Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2017 Overwriting Literature and Other Acts of Cultural Terrorism in the Control Era Raymond Blake Stricklin Follow this and additional works at the DigiNole: FSU's Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES OVERWRITING LITERATURE AND OTHER ACTS OF CULTURAL TERRORISM IN THE CONTROL ERA By RAYMOND BLAKE STRICKLIN A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Raymond Blake Stricklin defended this dissertation on April 12, 2017. The members of the supervisory committee were: S.E. Gontarski Professor Directing Dissertation Krzysztof Salata University Representative Andrew Epstein Committee Member Barry Faulk Committee Member Aaron Jaffe Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii For Stefanie, always iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Writing is never a solitary endeavor. I have had support from many since I began this project. This project would not have been possible without support and advice from my dissertation committee. My dissertation director S.E. Gontarski has shown his support for my project since the beginning. This manuscript has certainly benefited from his advice and careful editing of my work. I also wish to thank my dissertation committee Andrew Epstein, Barry Faulk, Aaron Jaffe, and Kris Salata for their insights and suggestions throughout this process. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ vi Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... vii INTRODUCTION: NOVEMBER 1975: A SCHIZO REPORT .....................................................1 1. CHAPTER ONE: “OPERATION REWRITE”: BURROUGHS OVERWRITES THE IMAGE OF THE BOOK .............................................................................................................................33 2. CHAPTER TWO: “CULTURE STINKS”: KATHY ACKER OVERWRITES THE CANON WITH BLOOD AND GUTS ...........................................................................................................58 3. CHAPTER THREE: “TO FINNAGAIN”: JOHN CAGE OVERWRITES MODERNISM .....78 POSTSCRIPT: JANUARY 1984: NAM JUNE PAIK SAYS GOOD MORNING, MR. ORWELL ..............................................................................................................................103 APPENDICES .............................................................................................................................110 A. DEAD FINGERS TALK: AN ATROPHIED BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................110 B. RUB OUT THE WORD .........................................................................................................123 References ....................................................................................................................................135 Biographical Sketch .....................................................................................................................142 v LIST OF FIGURES 1. Mother ......................................................................................................................................123 2. Empty Words ...........................................................................................................................124 3. Semiotic of Janeys ...................................................................................................................125 4. The Freud Pack ........................................................................................................................126 5. Time Cut-up .............................................................................................................................127 6. Seimotext(e) USA .....................................................................................................................128 7. Censored Page in Semiotext(e) USA ........................................................................................129 8. Censored Enclosure in Semiotext(e) USA ................................................................................129 9. Genital Collage ........................................................................................................................130 10. Janey’s Ode to a Grecian Urn ................................................................................................130 11. Discipline and Anarchy..........................................................................................................131 12. Writing for a Second Time Through Finnegans Wake ..........................................................132 13. Mesostics re Merce Cunningham...........................................................................................133 14. Zen for TV .............................................................................................................................134 15. Merce Cunningham Dances With Himself ............................................................................134 vi ABSTRACT Overwriting Literature and Other Acts of Cultural Terrorism in the Control Era examines late 20th century American experimental writers and artists who rethink the book as a viable communication technology. This study locates historically locates the work from these literary programmers to the 1975 Schizo-Culture conference at Columbia University. The conference, which introduced the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to the American public, featured two key artists from the American avant-garde: William S. Burroughs and John Cage. This study examines the connections between culture and theory and argues that both artists and theorists were responding to a new form of society, which Deleuze labeled the “control society” in a 1990 essay. The introduction to this study lays out the history and theory of this new society. The chapters that follow the introduction focus on writers and artists who construct what Deleuze describes as effective weapons against control. Burroughs, Kathy Acker, and Cage “hijack” literary texts in order to reprogram its message. While this study examines experimental writing, it uses these writers to think of how one might apply these techniques to mass media and information networks. vii INTRODUCTION NOVEMBER 1975: A SCHIZO REPORT I think Schizo-culture is being used here in a special sense, not referring so much to clinical schizophrenia but to the fact that the culture is divided up into all sorts of classes and groups, etc. Some of the old lines are breaking down, and this is a healthy sign. William S. Burroughs on Schizo-Culture, Burroughs Live The Last Countercultural Conference In November 1975, the French philosopher Michel Foucault delivered a talk on Wilhelm Reich and repression to a crowd at Columbia University. The occasion for the lecture was the Schizo-Culture conference, which was organized by Semiotext(e) founder Sylvère Lotringer and John Rajchman. During Foucault’s lecture, an audience member interrupted to accuse Foucault of being paid by the CIA. As Lotringer recalls, Foucault “fumbled for a reply and vehemently denied everything.” Frustrated and angered over such an accusation, Foucault later told Lotringer that the event was “the last counterculture conference of the 60s” (22). This statement, even in jest, makes Schizo-Culture into a significant event. And if the conference does signal the end of the 60s counterculture, it perhaps concurrently suggests the beginning of a new era. The four-day conference at Columbia University featured French theorists such as Jean- Francois Lyotard, and it introduced Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to the American public. Schizo-Culture, however, was not a conference on French theory. Foucault shared a stage with the American writer William S. Burroughs, and the American composer John Cage read on the same panel as Deleuze. While advertised as a conference on semiotics, the conference also included workshops on prison and psychiatry. These subjects, however, correspond more than they differ. Three years before Schizo-Culture, Deleuze and Foucault discussed the status of the 1 intellectual. Deleuze noted that the “intellectual and theorist has ceased to be a subject” in post- 1968 political discourse. For Deleuze, who speaks and acts always concerns a “multiplicity” or “groupuscles.” He thus concludes, “There is no more representation. There is only action, the action of theory, the action of praxis, in the relations of relays and networks” (Desert Islands 207). Foucault too discussed how collective discourse could challenge the major language of disciplinary institutions. His comments refer to prisoners, who begin to speak and develop their own theories on the prison industry. Foucault explains, “What really matters is this kind of discourse against power, the counter-discourse expressed by prisoners or those we call criminals, and not a discourse on criminality” (Desert Islands 208). Their discussion on a counter-discourse of prisoners occurs in the context of the 1972 Nancy prison revolt. Deleuze and Foucault’s