayahuasca telepathy psychedelics Amazon visionary aesthetics Cold War shamanism The Yage Letters drug literature

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Type: Chapter
Information: William Burroughs in Context , pp. 222 - 235

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009554732.019 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2026

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