Toward a Method of Paying Attention: The Ethics of Magnification in William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch

Abstract: Utilizing Donna Haraway's trope of the scanning electron microscope, this article shows how, by magnifying bodily porosity, multiplicity, and vulnerability, William Burroughs's Naked Lunch trains its readers in a certain ethical and affective posture toward people who use drugs, which the author calls "paying attention." As a method of reading addiction literature, "paying attention" means reading closely but not in order to diagnose. It also means prioritizing description over interpretation, while "paying attention" to real people who use drugs means striving to remain in open and reciprocal (rather than closed and hierarchical) relationship with them. In other words, we are moved to empathy and self-modification through a process of self-recognition in their struggle and approaching the question of "recovery" collaboratively and only insofar as they have defined what such positive change looks like for them.