The Visionary

Marcus Boon examines William Burroughs' 1950s Amazonian encounters with yagé (ayahuasca) as a pivotal moment in his literary and spiritual development. Boon argues that these experiences informed Burroughs' later ideas about language as a virus, the cut-up method, and his cosmological view of control and resistance. The chapter situates yagé not as an anomaly in Burroughs' work but as central to its epistemological and aesthetic radicalism, intertwining Cold War paranoia, psychedelic experimentation, and postcolonial critique. Boon suggests that Burroughs helped carry yagé from the jungle into global discourse on language, healing, and power, complicating contemporary movements for psychedelic healing, spiritual tourism, and decolonial thought.

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Abstract

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.