World of possibilities: Agency in female drug literature

Abstract

Literature's ability to provide a different repertoire of experience from those presented in other discursive frameworks and institutions situates it as a unique force in the function of ‘worldmaking.’ Drawing on Bakhtinian notions of literary discourse and the carnivalesque, this article examines the subversive nature of drug literature to create ‘a world inside out.’ Within drug literature, rules are inverted, authority mocked, the non-conformists are centre stage, and the ‘world’ is perceived and reconstructed via them. A comparative analysis of male and female drug literature in the works of William S. Burroughs and Anna Kavan also reveals the implication of gender on literary worlds. Burroughs' ‘world’ is one that Timothy Melley suggests is ‘a hostile place full of controlling agents.’ The world created in Kavan's texts, however, is one of possibilities where, through the trope of drug use, the female protagonist is freed from gender and other societal constraints.