And the Virus Spread: Infection as a Bond Between William Burroughs’s and David Cronenberg’s Dystopian Works

Abstract

This dissertation deals with infection in the American Beat Generation author William S. Burroughsand the Canadian film-maker David Cronenberg. I have chosen Burroughs’s Cut-Up trilogy (formed by The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded and Nova Express) and Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, Shivers and Rabid as my main frames of reference to carry out this study. The main purpose of this comparative analysis (which is not exempt of similarities and differences in the way these two authors tackle the same subject matter) is to explore a research gap in order to shed some light to the means by which the two authors perceive infection and parasitism as ever-present elements in theirworks that provides them with philosophical ideas that go well beyond the genres which they seem to be ascribed to on the surface. It will be seen how labels fall short to explain these two authors given the roughly experimental nature of their methods.As a conclusion, my research is also concerned with sex and monstrosity in both authors as a direct result of infection.