The Future Virtual: An Intellectual History of

Cyberpunk Criticism.

Simon Ayling, BA (Hons), University of Western Australia.

This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of
Western Australia. Submitted through the School of Humanities, Discipline of
History, in 2012.
 Abstract

This dissertation is an intellectual history of cyberpunk criticism. Looking through the

lens of the history of ideas, it examines cyberpunk critique for academic trends, and

for critical successes and absences. In the course of its analysis, this dissertation

examines key themes in the genre criticism. These include the influence of

posthumanist philosophy on cyberpunk criticism; the idea of the posthuman and its

place in the critical literature; the key role of feminist criticism in the formation of the

cyberpunk critical discourse; interpretations of spaces in the cyberpunk genre; and,

lastly, the role of history and the idea of historicity in cyberpunk fiction and critique.

It finds that the majority of cyberpunk critics analyse the genre using the critical tools

provided by postmodernism. It also observes that the philosophical leanings of the

cyberpunk critical discourse tend to be overwhelmingly posthumanist. While it

acknowledges the significant and intellectually important criticism provided by the

discourse constructed upon these twin pillars, it concludes that the lack of

consideration of alternative critical resources, particularly those which could have

been provided by humanism, has created lacunae within the genre discourse.

Ultimately, it finds that, although a lively community of criticism has grown up

around cyberpunk, it is a critical community which is marked as much by its silences

as its vigorous discussions.

 Table of Contents

1. Introduction.
pp. 1-37.

2. ‘Posthumanism With a Vengeance’: Cyberpunk and Posthumanism.

pp. 38-84.

3. ‘But it Ain’t No Way Human’: Cyberpunk and Theories of the Posthuman.

pp. 85-127.

4. The ‘Other’ Spaces of Cyberpunk: Cyberpunk and Spatiality.

pp. 128-161.

5. Women, Men and Machines: Feminist Cyberpunk Criticism.

pp. 162-202.

6. A Future Without a Past: Cyberpunk and History.

pp. 203-247.

7. Conclusion.
pp. 248-254.
 i

Preface

This project began through a serendipitous coincidence. Had I not been

reading a certain novel, on a particular day, in a specific place, it would never

have come to be. That being said, the germ of the idea for this thesis quickly took

hold in my consciousness. It has allowed me to combine my academic passions

in a single space. I have loved science fiction literature since I was a child, and

cyberpunk has held a fascination for me since I first read Gibson’s Neuromancer.

I wrote a joint Honours degree in History and Philosophy, and this project has

allowed me to continue an involvement in both disciplines. Indeed, without my

undergraduate training in philosophy I suspect much of the literature which has

formed the basis for this study would have been very difficult for me to

comprehend. Similarly, the understanding granted by training in History of Ideas

has been a key part of this dissertation. The combination of both philosophical

and historical understandings has allowed me to pursue the key themes of

cyberpunk critique to places which I could not have imagined six years ago,

when my study began.

A question which may be asked is ‘Why cyberpunk? What is it that

makes cyberpunk an attractive prospect for one to write about, both as a critic

and as an intellectual historian?’ I have several answers to this question, and they

provide different inspirations for me to write about cyberpunk, and about

cyberpunk criticism. Firstly, I enjoy reading cyberpunk. I first read Gibson’s

Neuromancer at 16, when a friend lent me his copy. I bought my own copy part

way through my reading, because I knew I was going to want to read it again and
 ii

again. Secondly, cyberpunk is thematically strong. At its best, cyberpunk raises

deep philosophical questions in ethics, ontology and epistemology. Analysing

cyberpunk, and the critical literature which has been written about it, enables me

to explore these themes, whilst retaining the connection to the literature which I

enjoy. Lastly, and importantly for me as a historian, cyberpunk is strongly

temporally determined. It is literature which is indicative of a certain cultural

moment, one which has always fascinated me. The political, economic and

intellectual milieu of the cyberpunk oeuvre is a time of change and, to some

degree, crisis. Cyberpunk is the literature of that crisis, and allows us a vision of

the time which is both enthralling and apposite. Similarly, the critical literature

written about cyberpunk allows a continuing view of the ways in which scholars

have read that vision of crisis, allowing a survey of critical thought across time.

Teasing out the threads of our time's intellectual dynamic is a project which I

find enthralling, and the opportunity to pursue this enterprise with cyberpunk

criticism was one which I could not pass up.

It will rapidly become obvious to anyone reading this thesis that, despite

my passion for cyberpunk, and indeed my great respect for the critical discourse

which has grown up about it, I have certain intellectual filiations which, at times,

elicit my concerns. It has become a standard part of historical practice to confess

to one’s biases prior to the commencement of a study, and this is no bad thing.

We can no longer pretend (if indeed ‘we’, meaning historians, ever really did

pretend) to pursue a purely ‘objective’ history. History is an interpretive process,

and of course the personality, passion and biases of the interpreter will come
 iii

through in the work. The majority of the cyberpunk critical discourse is

conducted by academics who would identify as postmodernist and/or

posthumanist; I, on the other hand, am both a modernist and a humanist. Since I

first read Habermas, I have been convinced by his argument that the project of

Enlightenment that is modernity is incomplete; I am to some degree sustained in

my intellectual pursuits by the idea that it may be completed. Perhaps this is

simply a product of my own subject position; I am, after all, a well educated,

white, middle-class male. However, my belief in modernity is a belief not that I

particularly deserved the privileges which have come to me, but that everyone

does, and that the project of the Enlightenment, ultimately, is about the extension

of opportunity to all. This is why I find the future imagined in cyberpunk both

compelling and disturbing; it is at once an entirely plausible extrapolation from

our present circumstances, and a future which I find truly terrifying.

In contemporary historical theory, it is taken as a given that we all have

intellectual affiliations which inflect our work. With that in mind, it is perhaps

best to outline, in brief, the philosophical and political underpinnings of this

dissertation. I am both a Marxist and a humanist, and as will become obvious as

the argument progresses, a commitment to these systems of thought provides a

guide for both the historical and the critical components of this thesis. However

(and despite the occasionally combative tone of my dissertation) I do not believe

that a commitment to humanist ideals precludes a meaningful dialogue with

posthumanists, nor that a commitment to Marxism implies a dismissal of

Marxism’s political alternatives. On the contrary, Marxism and humanism

remain vital by absorbing critiques and recognising the need for change. I hope
 iv

that my genuine desire to participate in that process is obvious throughout this

thesis.

I imagine there are always many accrued debts in the construction of a

doctoral dissertation. Certainly I would have been unable to complete, or even

begin, my project without the assistance of the people and institutions outlined

below. The University of Western Australia provided me with first a

Postgraduate Award scholarship, and then in the concluding stages of the project

with a completion grant. To my supervisors, Doctor Chantal Bourgault de

Coudray and Associate Professor Rob Stuart, I owe an immense debt. Doctor

Bourgault provided key criticisms early in the project, and Professor Stuart has

been a source of criticism, encouragement and mentoring throughout its duration.

He has read each and every draft of my work with a keen eye, and if this

dissertation is cogent and concise, then much of the credit for that must go to his

careful editing. Of course, any errors, omissions and infelicities in the text

remain entirely my own. Lastly, without the support offered by my friends and

particularly my parents, this dissertation would never have seen the light of day.
 1

The Future Virtual: Cyberpunk, Postmodernism and Critique.

Chapter One: Introduction.

This thesis will examine the ways in which cyberpunk science fiction,

scholarly critiques written about it, philosophy (particularly postmodern

philosophy) and culture intertwine and affect each other. It will argue that,

through the lens of genre critique, the social and intellectual trends of the time,

both the times of the primary works and of the critical texts, can be observed and

analysed. Cyberpunk is a primary site for study of the culture of the 1980s.1

Frederic Jameson has described this sub-genre as the ‘supreme literary

expression if not of postmodernism, then of late capitalism itself.’ 2 In order to

establish that the investigation of the intellectual history of cyberpunk criticism

is both a possible and fruitful line of enquiry, however, certain underlying issues

must be addressed. In this first chapter, it will first be argued that the history of

ideas, with a method substantially different from that of literary theory, provides

insight into the formation of the critical literature on cyberpunk. Following from

this, the relationship between science fiction and philosophy will be examined.
1
Science fiction reference materials usually firmly site cyberpunk in the culture of the 1980s.
See, for example, John Kessel, ‘Cyberpunk’, in James Gunn (ed.), The New Encyclopedia of
Science Fiction, Viking Penguin, New York, 1988, pp. 116-118, p. 116; Adam Roberts, The
History of Science Fiction, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2006, p. 311; Edward James, Science
Fiction in the 20th Century, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994, pp. 198-199; Roger
Luckhurst, Science Fiction, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2005, pp. 206-213; Mark Bould and Sherryl
Vint, The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction, Routledge, Abingdon, 2011, pp. 254-
160. Kessel is keen to position cyberpunk in opposition to its direct antecedents in the science
fiction of the 1970s, and James and Roberts note that the main concerns of cyberpunk are
particularly germane to the culture of the 1980s. Luckhurst identifies four interlocking aspects of
William Gibson’s first trilogy which make it ‘such a quintessential embodiment of the
postmodern 1980s.’ These are, respectively, the arch-capitalist nature of the societies portrayed; a
dominance of technology maintained alongside an ambivalent relationship with said technology;
a dense and pastiche-driven prose style; and lastly, a mournful elegiac attitude towards the past
buried under the weight of technological change. Luckhurst’s summary is excellent, particularly
for identifying that the cyberpunk relationship with technology is more nuanced than has often
been recognised. Bould and Vint note similar themes to Luckhurst.
2
Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke University
Press, Durham, 1991, p. 419.
 2

It will be argued that the commonality of speculation as a procedural method, a

willingness to reach outside contemporary society in order to search for answers,

gives science fiction a unique relationship with the philosophical mode of

discussion. The diversity of the critical sources stemming from cyberpunk

writing will be seen to provide insights into key areas of cultural and

philosophical debate. Although the critical literature is diverse in origin and

theme, however, it is often restricted in the texts which it discusses. This in turn

imposes certain restriction on this thesis. The reasons for these truncated

discussions are complex, and worthy of discussion before proceeding with the

bulk of the thesis. Primarily, however, this introduction will present the

argument that intellectual history, and the hermeneutic method, can provide a

novel and productive insight into the links between cyberpunk science fiction,

critique, and postmodern culture.

The history of ideas has, in recent times, taken a turn around the post.

Post-modernism, post-structuralism and post- (or anti-) foundationalism have

made their home in intellectual history. The effect of the incursion of these new

critical methods on the discipline has been a “linguistic turn.” Intellectual history

has, under the guidance of luminaries such as Hayden White and Dominick

LaCapra, abandoned the preoccupation with authorial intention which Quentin

Skinner had encouraged. 3 At first blush, this thesis seems to be peculiarly

amenable to these new approaches to intellectual history. Many of them, after

3
For Skinner’s lengthy and thorough exegesis on this and other points in the history of ideas, see
Quentin Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory, 8:1,
1969, pp. 3-53. For programmatic essays by LaCapra and White, Dominick La Capra,
‘Rethinking Intellectual History and Reading Texts,’ History and Theory, 19:3, 1980, pp. 245-
276, and Hayden White, ‘The Context in the Text: Method and Ideology in Intellectual History’,
in Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation,
1987.
 3

all, have evolved from literary theory, and it is popular literature and its

criticism, rather than canonical “old school” philosophy, with which this text

wrestles. However, the new approaches pioneered by LaCapra, White and others

suffer from serious problems. At best, these new, linguistic approaches to

intellectual history provide innovative interpretative options for the intellectual

historian; at worst, they risk abandonment of any realistic “conversation with the

past” in favour of a sort of conversation with ourselves that could be had without

the benefit of historical understanding. It could, of course, be argued that we

treat history simply as the description of past events; that no “conversation” need

be had at all. This way of viewing history has two obvious problems. The first is

that such an antiquarian approach neither makes for interesting, illuminating

history, nor satisfies people who ask “What’s the point?” The second problem

with such a position is that even the slightest recognition of the subjectivity

problem (via the hermeneutic circle or otherwise) makes the construction of this

type of ‘non-interpretative’ history impossible. Interpretation is always present

(in both senses of the word ‘present’). However, even when recognising the

epistemological difficulties involved in interpretation, it is important to stick to

the business of doing history. The increasing obsession with interpretative

difficulties and semiotic struggles evinced by Frank Ankersmit, Hayden White4

and others is unavoidable, but is also not particularly productive. If the

production of meaning is simply the play of signs without referents, then the

need for history seems questionable. As John Toews has put it, ‘Reading

LaCapra’s critical commentaries [on the history of ideas], one begins to wonder

4
See, for example, Frank Ankersmit, ‘Historiography and Postmodernism’, History and Theory,
28:2, 1989, pp. 137-153; Frank Ankersmit, ‘Historical Representation’, History and Theory, 27:3,
1988, pp. 205-228; and Hayden White, The Content of the Form.
 4

if it is possible to avoid the pitfalls of a referential or representational theory at

all without ceasing to ‘do’ history and restricting oneself to thinking about it.’ 5

The pursuit of meaning (whatever we are to conclude that ‘meaning’

means) is at the heart of intellectual history. There are practical difficulties,

however, with the recovery of meaning. Firstly, meaning is not obvious in texts

or contexts (particularly not in the texts and contexts of the fictional literature

which makes up a considerable portion of the primary sources for this thesis).

We may know perfectly well what a text means to us on first glance, but this can

hardly take into account the full vagaries of meaning. If it did, intellectual

historians and literary critics alike would be looking for other work. Given that

this is not the way to do things, what is? How does one determine whether the

behaviour of corporations in Gibson’s novels is a critique of 1980’s corporate

culture, or is simply a part of the plot structure, with unintended critical

outcomes? This is where the ‘old’ intellectual history and the new manifest their

greatest differences. Dominick LaCapra has identified two extremes in

intellectual history – the ‘presentist’ and the ‘documentary.’ 6 The documentary

extreme is more closely associated with the older style of intellectual history –

that advocated by Skinner, Pocock and others. Skinner’s method consists of the

reconstruction of meaning in past texts by establishing, in the main, authorial

intent. This is done through a careful intermixture of contextual and intratextual

analysis. Once this has been achieved, and the meaning (or potential meanings)

5
John Toews, ‘Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of Meaning and the
Irreducibility of Experience,’ American Historical Review, 92:4, 1987, pp. 879-907, p. 886.
6
LaCapra, ‘Rethinking Intellectual History,’ esp. pp. 272-276.
 5

of the text has been rediscovered, the job of the intellectual historian is done. 7

LaCapra typifies this documentary approach as consisting of the search for

‘facts’ in the past – the presentation of intellectual history as ‘reconstruction of

the past.’ 8 He is no doubt correct in arguing that this method, if conducted

uncritically, aims at that historical impossibility: the unbiased account.

Nonetheless, no historian can hold a viable ‘conversation with the past’ without

first making an attempt to discover what, as it were, the past was saying.

LaCapra is, however, convincing in arguing that the intention-based methods

advocated by Skinner do miss domains of great importance in intellectual

history. Even if we accept the original text as the expression of authorial

intention, this is only the beginning of the story which intellectual history can

and should examine. The ‘career’ of the text after it is written is more than a

simple process of readers passively reading and receiving the expressed

intentions of the author. Paul Ricoeur has pointed out that with

written discourse, the author’s intention and the meaning of the text
cease to coincide… Not that we can conceive of a text without an
author; the tie between the speaker and the discourse is not abolished,
but distended and complicated. The dissociation of the meaning and the
intention is still an adventure of the reference of discourse to the
speaking subject. But the text’s career escapes the finite horizon of its
author. 9

7
See Quentin Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, pp. 3-53. LaCapra’s
criticism of this pure “documentary” approach is apt, but on reading further into Skinner’s
articles after the publication of ‘Meaning and Understanding’, one begins to wonder if this is
really Skinner’s approach at all. Skinner seems to have presented his arguments in very
aggressive form, and subsequently amended them to a significant degree. In fact, the position
adopted by Skinner later in his career is not so very far from LaCapra’s own. For an example of
this moderation of Skinner’s original, fairly extreme position, see Quentin Skinner,
‘Hermeneutics and the Role of History”, New Literary History, 7, 1975, pp. 209-232.
8
LaCapra, ‘Rethinking Intellectual History,’ p. 272.
8
Paul Ricoeur, ‘The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text,’ New Literary
History, 5, 1973, pp. 91-117, p. 95. Emphasis in original text.
 6

This process of dissociation and interpretation is as much the proper subject of

intellectual history as the establishing of the “original” meaning of a text, and as

such will make up a substantial part of the analytic content of this thesis. If we

treat original, canonical texts as merely the opening sentences in a conversation

that intellectual historians seek to reconstruct, study and participate in, then the

study of interpretations becomes a critical part of the overall project of the

history of ideas.

LaCapra is cautious in advocating his alternative approach: ‘a more

“performative” notion of reading and interpretation in which an attempt is made

to “take on” the great texts and to attain a level of understanding and perhaps of

language use that contends with them.’ 10 It is not completely clear precisely what

it is that LaCapra here suggests; however it seems that he argues that we, as

historians, should engage with our texts on a more openly interpretative level.

This, in itself, seems like an excellent idea. If there is any point in developing a

historical understanding of a subject/object (text or otherwise), surely it is that

we should have a developed, educated and interesting interpretation of it.

LaCapra, however, recognises that this method, applied on its own, runs the risk

of justifying ‘creative misinterpretation.’ 11 LaCapra’s position then becomes

uncertain. On the one hand, he invokes “the facts” to put limits on creative

misinterpretation, and yet, on the other, his disavowal of the documentary

method apparently leaves him without this resource. We may, for the purposes of

establishing “the facts” have to accept the use of what LaCapra terms the

documentary method. Any interpretative spiral must begin somewhere, and

9
LaCapra, ‘Rethinking Intellectual History,’ p. 273.
11
LaCapra, ‘Rethinking Intellectual History,’ p. 274.
 7

establishing as nearly as possible what original texts meant, in their own terms,

in their own times, is as good a beginning as we can ever have. This should not,

however, be the end of the process. As Skinner points out, even if we “know”

what the correct reading is, the other readings do not have to be discarded.

Skinner argues, to the contrary, that the ‘status of the one uniquely correct

reading … can only be that it represents one good reading amongst others.’12

The other readings may then become “incorrect”, but they still have

interpretative validity, particularly if we are looking through the lens of

intellectual history. For if we do view the original text as the opening sentence in

a conversation, then it is important both to know as precisely as we can what that

sentence was, and also how people have responded to it. LaCapra’s warning

concerning the purely interpretative, presentist method in intellectual history is

apt. It is a method prone to misuse, even by the well intentioned. However, his

attempts to defend it are, at best, questionable. It is difficult to appeal to the

“facts” of the past to determine interpretative accuracy in the present when one is

indulging in theoretical tail-chasing regarding the interpretative problems of

establishing said facts. An alternative method, I would argue, would be to accept

the potential pitfalls in interpreting the ‘facts’ of past texts, and, in awareness of

these traps, proceed with attempting to establish the facts anyway. We can either

allow the point that all historical facts are also interpretations to blind our eyes to

the goals of historical analysis, and continue to engage in largely fruitless meta-

historical debate, or we can accept the warnings provided to the discipline of

history by recent trends, and yet persist with the work of being historians. Again,

12
Quentin Skinner, `Hermeneutics and the Role of History', New Literary History, 7:1, 1975, pp.
209-233, p. 226. For Skinner, of course, the ‘correct’ reading is that which is the best expression
of authorial intention.
 8

it seems difficult to conduct a conversation when one denies oneself the

opportunity to work out what the other ‘person’ is ‘saying.’

Umberto Eco writes very cogently on this point in Interpretation and

Overinterpretation. Eco divides the potential for the creation of meaning in texts

into three component parts – the intentio auctoris (authorial intention), the

intentio lectoris (the intention of the reader), and, critically for Eco, the intentio

operas, the intended meaning, as it were, of the text itself. 13 For Eco, the

‘intention of the empirical author’, as the actual person who wrote the text, is

‘radically useless.’ 14 In saying this, Eco is not, of course, implying that the

author herself is useless – rather that ‘Since the intention of the text is to produce

a model reader able to make conjectures about it, the initiative of the reader

consists in figuring out a model author that is not the empirical one…’ 15 What

this essentially means is that the author that the reader sees in the text is not the

actual author, but an ideal author extracted in reverse from the text the author

had produced. This, it seems, is in direct disagreement with Skinner’s insistence

on authorial intention. This difference, however, is one of focus, rather than a

substantial impediment to the advancement of some form of reasonably unified

theory. Skinner’s focus, as an intellectual historian of the “old school,” is on

establishing what the text in question could legitimately have meant to the actual

author, and thus to her contemporary readers. Eco’s focus is, to use LaCapra’s

vocabulary, more presentist – he wishes to understand what the text can mean to

13
See Umberto Eco, ‘Interpretation and History’, pp. 23-43, p. 25 and ‘Overinterpreting Texts’,
pp. 44-73, pp. 61-66, in S. Collini (ed.), Interpretation and Overinterpretation, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1992.
14
Eco, ‘Overinterpreting Texts’, p. 66.
15
Eco, ‘Overinterpreting Texts’, p. 64.
 9

us, or to readers at any other time for that matter. For the purposes of this thesis,

both foci will be necessary. In order to understand not just the foundational texts

of cyberpunk and of postmodernism but also the interpretative work produced on

the former, one will have to accept that authorial intention, even if it is the

beginning of meaning, cannot possibly be its ending. Eco, in his method of

reading, however, does not have recourse to authorial intention (intentio

auctoris) in order to place limits on the proliferation of possible interpretation.

Rather, he introduces the concept of intentio operas, the intention of the work

itself. In the third lecture documented in Interpretation and Overinterpretation,

‘Between Author and Text,’ Eco seems to be making an appeal for reasonable

interpretation – for looking for interpretations that, as it were, the text to some

degree encourages, rather than simply hunting down the things that we wish to

find in it. 16 Eco recognises, as many no longer seem to, that the text itself is a

point of some solidity. As he puts it, ‘Between the mysterious history of a textual

production and the uncontrollable drift of its future readings, the text qua text

still represents a comfortable presence, the point to which we can stick.’ 17

Having established that we must, despite the necessary

subjectivity of our history writing, write history anyway, the critical question for

the historian then becomes ‘How do we write the best history?’ What method

and understanding of the historical craft allows both the acknowledgement of our

subjective position, but also the full engagement of our subjectivity with our

past, the elusive beast which we study? Many attempts have been made to

resolve this methodological difficulty, but a promising strand, relatively recently

16
Eco, ‘Overinterpreting Texts’, pp. 71-73.
17
Eco, ‘Between Author and Text’, in Collini, S (ed.), Interpretation and Overinterpretation, p.
88.
 10

reclaimed in the Anglo-American tradition, has been that of hermeneutics. This

recent re-examination of hermeneutic ideas in the Anglo-American world has

come with the general challenges made to logical positivism and its various

theoretical offshoots. In history specifically, as historians have abandoned the

idea of history as the perfect record, and historians as purely objective

transmitters of past ‘fact’, new theoretical understandings of the way we interact

with the past have been required. Hermeneutics, as expressed by Hans-Georg

Gadamer and his various disciples, has increasingly become the framework

around which historical method is based. Hermeneutic theory offers the historian

a powerful method for interpreting and interacting with the past, one which

acknowledges the historian’s own historical position, yet which will also, when

well applied, not result in the gross subjectivism which Dominick LaCapra so

rightly fears. This is not to say that this moderate position between the

objectivism of ‘historical science’ and the subjective involutions of postmodern

theory has always typified hermeneutics as a method. Versions of the

hermeneutic idea, which pre-existed Gadamer, such as those expressed by

Dilthey and Croce, proposed ‘a subject who aims to understand an object… as it

is in itself. This means that the subject must be as open-minded and unprejudiced

as possible, approaching the object without preconceptions.’ 18 This, in itself,

does not sound particularly problematic. Indeed, the point has often been made

that the past must be allowed to tell its story, even if it only has the voice of the

historian with which to tell it. The problem with pre-Gadamerian hermeneutics

was this: it insisted that the correct method of doing history was to attempt to

discard ones own historical position in an attempt to regain the historical position

18
William Outhwaite, ‘Hans-Georg Gadamer’, in Quentin Skinner (ed.), The Return of Grand
Theory in the Human Sciences, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985, p. 25.
 11

of the past which we study. Gadamer criticised this, saying that ‘a hermeneutics

that regarded understanding as the reconstruction of the original would be no

more than the recovery of a dead meaning.’ 19 The meaning of the past must be a

present one; our understanding must also be such. Any meanings which we

extract from the past are irretrievably meanings for the present. If this is not the

intention of our historical inquiry, then we run the risk of meaningless

antiquarianism. There is a further, and more critical problem with such an

attempt to become the past in order to study it. Such an attempt, made by an

historian necessarily conditioned by his own present historicity, is of necessity

doomed to failure. We cannot ever completely abandon our own subject

positions; pretending that we can is both fundamentally mendacious and also

deleterious to the production of good history.

Gadamer advocated a different understanding of hermeneutics.

Outhwaite contrasts Gadamer’s idea to those preceding him by stating that, for

Gadamer,

Our understanding of a text arises out of our position in a historical

tradition, and this is in fact our link with the historical influence or
effectivity of the text itself. Understanding is not a matter of forgetting
our own horizon of meanings and putting ourselves within the alien
texts or society; it means merging or fusing our horizons with
theirs. 20

The process by which we go about creating this fusion of horizons is what we

call the hermeneutic method, and has been characterised with the now ubiquitous

name of the ‘hermeneutic circle.’ The method has been dubbed a circle, although

19
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, cited in Outhwaite, ‘Hans-Georg Gadamer’, p. 27.
20
Outhwaite, `Hans-Georg Gadamer', p. 25. See also I. Oliver, ‘The ‘Old’ and the ‘New’
Hermeneutic in Sociological Theory’, British Journal of Sociology, 1983, 34:4, pp. 519-553, p.
535-537 for an elaboration of similar thoughts.
 12

it might be better said that there are at least two circles to which we must pay

close attention. The first, and that which Skinner is careful to place emphasis on,

is contemporaneous with the object of study. It is a circle in which the historian

examines both text and context, carefully allowing each to illuminate the other,

in the search for possible meanings of the text and the examination of the world

of its context. The second, and that which was closer to Gadamer’s heart, is the

circle which encompasses the text and its interpretation across time, including, of

course, the interpretation proposed by the historian. This process, by which we

attempt to merge our own historicity with that of the object of study, is not the

simple process of interpreting the past from the present. Rather, we come at the

past reality through the understanding of tradition. It is the understanding of

what links us to the past we wish to study that enables the incremental merging

of the two ‘horizons.’ This part of hermeneutics encourages us to build bridges

to the past by an understanding of the traditions which link it to us.

It is important, as Michael Pickering points out, not to perceive tradition,

in the sense in which Gadamer uses it, as a dead thing, cut off from the present.

On the contrary, ‘A tradition… is not timeless but is temporally located, not

21
locked in the past but in a process of becoming.’ As such a ‘living’ entity,

then, tradition can be seen as our link with the past – a way of building the

bridge to begin the merger of differing cultural horizons. One such tradition is

the type of textual interpretation which makes up a large part of the body of

sources for this thesis. Stretching as it does between the time of writing of the
21
Michael Pickering, ‘History as Horizon’, Rethinking History, 1999, 3:2, pp. 177-195, p. 192.
Pickering’s discussion of the role of tradition in Gadamer’s hermeneutics is illuminating,
particularly pp. 188-193.
 13

primary sources, through to the present day, it represents a critical opportunity to

bridge the cultural and temporal gap between one’s own historical position and

that of the object of study. The analogy of the circle is illustrative of the very

nature of the way in which the bridge is to be built, the merger to be undertaken:

historian, text and interpretation constantly inform and challenge each other, in

the search for meaning and understanding. Zygmunt Bauman has commented on

the hermeneutic method that

The richer is our own historically developed practice, the richer

is the past which we consider a problem for, and are capable of,
understanding. The richer a past which we treat in such a way,
the richer becomes our civilisation and its further absorptive
capacity. The hermeneutic circle is not just a method to be
appropriated by professional historians. The hermeneutic circle
is the way in which history itself moves. 22

An awareness of the idea of hermeneutics becomes, on this understanding, not

just a useful tool for the historian, but a necessary understanding of the nature of

history itself.

The method resulting from the ideas of hermeneutics is particularly

applicable to the study of cyberpunk and the critiques which have been

constructed around it. Skinner’s early methods of inquiry in intellectual history

were too restrictive, and failed to recognise the importance of interpretation after

the ‘event’ of the original text. There is as much, if not more, to be learned from

the interpretative actions of critics writing about a text as there is to be learned

from the regaining of meaning in the original text itself. LaCapra’s criticisms,

whilst leaning too far in the direction of linguistic subjectivism, make this plain.

22
Zygmunt Bauman, Hermeneutics and Social Science: Approaches to Understanding,
Hutchinson and Co, London, 1978, p. 46.
 14

What happens to a text, after it has ‘left the horizon’ of its author, to paraphrase

Ricoeur, can be as indicative of the mindset of the critics and their time as the

text itself was in its own. In this thesis, of course, a relatively short time period is

under examination – cyberpunk and the critiques written in response to it have

only been with us since the early 1980s. This very closeness, temporally,

between the text, the following work and the present day make it even more

important to study text and criticism, and to allow them to illuminate each other,

and also to reveal facets of our own life. This dissertation, dealing as it does with

two distinct canons; the literary canon of cyberpunk and the

critical/philosophical canon of postmodern theory, and also with the body of

cultural criticism which follows from their intersection, is obviously one where

walking the tightrope between establishing meaning through the documentary

methods advocated by ‘old’ intellectual history and understanding and utilising

the interpretative methods and cautions issued by the ‘new’ school of intellectual

historians is particularly important. The fact that, even in simply attempting to

establish the ‘meaning’ of past works, the questions we ask of the past to some

degree determine the answers we will get should not act as a deterrent to making

inquiries. It rather emphasises the difficulty, and also the importance, of being a

‘good’ historian. We may speak for the past in our own words, but it is vital that,

in doing so, we strive at all times to allow the past to speak through us. The

process of attempting to be objective is the key to good history, rather than the

achievement of the impossible goal of objective history writing.

This thesis, therefore will consist of an inquiry into both the canonical

texts of cyberpunk and postmodernism, and also critiques written on cyberpunk,

 15

in the main by literary and cultural critics of the postmodern persuasion. This

will allow for a view into both ‘worlds’ simultaneously, as well as illuminating

aspects of present thought. Beginning with the study of the canonical texts in

question, and using (LaCapra’s reservations notwithstanding) an essentially

documentary approach to establish their meanings, whether these are clear or

clouded, coherent or confused, will give a grounding to the further study of the

interpretations which have stemmed from them. The examination of the texts of

cyberpunk criticism, however, offers an opportunity to study postmodern

interpretative theory in action. The ways in which meanings which stem from the

texts of the canon are contested, affirmed or altered (and sometimes simply

misrepresented or misread) in the critical literature, can be used to illuminate a

limited but important part of the intellectual milieu of postmodern culture, from

the 1980s to the present day. A key proposition of this thesis, therefore, will be

that the nature of the culture and philosophy of a time can be extracted from its

literature. This chapter will proceed with discussion of the strong links between

philosophy and science fiction, thus justifying the connections which will later

be drawn between postmodern culture, philosophy and critique, cyberpunk

science fiction and the overall cultural milieu from the 1980s to the present.

Recently, discussions of the relationship between science fiction and

philosophy have significantly increased. The Matrix films alone have spawned at

least three edited collections of works dealing specifically with the philosophical

issues raised in the trilogy. 23 Some years earlier, Robert E. Myers attributed this

23
William Irwin (ed.), The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Chicago,
Open Court, 2002; William Irwin (ed.), More Matrix and Philosophy: Revolutions and Reloaded
Decoded, Chicago, Open Court, 2005; and Glenn Yeffeth (ed.), Taking the Red Pill: Science,
Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix, Dallas (Texas), Benbella Books, 2003.
 16

proliferation to two simultaneous causes: that ‘Science fiction has come out of

the closet, and philosophy has come down from the ivory tower.’ 24 It has been

suggested, however, that the doors may not have completely opened, nor the

descent as yet reached the ground. Indeed, Stephen R.L. Clark has argued that

‘philosophical puzzles… could be explored through the imaginings of people less

constrained than academics,’ and ‘that opening oneself to what is described,

imagined, hinted at in the genre allows one to catch sight of possibilities that

professional philosophy has for too long neglected.’ 25 Science fiction also allows

us to test, as it were, the boat of philosophy on the waters of fiction. However,

the mere increase in popularity of discussing philosophy in terms of science

fiction does not necessarily indicate that this is the correct path to take. In most,

if not quite all, edited collections and individual books and articles discussing

science fiction and philosophy there is a dearth of justification for this type of

project. In most cases (for example the edited collections to do with the Matrix

films cited above) the editors and the authors of the various articles move

directly to their discussion of various philosophical issues apparently raised by

science fiction texts, without first asking, and more importantly answering, the

questions ‘Why is it that we can discuss philosophy in terms of science fiction?’

and, ‘How is it that science fiction raises these philosophical conundra?’ The

connections between science fiction and philosophy are often not made explicit;

they are rather assumed. This is most likely because the authors felt that the

themes and issues raised in the texts which they studied had such obvious

philosophical content that no explication was necessary. Lou Marinoff, for

24
Robert E. Myers, ‘Introduction: Exploring the Intersection’, in R.E. Myers (ed.), The
Intersection of Science Fiction and Philosophy, Westport, Greenwood Press, 1983, p. ix.
25
Stephen R.L. Clark, How to Live Forever: Science Fiction and Philosophy, Routledge, London,
1995, p. 5.
 17

example, when discussing the links between philosophy and the Matrix series,

mentions that ‘to introduce Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, all I have to do is ask

‘Have any of you seen a movie recently that addresses the difference between

appearance and reality?’… Dozens of hand shoot up, and voices call out ‘The

Matrix!’’ 26 It is not only the Matrix films which inspire such instant

philosophical gratification. Any avid reader of science fiction understands the

sense of wonder and questioning that good (and even indifferent) science fiction

can inspire. However, for the purposes of this thesis, these connections need to

be examined and explained. This will not only justify the ongoing philosophical

argumentation throughout the thesis, but will enable a more cogent and applied

discussion of the philosophical issues themselves. As will be discussed below,

science fiction raises questions in many of the areas discussed by philosophy,

including metaphysics, ethics and, interestingly, history of philosophy. This last

is crucial for the overall themes of this thesis, as the links between postmodern

philosophy and cyberpunk science fiction become most apparent when studied

through the contextualising lens of the history of ideas.

Philosophy and science fiction have been linked for longer than many

philosophers would, one suspects, like to acknowledge. Indeed, it is arguable that

philosophers began doing science fiction before the concepts of modern science

existed, and certainly before the existence of the (mainly) twentieth century

literary genre of science fiction. This is because science fiction and philosophy

often contain a similar key component: speculation. Plato, in The Republic,

speculates about the organisation of a future society, and the changes in structure,

26
Lou Marinoff, ‘The Matrix and Plato’s Cave: Why the Sequels Failed’ in William Irwin (ed.),
More Matrix and Philosophy: Revolutions and Reloaded Decoded, p. 5.
 18

ethics and beliefs which would be required to bring it about. George Orwell in

1984, Isaac Asimov in Foundation or Frank Herbert in Dune do very similar

things. They all, including Plato, tell stories which enable the reader to imagine

things not as they are, but as they might be in the future. The story told by

Descartes to justify his methodological scepticism, his tale of systematic

deception by a malin génie (evil demon, updated in more recent times to the

‘brain in the vat’ story) sounds very like the “consensual hallucination” of

Gibson’s cyberspace, or, for that matter, the non-consensual hallucination of

machine-space in The Matrix. In each case, the story is told as a starting point to

speculation about the nature of belief, reality and the truth (or lack thereof) of the

external world. Yet we call Descartes a philosopher and William Gibson and the

Wachowski brothers fiction writers/directors. This is not to attempt to broaden

the category of ‘philosopher’ to include Gibson and the Wachowski brothers.

The similarities elucidated here serve merely to make the point that science

fiction and philosophy often do similar things, provoking similar thoughts in

their readers. In fact, science fiction and philosophy not only serve to provoke

similar ways of thinking, but use similar tools to do it. They each can propose a

modification to the world as it is now, and speculate on the effects that this will

have – the challenges that would be posed to people under such an altered

system, the benefits and detrimental effects that such an alteration to the way we

live might have. As Robert E. Myers puts it, ‘philosophers may set up a schema

that differs in significant aspects from the one adopted by most persons and then

trace the implications of this “new” or altered schema…’ 27 Science fiction, in

literature, has a commitment to just such speculations. This is, simply put,

27
Myers, ‘Introduction: Exploring the Intersection’, p. xiii.
 19

because it is fiction, linked with science. The history of philosophy as a

discipline, at least since the Enlightenment, has been strongly linked to the

history of science (indeed, many great philosophers were also scientists), and so

it is that science fiction, as literature, may have a special link to philosophy. If

present scientific developments can provoke major ethical and public debate

(think of the controversies surrounding cloning, or stem cell research, to mention

just two such recent debates, or the continuing Darwinism/intelligent design

conflict), then does it not also stand to reason that a fiction which bases itself on

extrapolating present trends in the sciences, be they genetics, cybernetics,

population studies or whichever science happens to take the author’s fancy,

should also be able to raise and discuss philosophical dilemmas?

Metaphysical and epistemological questions can be raised easily within a

science fictional context. As mentioned above, Putnam’s ‘brain in the vat’28

story has a distinctly science fictional ring to it, and yet this is a story being told

by a professional philosopher for philosophical purposes, rather than by a science

fiction author for entertainment purposes. Putnam uses the expanding knowledge

which science has acquired about the workings of the human brain to raise

methodological doubt about the nature of our experience, renewing Cartesian

doubt for a modern generation. A critical point is that it is the science within this

science fictional tale which enables him to re-raise this point. The continuing

progress of scientific understanding raises issues which clever authors can use to

examine the nature of the human condition, not only in the present but into the

imagined future as well. Mark Rowlands has suggested that ‘Most great science

28
See Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981.
 20

fiction stories are about something that is essentially alien or other to us… In the

great science fiction stories we stare into the monster, and it is always ourselves

we find staring back.’ 29 It is the presence of this other in science fiction, this

examination of different ways of thinking and being, which enables science

fiction to examine deep philosophical questions. Philosophy itself often requires

the use of modes of thinking which, for want of a better word, do not come

“naturally.” Descartes, in order to propose the methodological doubt as to the

reality of perceptual experience which forms the heart of his Meditations, had to

go to the extreme lengths of proposing a malin génie, an entity which

deliberately and maliciously deceived him as to the nature of his experiences.

This is not the kind of proposition about which one usually thinks, and certainly

not a way of thinking which we usually uphold. As John Ahrens and Fred D.

Miller have put it ‘This sort of science fiction [metaphysical science fiction]

often employs philosophical assumptions which are quite at variance with

enlightened common sense.’ 30 That said, if humans went about systematically

doubting the existence of live electrical cables and moving buses, and acting to

explore this doubt, then the future of the species would be threatened. However,

it is a mode of thought which has been critical in the development of modern

philosophy. Methodological doubt, in various forms, has enabled philosophy to

ask fundamental questions about the nature of being, knowing and belief –

questions which seem ridiculous from an everyday perspective. Science fiction,

because it also steps outside the everyday to the as yet unformed world of the

future or the altered worlds of the present or past, similarly has the capability to

29
Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher at the End of the Universe, Ebury Press, London, 2004, pp.
vii-viii.
30
John Ahrens and Fred D. Miller, ‘Beyond The Green Slime: A Philosophical Prescription for
Science Fiction’, Philosophy in Context, 11, 1981 pp. 1-10, p. 4.
 21

ask such searching questions. Philosophy and science fiction, therefore, have this

in common: they propose modes of thought and ideas about existence which are

to some degree foreign to the ways in which we ‘normally’ think of the world,

and which challenge us to think in new ways, and to create novel solutions, not

only to potential problems in the future, but also to ongoing epistemological and

metaphysical difficulties.

Robert E. Myers describes epistemology as including ‘questions on the

possibility of knowledge and its nature, the degree of certainty, the problem of

error, the kinds of knowledge and the nature of and criteria for truth.’ 31 Given

this definition, it follows that many good science fiction stories raise significant

epistemological issues. One example, extracted from Gibson, might be the

epistemological status of cyberspace. 32 If it is a ‘consensual hallucination’ is it

then “true” or “false?” What, in other words, is the epistemic status of events

which take place in cyberspace? 33 Myers goes on to describes metaphysics as

dealing with ‘such problems as the relation of appearance and reality, the

ultimate nature of reality, the categories we use to order and interpret what we

understand to be real…, and the implications of major models or paradigms that

have been adopted to explain the order of reality…’ 34 The discussion of

problems such as these seems to come as naturally as breathing to science fiction

authors. A quote from the flyleaf of a copy of Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a

31
Myers, ‘Introduction: Exploring the Intersection’, p. xii.
32
William Gibson is credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with the invention of this now-
ubiquitous word. In the Neuromancer series, it is an abstract, computer generated sub-reality,
accessed via “jacking-in”, using neural electrodes. It is also described as a “consensual
hallucination.”
33
This will be examined in greater detail in the chapter of this thesis entitled ‘The “Other” Spaces
of Cyberpunk: Cyberpunk and Spatiality.’
34
Myers, ‘Introduction: Exploring the Intersection’, p. xii.
 22

Strange Land serves to illustrate this: ‘Although he knew it was an impossible

task, Robert Heinlein deliberately set out to question every axiom of Western

Culture. To throw doubts, and, if possible, make the antithesis appear a possible

and perhaps a desirable thing.’ 35 This, it seems, neatly sums up the way science

fiction can assert deeply questioning metaphysical propositions: through

speculation that things may not be the way they seem, or that they could be

different from the way that they are.

It is this ability to examine the ways in which things could be different

which enables science fiction, at its best, to make significant contributions to

ethical discussions. Thomas L. Wymer has said that ‘Science fiction… can

function as the means by which a culture critically explores and creates its own

values and consciousness.’ 36 Many philosophers might raise their heads in shock

at this description, for it also seems to perfectly describe the role of the

professional ethicist. This quote implies that science fiction can not only be the

vehicle for the discussion of abstract philosophical dilemmas, but can also

provide the method for the critique of contemporary society. Science fiction can,

and often does, act as a sort of extrapolatory crystal ball, taking contemporary

phenomena, be they social, political technological or from any of a broad range

of fields, and imagining the ways in which they might develop in the future. The

effects that the individual author foresees in the future act not only as a warning

(or recommendation) of the value of present practice for future people, but also

as a critique of the said practice in contemporary times. Present value systems

35
Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (unexpurgated edition), Hodder and Staughton,
London, 1992, p. i.
36
Thomas L. Wymer, ‘Perception and Value in Science Fiction’, in Thomas D. Clareson (ed.),
Many Futures, Many Worlds, Kent State University Press, 1997, pp. 1-13, p. 12.
 23

can be subject to such critiques in science fiction either through carrying them to

their logical extremes in the posited future world, or through the proposition of

alternatives. Social and political systems in the proposed future, often facilitated

by technological advances envisioned by the author, can be used to highlight

flaws in the present order, or to affirm its goodness. Ethical questions can also be

raised on a broader level. Isaac Asimov’s robot stories, for example, raise key

issues to do with consciousness and ethical status. The robot protagonists of I,

Robot are keenly self aware, and yet restricted by the Laws of Robotics which

Asimov developed. Much of one of the stories is taken up in an extended ethical

debate which the robot has with (him)self, which results in (him) being able to

create an extension to the Laws with which (he) was programmed, to whit: The

Zeroth Law: It is permissible for a robot to take a human life when it is done to

protect humanity. This is clearly, to some degree, a defence of a utilitarian

viewpoint on ethics. Other ethical questions are raised in the stories, however.

We might ask ‘What restriction upon the behaviour of self aware creatures can

be ethically countenanced?’ In other words, are the Laws of Robotics themselves

an ethical construction, or merely a self-serving enslavement of another self

aware “species?” We might also use the robot books as a starting point for a

discussion of racism, through the lens of “robotism.” In cyberpunk, also, points

worthy of ethical examination continually surface. Set in a future of incredible

technological advances, juxtaposed with equally massive social degeneration,

cyberpunk fiction, particularly that of Gibson, significantly questions the

assumed link between technological and social progress.

 24

It is in this relationship with contemporary society that we can observe

the third way in which philosophy and science fiction are linked. Wymer

suggests that we should ‘look at science fiction as a movement, a series of events

in the history of ideas… since it is a genre which has come in recent years to sum

up, in fact to recapitulate, some of the major developments of the last three

hundred years or so of Western culture.’ 37 This suggestion seems to express not

only the fundamental reason behind the writing of this thesis, but to emphasise

the connection which will be stressed here: the connection between science

fiction writing and the philosophical climate of the times in which it is written.

The classical science fiction of Asimov and Robert Heinlein expresses a

confidence in the progress of reason and the scientific method indicative of the

philosophical and social confidence of its time. Asimov, in the epic Foundation

saga, seems with Popperian certainty to extend 1950s American culture to a

galactic scale. His way of saving the Galactic Empire from thousands of years of

barbarism is to preserve its knowledge in an isolated enclave of specialists, ready

to be released back into the galaxy of savages, whether they are receptive or not.

Cyberpunk, on the other hand, displays a more cautious and critical assessment

of the role of science, technology and progress, with the dystopic worlds

portrayed by Gibson, Sterling, Cadigan and others suffused with technological

and scientific progress, but populated by teeming masses unable to access the

benefits which should have accrued from these advances. 38 Whilst the presence

of what, for lack of a better term, might be called “posthumanising” technologies

in cyberpunk appeals to the postmodern, the presence of stringent social and

37
Wymer, ‘Perception and Value in Science Fiction’, p. 2.
38
Brooks Landon notes that ‘cyberpunk writers were intensely interested in new technological
frontiers – but wary of the implications of these new technologies.’ Brooks Landon, Science
Fiction After 1900: From the Steam Man to the Stars, Routledge, New York, 2002, p. 160.
 25

economic critiques may indicate that other concerns are also present. Science

fiction, like other literature, is created by certain authors, at certain times, and

read by readers at these or other times. The texts, therefore, will betray the

obsessions of the author at the time of writing, and this is a matter for the

contextual method of the history of ideas to uncover and analyse. For the writer,

the text is always contemporary, and will express the contemporary problems

which the author wishes to discuss. For the reader, the text is always present, and

the meaning of the discussion may change. Hence the concentration of this

dissertation not only on the primary texts of cyberpunk, but also on subsequent

critique and discussion. However, through the examination, with the hermeneutic

method, of the meanings expressed by the author in the text and the meanings

present in the surrounding context, the text (in this case science fiction novels, in

the main) can illuminate the philosophical issues contemporary to its writing, be

they the dominance of order and reason in Asimov, or the examination of their

breakdown in Gibson.

Science fiction and philosophy, therefore, are closer together than at first

they might seem. Whilst philosophy occasionally takes the guise of a

dispassionate, tired debating forum amongst cloistered academics, and science

fiction the mistake-riddled obsession of a popular culture sub-group, each, in

fact, has more to offer the other than at first appears. Justin Leiber reminds us

that Plato ‘supposed that successful fiction is inspired, felt philosophy… while

philosophy is reasoned fiction, schooled possibilities…’ 39 If this is the case, and

it seems that this accurately describes the relationship between science fiction

39
Justin Leiber, ‘On Science Fiction and Philosophy’, Philosophical Speculations in Science
Fiction and Fantasy, 1:1, 1982, pp. 5-11, p. 7.
 26

and philosophy, then discussing philosophy in terms of science fiction, and vice

versa, is by no means wrong. It may rather bring something extra to each. It is

possible that science fiction may provide philosophy with interesting situations to

discuss and investigate, but also that philosophy can inspire science fiction to

examine new and interesting possibilities. If the arguments and analysis outlined

above hold, then this is indeed the case. Science fiction can both illuminate and

comment upon the philosophical debates contemporary with it, and thus prove a

useful and rich resource in discussing contemporary philosophy. The critical

literature surrounding a series of texts can also provide elucidatory material, and

it is to this which we next move.

Much of the analysis in this thesis will be based upon the examination of

the critical literature surrounding cyberpunk. This is partially due to the

commitment earlier expressed to hermeneutics, to understanding the tradition

which has grown up around cyberpunk. It is a central idea of hermeneutics that

the study of this tradition will allow us a greater connection to cyberpunk itself,

or perhaps rather would serve to connect us to cyberpunk and cyberpunk to us.

However, this is not the only reason for studying the critical tradition

surrounding cyberpunk. The tradition itself is actually the object of study for this

thesis. The aim of this dissertation is, in many ways, not only to allow cyberpunk

to illuminate the cultural milieu of the 1980s, but also to allow subsequent

critique to continue to provide us with information regarding the progress of

these cultural obsessions, particularly those of postmodernism. The main body of

this thesis, therefore, will consist of discussion of the critical literature on

cyberpunk, illuminated by an understanding of the primary sources of which

 27

these critiques make use. The critical literature based upon cyberpunk is diverse

and rich, both in the topics which it discusses and the disciplines from which it

comes. This diversity will become obvious as this dissertation progresses.

Despite this, it is appropriate here to discuss briefly the breadth and depth of this

source base. Firstly, critics and authors from a wide variety of fields have used

cyberpunk as a starting place for their commentaries. Obviously, literature theory

features heavily in the critical literature on cyberpunk, but gender studies,

cultural studies and even philosophy feature strongly also. Articles from Modern

Fiction Studies sit alongside those from Extrapolation, Genders, and The Journal

of Popular Culture. Far from being the domain of a few literary critics,

discussions of cyberpunk have taken on proportions well beyond those which

would be predictable, given the relatively slim primary source base. This is due

to the fact that cyberpunk has relevance in numerous areas of contemporary

interest, including but not restricted to simulation and the nature of reality,

philosophy of mind and the mind/body problem, gender issues and technology,

and corporate power in an increasingly corporatised world. Before

foreshadowing the coming examinations, however, it is of interest to examine

precisely what the cyberpunk source base utilised by the critical literature is, and

to gain an understanding of why these novels may have been selected for critical

appropriation rather than others.

When reading literary criticism on cyberpunk, it quickly becomes

obvious that there is a certain body of key texts which defines the cyberpunk

subgenre. These texts include two trilogies by William Gibson (the first
 28

including Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and the second

consisting of Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow’s Parties), and some works

by Pat Cadigan and Bruce Sterling, including Synners and Mindplayers by the

former and most often Schismatrix by the latter. Added to this collection of

novels, two anthologies of short stories, the Mirrorshades anthology (edited and

with a foreword by Bruce Sterling) and the collection of Gibson’s short stories,

Burning Chrome, also feature frequently in critical discussions. Gibson’s newer

works, the trilogy beginning with Pattern Recognition, have yet to gain

significant status in the critical literature, and whilst both Sterling and Cadigan

have written numerous other novels, they also do not carry much weight in the

academic literature. However, what the development of this list of prescribed

texts tells us is that cyberpunk, small subgenre of a generally outcast form of

writing though it is, has already evolved a canon – a body of texts without which

one cannot be said to understand the genre. Other authors are mentioned in the

critical literature on cyberpunk, of course, but in general so infrequently as to be

discounted from the nascent cyberpunk canon. This canon, such as it is, seems to

consist almost exclusively of works composed by the authors listed above:

Gibson, Sterling and Cadigan. Whilst agreeing with Joseph G. Kronick’s

observation that canons should consist of rules rather than lists, 40 it becomes

increasingly obvious that what critics of cyberpunk tend to examine is a list – and

a short one at that. A more interesting question by far, however, and more in

keeping with the contextualising goals of this thesis, is not which books and

authors make the cut, but instead to ask precisely how the cut was made. In one

sense this question may in fact seem irrelevant. Why should one not simply

40
Joseph G. Kronick, ‘Writing American: Between Canon and Literature’, The New Centennial
Review, 1:3, 2001, pp. 37-66, p. 39.
 29

discuss only the texts which the critical literature examines and leave it at that?

The answer, in intellectual history terms at least, is that the selection of texts is in

itself a decisive process, and deserves examination. More prosaically, but also

importantly, at some point a selection must be made from the plethora of texts

which have been called cyberpunk (or, for that matter proto- or post- cyberpunk).

The adoption of the nascent canon of cyberpunk from the critical literature on the

sub-genre is one method of doing this, and is in fact a method which fits very

well indeed with the methodology and goals of this thesis. There is a second

canon to consider in the critical literature, of course – the scholarly canon. There

is a veritable plethora of critical texts which might be considered to be a part of

the critical canon for cyberpunk. Works by Donna Haraway, Jacques Derrida,

Jean Baudrillard and Jean-François Lyotard at the very least deserve

consideration as ‘canonical’ texts. This thesis does not propose to examine the

complex processes of canonisation. It is sufficient, for the purposes of the

examinations to be undertaken, to acknowledge that there is a group of key texts

which inform cyberpunk criticism. 41

In following the map established by the processes of canonisation,

however, literary critics have created a further vast and rich body of critical

literature, which raises many and complicated issues. Thematically, much of the

critical material on cyberpunk is postmodern, both in its theoretical basis and, for

want of a better word, in its general “feel.” Literary criticism based upon

41
The examination of the twin ‘canons’ of cyberpunk criticism could prove to be both an
interesting and lengthy pursuit. Certainly, at least one excellent article has been devoted to the
study of the canonisation process of one cyberpunk text. See Sarah Brouilette, ‘Corporate
Publishing and Canonisation: Neuromancer and Science Fiction Publishing in the 1970s and
Early 1980s’, Book History, 5:1, pp. 187-208. Without wishing to excessively foreshadow future
work, an intellectual history of cyberpunk’s ‘canons’ could prove to be fruitful ground for further
examination of the cultural climate which surrounded the development of cyberpunk criticism.
 30

cyberpunk has expanded upon, interpreted, and in many cases misinterpreted the

primary texts in affirming postmodernity, and in finding support for

posthumanist ideas. This is not to imply that postmodernism is a unitary doctrine

which has a single dogma. However, there are certain consuming passions in

postmodern theory which continue to influence the writing of postmodern

critique. Cyberpunk, due to the nature of its own themes, often seems to express

and confirm these passions of postmodernity, and to provide the perfect

launching pad for the continued proliferation of postmodern thought. However,

in the coming chapters, this thesis will contend that this is actually often not the

case, and that, in presenting postmodern interpretations of cyberpunk, critics

often miss the mark. Thus, this thesis will require continual inter-textual

reference between the primary texts (both of cyberpunk and the postmodern

movement) and the critical literature on cyberpunk, a hermeneutic understanding

of the tradition from start to finish. It will present a meta-critical view of

cyberpunk scholarship, and in doing so, attempt to illuminate both the strengths

and limitations of the cyberpunk critical tradition.

Chapter Two of this dissertation, entitled ‘“Posthumanism with a

Vengeance”: Cyberpunk and Posthumanist Literary Criticism’ will discuss a

perennial postmodern theme: the decay and death of the humanist subject.

Posthumanism is a predictable progression from the antihumanism apparent in

much postmodernist thinking. Cyberpunk has been fruitful ground for those who

wish to proclaim the death of the humanist subject, and its decay into a

multiplicity of ‘subjectivities’. The idea of the cyborg, in particular, has triggered

 31

a massive body of writing, beginning with Donna Haraway, who in “A Manifesto

for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s”

proposed ‘cyborg writing’ (and indeed cyborg existence) as a postmodern

method of, amongst other things, gender transgression (this will obviously also

be referred to in the later chapter on gender and cyberpunk). Returning to the

point, the death of the humanist subject, in our contemporary world, comes from

the play of subjectivities engendered at least partly by the blurring of boundary

lines and binary differences – such as those between genders and between nature

and technology. If this is the case, then the decay of the subject should be even

more apparent in cyberpunk writing, where the dividing line between technology

and nature is even more blurred. For example, it is questionable whether simply

wearing glasses makes one a cyborg, but what is not in question is that a

character such as Gibson’s Molly Millions, who has nerve upgrades, razors under

her fingernails and, most obviously, mirrorshade glasses implanted into her face,

is such a creature. This difference being observed, it should be comparatively

easy to observe also the absence of any Enlightenment, humanist subject in

Gibson’s and others’ work. I will argue that this is not the case, and that, in the

instance of Neuromancer at least, it is the struggle of two inherently non-human

characters (the artificial intelligences Neuromancer and Wintermute) to achieve

the status of a unitary subject which drives the plot. It is not apparent that any

other characters in cyberpunk novels are significantly “posthuman” either. The

mere fact that the form of their humanity in many ways differs from our own, or

from our preconceived notions of what it is to be human, is not indicative of the

formation of a fundamentally different condition, that of being “post-“ human.

Once again, Gibson has commented, albeit obliquely, on this topic, claiming that
 32

‘The emotional friction in my books has to do with how far these people have

been taken from what we think of as human, and yet how like us they are and yet

how they do manage to retain reserves of love and to remain themselves. I think

that is something that a lot of us still do, and it amazes me that we can.’ 42 It is

worthy of consideration, then, that rather than examining posthumanism (either

as an extant condition, or as something to be striven for) cyberpunk may in fact

examine the resilience of human people in the face of a dehumanising world.

The chapter which continues the argument will be titled ‘“But It Ain’t No

Way Human”: Cyberpunk and Theories of the Posthuman’. Chapter Three

contains manifest links to the previous chapter, and indeed some time will be

devoted to disentangling these intellectual threads, in order to clarify the

following discussion. It will be observed that, within the idea of the posthuman,

there are two main divisions: one which, for lack of any other terminology, this

thesis terms the ‘cybernetic’ posthuman, and another which will be termed the

‘philosophical’ posthuman. The chapter goes on to propose that a confused

conflation of the two occurs in much of the critical literature on cyberpunk, and

that the critical literature often treats evidence of one (the ‘cybernetic’

posthuman) as evidence of the other (the ‘philosophical’ posthuman). The

chapter analyses in some depth the differences between these two formations of

the posthuman. It proposes that the confusion between and conflation of these

two differing ‘posthumans’ in the critical literature makes much of that critical

literature deeply suspect. It goes on to suggest that the cybernetic posthumans

which abound in cyberpunk not only do not necessarily provide evidence of the

42
John Aloysius Farrell, ‘The Cyberpunk Controversy’, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, 19
February 1989, (Interview with William Gibson).
 33

genre’s support for their philosophical siblings; they may actually provide

evidence of precisely the opposite.

Chapter Four, entitled ‘Cyberpunk Spatiality: The “Other” Spaces of

Cyberpunk’ examines the characteristics of cyberpunk spaces. In particular, it

examines the quintessential “space” of cyberpunk, cyberspace, and also the

interstitial spaces beloved of Gibson, and to a lesser extent embraced by other

cyberpunk authors. It examines three main ways in which critics have viewed

cyberpunk cyberspaces: firstly, as a massive extension of a dualist view of the

mind/body problem; secondly, as an extension of Cartesian mathematical space;

and lastly, as confirmation of Jean Baudrillard’s theories of simulation. It will be

observed that all of these interpretations of cyberspace suffer from serious flaws,

but also that they all do capture something of the nature and role of cyberspace in

cyberpunk fictions. Chapter Four also examines the role of interstitial spaces in

cyberpunk fiction, particularly in the work of William Gibson. Gibson assigns a

highly positive role to interstitial spaces in his fiction, at least where he is willing

to openly term them as interstitial. The critical literature has largely reacted

positively to Gibson’s use of the interstitial; this is perhaps unsurprising given

the largely postmodern slant of much cyberpunk criticism. This chapter examines

such enthusiasm in both Gibson’s fiction and the critical literature, and finds

reasons for doubt.

Feminist cyberpunk criticism has represented continual guiding force and

source of innovation in cyberpunk criticism. Feminist debates have been amongst

 34

the most complex and interesting in the critical literature surrounding cyberpunk,

constituting a significant part of the literature, some of it quite influential. 43

Chapter Five, ‘Women, Men and Machines: Cyberpunk and Feminist Criticism’,

aims to analyse these debates from the perspective of intellectual history. The

debates have centred around two poles: firstly, direct character analyses taken

from the texts (for example the characters of Case and Molly in Neuromancer)

and the gendered status of these individuals and their relationships with each

other. Molly herself is a figure of much contention, with arguments varying from

presenting her as a strong, self-empowered woman to others examining the ways

in which she is exploited by a still innately patriarchal society. The second pole

around which discussion has taken place is that of the enabling powers of the

technologies presented in cyberpunk. It has been claimed that cyborg

technologies (augmentation, digitisation, cyberspace) offer freedom from gender

– a breakdown of the binaries present in Enlightenment discourses. Chapter Five

will question not just the idea of such a breakdown (whether it is such a

wonderful idea), but whether in fact it is facilitated by the technologies presented

in cyberpunk, and indeed whether the black and white presentation of

Enlightenment philosophy implicit in such readings is valid.

Chapter Six is less obviously linked to those preceding it, but it is

key to the ideas of this thesis as a whole, and is in fact the major thread which

draws this thesis together. One of Frederic Jameson’s most important (for a

historian at least) observations about the postmodern condition is that it creates a

43
For example, Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature,
London, Free Association, 1991.
 35

world where it is increasingly difficult to have a sense of history – to gain

historicity. This is one area where cyberpunk texts do seem to ratify the

“condition of postmodernity” and exemplify postmodern writing. It will be

argued that cyberpunk writing, particularly Gibson’s Neuromancer trilogy and

Sterling’s Schismatrix, demonstrates precisely this characteristic of

postmodernity, in that all the novels seem to take place in a perpetual present,

with little reference to past events, even those taking place in previous novels in

the series (this is obviously particularly relevant to Gibson, whose work exists in

this ‘serial’ form). It is interesting that, despite the richness of cyberpunk

criticism, comparatively little has been written on Jameson’s astute observation.

There will also be significant links displayed to the work of Jean-François

Lyotard, whose discussions of the death of the grand narratives of the

Enlightenment have had both a significant influence on postmodern theory and

have observable parallels in cyberpunk writing. Critically, for the historian at

least, Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis is roughly contemporaneous

with the emergence of cyberpunk, and it will also be used to illuminate the

cyberpunk view on history and the future. Chapter Six, entitled ‘A Future

Without a Past: Cyberpunk and History’, will discuss the potential reasons for

this lack of historicity in cyberpunk, and also the treatment (or lack thereof) of

the historicity issue in the critical literature. There are myriad possibilities, but to

list a couple, the highly technologised state of societies in cyberpunk literature

might be a reason, as might the dominance of a certain kind of capital culture

(this is one of the suggestions which Jameson makes in Postmodernism: Or, The

Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism). Whatever the reasons, there is a clear case to

be made that, in this aspect of cyberpunk, if not so much in others, postmodern

 36

criticism has a point. The decay of the sense of history into an endless present is

“present” in cyberpunk writing, and is well worth further examination, and

Lyotard’s identification of scepticism towards grand narratives is also present in

the fractured writing of the cyberpunk subgenre.

Cyberpunk science fiction is a complex and interesting sub-genre, raising

numerous questions of philosophical import. In this chapter the ways in which

we might extract an understanding of the issues raised, and the processes by

which this comes about, has been indicated. The method provided by intellectual

history, hermeneutics, enables a considered merging of points of view, and this

gradual fusion of socio-cultural horizons, undertaken through the tradition

established in the critical literature on cyberpunk, will enable a deeper

understanding not just of the primary texts, but also the postmodern culture from

which they, and the critical texts, arose. Cyberpunk, as a sub-genre of science

fiction, is in a unique position to provide us with information as regards the

philosophical obsessions of its time, and of ours, and once again, the

continuation (or not) of these threads through the critical literature will provide

crucial insights. Lastly, the nature of the texts which critics consider, and why

they consider some texts and not others, must always play a part in how we

examine and understand cyberpunk. Over the coming chapters, cyberpunk and its

critiques will act as a lens for the viewing and analysis of contemporary culture

and philosophy. The interests and obsessions of both cyberpunk novels and the

critical literature resulting from them allow the examination of numerous issues

of philosophical and historical import, including the advance of postmodernism.

The coming chapters will examine the alleged breakdown of the unitary

humanist subject, the role of gender in culture, literature and critique, the
 37

construction of the mind (and the deconstruction of the philosophy of mind

proposed by postmodernity), and the death of history. Firstly, however, we turn

the key on the philosophical history of cyberpunk, and examine its links with

posthumanist philosophy.
 38

Chapter Two: “Posthumanism With a Vengeance”: Cyberpunk and

Posthumanist Literary Criticism.

It is apparent, when confronted with the literary criticism written about

cyberpunk, that the overwhelming majority of the critics consider the sub-genre

to be posthumanist in its philosophical leanings. There are rare and brief

exceptions to this rule. Istvan Csiscery-Ronay, for example, describes Count

Zero as ‘Gibson’s attempt to recover a place for the individual artist and work of

art from the postmodern vortex that NM ended up affirming. CZ’s moral and

aesthetic vision stands on whether it can create a humanistic and compassionate

counter-pleasure, equal to NM’s.’ 1 However, this implies the acceptance of

Neuromancer’s posthumanist status, and Csicsery-Ronay also goes on to argue

that Count Zero fails in its attempts to create a humanist vision in the cyberpunk

universe. The overall outcome of Csicsery-Ronay’s impressive discussion, then,

is the implication that it is impossible, at least for Gibson, to successfully insert a

humanist standpoint into a genre which is essentially posthumanist: that ‘CZ is

about the difficulty of telling any other story than NM, and of maintaining a

modernist novelistic narrative against the flow of apocalypse.’ 2 The discussion of

cyberpunk to follow in this chapter is, in relation to the majority of cyberpunk

critique, cast critically, as a respectfully dissenting judgement. It will be argued

that, in many ways, cyberpunk as a whole is humanist in style and intent, and that

this is not necessarily a bad thing. Whilst it is true, particularly in the work of

William Gibson, that a dehumanising, even inhuman, world is the setting of

1
Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., ‘Antimancer: Cybernetics and Art in Gibson’s Count Zero’,
Science-Fiction Studies, 22:1, 1995, pp. 63-86, p. 64. Contractions in original text.
2
Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., ‘Antimancer’, p. 84. Contractions in original text.
 39

cyberpunk, the themes, characterisation and plot and narrative progression

contain startlingly (in the light of the overwhelmingly posthumanist critical

interpretations of cyberpunk) humanist values and standpoints.

Despite these reasons for considering cyberpunk to be a genre

predominantly humanist in its outlook, however, it remains the case that the

majority of literary criticism written about cyberpunk maintains that cyberpunk is

significantly, if not wholly, posthumanist in outlook. This is perhaps not

surprising, as cyberpunk burst onto the literary scene at a time when, particularly

in America, postmodernist and posthumanist theory increasingly dominated

radical critical culture. The massive changes engendered by the perceived

failures of both left liberalism and Marxism had led to an abandonment of both

humanist critical methods and humanist philosophy in general, 3 and anti-

humanism and posthumanism became de rigueur for ‘advanced’ critics. This

transformation had occurred earlier in France, with Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut

concluding that ‘French philosophy of the ’68 period resolutely chose the

antihumanist position.’4 Whilst Ferry and Renaut refer only to the French

intellectual milieu, it is possible to generalise their comments to the world of

radical literary criticism as a whole. Into this critical culture came a brand of

science fiction which identified itself in many ways as being in opposition to

classical, humanist science fiction (at least in its own propaganda). 5 There is an

3
For a brief exposition on this theme, see Richard Wolin, Labyrinths: Explorations in the
Critical History of Ideas, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1995, p. 3.
4
Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, French Philosophy of the Sixties: An Essay on Antihumanism,
University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1990, p. xxiii.
5
See for example, Bruce Sterling’s preface to William Gibson’s collection of short stories,
Burning Chrome, Bruce Sterling, ‘Preface’, pp. 9-13 in William Gibson, Burning Chrome,
Voyager Press, London, 1995, first published Gollancz 1986.
 40

obvious desire in posthumanist theory to dismantle (or rather deconstruct) old

paradigms (particularly those of humanist thought), and there is a similar

tendency in cyberpunk with regards to more traditional forms of science fiction. 6

While it will be argued that to treat cyberpunk as simply an extension of its own

propaganda machine is questionable, cyberpunk is, undeniably, quite different

from most prior science fiction. Cyberpunk was, and is, science fiction written

for an age when human technology has changed, and has changed the way people

view the world. As Bruce Sterling put it in the introduction to Gibson’s

collection of short fiction, Burning Chrome, ‘It [cyberpunk] derives from a new

set of starting points: not from the shopworn formula of robots, spaceships and

the modern miracle of atomic energy, but from cybernetics, biotech and the

communications web.’ 7 Posthumanist theory posited itself as new theory for a

new age of (post)humanity, and cyberpunk developed as the science fiction of

that new age. The match between an oppositional social/aesthetic theory and the

self-declaredly radical new sub-genre was to be expected.

This chapter will examine this phenomenon in cyberpunk criticism, and

analyse the evolving web of relations between literary criticism, philosophical

posthumanism and cyberpunk science fiction. The connections between literary

theory and philosophical posthumanism, of course, have been discussed

elsewhere at great length, by both opponents and proponents of

post/antihumanism.8 The discussion of these links, therefore, will be confined to

6
For a brief exegesis on the differences between classical science fiction, the New Wave and
cyberpunk, see Sabine Heuser, Virtual Geographies: Cyberpunk at the Intersection of the
Postmodern and Science Fiction, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2003, pp. x-xi.
7
Bruce Sterling, ‘Preface’, p. 11, in William Gibson, Burning Chrome.
8
For examples of this literature, see Neil Badmington, ‘Introduction: Approaching
Posthumanism’, in Neil Badmington (ed.), Posthumanism, Palgrave, New York, 2000,
 41

a series of remarks intended to elucidate the main discussion, namely the

ongoing posthumanist interpretative matrix which has inflected cyberpunk

criticism. Critical discussions of cyberpunk novels demonstrate a number of

intellectual threads, which quite frequently become tangled. Amongst these, the

confusion of the technological posthuman with the philosophy of posthumanism

stands out as perhaps the most common tangle. However, there is also a

significant degree of disagreement as to the hopeful or otherwise nature of

cyberpunk literature – particularly in Gibson’s work. It would seem that those

who argue that posthumanist philosophical tenets are those that people should

espouse, and that cyberpunk is a predominantly posthumanist genre, should be

prepared to accept the logical outcome of such positions. If the worlds imagined

in cyberpunk fiction are essentially or predominantly hopeful ones, and if they

represent the imagined posthumanist (or posthuman) future, then it follows that,

in the imagined worlds of cyberpunk at least, posthumanism offers a viable

alternative to a revised humanism. However, should the converse be true, and the

worlds imagined by cyberpunk prove to be a future nightmare, rather than a

future utopia, and yet still remain posthumanist, then those who have both

identified with posthumanism and identified it in cyberpunk have a significant

problem. This largely unresolved tension underlies much of the critical literature

on cyberpunk. It may also be present in the genre literature, as Darko Suvin has

observed, arguing that Gibson’s ‘work does not accept the values of the black,

particularly pp. 8-10; Richard Wolin, Labyrinths, pp. 195-201. An interesting article on the
potential critical disjunctures between ‘theory’ and posthumanism is Stefan Herbrechter and Ivan
Callus, ‘What’s Wrong With Posthumanism’, rhizomes, 7, 2003 (online resource).
 42

closed world he evokes with such skill: he hates the status quo. But his balancing

act accepts the status quo a bit too readily as inevitable and unchanging.’ 9

9
Darko Suvin, ‘On Gibson and Cyberpunk SF’, in Larry McCaffery (ed.) Storming the Reality
Studio, Duke University Press, Durham, 1991, pp. 249-365, p. 357.
 43

Indeed, whether cyberpunk is interpreted as utopian or dystopian, both of

these perceptions raise problems for the posthumanist critics of cyberpunk.

Utopia, after all, is an idea that reached its apogee in the Enlightenment with its

ongoing narratives of progress and human transcendence. If cyberpunk is utopian

(although it seems a significant stretch to so characterise the devastated

oppressed worlds of many cyberpunk novels), then it is utopian in that in some

way it imagines a better future. If it is dystopian (and the argument that

cyberpunk is a predominantly dystopian sub-genre is easier to make), then it is

dystopian precisely because it imagines what can go wrong with the present as it

progresses into the future. In either case, critics of the posthumanist persuasion

must proceed very carefully, for the idea of progress, and also the idea of

transcendence, are humanist ideals which the antihumanist philosophical

movement has come to regard with the greatest suspicion. The very idea of

utopia (and, by definition, its corollary, dystopia) entail the idea of progress.

Before proceeding with examination of critical texts specifically related

to cyberpunk, however, some brief discussion of the background of academic

posthumanism is required. Posthumanism has a variety of roots in scholarship.

Richard Wolin, in ‘Antihumanism in French Postwar Theory’, outlines a number

of these; ‘in a Foucauldian spirit’, Wolin sketches ‘a genealogy of French

intellectual politics of the period; a genealogy that can account for why

philosophical antihumanism could present itself as a redoubtable theoretical

option…’ 10 Whilst Wolin’s position is unambiguously that of a humanist critic of

posthumanist theory, this does not impair the accuracy of his genealogy of

10
Richard Wolin, Labyrinths, p. 178.
 44

post/antihumanist thought. 11 Wolin identifies four main areas of theoretical

examination which were blended to create contemporary philosophical

antihumanism. These are ‘the influences of (1) the later Heidegger, (2)

structuralism and structural anthropology, (3) semiology and linguistics and,

later, [4] poststructuralism,’ which ‘combined to form, as it were, an

epistemological united front whose main object was to have quit with “man,” the

subject of traditional humanism.’ 12 The reasons for what seemed a particularly

sudden departure from a tradition of Enlightenment stretching back some

hundreds of years, were, of course, diverse. Wolin (somewhat cynically)

attributes the adoption of Heidegger by the French Marxist Left to a simple

desire to discredit Jean-Paul Sartre’s brand of existential humanism. 13 The

existential anti-humanism of Heidegger, on the other hand, had ‘significant

intellectual affinities [with] Marxism… insofar as both doctrines displayed an a

priori mistrust of Western humanism.’ 14 In this strange meeting of right

reactionary and left revolutionary thought, 15 the common target appeared to be

humanism, and its representative ‘man’. Wolin argues that, along with Lacan’s

argument that ‘the self can never be anything other than a patchwork of artificial,

linguistic constructs that serve to cover up and distort the unconscious,’ 16 and the

structural anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss, who argued that ‘“structures”,

rather than human will and consciousness, are the fundamental determinants of

11
It does, obviously, impact upon his conclusions about the legacy of posthumanist theory.
However, since it is not Wolin’s conclusions but rather his investigations of the intellectual
foundations of posthumanist thought that are at issue, it remains both useful and interesting to
examine Wolin’s historical analysis.
12
Richard Wolin, Labyrinths, p. 178.
13
Richard Wolin, Labyrinths, p. 182.
14
Richard Wolin, Labyrinths, p. 182.
15
Darrin McMahon, in Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and
the Making of Modernity, describes ‘Enlightenment bashing’ as a new ‘intellectual blood-sport,
uniting elements of both the Left and the Right in a common cause.’ Darrin McMahon, Enemies
of Enlightenment, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, p. 12.
16
Richard Wolin, Labyrinths, p. 187.
 45

cultural life,’ 17 the ‘critique of “man” that was forcefully elaborated in the

thought of Heidegger… provided the ensuing wave of antihumanist discourse –

so-called poststructuralism – with a firm foundation on which to build.’ 18 The

presence of such a foundation, however, does little to explain the adoption of

antihumanist theory as the dominant left critical theory in (predominantly

American) literary criticism. Wolin elsewhere comments that antihumanism

undertook ‘a rather surprising transatlantic migration that took place during the

1970s’, and ‘was heralded as “critical,” “oppositional,” and “radical” – claims

that probably said more about the impoverished state of contemporary American

radicalism… than anything else.’ 19 Edward Said has noted another reason for the

growth in popularity of antihumanist discourse, observing that antihumanism

‘was an often idealistic critique of humanism’s misuses in politics and public

policy, many of which were in regard to non-European people and

immigrants.’ 20 It is of interest that the adoption of antihumanism, the assault on

Enlightenment tout court, by Western radical intellectuals came at a time when

both the left liberal thought of the 1960s and the alternative proposed by

Marxism were deemed to have failed. Change within the structures of humanism

no doubt seemed, at best, highly unlikely. For these, or other, reasons it cannot

be doubted that antihumanist (or posthumanist) thinking became the main mode

of radical criticism.

17
Richard Wolin, Labyrinths, p. 188.
18
Richard Wolin, Labyrinths, p. 195. See also Neil Badmington, ‘Introduction: Approaching
Posthumanism”, in Posthumanism, Neil Badmington (ed.), Palgrave, New York, 2000, pp. 5-10
for a similar account to Wolin’s (if one which draws very different conclusions!).
19
Richard Wolin, Labyrinths, p. 3.
20
Edward Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, Palgrave, New York, 2004, p. 13.
 46

At this point a brief excursus on the nature of the ‘humanism’ to which

posthumanism presents itself as an alternative is merited. For humanism, despite

the tendency of posthumanist authors to present it as a sort of overbearing

philosophical/critical monster, is in fact characterised by internal division. There

is one division, however, which it is most important to observe before proceeding

with an analysis of the various critiques which posthumanist theory has, rightly

or otherwise, levelled at humanism. This is the division between the kind of

conservative literary theory which has, over a lengthy period of time, been

advanced as ‘humanist’ in critical circles, and the philosophical humanism of, for

example, Immanuel Kant, which was (and is) profoundly anti-conservative –

even radical. Edward Said, in Humanism and Democratic Criticism, provides a

brief but interesting history of conservative humanism. He states that it ‘is

thought of as something very restricted and difficult, like a rather austere club

with rules that keep most people out, and when some are allowed in, a set of

regulations disallowing anything that might expand the club’s membership.’21

Said traces this attitude from the literary High Modernism of T.S. Eliot through

to the more recent criticism of Allan Bloom, whose work he describes as

‘represent[ing] the nadir of what Richard Hofstader calls anti-intellectualism…

education ideally was to be a matter less of investigation, criticism and

humanistic enlargement of consciousness than a series of unsmiling restrictions,

ending up with a small handful of elites…’ 22 Said clearly has little respect or

affection for this kind of ‘humanism’, and that is entirely understandable. Such

narrow, reductionist and exclusionary doctrines have given humanism a very bad

21
Edward Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, p. 16.
22
Edward Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, p. 18. See also Richard Wolin, Labyrinths,
pp. 33-42, ‘The Cultural Politics of Neoconservatism’, for an interesting examination of the
continuing existence and influence of this kind of reactionary thought.
 47

name. However, as Said also allows, ‘it is worth insisting, in this as well as other

cases, that attacking the abuses of something is not the same thing as dismissing

or entirely destroying that thing. So, in my opinion, it has been the abuse of

humanism that discredits some of humanism’s practitioners without discrediting

humanism itself.’ 23 Later Said goes on to explain that he does not consider that ‘a

belief in humanism… must be accompanied by reams of laundry list exclusions,

the prevalence of a miniscule class of selected and approved authors and readers,

and a tone of mean-spirited rejection…’ and that ‘to understand humanism at

all… is to understand it as democratic, open to all classes and backgrounds, and

as a process of unending disclosure, discovery, self-criticism and liberation.’24

Said’s exegesis of conservative ‘humanism’ as opposed to liberatory humanist

criticism could not be clearer – one is innately exclusive, regressive, and

conservative, the other retains the liberatory potential for critical self-analysis,

the Enlightenment virtue of reasoned critique of reason first summarised by

Kant. However, whilst noting this distinction, it is apparent in reading much

posthumanist criticism that many posthumanist critics do not particularly care

which kind of ‘humanism’ they are dealing with. In a peculiar case of ‘all cats

are black in the night’ syndrome, many posthumanist critics are happy to deal

with humanism as if it were all of the Bloom school. This, needless to say, does

their arguments little service.

Martin Halliwell and Andy Mousley, in Critical Humanisms, outline

‘three important and interrelated characteristics of what this book will

subsequently call “classical” or occasionally “liberal” humanism: the sovereignty

23
Edward Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, p. 13.
24
Edward Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, pp. 21-22.
 48

of the subject (a key feature of liberal humanism); the transparency of language;

and rationalism.’ 25 Along with other, subsidiary concepts, most critics writing

about the philosophical posthuman consider some variation of the above to be the

humanist conception of the subject. This may be true for some kinds of

humanism, but a philosophical monster which has existed for better than four

hundred years wears many faces. Indeed the tendency of posthumanist critics to

use the terms ‘liberal humanist’ and ‘humanist’ interchangeably marks a certain

weakness in the arguments put forward. 26 This is a point which Terry Eagleton

makes well in The Illusions of Postmodernism, when he writes that:

In a convenient piece of straw-targeting, all liberalism is seen

as promoting some primitive Hobbesian notion of the self as a
naked social atom anterior to its social conditions, linked to
other anti-social atoms by a set of purely contractual
relations external to its inner substance. It doesn’t sound too
beguiling, but some postmodernists actually seem to imagine
that this is what all liberals must by definition hold. The
history of Western philosophy, so we are asked to believe, is
by and large the narrative of this starkly autonomous subject,
in contrast to the dispersed, divided subject of current
postmodern orthodoxy. This ignorant and dogmatic travesty
of Western philosophy should not go unchallenged. For
Spinoza, the subject is the mere function of an implacable
determinism, its ‘freedom’ no more than the knowledge of an
iron necessity. The self for David Hume is a convenient
fiction, a bundle of ideas and experiences whose unity we can
only hypothesise. Kant’s moral subject is indeed autonomous
and self-determining, but in a mysterious way quite at odds
with its empirical determining. For Schelling, Hegel and the
other Idealists, the subject is relational to its roots, as it is of
course for Marx; for Kierkegaard and Sartre the self is
agonisedly non-self-identical, and for Nietzsche mere spume
on the wave of the ubiquitous will to power. So much, then,
for the grand narrative of the unified subject. That there is
indeed such an animal haunting Western thought is not in
question; but the tale is far less homogenous than some

25
Martin Halliwell and Andy Mousley, Critical Humanisms: Humanist/Anti-Humanist
Dialogues, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2003, pp. 3-4.
26
I would argue that, for the above typology to be true, one should probably also add the term
‘capitalist’ into the equation, giving the unwieldy but more accurate designation ‘liberal capitalist
humanist’.
 49

postmodernist devotees of heterogeneity would persuade us to

think. 27

Similarly, as Halliwell and Mousley have pointed out, ‘Faith in the march of

human reason towards perfection is itself not the only way of characterising

Enlightenment thought, but it has contributed towards the idea of humanism

established by a largely French and poststructuralist canon of criticism that it is a

belief-system with an inflated and uncritical view of human capacities.’28

Eagleton’s analysis, when combined with Halliwell and Mousley’s, demonstrates

that both the terms ‘liberal’ and ‘humanist’ are more complicated than commonly

assumed in posthumanist writing. In short, the term ‘liberal humanist’, when

used by critics of a posthumanist persuasion is a straw man. 29 That they

frequently engage with an absent opponent, however, neither renders

posthumanism itself nor cyberpunk criticism with a posthumanist basis

unenlightening.

Posthumanist attacks on humanism stem from various sources, and result

in a variety of different critiques. Perhaps the single most common assault on the

Enlightenment by posthumanist thinkers is established with the claim that

humanist thought, deliberately or accidentally, consists largely of the drawing of

a series of binary oppositions. This particular condemnation of Enlightenment

thought is so common in posthumanist theory that it is difficult to trace any

27
Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1996, p. 79.
28
Halliwell and Mousley, Critical Humanisms, p. 4.
29
Perhaps this is why Neil Badmington feels inclined to dig up René Descartes when he wishes
to debate humanism, rather than engaging with the Enlightenment project in more modern terms.
See Neil Badmington, ‘Theorising Posthumanism’, Cultural Critique, 53, pp. 10-17.
 50

precise originator of the concept. Michel Foucault, for example, in Madness and

Civilisation, set about constructing a text which is simultaneously a genealogy of

the idea of madness in European civilisation and a deconstruction of the binary

division which society has traditionally maintained between the ‘sane’ and the

‘mad.’ Another criticism of Enlightenment thought commonly purveyed by

posthumanist critics is an attack on the inherent essentialism of the humanist

position. It is commonly argued that, by inscribing ‘Man’ at the centre of things,

humanism explicitly excludes other organisms (or perhaps even humans who do

not fit some idealised type) and implicitly requires there to be some founding

essence by which ‘Man’ can be recognised. Thus, William V. Spanos can write,

of humanism, that:

…despite its pluralism, its alleged tolerance of the play of

difference, humanism, in giving privileged status to Man,
privileges the panoptic, assimilative imagination that assumes
that the texts which are natural and good – proper – are those
which have discovered the Identity inhering in the difference, and
those which are bad, i.e., contribute to anarchy, the texts which
do not or refuse to resolve the conflict of difference in the name of
the humanistic Logos, i.e., that resist encirclement, cultivation
and colonisation. 30

Spanos here states some of the ongoing assumptions of posthumanist theory.

Firstly, that humanism, despite pretensions towards the cultivation of tolerance

or acceptance and recognition of difference, is really only after the one essential

thing which makes all humans human; and secondly, that this overriding

essentialist quest, by its very nature, requires humanist thought to exclude and

30
William V. Spanos, ‘Boundary 2 and the Polity of Interest: Humanism, the “Center Elsewhere”
and Power’, boundary 2, 12:3, 1984, pp. 173-214, p. 181. For a similar argument, see William V.
Spanos, ‘The Uses and Abuses of Certainty: A Caviling Overture’, boundary 2, 12:3, 1984, pp. 1-
17.
 51

repress all those things which are indicative of the differences between

individual people (or indeed groups of people). As Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut

have put it, ‘Without going into the analysis of the specific modalities of this

antihumanism again, it has to be pointed out, in order to understand the reason

[for the turn against humanism in French philosophy], that it was always based

on a line of argument according to which the humanism of modern philosophy,

although apparently the liberator and defender of human dignity, actually

succeeded in becoming its opposite: the accomplice, if not the cause, of

oppression.’ 31 An example of such an argument can be seen in the introduction

to the collection of essays, Posthumanism. Neil Badmington argues there that,

‘If, the anti-humanists argued, “we” accept humanism’s claim that “we” are

naturally inclined to think, organise and act in certain ways, it is difficult to

believe that human society and behaviour could ever be different than they are

now. Humanism was therefore to be opposed if radical change, the thinking of

difference, was to become a possibility. The future would begin with the end of

Man.’ 32 Or, as it is put in a different way in the same collection, ‘The claim of

universal humanity inherent in the republican “we” underpins the apparent

paradox that a nation like the United States, dedicated to the inalienable rights of

man, should be a hostage to racism, sexism and homophobia… American hatred

of difference and fear of the other is so persistent and complex precisely because

Americans believe themselves to be human. Theirs is not a tolerance of

difference, but of identity, of the identity of an abstract human nature’, 33 and

31
Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, French Philosophy of the Sixties: An Essay on Antihumanism,
University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1990, p. xxv.
32
Neil Badmington, ‘Introduction: Approaching Posthumanism’, in Posthumanism, Neil
Badmington (ed.), Palgrave, New York, 2000, p. 7.
33
Bill Readings, ‘Pagans, Perverts or Primitives? Experimental Justice in the Empire of Capital’,
in Neil Badmington (ed.), Posthumanism, Palgrave, New York, 2000, pp. 112-128, p. 117.
 52

later, ‘As Lyotard reminds us, acts of great terror have been committed not

simply in the name of but as a result of the presumption of a common, abstract,

universal humanity.’ 34 Edward Said, in Orientalism, observes that Western

discourse concerning the Orient displays significant ethnocentrism, and that this

ethnocentrism takes the course of a series of binary distinctions, e.g., ‘The

Oriental is irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, “different”; thus the European

is rational, virtuous, mature, “normal.” 35 It could be argued that this is precisely

the kind of essentialist discourse for which posthumanism has taken humanism

to task.

A further element of the posthumanist critical framework, almost

certainly first identified and proposed by Jean-François Lyotard, is the cynicism

with which it addresses the grand accounts of humanity which so enthralled

Enlightenment thinkers. Indeed, it was Lyotard who wrote ‘simplifying to the

extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.’ 36 The

specific metanarrative of the Enlightenment which occupied much of Lyotard’s

thought after this was the concept of rationality, particularly that embodied in the

ideas of rational consensus proposed by Jurgen Habermas. 37 Without wishing to

examine Habermas and Lyotard’s lengthy and complex debate in detail, Fredric

Jameson’s appraisal of the postmodern objection to the idea of consensus welds

34
Bill Readings, ‘Pagans, Perverts or Primitives?, p. 119. For an interesting rebuttal of the idea
that racism and genocide are necessary outgrowths of the Enlightenment mindset, see Raymond
Tallis, Enemies of Hope: A Critique of Contemporary Pessimism, St. Martin’s Press, New York,
1997, pp. 53-61. For a further rebuttal, specifically relating to Jacques Derrida’s argument that
Heidegger’s Nazism was attributable to a surfeit of ‘humanism’, see Richard Wolin, Labyrinths,
pp. 154-161.
35
Edward Said, Orientalism, Penguin, London, 1995, p. 40.
36
Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (trans. G. Bennington and B. Masumi),
Manchester University Press, 1986, p. xxvi.
37
Lyotard’s primary objections to Habermas’ conception are expressed in Jean-François Lyotard,
The Postmodern Condition (trans. G. Bennington and B. Masumi), Manchester University Press,
1986, pp. 65-66.
 53

this piece of critique well to its companions. Jameson states that ‘the ideology of

groups and difference does not really strike a blow, philosophically or

politically, against tyranny… ‘Tyranny’ meant the ancient regime; its modern

analogue, “totalitarianism”, intends socialism; but “consensus” now designates

representative democracy… and it is now this that, already objectively in crisis,

finds itself politically challenged by the new social movements, none of which

find the appeal to majority will and consensus particularly legitimate any longer,

let alone satisfactory.’ 38 Or, as Lyotard himself put it, ‘We must thus arrive at an

idea and practice of justice that is not linked to that of consensus.’ 39 Lastly, and

at least equally importantly, posthumanism adopts an oppositional position

regarding the subject-centred philosophy of the Enlightenment. As Ferry and

Renaut put it, ‘From Foucault’s declaration of the “death of man” at the end of

The Order of Things to Lacan’s affirmation of the radically antihumanist nature

of psychoanalysis since “Freud’s discovery” that “the true centre of the human

being is no longer in the same place assigned to it by the whole humanist

tradition,” the same conviction is upheld: The autonomy of the subject is an

illusion.’ 40 By the time of the rise of cyberpunk as a sub-genre,

post/antihumanist critique increasingly influenced the radical academic literary

establishment. It is within this background of posthumanist critical theory which

the dominance of posthumanist interpretations of cyberpunk establishes itself.

There are, however, many ways to skin a cat, and, apparently, many ways to read

the death of ‘man’ into cyberpunk fiction. The following paragraphs analyse the

38
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Verso, London,
1991, pp. 340-341.
39
Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (trans. G. Bennington and B. Masumi),
Manchester University Press, 1986, p. 66.
40
Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, French Philosophy of the Sixties: An Essay on Antihumanism,
University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1990, p. xxiii.
 54

variety of posthumanist readings of cyberpunk science fiction, and attend to

common intellectual threads, common successes and failings, in the

interpretative arts of their authors.

Early cyberpunk critique quickly associated cyberpunk with

postmodernism. In the seminal Mississippi Review 31/32, devoted to cyberpunk,

Istvan Csiscery-Ronay concluded that ‘cyberpunk is… the apotheosis of the

postmodern.’ 41 Csicsery-Ronay continued his argument by claiming that

out of the antihuman evil that has created conditions intolerable

for normal human life comes some new situation. This new
situation is, then, either the promise of an apocalyptic entrance
into a new evolutionary synthesis of the human and the machine,
or an all encompassing hallucination in which true motives, and
true affects, cannot be known. Neuromancer’s myth of the
evolution of a new cosmic entity out of human technology is
perhaps the only seriously positive version of the new situation –
but even it offers only limited transcendence, since the world is
much the same in Gibson’s later novel, Count Zero, set some
years later. 42

Whilst Csicsery-Ronay does not specifically refer to cyberpunk as posthumanist

in intent, it is easy to infer (as later critics do) that the change in human

conditions which Csicsery-Ronay describes, as imagined in cyberpunk, is

incompatible with a humanist mindset. In particular, the ‘evolutionary synthesis

of the human and the machine’ which is, to greater or lesser degrees, imagined in

cyberpunk fiction is one of the key themes of posthumanist interpretations of

41
Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, ‘Cyberpunk and Neuromanticism’, in Larry McCaffery (ed.) Storming
the Reality Studio, Duke University Press, Durham, 1991, pp. 182-193, p. 182. As Sabine Heuser
notes in a footnote on p. 12, Virtual Geographies, ‘The double volume of Mississippi Review has
been frequently cited but is rarely stocked by academic libraries and thus remains very difficult to
obtain. Fortunately, most of the stories and articles contained therein have also been published
elsewhere.’
42
Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, ‘Cyberpunk and Neuromanticism’, p. 191.
 55

cyberpunk. 43 This idea is, obviously, also key to interpretative examinations of

the posthuman in cyberpunk. It is unsurprising, on the surface at least, that the

idea of the cybernetic posthuman and philosophical posthumanism are strongly

associated. After all, it would seem at best futile to argue for the continuation of

the Enlightenment humanist project if there were no more humans about whom

to be humanist. However, this dangerous and mostly unstated assumption

requires interrogation. In the later chapter examining the idea of the

technological post-human in cyberpunk criticism, the question of what puts the

‘post’ in posthuman will be explored.

Despite, or perhaps due to, the large quantity of posthumanist critique

about cyberpunk, there are schisms in the critical literature. These critical

disjunctures manifest not so much in the various presentations of the idea of the

posthumanist being, but rather in the presentation of the opposing and preceding

ideas of humanism. All the posthumanist critics of cyberpunk tend to agree that

one of the great problems of humanist thought is its tendency to essentialise

human nature. This, they argue, is not only a gross misrepresentation of humans,

but also leads, by the projection of an idealised view of human nature, to the

marginalisation and exploitative domination of people who do not fit this

idealised view of ‘man.’ Thus, by this argument, the essentialisation of human

nature by humanist thinkers was actually their extrapolation from the kinds of

people they understood best. As the bulk of Enlightenment thought had its

genesis in Europe, and was primarily conducted by white males, the things they

thought were ‘essential’ in humans tended to be the things that white, European,

43
The idea of cyberspace, Gibson’s ‘consensual hallucination’ will be examined in greater depth
in the chapter ‘The “Other” spaces of Cyberpunk: Cyberpunk and Spatiality.’
 56

wealthy, highly educated males valued. These ‘essential’ components of human

nature, according to most posthumanist thought, and most posthumanist

cyberpunk critics, are not only not ‘essential’ but actively exclude people from

other, usually less privileged positions in the world. Thomas Foster has

suggested that cyberpunk questions the essential nature of the humanist subject,

and observes that

cyberpunk represents cultural identity as an inescapable, if

partial, commodification of subjectivity, as a process of
signifying for others in ways that are outside the control of
individual subjects. This representation of the cultural
commodification of identity can be understood as the result of
the late capitalist extension of the commodity structure into
previously sacrosanct areas of (white male) individual
experience, but it can also be read as a precondition for
revealing the histories of those social subjects who have been
consistently denied such immunity, who have always inhabited
bodies marked as particular and therefore not fully or only
human because not generally human. 44

Or, in the words of Mary Catherine Harper, ‘cyberpunk can be said to invite a

critique of humanist subjectivity as well as to suggest the possibility of liberation

from the constraints of such oppositional categories as masculinist rationality and

feminised “meat.”’ 45 In these critical readings of cyberpunk, we must note that

the prevailing critical vision of cyberpunk interprets it as a genre that questions

humanist essentialism – even discards essentialist thinking altogether. It almost

goes without saying that critics in general consider this to be a good idea.

44
Thomas Foster, ‘Meat Puppets or Robopaths?: Cyberpunk and the Question of Embodiment’,
Genders, 18, pp. 11-31, p. 23.
45
Mary Catherine Harper, ‘Incurably Alien Other: A Case for Feminist Cyborg Writers’, Science
Fiction Studies, 22:3, pp. 399-421, pp. 399-400.
 57

However, what posthumanist critics of cyberpunk don’t seem to be able

to agree on is which part of being human humanists think is essential. On the one

hand, there are those critics, probably the majority, who regard the human

physical form as the ideal part of the essential human in Enlightenment thought.

This, conveniently, meshes well with an argument presenting cyberpunk as

posthumanist in nature. If the physical human is the defining facet of what is

essentially human, the shrine within which the flawed concept of the humanist

subject supposedly sits, then cyberpunk abounds with examples of the alteration

(not to say desecration) of that shrine. If the physical body, the ‘natural’,

unaltered human is indeed the thing which defines the humanist subject, then it

seems that it is well and truly challenged, if not completely destroyed, in

cyberpunk. Bodies are routinely altered, sometimes minimally, sometimes in

truly amazing ways. The cyberpunk imagination of the possibilities of human

transformation by technology allows for virtually anything – removable eyeballs,

razorblade fingernails, even the complete rebuilding of nigh-on destroyed bodies.

As Veronica Hollinger puts it,

Along with the ‘other’ space of cyberspace, Neuromancer offers

alternatives to conventional modalities of human existence as
well: computer hackers have direct mental access to cyberspace,
artificial intelligences live and function within it, digitalised
constructs are based on the subjectivities of humans whose
‘personalities’ have been downloaded into computers, and human
bodies are routinely cloned.

This is Sterling’s post-humanism with a vengeance, a post-

humanism which, in its representation of “monsters” – hopeful or
otherwise – produced by the interface of the human and the
machine, radically decentres the human body, sacred icon of the
essential self, in the same way that the virtual reality of
cyberspace works to decentre conventional humanist notions of
an unproblematical “real”. 46

46
Veronica Hollinger, ‘Cybernetic Deconstructions: Cyberpunk and Postmodernism’, Mosaic,
 58

Whilst the proliferation of technology in the imagined world of cyberpunk

encourages the discussion of the cybernetic posthuman, it has also been the case

that the ‘cybernetic breakdown of the classic nature/culture opposition’ has been

argued as situating cyberpunk ‘among a growing… number of science-fiction

projects which can be identified as ‘anti-humanist.’’ 47 Hollinger here raised a

point which becomes a continuing theme in cyberpunk critique. The

modification, and even destruction, of the physical human body in cyberpunk

literature is read as an effort at deconstruction of the humanist conception of the

human. 48 Under posthumanist interpretations of humanism, the human is most

often identified as taking one side or the other of the mind/body binary split. It is

of interest that, in order to maintain that the technological alteration of the

physical human constitutes a deconstruction of the humanist conception of the

human, posthumanists must, of necessity, argue that Enlightenment humanism

placed the ‘essence’ of humanity in the body, or physical side of the mind/body

binary. In other words, it is, on this interpretation, being a human being in a

recognisably human body which constitutes being human for humanists. If that

were the case, then significant technological alteration of the human body would

indeed undermine humanist theory concerning the self. From Molly Millions’

23:2, 1990, p. 32-33. References to Sterling’s ‘posthumanism’ remain a continuing presence in

Hollinger’s critical contributions. See, for example, Veronica Hollinger, 'Posthumanism and
Cyborg Theory', in Mark Bould, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts and Sherryl Vint (eds.), The
Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, Routledge, New York, 2009, pp. 267- 278, p.
269.Sterling’s regular references to characters in Schismatrix as ‘posthuman’ may be one of the
factors which leads to the designation of his work as posthumanist. However, a distinction I will
draw, in this and the next chapter, is the distinction between philosophical posthumanism or
‘post-humanism’ and technological posthumanism or ‘posthuman-ism.’ See also Stefan
Herbrechter and Ivan Callus, ‘What’s Wrong With Posthumanism’, rhizomes, section (f) for the
genesis of this idea.
47
Veronica Hollinger, ‘Cybernetic Deconstructions’, p. 30.
48
This theme is examined in greater detail in the next chapter, entitled ‘“But it Ain’t No Way
Human”: Theories of the Posthuman and Cyberpunk.’
 59

razor nails and upgraded nervous system to Bobby Newmark’s or Mark’s

complete withdrawal into cyberspace, these new and different selves created by

the intersection of human and technology do present a deconstruction of the

‘natural’, ‘essential’ human self separate from the world and the technology

present within it.

The question must be asked, however, does this really challenge the

humanist idea of the subject? Do the eyeballs make the human? Many critics

writing about cyberpunk would certainly consider this to be the case. Consider

Timo Siivonen, discussing, in a typical fashion, the boundary figure of the

cyborg in cyberpunk:

The cyborg is an oxymoron combining the mechanical world of

the machine and the ‘natural’ world of the organic body. Human
and machine, culture and nature, subject and object: the thought
of the modern West has been traditionally structured around such
pairs of opposing concepts. The oxymoronic cyborg seems to
activate this set of pairs of concepts at the base of our thinking,
which, while they have mutually excluded each other, have also
presupposed each other’s existence. In order to be a subject, a
subject must have an object, through which it can produce itself.
In the immersive nature of cyborg discourse, this dichotomy
disappears. The border between human and machine has
disappeared, or, at least, it has been problematised. 49

However, when discussing the fusion of human and machine which is the figure

of the cyborg, Siivonen, along with many other authors of cyberpunk critique,

conducts a piece of faulty reasoning. The argument behind the idea that the

figure of the cyborg disrupts the subject/object distinction undeniably present in

much Enlightenment thought is relatively simple. The cyborg, simply put, is a

49
Timo Siivonen, ‘Cyborgs and Generic Oxymorons: The Body and Technology in William
Gibson’s Cyberspace Trilogy’, Science Fiction Studies, 23, 1996, pp. 227-244, p. 229.
 60

combination of two things; a human (animate, biological and ‘subject’) with

technology (inanimate, mechanical and ‘object’). The argument apparently then

proceeds immediately to the claim that this combination or fusion somehow

disrupts the subject/object distinction. This, however, need not necessarily be the

case. Consider a different case to that of the futuristic (or perhaps present-istic)

cyborg: that of a human and a tool or prosthesis. Take, for example, the

spectacles which many people wear to correct their vision. Removed from the

wearer, they are simply metal, plastic and glass – an object. However, attached

to the wearer, they become something more – a ‘part’ of the wearer which acts to

effect their perception of the world, hopefully in a positive way. Is this

monstrous fusion of inanimate object and thinking subject then a precursor to the

collapse of one of the founding principles of Western logic? Definitely not, as

Vivian Sobchack, when discussing her prosthetic leg, is at pains to point out,

stating that, ‘The desired transparency here, however, involves my incorporation

of the prosthetic – and not the prosthetic’s incorporation of me…’ 50 The

problems raised for the subject/object distinction by the figure of the cyborg are,

therefore, resolved by the incorporation and encapsulation of the ‘object’ (the

technological bit of the cyborg) by the subject (the human subject being, for

want of a better term, ‘cyborged’). Sobchack concludes her argument, which was

made in opposition to Jean Baudrillard’s interpretation of Ballard’s Crash, with a

warning statement about Baudrillard’s ‘deadly, terminal confusions between

meat and hardware.’ 51 In reference to these confusions, Sobchack argues that

‘Without my lived-body to live it, the prosthetic exists as part of a body without

50
Vivian Sobchack, ‘Beating the Meat/Surviving the Text, or How to Get Out of this Century
Alive’, in Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk, Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows (eds),
Sage Publications, London, 1995, pp. 205-214, p. 210.
51
Vivian Sobchack, ‘Beating the Meat/Surviving the Text’, p. 213.
 61

organs – a techno body that has no sympathy for human suffering, cannot

understand human pleasure and, since it has no conception of death, cannot

possibly value life.’ 52 Moreover, without her lived body to live it, Sobchack’s

prosthetic is, quite simply, an object – an inanimate, if cleverly constructed,

replacement for a lost limb.

It requires a very narrow interpretation of the humanist idea of the

conscious subject to argue that the physical modification of the human body

imagined in cyberpunk constitutes a form of posthumanist discourse. This ultra-

restricted humanism, in which the functioning of the subject is dependent on a

completely inviolate physical form, is a picture of a humanism which really

never existed. Indeed, as alluded to previously, in order to maintain that physical

alteration of the human constitutes a deconstructive activity, and a disproof of

Enlightenment humanism, it is necessary for posthumanist critics to maintain that

the part of the human which humanism has traditionally seen as essential is the

human body. This is a significant departure from much previous antihumanist

thought. The typical criticism levelled at humanist philosophy by antihumanists

has been that humanism locates the essence of humanity in the mental sphere,

and enshrines the rational consciousness as the unalterable fact of human

existence. This alleged over-emphasising of rationality (particularly of

instrumental reason), and the subsequent creation of the Enlightenment ‘Goddess

of Reason’, antihumanists have argued, leads to humanists ignoring the

importance of anything which is not directly related to the abstract, reasoning

consciousness. Thus, feminist critiques of Enlightenment humanism often

52
Vivian Sobchack, ‘Beating the Meat/Surviving the Text’, p. 213.
 62

present the argument that, as women have, in Western culture, often been

presented as working bodies, and men as reasoning, mental creatures, the

humanist emphasis on rationality has served, deliberately or accidentally, as a

tool for oppressing women. This has led to an increasing discussion of

‘embodiment’ as a paradigm for the discussion of the human. 53 Whether one

agrees with the portrayal of humanism as a philosophy which enshrines the

reasoning consciousness at the cost of other aspects of the human or not, it

remains interesting, and problematic, that the arguments presented by many

critics of cyberpunk regarding body modification in the genre represent a

significant departure from previous posthumanist critiques of the Enlightenment.

For if humanist thought argues that the reasoning consciousness is the essence of

what it is to be human, then modifications of the human body would appear to

be, at best, irrelevant to debates about the validity of humanism.

Some posthumanist cyberpunk critics, perhaps realising the futility of

attacking humanism through the idea of physical essentialism, instead examine

the ways in which cyberpunk can be interpreted as undermining humanist visions

of the essential nature of the reasoning consciousness. This is, frequently, deeply

related to discussions of cyberspace. However, discussions of cyberspace are so

intense that they compose the bulk of a chapter subsequent to this, entitled ‘The

“Other” Spaces of Cyberpunk: Cyberpunk and Spatiality.’ Despite the overt

53
Embodiment is also a paradigmatic concept in cyberpunk criticism. It not only forms a key
concept in the articulation of this chapter, and much of the critical material relating to it, but also,
for obvious reasons, the later chapter on feminism and cyberpunk. For an interesting note on
embodiment in both the humanist and posthumanist traditions, see Anne Balsamo, Technologies
of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women, Duke University Press, Durham, 1996, p. 31,
and Cathy Peppers, ‘’I’ve Got You Under My Skin’: Cyber(sexed) Bodies in Cyberpunk
Fictions’, in Bodily Discursions: Genders, Representations, Technologies, Deborah S. Wilson
and Christine Moneera Laennec (eds.), State University of New York Press, Albany, 1997, pp.
163-185, p. 182.
 63

similarities between the thought of Baudrillard and the deconstructive activities

posthumanist critics frequently wish to credit both themselves and cyberpunk

with, there have also been critics who have identified similar problems in the

work of Baudrillard and other postmodernists and in Enlightenment thought.54

The key problem, these theorists have argued, in Enlightenment thought and in

Baudrillard and others, is a tendency to write off the body. In humanist thought,

it is argued, the body is often ignored as simply the resting place of the rational,

thinking humanist subject, whereas in deconstructive postmodernism the body,

as a part of the complex that is the subject, is written off as simply another thing

to be deconstructed. These arguments are primarily made by feminist authors,

and this is no coincidence. The recognition of the importance of embodiment

present in more recent feminist theory is of critical importance to literary

criticism of cyberpunk. However, it remains to be seen whether this awareness of

the central importance of embodiment to the process of being human is an idea

which should be put in opposition to humanist ideas of the human, or rather one

which should be viewed as a way of improving the humanist viewpoint.

Certainly, some critics of cyberpunk view the ways in which cyberpunk literature

deals with embodiment as innately posthumanist. This approach, however, is

often based on flawed interpretations of humanist ideas. As discussed above, it is

not necessary, in order to be a humanist, to claim that being essentially human is

dependent on a completely unaltered ‘natural’ human body. Another claim which

posthumanist critics have made about cyberpunk is that it is a project which

participates in the postmodernist fragmentation of the conscious subject. It is a

generally accepted tenet of humanism that it proposes that humans are self-

54
See, for example, Anne Balsamo, Technologies of the Gendered Body, pp. 29-31.
 64

positing, conscious thinking subjects, and that these subjects are unitary beings.

Postmodernist and posthumanist theory, on the other hand, has attacked this idea

of the human in favour of a picture of humans which paints them as

amalgamations of fractured, not necessarily contiguous subjectivities. Whether or

not this posthumanist view of the human is correct or not, it is difficult to find

significant support for it in cyberpunk science fiction. Whilst it is true that

characters in cyberpunk are often not in complete control of their own destinies

(and sometimes not even of their own bodies or minds), it is generally still the

case that they exist as unified subjects, thinking, feeling and existing as

individuals. As Sharon Stockton notes, in opposition to the prevailing theory that

cyberpunk presents fractured, non-unitary consciousnesses, ‘Many critics argue

that cyberpunk is the genre that most clearly pronounces the arrival of this

postmodern subject… My own sense is that the genre of cyberpunk does not go

so far, and I would take issue with the argument that it portrays a schizophrenic,

‘Baudrillardian’ subject. It seems clear to me that it is cyberpunk’s project to

remythologise an earlier, powerfully autonomous subject that is, in effect, a latter

day version of adventure/romance.’ 55

There are certainly characters in cyberpunk which stretch this paradigm

to its limits, however. Particularly in the work of Pat Cadigan, specifically in her

novel Mindplayers, people routinely alter their own minds, grafting on

memories, and even personalities copied from other people. The case of Jerry

Wirerammer, who makes copies of his personality available to others in an

55
Sharon Stockton, ‘’The Self Regained’: Cyberpunk’s Retreat to the Imperium’, Contemporary
Literature, 36:4, 1995, pp. 588-612, p. 588. See also Douglas Kellner, Media Culture: Cultural
Studies, Identity and Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern, Routledge, London,
1995, p. 309.
 65

attempt to avoid the Mind Police, is of particular import. With so many others

copying his personality, his memories, what we might consider to be Jerry

Wirerammer, it becomes apparently more difficult to argue in defence of the idea

of humans as unitary, conscious subjects. ‘Apparently’, however, is not the

whole story. What we are dealing with, in the Jerry Wirerammer case, is not a

confusion of multiplicitous Jerry Wirerammer subjectivities, but rather a group

of individual subjects, all of whom believe themselves to be Jerry Wirerammer.

Altering the content of the consciousness does not necessarily imply altering its

status as a unitary consciousness. The individual conscious mind, whilst retaining

little or nothing of its original form, still remains an individual conscious subject.

There is, however, a strong point to be made here for posthumanist critics

(although none have bothered to make it). If the humanist perception of the

subject is that of a rational, unitary conscious being, and a part of being a unitary

consciousness is a perceived continuity of consciousness across time, then

personality change, in the nature of Cadigan’s characters in Mindplayers, might

present humanist accounts of the subject with a significant challenge. Can there

really be a continuity of consciousness if a person goes to bed at night believing

herself to be one individual, and wakes up believing herself to be another?

Cadigan’s presentation of various mental technologies available to characters in

Mindplayers makes the postmodern, posthumanist idea of consciousness literally

possible in a way which is at best figurative now. Further, the merging of Visual

Mark’s digitised consciousness and the artificial intelligence Artie Fish in

Cadigan’s Synners represents another possible angle by which cyberpunk

interrogates the human/machine divide. Unlike the example of cyborgia

discussed above, this does not represent the simple integration of object by
 66

subject. Artie Fish, despite being ‘technological’ is in (him?it?)self a conscious

subject. Thus in this case, as Sabine Heuser astutely observes, ‘Not only does the

human incorporate the machine; the machine also incorporates the human.’ 56

Another, and very interesting, argument that cyberpunk, specifically

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, presents an anti-essentialist (and therefore anti-

humanist) view of the functioning of consciousness is presented by N. Katherine

Hayles. Having previously stated that the posthuman ‘considers consciousness,

regarded as the seat of human identity in the Western tradition long before

Descartes thought he was a mind thinking, as an epiphenomenon, an

evolutionary upstart that tries to claim it is the whole show when in actuality it is

only a minor sideshow,’ 57 Hayles then embarks on a considered discussion of the

role of consciousness in Snow Crash. She argues that

Snow Crash writes the drama back into history, suggesting that
we are all potential posthumans because the posthuman lies
coiled around the brainstem and cannot be removed without
killing the patient… Suggesting that the snow crash virus can be
defeated by a healthy dose of rationality and scepticism, Snow
Crash would inoculate us against the virus by injecting us with a
viral meme… The essence of this meme is the realisation that the
best way to counteract the negative effects of the posthuman is by
acknowledging that we have always been posthuman. We should
value the late evolutionary add-ons of consciousness and reason,
not because they are foundational, but because they allow the
human to emerge out of the posthumans we have always been. 58

56
Sabine Heuser, Virtual Geographies: Cyberpunk at the Intersection of the Postmodern and
Science Fiction, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2003, pp. 219-220. It is a pity that Heuser makes this
excellent point briefly and towards the end of her book. In Cadigan’s representations of
consciousness, I think, there is perhaps the greatest room for the reading of cyberpunk as
posthumanist literature.
57
N. Katherine Hayles, ‘The Posthuman Body: Inscription and Incorporation in Galatea 2.2 and
Snow Crash’, Configurations, 5:2, 1997, pp. 241-266, p. 242.
58
N.Katherine Hayles, ‘The Posthuman Body’, pp. 265-266. See also S. Dougherty, ‘Culture in
the Disk Drive: Computationalism, Memetics and the Rise of Posthumanism’, Diacritics, 31:4,
2001, pp. 85-86 for further analysis of the posthumanist view of consciousness.
 67

If correct, Hayles’ argument would potentially have much greater consequences

for the portrayal of cyberpunk as a form of humanist fiction than many other

interpretations. Unlike those critics who consider that the essentialist problem in

humanism lies in an over-valuation of the physical human, Hayles cuts closer to

the bone when she considers that humanism locates the essence of the human in

reasoning consciousness. However, there is a considerable problem with Hayles’

analysis. If, as Hayles states, ‘consciousness and reason… allow the human to

emerge out of the posthuman[s]’, then it could still be argued that reasoning

consciousness is the foundational aspect of being human. Put in logical terms, if

the difference between posthumans and humans, on Hayles’ analysis, is

consciousness and reason, then the reasoning consciousness would be a

necessary but not sufficient condition for being human. A final word, however,

on the problem of essentialism in Enlightenment discourse, and whether or not

cyberpunk challenges humanism on this point. Many posthumanist critics seem

convinced that one can argue for difference or for an essentialist account of

human nature, mainly on the premise that an essentialist account of human nature

may mouth attentiveness to difference, but, in essence, will always search for

totality – for the recognition of that essential component in everyone. It has been

argued, however, that the choice between difference and essentialism is a false

choice. As Dena Goodman has put it, ‘Rather than grounding a choice between

universalism and difference, the complex legacy of the Enlightenment allows us

to refuse that choice as well as its derivatives: between universalistic feminism

and difference feminism, between political rights and social power, between
 68

politics and civility.’ 59 It has been put differently, and in a different context, by

Robert Wokler who stated that ‘Kant came from nowhere, went nowhere and put

forward… the view from nowhere. And yet the humanitarian principles of his

moral philosophy are radical and compelling in their intolerance of injustice

everywhere. To be indifferent to difference is not to disregard the welfare of

others. On the contrary, it is to be eternally vigilant, ever watchful of the abuse of

individual rights and needs.’ 60 These two authors seem to be arguing that the

Enlightenment, humanist legacy is not simply an overwhelming drive to

essentialism, determined to make everyone just the same, but rather a recognition

that, in understanding that there are things which we all have in common, we can

ground an ethical theory which might enable us to recognise and accept those

things which make us different. If this is the case, then it is not simply

posthumanist cyberpunk theory which needs serious re-appraisal, but rather the

entire posthumanist assault on humanist essentialisation of the human.

When posthumanists deal with the mental component of humanist

discourse, there is a marked tendency to read transcendentalism into humanist

theory. This transcendentalism is not that of Kant’s transcendental reasoning, but

rather an impulse to transcend the limits of human embodiment, which many

posthumanists impute to humanism. Derived in part from radical feminist

critiques of Enlightenment thought, this critique of humanism focuses on the

humanist tendency to privilege the reasoning consciousness over its embodied

state. Feminist critiques of much Enlightenment thought have made the point,

59
Dena Goodman, ‘Difference: An Enlightenment Concept’, in What’s Left of Enlightenment,
Keith Baker and Peter Reill (eds.), Stanford University Press, Stanford, pp. 129-147, p. 147.
60
Robert Wokler, ‘The Enlightenment Project and its Critics’, in The Postmodernist Critique of
the Project of Enlightenment, Sven-Eric Liedman (ed.), Rodopi Press, Amsterdam, 1997, p. 29.
Emphasis in original text.
 69

often quite validly, that many of the ideas of the Enlightenment, stemming as

they did from a patriarchal cultural background, reflected this background in

their initial expression. Thus, within the context of a philosophy which valorised

instrumental reason at the expense of embodiment and a culture which valued the

masculine at the expense of the feminine, a sort of double binary grew up. On

one side were men (empowered) and rationality (valued), and on the other

women (oppressed) and embodiment (repressed). Reasoning consciousness came

to be seen as something to be desired, whereas embodiment, due to its

association with the undervalued feminine, came to be seen as an unwanted

curse, something to be at worst accepted, at best done away with altogether.

From this interpretation of Enlightenment thought comes the continuing idea that

transcendence, a concept much employed in humanist philosophy and literature,

ultimately means transcendence of the embodied human, to a disembodied realm

of pure reason. This central objection to the way humanist thought functions

roots further disagreements with both the humanist tendency to focus on the

things which make human beings commonly human, rather than the things which

make them individually persons, and to the broader distinctions which humanism

has drawn between humans and other kinds of animals. As N. Katherine Hayles

puts it, ‘Identified with the rational mind, the liberal subject possessed a body but

was not usually represented as being a body. Only because the body is not

identified with the self is it possible to claim for the liberal subject its notorious

universality – a claim that depends on erasing markers of bodily difference…’61

However, it should be observed that the observance of commonalities between

different people does not necessarily entail the erasure of difference. Nor, in

61
N. Katherine Hayles, ‘The Posthuman Body’, p. 245.
 70

point of fact, does an acceptance of the critical importance of reasoned

consciousness in the production of the human self of necessity mean that the

body is regarded simply as surplus junk, to be dealt with or discarded as required.

Whether or not one accepts that a desire to transcend the limits of human

embodiment lurks beneath the surface of humanist philosophy, it is undeniably

true that antihumanists have often argued that this is the case. 62 The crucial

importance of embodiment in many cyberpunk novels has been cited as a reason

for them to be considered, at least partially, as posthumanist texts. As Mary

Catherine Harper comments with reference to Case, a character from William

Gibson’s Neuromancer, ‘Back in his “meat”, he spends the “bulk of his Swiss

account on a new pancreas and liver,” thus completing the cyborg birth process,

and directly eschewing the humanist desire to escape the body and achieve

transcendence in a purely rational state. Anti-humanism is evident here in the

text’s rejection of the humanist/essentialist desire for transcendence of the

material body.’ 63 Whether or not Case chooses to desert his body for a different

existence in cyberspace or not is, unfortunately, not quite the point. It is rather

the simple possibility that the choice exists that affirms the rather simplistic

reductionist version of humanism to which many posthumanist critics object.64

The mere fact that consciousness is imagined as separable from the human body

is an argument in favour of conscious thought comprising the essential part of

62
See, for example, Neil Badmington’s exegesis on Descartes’ dualism in ‘Theorising
Posthumanism’, Cultural Criticism, 53, 2003, pp. 10-27, especially pp. 15-17.
63
Mary C. Harper, ‘Incurably Alien Other: A Case for Feminist Cyborg Writers’, Science Fiction
Studies, 22, pp. 399-421, p. 404.
64
I would add also that it is not necessary, as a humanist, to adhere to a Cartesian dualist model
of the self.
 71

human nature. However, Sabine Heuser makes an important point when she

suggests that

Cadigan and Gibson differ on issues of (dis)embodiment. Cadigan

does not accept the throw-away attitude towards the body which
Gibson appears to promote… Cadigan consistently and radically
questions the Cartesian mind-body split. In sum: whereas Gibson’s
virtual world of cyberspace primarily provides a form of escape
from the constraints of the real world… Cadigan’s virtual
scenarios are a means of empowerment, a way of developing
strategies for a better life in the real world, even if the distinction
between real and virtual is not that important.65

It is of interest that although many posthumanists criticise the idea of

transcendence within humanist literature, and impute to it a desire to transcend

the human condition entirely, few if any are willing to discuss the usage of the

idea of transcendence within the paradigm of humanist criticism. The idea of

transcendence is, however, a critical idea in humanist readings of texts.

Transcendence, in the sense in which it is meant in humanist literature, consists

of two distinct parts. Firstly, there is the sense of individual transcendence of

individual limits. This idea is best represented by novels of the Bildungsroman

type. The second type of transcendence often portrayed within humanist works is

that of human progress, that of the human species attempting to transcend current

limitations.66

Cyberpunk undeniably does have significant elements of individual

transcendence in the Bildungsroman tradition. 67 Characters in cyberpunk works,

65
S. Heuser, Virtual Geographies: Cyberpunk at the Intersection of the Postmodern and Science
Fiction, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2003, p. 167.
66
It cannot be stressed enough that this does not necessarily mean transcendence of the physical
in the pursuit of some mythical realm of pure reason or spirit.
67
Veronica Hollinger has observed that cyberpunk contains Bildungsroman-type character
development. See Veronica Hollinger, ‘Retrofitting Frankenstein’, in Sherryl Vint and Graham J.
 72

whether it is Case in Neuromancer or Gina and Gabe in Mindplayers, evolve as

individuals, coming into greater knowledge of themselves and the world around

them. Sabine Heuser partially affirms this when, commenting on the differences

between the writing of Gibson and Cadigan, she observes

As far as character development goes, Gibson’s heroes usually end

up where they started without any significant gain in terms of
money, insight or information, because they live simply for the
adventure, the risk-taking, and the adrenaline rush… Cadigan’s
characters follow an entirely different trajectory. Their
development resembles the growth encountered in a
Bildungsroman: they may not find the final answers to their
questions but they gain deeper insight, more knowledge, and better
skills. 68

Heuser is certainly correct in her analysis of Cadigan’s work, but her analysis of

Gibson is questionable. Case, for example, begins Neuromancer as a burned-out

criminal, obsessed with ‘the dance of biz,’ and quite possibly suicidal, with little

care for himself and none for the world and people around him. By the end of the

novel, Case has realised that he wants things to change, that for both himself and

the world around him, the way things are is simply not sustainable, nor, for want

of a better word, right. He learns through his struggle to liberate the

Neuromancer and Wintermute AIs that he has (to some degree at least – he is

still a career criminal) higher ideals than simply making money, that he is

capable of more than simply being a drug-using hacker and minor crime lord.

The apathetic, self-destructive Case of the start of the novel has, by the climactic

sequence, changed enough in himself to know that he wants the world to change.

Murphy (eds.), Beyond Cyberpunk: New Critical Perspectives, Routledge, New York, 2010, pp.
191-210, especially pp. 200-204.
68
Sabine Heuser, Virtual Geographies: Cyberpunk at the Intersection of the Postmodern and
Science Fiction, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2003, p. 168.
 73

Even if Case’s actions apparently don’t succeed in engendering this change

(although it could be argued that if one reads Count Zero and Mona Lisa

Overdrive as a direct continuation of Neuromancer that his actions actually do

change the world for humans, even if not very much), Case himself has altered

considerably. From a self-obsessed, self-destructive criminal who could not care

much about himself, much less the rest of the world, Case, with a considerable

amount of help (usually from Molly), and coercion, has become someone who at

least has the ability to recognise that the system he lives in is broken. He has,

along with Molly, discovered new truths about the world – to use a phrase not

particularly popular at the current moment, he has become ‘enlightened’.

Similarly, the concept of transcendence of individual limits is raised by the

prospect of body modification technology. Despite the suspicion with which

many posthumanists hold the idea of progress, technological change undeniably

plays a significant role in cyberpunk fiction. Glenn Grant, realising the critical

importance of an understanding of transcendence, at least on the individual level,

observed that

Technological transcendence of human limits, and detourned

technology, are pivotal concepts in most cyberpunk works… This
concern is often mistaken for an obsession with technological
dehumanization, when in fact it is a belief in post-humanization.
“Technological destruction of the human condition leads not to
future-shocked zombies but to hopeful monsters… Cyberpunk sees
new, transhuman potentials, new modes of existence and
consciousness.” Although these new modes often seem monstrous,
they may also be pathways for future evolutionary development. 69

69
Glenn Grant, ‘Transcendence Through Detournement in William Gibson’s Neuromancer’,
Science Fiction Studies, 17, 1990, p. 45.
 74

Whilst Grant is correct in identifying the importance of personal individual

transcendence in cyberpunk, his evocation of ‘hopeful monsters’ and the

possibility for new human ‘evolution’ is, at best, only marginally supported by

the texts. 70 Rather, in the majority of cyberpunk works, the possibility for human

progress as a species seems to have disappeared. The one significant exception to

the general bleakness of cyberpunk worlds is Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix. This

novel seems to break many of the sub-generic conventions, and as such demands

attention throughout this dissertation.

This brings us to the second type of transcendence often apparent in

humanist writing. The idea of progress for humans as a whole is one which has

obsessed humanist philosophy and literature for the best part of the last five

hundred years. The idea that humanity, particularly through technological

innovations, but also through changes in our social, political and economic

systems, can advance itself, creating improved circumstances for continuing

human existence, is one which has been key to the mindset of humanism, both in

fiction and philosophy, for a very long time indeed. It is of interest that, although

many of the posthumanist critics writing on cyberpunk examine the idea of

transcendence, their discussion tends to be limited to a discussion of the alleged

humanist desire to transcend the human physical form to achieve some kind of

mystical union with pure reason. Few take up the challenge of engaging with the

70
As Adam Roberts astutely observes, ‘Far from being a celebration of technology, William
Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) articulates a distinctively double-edged attitude to the machine.
On the one hand, this is a text that delights in the ingenious and fascinating toys its imaginative
universe produces, although, given the spy/crime genre Gibson is working in, this delight is
expressed chiefly in terms of the damage the technology can do: how effective the weaponry is,
how deadly Molly’s implants are, and so on. But simultaneously the technology in this
imaginative universe is almost always threatening, alienating, a negative quantity.’ Adam
Roberts, Science Fiction, Routledge, London, 2000, p. 125.
 75

humanist idea of transcendence on its own terms. Had more cyberpunk critics

done so, they would rapidly have discovered a fairly obvious but critically

important point. Cyberpunk, for the most part, contains few if any elements of

transcendence-for-humanity. Whilst, as has been discussed above, it remains

possible for individual characters in cyberpunk novels to transcend their own

limits (transcendence as in the Bildungsroman) for humanity as a whole the idea

of progress seems no longer to function. Taking Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy as an

example, despite the potentially world-shaking occurrences at the end of

Neuromancer, the world does not seem to have appreciably changed by the start

of Count Zero. Similarly, the world of Mona Lisa Overdrive is essentially the

same as that of Count Zero. It is worth repeating Istvan Csicsery-Ronay’s apt

analysis of the ‘change’ which takes place at the end of Gibson’s Neuromancer,

And yet, out of the antihuman evil that has created conditions
intolerable for normal human life comes some new situation. This
new situation is, then, either the promise of an apocalyptic
entrance into a new evolutionary synthesis of the human and the
machine, or an all encompassing hallucination in which true
motives, and true affects, cannot be known. Neuromancer’s myth
of the evolution of a new cosmic entity out of human technology is
perhaps the only seriously positive version of the new situation –
but even it offers only limited transcendence, since the world is
much the same in Gibson’s later novel, Count Zero, set some
years later. 71

John Huntingdon, in a similar vein, notes that, although there are various, for

want of a better term, ‘resistive’ activities undertaken by characters in

cyberpunk, their acceptance of the technological status quo ‘enables a kind of

guerrilla activity in the belly of the beast, but at the same time the more ecstatic

71
Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, ‘Cyberpunk and Neuromanticism’, in Larry McCaffery (ed.) Storming
the Reality Studio, Duke University Press, Durham, 1991, pp. 182-193, p. 191. My emphasis.
 76

its activity, the more it tends to obscure any political solution. It depicts

alienation (which is something different from resistance) as a stable and

permanent state.’ 72 In other words, despite the frantic actions of the various

characters in Neuromancer, the best they seem to be able to do is carve out a

niche for themselves. Any overarching, systemic change is not only beyond their

power, but seemingly beyond their conception. Without change, there can be no

progress, and without progress the humanist idea of humanity transcending itself

is dead. This simple examination of the humanist idea of transcendence in its

own terms could provide posthumanist critics with some of their strongest

arguments that cyberpunk is posthumanist writing, and yet a refusal to look

beyond their own flawed account of the meaning of transcendence in humanist

literary theory has apparently prevented critics from developing this argument.

The major exception to the cyberpunk rule of ignoring possibilities for systemic

transcendence is Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix, where despite his frequent

mentioning of the philosophy of ‘Posthumanism,’ something akin to the

humanist idea of the human transcendence of human limits is a more or less

continual process. Sterling’s motley crew of Mechanists, Shapers and the various

other factions in the novel Schismatrix and the short stories set in the same

universe are involved in a process of becoming smarter, fitter, better adapted to

their environments – all in all, a process which looks remarkably like humanist

transcendence. It is ironic that this occurs in the only work in the core of the

cyberpunk canon which actually mentions posthumanism. 73

72
John Huntingdon, ‘Newness, Neuromancer, and the End of Narrative’, in T. Shippey (ed.)
Fictional Space: Essays on Contemporary Science Fiction, Oxford, Humanities Press, 1991,
pp.59-75, p. 72-73.
73
See Graham J. Murphy, ‘Angel(LINK) of Harlem: Techno-Spirituality in the Cyberpunk
Tradition’ in Sherryl Vint and Graham J. Murphy (eds.), Beyond Cyberpunk: New Critical
 77

Another thread within cyberpunk which has been recognised as

posthumanist is its cynicism as regards to meanings, particularly meanings for

humans. Cyberpunk, it has been argued, displays a distinctly postmodern,

Lyotardian distaste for grand narratives. The narratives of the Enlightenment,

such as development towards capital ‘T’ truth, progress and, indeed intellectual

enlightenment itself are discarded in favour of a valuation of surface, a pursuit of

affect over effect. Thus, it is argued, character development in much cyberpunk

is minimal, whereas intense description of the surrounds (usually with a liberal

mixture of brand names thrown in) is preferred. The headlong plot of much

cyberpunk leaves little room for introspective character development, and things

rush to their ‘conclusion’ without any time for grand ideals. Indeed cyberpunk

also displays a certain disdain for the idea of conclusions, and for the teleological

view of things this must entail. Taking Neuromancer as an example, the

‘conclusion’ reached at the end of the novel is simply that, for the characters we

know at least, not very much has changed. Despite the apocalyptic merging of

Neuromancer and Wintermute, the final dénouement of Case’s ‘pact with

demons’, nothing changes very much in the outside world. Case is a little richer,

perhaps, but the frantic action of the novel, Case’s intense and self-destructive

desire to change things, has actually achieved nothing concrete. The merged AIs

seem to care little for human existence, and instead are more preoccupied with

conversing with another of their own kind. In response to Case’s queries ‘“So

what’s the score? How are things different? You running the world? You

Perspectives, Routledge, New York, 2010, pp. 211-227, pp. 213-216 for one of the rare analyses
of transcendence in the cyberpunk canon.
 78

God?”’, the merged Wintermute/Neuromancer construct replies ‘“Things aren’t

different. Things are things.’” 74 The world at the start of Count Zero, the next of

Gibson’s novels in the Sprawl trilogy, is much the same as the world in

Neuromancer. If meaning plays any part in the conclusion of Neuromancer, it is

not meaning for humans, the humanist understanding of meaning, but rather

meaning for AIs, a completely inhuman meaning. 75

This negation of meaning in cyberpunk deconstructs, it is argued,

traditional humanist assumptions regarding progress, knowledge and the

common thread of humanity. The Enlightenment, humanist ideal that humanity

progresses in knowledge is discarded in favour of a complete cynicism about the

possibility of human knowledge. If the possibility of human knowledge of truths

is abandoned, then the idea that these truths can be acquired rationally is, at best,

preposterous. Truth and knowledge are simply not issues in cyberpunk, it is

argued – at least not for the human characters. Rather, there exists power and the

means to use it (or direct it for one’s own purposes). The characters in cyberpunk

novels simply are not interested in any narrative of common humanity. They lack

the time and inclination, and their imagined world does not allow for such

luxuries. Cyberpunk, in general, provides a setting where difference is more

appreciated and valued than similarity – that which makes characters different to

others makes them valuable, and that which might make them similar to the

masses they variously exploit or ignore is, well, ignored. 76

74
William Gibson, Neuromancer, Ace Books, New York, 1984, p. 270.
75
For an erudite expression of this idea, see John Christie, ‘Of AI’s and Others: William
Gibson’s Transit’, in Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative, George Slusser and
Tom Shippey (eds.), University of Georgia Press, Athens (Georgia), 1992, pp. 171- 182, p. 174.
76
For a reasoned argument as to why difference theory (or differance theory) cannot ground a
constructive ethics, see R. Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School,
 79

Neuromancer remains the most discussed of cyberpunk texts, and it is from

Gibson’s masterpiece and its sequels which a counter-argument arises. Whilst

Gibson’s characterisation in Neuromancer has been much, and unfairly,

maligned, the fast-paced, exciting plot and narrative structure and brilliant use of

language in the novel remain its central features. The overarching plot structure

and eventual conclusion of Neuromancer have been perhaps most often

interpreted as the ‘posthumanist’ part of the novel. It is true that Case, Molly and

others are guided, in the end, by inhuman agents for inhuman ends. John Christie

has pointed out that

As far as human significance is concerned, the catastrophic change

represented by the now autonomous AI is, in fact, minimal. Gibson
may offer difference rather than depth, but even difference is no big
deal. This acute semiotic cynicism is a salutary reminder to the
difference mongers whose enthusiasm for difference conceals and
revalorises a conventional liberal humanism. It is a cynicism with
respect to meaning itself, and in that respect a rigidly posthumanist
stance. This ideological register is also left behind as Gibson’s
work proceeds. 77

Like Csicsery-Ronay, Christie clearly believes that as Gibson’s work progressed,

his writing became consistently less posthumanist, both in intent and in outcome.

However, there is another, at least equally valid interpretation of Neuromancer’s

progression and conclusion. Rather than viewing the apparent meaninglessness

of the ‘catastrophic’ status change of the AIs (at least by human standards) as

‘cynicism with regard to meaning itself’, it is entirely possible, particularly when

Existentialism, Poststructuralism, Columbia University Press, New York, 1992, especially

Chapter 9, ‘The House that Jacques Built: Deconstruction and Strong Evaluation.’
77
John Christie, ‘Of AI’s and Others: William Gibson’s Transit’, in Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and
the Future of Narrative, George Slusser and Tom Shippey (eds.), University of Georgia Press,
Athens (Georgia), 1992, pp. 171- 182, p. 174.
 80

reading Neuromancer in the light of both Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive,

to argue that Gibson is rather saying that ‘meaning for machines’ (and

undoubtedly their merging is very important to both Neuromancer and

Wintermute) is only really meaningful when it becomes meaning for humans.

Rather than a change of tack from the posthumanist to the not-so-posthumanist,

Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive can then be read as a

contiguous series. Perhaps ‘change for the machines,’ 78 to steal a phrase from Pat

Cadigan, only really matters when we (humans) change for them, not when they

change for themselves. In other words, whilst the human impact of the

Neuromancer/Wintermute fusion is delayed, only occurring in Count Zero and

Mona Lisa Overdrive, it is still there, and it is telling that this human impact, in

the form of the ongoing Angie/Bobby story, is the tale which Gibson chooses to

tell. If there is a cynicism as regards meaning, Neuromancer is cynical regarding

the import of meaning-for-AIs, not meaning-for-humans.

This chapter has examined the ways in which cyberpunk literature has

been considered posthumanist. Predominantly, critics writing about cyberpunk

have considered it to be a form of postmodern, posthumanist fiction. They have

argued that it is a form of fiction which imaginatively participates in the

postmodern fragmentation of the subject, through technological modification of

the body and mind. Many of these same critics have also argued that central

symbolic devices in cyberpunk act to undermine certain binary splits which they

deem to be an essential part of Enlightenment thought. It has been repeatedly

argued that the figure of the cyborg, for example, so common in cyberpunk,

78
Pat Cadigan, Synners, Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, 2001, p. 97.
 81

represents a posthumanist move, an attempt to undermine the coherence of the

subject/object binary. The figure of the cyborg is critical in posthumanist

readings of cyberpunk fiction, not only for this reason, but because it has also

been argued that it radically deconstructs the humanist figure of ‘natural’ man.

However, as has been argued in this chapter, the arguments presented by

posthumanists based on the figure of the cyborg in cyberpunk fiction are fraught

with difficulties. The argument that the cyborg symbolically represents a break

with Enlightenment essentialism is dependent on an analysis of humanism not

common in critical literature outside the body of cyberpunk critique. It relies, at

the last, on arguing that humanist theory has traditionally presented the human

body as the essential part of the human in its essentialist narratives. However,

this argument is does not accord with most preceding analyses of humanism.

Posthumanist attacks on humanism have traditionally argued that humanism pays

too little, rather than too much attention to the human body, and with good

reason. The Enlightenment enthronement of pure reason did often come at the

cost of an understanding of the functioning of embodiment. This understanding

of the role of embodiment, hard won in the main by feminist theory, has led to

critical re-appraisal of the role of the reasoning consciousness. However, and to

the detriment of their readings, many critics of cyberpunk proceed as if earlier

critiques of humanism did not exist. If humanist thought had claimed that

anything was ‘essential’ to being human, it was the presence of reasoning

consciousness, rather than an unadulterated human form. The alleged

deconstructive activity of cyberpunk cyborgia can be seen to be at best a

deconstruction of a form of humanism which never existed, or at worst a simple

critical mistake.
 82

Some critics more aptly identify the reasoning consciousness as the

basket into which humanist thought placed its eggs. However, despite the

presentation of numerous arguments relating to this topic, posthumanist

interpretations of cyberpunk fiction struggle when dealing with the central

importance of reason to humanist thought. This chapter has argued that the

reason that these posthumanist analyses of cyberpunk have overwhelmingly

failed when attempting to argue that the treatment of consciousness in cyberpunk

carries deconstructive criticism of humanism is, fairly simply, that it doesn’t.

Cyberpunk fiction occasionally skirts the edges of questioning the Enlightenment

conception of the mind, but does not actually do any real deconstructing.

However, the allegation that Gibsonian cyberspace tacitly restates a Cartesian

dualist mind/body paradigm is an idea which this thesis must challenge. In a later

chapter, ‘The “Other” Spaces of Cyberpunk’, it will be observed that Gibsonian

cyberspace presents a view of the mind/body problem which is anything but

Cartesian, and that the charge of dualism, as it so often is, was most likely

levelled at Gibson’s conception of cyberspace to discredit it amongst critics of a

certain persuasion.

This chapter has also examined the alleged cynicism of cyberpunk

towards the grand narratives of the Enlightenment. Whilst a few critics have

examined this aspect of cyberpunk, on the whole it has been ignored. The

importance of the humanist idea of transcendence, of the progress of the human

species, has largely been ignored. This chapter has suggested that this gap in the

critical literature has largely been the result of critics only examining the concept
 83

of transcendence in the light of the posthumanist conception of what individual

transcendence means for humanists. This is a great pity for posthumanist

cyberpunk theory, as it is in cyberpunk’s attitude towards the grand narratives of

the Enlightenment that confirmation of some form of posthumanist outlook can

be found. Indeed, the absence of ideas critical to Enlightenment, humanist

thought such as progress and human freedoms remains perhaps the most

posthumanist aspect of cyberpunk fiction.

This chapter has studied, in particular, posthumanist interpretations of

cyberpunk. Whilst understanding and to some degree sympathising with these

interpretations, it has discovered that there is room for the contestation of their

views. Indeed, whilst the majority of critical writing on cyberpunk deals with its

supposed posthumanist qualities, it is strongly arguable that the opposite is true.

Despite the overwhelmingly posthumanist outlook of cyberpunk critique, there is

a strong case to be put for viewing cyberpunk as humanist literature. Certainly,

there is room for critical reappraisal of posthumanist interpretations of the genre.

This chapter has therefore been developed in the spirit of Edward Said’s

description of humanist critique: ‘Humanism is the exertion of ones faculties in

language in order to understand, reinterpret and grapple with the products of

language in history… humanism is not a way of consolidating and affirming

what ‘we’ have always known and felt, but rather a means of questioning,

upsetting and reformulating so much of what is presented to us as commodified,

packaged, [and] uncontroversial...’ 79

79
E. Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, Palgrave, New York, 2004, p. 28.
 84

Chapter Three: “But It Ain’t No Way Human”: Theories of the

Posthuman and Cyberpunk.

Science fiction repeatedly insists that humans are not the first,
the last, or the most important intelligent beings in the
cosmos; that in fact we are only one small part of a vast and
alien universe; and that, perhaps, the only appropriate
response to this environment is for humans to create, or
transform themselves into, alien beings. From this viewpoint,
those who continue to focus only on human concerns and
human limitations are the ones who are evading reality and
responsibility.

Even if one accepts the logic of this position, there

remain questions as to whether it is desirable, or even
possible, for human beings to achieve an inhuman
perspective.

Gary Westphal, ‘“The Gernsback Continuum” and William

Gibson’, in Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of
Narrative, George Slusser and Tom Shippey (eds.),
University of Georgia Press, Athens (Georgia), 1992, pp. 88-
108, p. 105.

The posthuman, as a theoretical construct, has come under scrutiny in

recent years. Volumes of critical work have been devoted to the subject. 1 It was

inevitable that theories of the posthuman would be deployed in the interpretation

of cyberpunk. Firstly, many of the characters present in cyberpunk fiction

present, at least on first glance, as beings which could be termed ‘post-human’.

In other words, due to technological modification of their physical, and

sometimes mental, selves they appear to be no longer human – at least in the way

we understand ‘human’ now. Secondly, due to the simple similarity between the

word ‘posthuman’ and the word ‘posthumanism’, theories of the posthuman were

provided with an easy entrance into cyberpunk critique. As theories of the

1
These include, for instance, N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies
in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1999; Judith
Halberstam and Ira Livingstone (eds.), Posthuman Bodies, Indiana University Press,
Bloomington, 1995; and Elaine L. Graham, Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens
and Others in Popular Culture, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2002.
 85

posthuman were identified with posthumanism, and cyberpunk had (mostly)

already been pegged as posthumanist literature, 2 it became easy (and also quite

fruitful) for critics to examine cyberpunk in the light of theories of the

posthuman. However, this chapter will argue that the presence of ‘posthuman’

characters in cyberpunk fictions does not necessarily imply that posthumanist

philosophical values are also in play: it will be argued that, in fact, the opposite

may be the case.

Within the broad spectrum of discourses of the posthuman, two

significantly different positions arise. The first, arising from the discourse of

technology, as typified by works such as Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual

Machines 3 or Hans Moravec’s Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human

Intelligence, 4 maintains a primarily biological or evolutionary definition of the

human. Thus, when this technology-focussed idea of the posthuman is deployed,

the kind of posthuman under discussion is really that of a successor species to

Homo Sapiens, whether in the form of massively cyborged post-humans,

artificial intelligences, who were not human to begin with, or human

consciousnesses downloaded into computer systems, carbon-gone-silicon. This

concept of the human, however, is certainly not the only one available to theories

of the posthuman. The other major type of portrayal of the human upon which

theories of the posthuman depend is rather more philosophical. Texts such as

Posthuman Bodies and How We Became Posthuman deploy and criticise an idea

2
See the previous chapter, ‘“Posthumanism With a Vengeance”: Posthumanism and Cyberpunk’
for description and analysis of the links between posthumanism and cyberpunk.
3
Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines: How We Will Live, Work and Think in the New
Age of Intelligent Machines, Orion, London, 1999.
4
Hans Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1988.
 86

of the human derived from liberal humanist philosophy. This conception of the

posthuman obviously has considerable connections to posthumanist philosophy –

after all, a theory which describes that which comes after the ‘human’ of

humanist philosophy will of necessity maintain an interest with that philosophy

which proclaims itself as coming after humanism. Out of the plethora of different

writings on the posthuman, these two perspectives, in one form or another,

predominate. This is not to say that either is an absolute, or to present them as

some kind of binary opposition. Such a simplistic approach would not do justice

to the ways in which various critical texts deploy these theories, either

individually or in tandem, as complements or opposites.

Indeed, the problems of the cybernetic theory of the posthuman have been

most consistently and cogently described by N. Katherine Hayles, herself a great

advocate of the philosophical posthuman. The problem with the cybernetic

theory of the posthuman, from the point of view of Hayles, amongst others, 5 is

not so much that it does not consider the philosophical issues raised by the

philosophical theory of the posthuman, or that it fails to challenge liberal

humanist ideas of the self, but that it relies on liberal humanist understandings of

the self to inform and ground its very conception of the posthuman. As Hayles

puts it ‘One could argue that the erasure of embodiment is a feature common to

both the liberal humanist subject and the cybernetic posthuman.’ 6 Thus, rather

than challenging the ‘human’ (in the sense of the humanist definition of what it

means to be a human being) the cybernetic posthuman, by assuming the

correctness of these propositions, tacitly reinforces outmoded and incorrect ways

5
For views on the liberal humanist foundations of the cybernetic posthuman, see, Elaine L.
Graham, Representations of the Post/Human, pp. 124-128.
6
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, p. 4.
 87

of thinking. The philosophical posthuman, on the other hand, does not depend on

technological modification to argue for its form of post-humanity. On the

contrary, using arguments derived mainly from posthumanist philosophy,

philosophical theories of the posthuman argue that we need differing ideas of

what it means to be a (post)human being, rather than the assertion that, as a sort

of technological continuation to evolution, homo sapiens will inevitably give

way to post-homo sapiens. In other words, the cybernetic posthuman concerns

itself with examining what will come after homo sapiens, whereas the

philosophical posthuman examines alternatives to the humanist conception of

what it means to be homo sapiens. Many posthumanist critiques of the humanist

subject have already been outlined in the previous chapter, so this chapter will

confine itself to those critiques which have been elaborated in concert with the

idea of the posthuman. Of particular interest will be the dependence of these

critiques upon a certain conception of humanism, which gives rise to very

concrete ideas about the (liberal) humanist subject (basically the topic of critique

for the philosophical posthuman).

Some critics, notably Veronica Hollinger and Scott Bukatman, have

tended to treat the raising of the idea of the cybernetic posthuman as if it

necessarily entailed the idea of the philosophical posthuman. 7 Without wishing

to detract from the critical importance of Hollinger’s early works of cyberpunk

criticism (it could be argued that Hollinger in many ways set the tone for critics

to come), or for that matter from Bukatman’s critical contributions, this

7
See, for example, Scott Bukatman, ‘Postcards From the Posthuman Solar System’, Science
Fiction Studies, 18:3, 1991, pp. 343-357; and Veronica Hollinger, ‘Cybernetic Deconstructions:
Cyberpunk and Postmodernism’, Mosaic, 23:2, 1990, pp. 29-44.
 88

assumption needs to be justified. Indeed, so divergent are the underlying

assumptions of theories of the cybernetic posthuman from those of the

philosophical posthuman that they seem, on the face of things, to directly

contradict each other.

The difference between the cybernetic idea of the posthuman and the

philosophical posthuman has been identified by posthumanist critics themselves.

Bart Simon, in the Cultural Critique issue on posthumanism, comments that

there has been unproductive confusion between what one might call a
popular and a more critical posthumanism…This popular
posthumanist (sometimes transhumanist) discourse structures the
research agendas of much of corporate biotechnology and
informatics as well as serving as a legitimating narrative for new
social entities…critical posthumanism [is] an interdisciplinary
perspective informed by academic poststructuralism, postmodernism,
feminist and postcolonial studies and science and technology
studies. 8

In an article from the same issue, Eugene Thacker also notes the ideological split

in ‘posthumanism’, stating that:

I will take “posthumanism” as a wide-ranging set of discourses that,

philosophically speaking, contain two main threads in its approach to
the relationship between human and machine. The first thread I will
refer to as “extropianism,” which includes theoretical-technical
inquiries into the next phase of the human condition through
advances in science and technology… The second thread is a more
critical posthumanism, often in response to the first, and includes key
texts by contemporary cultural theorists bringing together the
implications of postmodern theories of the subject and the politics of
new technologies. 9

8
Bart Simon, ‘Introduction: Toward a Critique of Posthuman Futures’, Cultural Critique, 53, pp.
1-9, p. 2.
9
Eugene Thacker, ‘Data Made Flesh: Biotechnology and the Discourse of the Posthuman’,
Cultural Critique, 53, pp. 72-97, p. 73.
 89

Whilst these critics’ recognition that there is a divide in the theory of

‘posthumanism’ is accurate, this thesis would question precisely how

posthumanist Simon’s ‘popular’ or Thacker’s ‘extropian’ versions of the theory

can really be. If, as Hayles’ insists, these discourses conceal liberal humanist

presumptions at their roots, then the use of the term ‘posthumanist’ to describe

them is at best terminologically sloppy, at worst actively misleading.

The technological posthuman is, it appears, a central theme in cyberpunk.

Perhaps attributable to Bruce Sterling’s description of one of his characters in

Schismatrix, the term seems to have stuck (like Gibson’s most famous

neologism, cyberspace). The states of being of numerous characters in various

cyberpunk works are discussed as being posthuman – from body modification, to

cybernetic implants, to outright translation as cyberspatial consciousnesses.

These varied and disparate states all seem to be representative of that slippery

condition, the technological posthuman, or, as N. Katherine Hayles terms it, the

cybernetic posthuman. Hayles’ terminology, and indeed her description of the

underlying assumptions of the idea of the cybernetic posthuman, is well worth

quoting in full.

In the American tradition of cybernetics, the posthuman emerges as

a point of view characterised by the following assumptions (this list
is not exclusive or definitive; it is meant to be suggestive rather
than prescriptive): (1) The posthuman view privileges informational
pattern over material instantiation, so that embodiment in a
biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an
inevitability of life. (2) It considers consciousness, regarded as the
seat of human identity in the Western tradition long before
Descartes thought he was a mind thinking, as an epiphenomenon,
an evolutionary upstart that tries to claim it is the whole show when
in actuality it is only a minor sideshow. (3) It thinks of the body as
 90

the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate, so that extending

or replacing the body with other prostheses becomes a continuation
of a process that began before we were born. (4) Most importantly,
by these and other means the posthuman view configures human
being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent
machines. In this view there are no essential differences between
bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism
and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals. 10

Hayles’ definition is compelling, and is constructed on the basis of significant

examples from what one might call the prophets of a cybernetic posthuman

future. These authors usually envision a gradual merging of humans and

information technologies, along with the development of working artificial

intelligences. In Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines, this is most

dramatically represented in the constructed conversations with his imaginary

interlocutor, Molly (coincidentally the name of the major female character in

Gibson’s Neuromancer). Most obvious in these conversations is Molly’s gradual

merger with her cybernetic implants and also the arrival on the scene (and later

‘evolution’) of Molly’s artificial assistant, George. 11 It could be argued that the

primary difference between the human and the posthuman in this view is that the

human is still largely dependent on its biologically provided apparatus, whereas

the posthuman is physically and mentally coming to rely more heavily on

cybernetic hardware for survival, communication, productivity and

entertainment. Kurzweil, for example, predicts that, in 2099, ‘Even among those

human intelligences still using carbon-based neurons, there is ubiquitous use of

neural implant technology, which provides enormous augmentation of human

perceptual and cognitive abilities. Humans who do not utilise such implants are

10
N. Katherine Hayles, ‘The Posthuman Body’, p. 242.
11
Conversations with ‘Molly’ occur irregularly throughout The Age of Spiritual Machines, but
the particular discussions referred to are located in Part Three, ‘To Face the Future’, pp. 236-313.
 91

unable to meaningfully participate in dialogues with those who do.’ 12 Earlier

Kurzweil forecasts that ‘The number of software-based humans vastly exceeds

those still using native neuron-cell-based computation.’ 13 In other words, the vast

majority of humans will be either entirely or substantially cyberneticised (for

want of a better term), and that those who are not will be unable to participate in

a society and culture dependent on these infrastructures (one does at this point

wonder whether Kurzweil has considered people outside the upper classes of

wealthy Western countries, but that is a myopia he has in common with

cyberpunk). Hans Moravec, in Mind Children, also speculates on transferring

human minds to computers, and makes arguments very similar to those made by

Kurzweil. Moravec argues that moving our minds to a different medium than the

human brain will be the only way to keep up with our computation cousins and

competitors in the intelligence game, artificial intelligences. 14 Moravec also

argues that, given the palpable limitations of human physicality, particularly our

ability to manipulate and interact with the outside world, these aspects of being

human would also have to change. 15 It would seem, then, that becoming the

cybernetic posthuman is indeed a matter of becoming something very different

from what we take to be human now.

The cybernetic form of the posthuman is clearly evidenced in cyberpunk,

and many critics have observed the posthuman-ness of cyberpunk characters.

Cyberpunk characters run the full gamut of what we might term the posthuman

spectrum, from Case, the protagonist of Gibson’s Neuromancer, who is never

12
Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines, p. 293.
13
Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines, pp. 292-293.
14
Hans Moravec, Mind Children, pp. 108-116.
15
See Hans Moravec, Mind Children, p. 102.
 92

described as actually having any physical implants (although he does at various

points receive new organs, and there is of course the bio-toxin which

‘encourages’ him to work for Armitage/Corto in the first place), through to the

Mechanists and Shapers of Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix, and finally to the

digitised consciousnesses of The Dixie Flatline (Neuromancer), Bobby and

Angie (Mona Lisa Overdrive), or Visual Mark/Art/Markt (in Cadigan’s Synners).

One way in which the cybernetic posthuman, as imagined in cyberpunk,

has been interpreted by critics, is as an attack on the nature/technology dualism.

This binary, which critics such as Hollinger claim is a crucial part of humanist

doctrine, 16 was discussed in a different light in the previous chapter, under the

guise of the subject/object distinction. However, arguments pertaining to the

nature/technology distinction are of a different type, and are best accommodated

and examined in the light of theories of the posthuman. In any case, it is clear

that, although cyberpunk, like most science fiction, extrapolates from present

trends in order to imagine a future world, the usage of technology in the

imagined cyberpunk future is considerably different from that in our present.

Where in most previous genre science fiction the boundary between human and

technology is largely maintained (even if it is first problematised), in cyberpunk

there is an acceptance of the blurring of the line between human and machine.17

Technology, in the cyberpunk imagination, crosses the fragile boundary of

16
The claim, as I understand it, is not so much that any single binary pair is critical to humanist
thought, but that all humanist thought is composed of such binaries. See Veronica Hollinger,
‘Cybernetic Deconstructions’ where Hollinger argues that the human/machine binary is critical to
Enlightenment thought. This is also pertinent to the thought of Hayles and Graham, for whom the
sustaining of the ‘humanist’, Cartesian distinction between mind and body reveals the
presumptions of the cybernetic idea of the posthuman.
17
See Veronica Hollinger, ‘Cybernetic Deconstructions’, p. 30 for a fuller expression of this
point.
 93

human skin and becomes, in a more tangible way than in much prior science

fiction, a part of the (post)human. Following Hollinger, other critics comment

that, rather than redeeming the binary opposition between the natural and the

artificial, the relationships between technology and people imagined in

cyberpunk act to blur the line between the human and the

technological/artificial. 18 This, as we have seen in chapter two, supposedly

constitutes a significant deconstruction of the humanist self. The colonisation of

the human body by technology decentres the body as inviolable locus of the

humanist subject, and fractures the humanist idea of the subject by creating a

host of possibilities for subjectivity. The de- (or re-) construction of the human

by technological apparatuses is, according to this line of argument, a nail in the

coffin of the Enlightenment idea of ‘essential’ humanity. If the human body can

be altered, prostheticised, enhanced and otherwise changed by technology, what

remains of the ‘essential’ or ‘natural’ human of humanist visions? The answer

reached by cyberpunk critics of the posthumanist persuasion is that, truly,

nothing remains. The idea of the ‘essential’ human, invented by humanism,

which is philosophically untenable in any case, is firmly and perhaps finally

deconstructed by the imagined technological absorption of the human in

cyberpunk fiction. If it is still possible, now, to support humanist ideas of the

essential self, it surely will not be when the physical part of that self is so

malleable as to be unrecognisable as ‘human.’

This figure of the prosthetic, altered (post)human has another name - a

name which is critical in the discourse of cyberpunk critique. That other name is,
18
See, for example, Karen Cadora, ‘Feminist Cyberpunk’, Science Fiction Studies, 22, 1995, pp.
357-371, and Mary Catherine Harper, ‘Incurably Alien Other: A Case for Feminist Cyborg
Writers’, Science Fiction Studies, 22, 1995, pp. 399-421.
 94

of course, the cyborg, and much of the critical work on themes surrounding the

posthuman has made use of this concept. The term cyborg, however, has critical

and thematic resonances far beyond cyberpunk. Some of the most interesting and

provocative writing on the idea of the cyborg is that of Donna Haraway, and it

was inevitable that critics writing about cyberpunk would begin to examine

cyberpunk’s cyborgs in relation to Haraway’s work. Haraway’s conception of the

cyborg as a paradigm-shattering presence in the (post)modern world is one which

clearly resonates with many posthumanist cyberpunk critics. Indeed, at first blush

Haraway’s cyborg, as described in Simians, Cyborgs and Women, and cyborgs in

cyberpunk seem to have much in common. Haraway’s cyborg is

A creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisexuality,

pre-oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labour, or other seductions to
organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of
the parts into a higher unity. In a sense, the cyborg has no origin
story in the Western sense - a “final” irony since the cyborg is also
the awful apocalyptic telos of the “West’s” escalating dominations of
abstract individuation, an ultimate self untied at last from all
dependency, a man in space. An origin story in the “Western”,
humanist sense depends on the myth of original unity, fullness, bliss
and terror, represented by the phallic mother from whom all humans
must separate, the task of individual development and of history, the
twin potent myths inscribed most powerfully for us in psychoanalysis
and Marxism…

The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and

perversity. It is oppositional, utopian, and completely without
innocence. No longer structured by the polarity of public and private,
the cyborg defines a technological polis based partly on a revolution
of social relations in the oikos, the household. Nature and culture are
reworked; the one can no longer be the resource for appropriation or
incorporation by the other. The relationships for forming wholes from
parts, including those of polarity and hierarchical domination, are at
issue in the cyborg world. Unlike the hopes of Frankenstein's
monster, the cyborg does not expect its father to save it through a
restoration of the garden; that is, through the fabrication of a
heterosexual mate, through its completion in a finished whole, a city
and cosmos. The cyborg does not dream of community on the model
 95

of the organic family, this time without the oedipal project. The
cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of
mud and cannot dream of returning to dust. Perhaps that is why I
want to see if cyborgs can subvert the apocalypse of returning to
nuclear dust in the manic compulsion to name the Enemy. Cyborgs
are not reverent; they do not re-member the cosmos. They are wary
of holism, but needy for connection- they seem to have a natural feel
for united front politics, but without the vanguard party. The main
trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate
offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention
state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly
unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential. 19

Haraway’s cyborg is, like those in cyberpunk fiction, a fictional creature – a

dream of the future, extrapolated from the present. It is, in many ways, the

bastard offspring of the system from which it derives, commodified, constructed

and manipulated by capitalist workings. Haraway holds that the cyborg is a

hopeful construct, that its boundary defying properties will allow it new means of

opposition, new methods of organisation. As Jenny Wolmark has put it,

Donna Haraway’s conceptualisation of the posthuman subject as a

cyborg, however, rejects these dualisms [specifically those of
human/machine and ‘dualistic gender identities’], as well as the
prescriptive and normative posthuman subjectivity that is sustained
by them. She argues that the multiple entanglements of the body
with technology facilitate a denaturalisation of the relationship
between the body and cultural identity, which in turn destabilises
the “structure and modes of reproduction of Western identity, of
nature and culture, of mirror and eye, slave and master, body and
mind”. 20

Whether or not one agrees with Haraway’s idea of the cyborg, however, it is not

necessarily the case that cyborgs in cyberpunk are developed with a similar

19
Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York,
Routledge, 1991, pp. 150-151.
20
Jenny Wolmark, ‘Staying with the Body: Narratives of the Posthuman in Contemporary
Science Fiction’, in Edging into the Future, Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon (eds.),
University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2002, pp.75-89, pp. 76-77.
 96

understanding in mind. As Mary Catherine Harper has pointed out ‘Haraway’s

cyborg is a self-declared deconstructor of humanism while Gibson’s cyborgs

deviate from, then reinstate the humanist position… This is not to say that

Haraway’s cyborg and the figures in Gibson’s cyberpunk novels are necessarily

incompatible… They both offer to late 20th-century American culture an

imaginative bio-technological form which by its nature undermines the split

between humanity and its technology.’ 21 Whilst it is true that Gibson’s novels

frequently manifest a revised (if somewhat pessimistic) version of humanism, to

which the Haraway of the Manifesto is clearly opposed, there are other

significant differences. Gibson’s imagined cyborgs, unlike Haraway’s, retain

their links to the forces which created them. In a world governed by the

movements of capital and information, such as the world of Gibson’s Sprawl

trilogy, cyborgs are neither created ex nihilo nor is their existence guaranteed

outside of the system. Whilst Haraway maintains that the cyborg has ‘no truck

with… unalienated labour’, it is Gibson’s cyborgs who best embody this idea.

They remain, through their very existence as part-commodified machines in a

capitalist system, alienated. Whilst Haraway asks us to consider a system in

which the utopian idea of unalienated labour has been discarded, Gibson

imagines a system in which this has occurred. As John Huntingdon has put it,

Neuromancer shares the new wave’s dark sense of the overwhelming

and self-destroying system, but at the same time it breaks with new
wave pessimism by finding a positive value in the alienation of
technological competence. The hacker and the game player, far from
disavowing technology, glorify it and use it to compensate for the
overwhelming power of the world symbolised by the multinational
corporations.

21
Mary Catherine Harper, ‘Incurably Alien Other’, pp. 403-404.
 97

Such an acceptance enables a kind of guerrilla activity in the belly of

the beast, but at the same time the more ecstatic its activity, the more
it tends to obscure any political solution. It depicts alienation (which
is something different from resistance) as a stable and permanent
state. 22

The problem with Haraway’s imagined cyborgs is fleshed out in their Gibsonian

counterparts. To insist that the cyborg will not countenance the idea of

unalienated labour is all very well, but it entails one of two choices. Either one

must deny that labour can be unalienated (in other words argue that all labour is

necessarily alienating) or one must argue that the ideas of both alienated and

unalienated labour are fruitless. If the first proposition is accepted then

Haraway’s cyborgs cannot help but become like Gibson’s – guerrilla fighters, in

a war they cannot win. If the second implication from Haraway’s argument is

accepted, then another difficulty arises. If we abandon the concept of alienation

altogether, then a powerful tool for understanding and opposing capitalism has

been lost. This is most likely Haraway’s argument, however – that the idea of

alienation has failed. The problem with Haraway’s cyborg with its ‘commitment

to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity’, rather than to a myth of unalienated

labour, is that these approaches are, by definition, partial and non-systemic.

Without a systemic understanding and method for resisting capitalism, this thesis

contends, one is at least as likely to create a Gibsonian cyborg as a Harawayan

one. After all, Gibson’s cyborgs do resist the system, in their own way. However,

they lack the systemic understanding necessary to conceive of opposition to the

system as a whole. As a result, as critics have repeatedly observed, in cyberpunk,

nothing ever really changes. What Gibson’s cyborgs lack, when compared with

22
John Huntingdon, ‘Newness, Neuromancer, and the End of Narrative’, in Tom Shippey (ed.)
Fictional Space: Essays on Contemporary Science Fiction, Oxford, Humanities Press, 1991,
pp.59-75, pp. 72-73.
 98

Haraway’s, is the sense of optimism implicit in Haraway’s Manifesto. Their

complicity in the system is not perverse, or rebellious so much as it is escapist.

They may not be ‘true’ to their origins – but neither do they act against them.

This is perhaps the greater difference between Haraway’s cyborgs and Gibson’s.

Haraway imagines cyborgs which are somehow both a part of the system from

which they spring and yet not a part of it at the same time – Gibson’s cyborgs are

wholly committed to and complicit in the continuation of the system to which, in

a financial sense as much as anything else, they belong. As Cathy Peppers points

out, Haraway’s

cyborg sounds like a deconstructionist’s dream come true, but the

reality that a cyborg might equally be represented by a fighter
pilot plugged into his intelligent headgear as by the “ideal”
replicants in Blade Runner, by Robocop as well as by Laurie
Anderson in performance, should give us pause. If cyborgs can
equally be represented by the technofascist bodies of a
Terminator or a Robocop, as by the “women of colour” affinity
identities Haraway describes, can the cyborg really be “post-
gender”? 23

This question can be expanded to ask, simply, if cyborgs are as complicit as they

must be in systems of oppression, then to what extent will local acts of resistance

actually make a difference? How will partiality and irony serve a ‘posthuman’

who is, in a very real sense, constructed and owned by the system?

The figure of the cyborg, however, remains salient in cyberpunk critique.

Critics focus on the boundary-defying nature of the cyborg - on its apparent

blending of nature and technology, of human and inhuman. Veronica Hollinger,

23
Cathy Peppers, ‘’I’ve Got You Under My Skin’: Cyber(sexed) Bodies in Cyberpunk Fictions’,
in Bodily Discursions: Genders, Representations, Technologies, Deborah S. Wilson and Christine
Moneera Laennec (eds.), State University of New York Press, 1997, pp. 163-185, p. 164.
 99

in a relatively early piece of cyberpunk criticism, put it thus, ‘Human bodies too

are absorbed into this rhetorical conflation of organism and machine… The

human world replicates its own mechanical systems, and the border between the

organic and the artificial threatens to blur beyond recuperation.’ 24 The result of

this blurring of the line between human/natural and technology/artificial is the

disruption of one of the binary positions which, it is frequently argued, underpin

all Enlightenment thought. The largest, though strangely the least mentioned, of

these binary distinctions, is the simple distinction ‘human/not-human’.

Enlightenment thought has, on the whole, generally held humans to be distinct

from all other things, by possession of the capacity for reasoned thought. The

figure of the cyborg, it is argued, has the power to dissolve this binary

distinction. In essence, the cyborg is a blend of the human and the not-human, or

as Mary Catherine Harper puts it, ‘the ontological category of ‘cyborg’ is an

oscillation of humanist subject and post-humanist commodity-based

subjectivity.’ 25 The destabilisation of the natural/artificial binary is, it is argued, a

deconstructive activity, particularly when it takes place on the battleground of the

human body. ‘’Cyborg politics’’, argues one cyberpunk critic, ‘opens the

prospect of technological symbiosis as a progressive alternative, rather than a

simple masculine fantasy of ‘natural’ mastery and domination.’ 26 Similarly,

Veronica Hollinger has argued that

In its various deconstructions of the subject carried out in terms

of a cybernetic breakdown of the classic nature/culture opposition
– cyberpunk can be read as one symptom of the postmodern
condition of genre science fiction. While science fiction frequently
problematises the oppositions between the natural and the

24
Veronica Hollinger, ‘Cybernetic Deconstructions’, p. 31.
25
Mary Catherine Harper, ‘Incurably Alien Other’, p. 406. See also Timo Siivonen, ‘Cyborgs and
Generic Oxymorons: The Body and Technology in William Gibson’s Cyberspace Trilogy’,
Science Fiction Studies, 23, 1996, pp. 227-244, p. 227.
26
Scott Bukatman, ‘Postcards From the Posthuman Solar System’, p. 347.
 100

artificial, the human and the machine, it generally sustains them

in such a way that the human remains securely ensconced in its
privileged place at the centre of things. Cyberpunk, however, is
about the breakdown of these oppositions. 27

In other words, the liminal figure of the cyborg, occupying the space between the

‘man’ and the machine, causes a tear in the intellectual fabric of humanism.

Others think similarly, stating that

The cyborg is an oxymoron combining the mechanical world of the

machine and the ‘natural’ world of the organic body. Human and
machine, culture and nature, subject and object: the thought of the
modern West has been traditionally structured around such pairs of
opposing concepts… In the immersive nature of cyborg discourse,
this dichotomy disappears. The border between human and machine
has disappeared, or, at least, it has been problematised. 28

The figure of the cyborg, for these critics, represents a deconstruction of the

humanist boundaries of the self - firstly, through the breakdown of the

nature/technology binary, and also through the rupture of the human/inhuman

boundary. One does feel compelled to point out that the actions of Gibson’s

cyborgs, at least, very rarely have overt political overtones. As Istvan Csicsery-

Ronay has perceptively noted,

It’s hard to see the “integrated” political-aesthetic motives of

alienated subcultures that adopt the high tech tools of the
establishment they are supposedly alienated from. It seems far more
reasonable to assume that the “integrating”, such as it is, is being
done by the dominant telechtronic cultural powers, who – as
cyberpunk writers know very well – are insatiable in their appetite
for new commodities and commodity fashions. 29

27
Veronica Hollinger, ‘Cybernetic Deconstructions’, p. 30.
28
Timo Siivonen, ‘Cyborgs and Generic Oxymorons’, p. 229. For a similar interpretation, see,
Mary Catherine Harper, ‘Incurably Alien Other’, p. 406.
29
Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, ‘Cyberpunk and Neuromanticism’, in Larry McCaffery (ed.) Storming
the Reality Studio, Duke University Press, Durham, 1991, pp. 182-193, p. 183.
 101

Scott Bukatman’s dream of a liberatory ‘cyborg politics’ certainly does not seem

to be borne out in the imagination of cyberpunk. On the contrary, the cyborgs of

cyberpunk seem to be the heirs of modern commodity servitude.

Indeed, there are reasons aplenty to question whether cyborgs in

cyberpunk generally, and in the work of Gibson in particular, actually do the

boundary-defying job that critics want them to accomplish. It is all very well to

say that the very nature of the cyborg makes it a boundary-defying construct, but

there are rather deeper issues at play. Humans have always existed in a complex

relationship with technology, from fire and the domestication of animals, to

information technology and virtual reality. Technology always in some part plays

a role in defining what it is to be human, and this is surely also the case with the

imagined cyborgs of cyberpunk fiction. However, a critical question, and one

which is infrequently asked, is ‘Does this actually make them that different from

us?’ The answer given by many critics of cyberpunk is undoubtedly ‘Yes’, yet

the interaction of characters in cyberpunk novels remains believably human.

Whilst the physical nature of many cyberpunk characters is undeniably altered

from a pristine biological state, they remain significantly human in the ways they

interact with each other and their world. As Norman Spinrad put it, when

discussing Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix, ‘Sterling’s nontranscendental rendering

of the relatively ordinary and indisputably human psyches of all these physically

transmogrified human clades forces us to confront the inevitable alteration of our

body images by science and technology’, or earlier ‘The characters, Lindsay in

particular, no matter how weird their physiognomies become, are believably

 102

human on a psychological level.’ 30 If, as Spinrad thinks, cyberpunk characters

can remain ‘believably human’ despite their varied technological body

adaptations, then it becomes apparent that these technological alterations of the

physical human do not present the boundary-overcoming synthesis of human and

machine that posthumanist theorists have desired. Rather than a synthesis in

which the machine plays an equal part with the human in the formation of a new

organism, there remains an extension of the dominant relationship of humans to

their technology which has characterised the traditional way of thinking about

technology for some time. 31 Indeed, even the characters in the technology-heavy

worlds of cyberpunk seem to recognise that the gap between humans and their

technology still exists. As the Dixie Flatline construct insists, with reference to

AI’s, they may perform human-like activities, such as writing poetry or

cookbooks, ‘but [they] ain’t no way human.’ 32

A final passing comment on the cyborg in cyberpunk critique is necessary

before moving on to examine Hayles’ ideas concerning the posthuman. It was

earlier argued that the cyborgs of cyberpunk are, unlike Haraway’s ideal cyborgs,

largely faithful to their capitalist origins. This is not necessarily a surprising

insight, when one takes into account that it has already been observed elsewhere

that ‘while postmodern subjectivity itself may seem at first strikingly radical, it

30
Norman Spinrad, Science Fiction in the Real World, 1990, Southern Illinois University Press,
Carbondale, p. 120. Emphasis in original text.
31
There is somewhat of an exception to this rule, namely the role of Artificial Intelligences in
Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy. For a thought provoking account of the relationship of the human and
the inhuman in Neuromancer, see Howard Caygill, ‘Surviving the Inhuman’, in Inhuman
Reflections: Thinking the Limits of the Human, Scott Brewster, John J. Joughin, David Owen and
Richard J. Walker (eds.), Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2000, pp. 217-229.
32
William Gibson, Neuromancer, Ace Books, 1984, p. 130. Emphasis in original text.
 103

bears uncanny similarities to the structures of global capitalism.’ 33 If, in fact, the

cyborg is the literal embodiment of postmodern subjectivity, then it should

perhaps not come as a surprise that the cyborgs of cyberpunk seem committed to

their capitalist roots. Indeed, whilst the future capitalism of cyberpunk often

seems to remain uninterrogated by critics, the unchallenged nature of the

capitalist system within the genre should not go unnoted. The association

between the cyborg, capitalism and cyberpunk has not passed everyone by,

however. David Brande suggests that ‘the cyborg is the “consciousness” of the

techno-capitalist dream’ and also that ‘Gibson’s fiction… is a dream of late-

capitalist ideology.’ 34 Fredric Jameson has referred in passing to cyberpunk as a

‘romance of finance capital’, 35 at the same time suggesting that cyberpunk

depicts a kind of utopia – namely, a capitalist one. Tom Moylan has suggested

that even the “rebel spaces” of cyberpunk are in fact commodified, and that ‘each

has found its niche on the planetary market.’ 36 Cyberpunk, therefore, suggests

that both the worst aspects of the humanist self and the capitalist paradigm can be

sustained within the idea of the cyborg. The lack of critical engagement with the

capitalist paradigm in cyberpunk is reminiscent of comments made by Terry

Eagleton regarding the postmodern left, that ‘The power of capital is now so

drearily familiar, so sublimely omnipotent and omnipresent, that even large

33
Laura Bartlett and Thomas B. Byers, ‘Back to the Future: The Humanist Matrix’, Cultural
Critique, 53, 2003, pp. 28-46, p. 29.
34
David Brande, ‘The Business of Cyberpunk: Symbolic Economy and Ideology in William
Gibson’, Configurations, 2:3, 1994, pp. 509-536, pp. 510-511.
35
Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science
Fictions, Verso, London, 2005, p. 21. In contrast, Brooks Landon has claimed that Neuromancer
‘[parodies] both capitalism and consumerism’. Brooks, Landon, Science Fiction After 1900:
From the Steam Man to the Stars, Routledge, New York, 2002, p. 162. On the whole, I think
Jameson’s analysis of cyberpunk is to be preferred, on this point at least. While Gibson may not
necessarily romanticise the various corporate entities which are involved in his novels, for
example, he undeniably romanticises the arch-capitalist worlds which result from their activities,
36
Tom Moylan, ‘Global Economy, Local Texts: Utopian/Dystopian Tension in William Gibson’s
Cyberpunk Trilogy’, in Sherryl Vint and Graham J. Murphy (eds.) Beyond Cyberpunk,
Routledge, New York, 2010, pp. 81-94, pp. 90-91.
 104

sectors of the left succeeded in naturalizing it, taking it for granted as such an

unbudgable structure that it is as though they hardly have the heart to speak of

it’, 37 and earlier ‘We now find ourselves confronted with the mildly farcical

situation of a cultural left which maintains an indifferent or embarrassed silence

about that power which is the invisible colour of daily life, which determines our

existence… in almost every quarter, which decides in large measure the destiny

of nations and the internecine conflicts between them.’ 38 In cyberpunk literature

and the critical literature about it, this observation rings true. 39 Capitalism is the

elephant in the room, demanding our attention yet hardly ever discussed.

Another form which the posthuman takes in cyberpunk is that of the

digitised consciousness. There are, of course, different treatments of the subject

in different works. One particularly marked difference is that between William

Gibson’s treatment of digitised human consciousnesses in the Neuromancer

trilogy and Pat Cadigan’s imagining of them in Synners. There are strong

similarities, of course, not least in the fundamental ideas that the abstraction of

human consciousness into digital form is possible. However, in the end results

for Bobby and Angie in Gibson’s Mona Lisa Overdrive, as opposed to Visual

Mark/Art/Markt in Cadigan’s Synners, there lies a significant difference. Bobby

and Angie, despite their abstraction as cyberspatial consciousnesses - in other

words, despite the complete removal of their minds from their previous
37
Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1996, p. 23.
38
Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism, pp. 22-23.
39
There are, of course, exceptions to the rule in both the critical literature and the cyberpunk
oeuvre itself. Pawel Frelik, in his article discussing the fiction of Richard K. Morgan, observes
that Morgan ‘discards cyberpunk’s political blindness in ways both major and minor.’ Frelik is
entirely correct in his analysis, and this potentially makes Morgan’s novels an interesting new
chapter in the history of cyberpunk. See Pawel Frelik, ‘Woken Carbon: The Return of the Human
in Richard K. Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs Novels’, in Sherryl Vint and Graham J. Murphy (eds.),
Beyond Cyberpunk: New Critical Perspectives, Routledge, New York, 2010, pp. 173-190, p. 176.
 105

embodiment - seem to remain fundamentally the same. They continue existence

as unitary consciousnesses, with the same sense of themselves as “Bobby” and

“Angie” that they had when they were embodied as humans. 40 In Synners,

however, a different, and messier, story unfolds. As might be indicated by the

split naming above, Visual Mark’s translation to a cyberspatial embodiment is

much more complex. While Mark’s merger with the AI Art is necessitated by the

overarching plot structure of the novel (it is both Mark’s and Art’s only way of

surviving the virus unleashed into the system by Mark’s stroke(s) as he attempts

to become a cyberspatial consciousness), the implications of this merger (and the

previous stroke) indicate that Cadigan’s view of the idea of digitising

consciousness is more nuanced than Gibson’s. Cadigan complicates the process

of digitising consciousness in two ways that Gibson does not. Firstly, Mark’s

move to cyberspace is fraught with danger in a way that Bobby and Angie’s is

not; whilst both they and he die in the process Visual Mark’s corporeal death

releases a dangerous computer virus which endangers many people, his new

cyberspatial self included. Their deaths are portrayed as a gradual withering

away; his is cataclysmic. Secondly, his cyberspatial consciousness is unable to

survive by itself; it (he?) must merge with the AI Art in order to continue. Whilst

this could be read as a simple plot mechanism, it could also be read as a warning

about the dangers of attempting to abandon our embodiment as humans. Also,

whilst Cadigan seems to accept the idea of digitising consciousness, she does not

also accept that such a process would leave the mind involved unchanged. Whilst

this thesis has argued elsewhere that the digitisation of consciousness entails the

40
The final chapter of Mona Lisa Overdrive is a description of Bobby and Angie’s ‘life’ in the
cyberspace of the Aleph construct. Bobby and Angie, as well as The Finn and 3Jane exist within
it as discrete consciousnesses. See William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Grafton Books, 1989,
pp. 313-316.
 106

acceptance of a rather questionable form of materialism, Cadigan complicates the

issue by re-raising the problem of embodiment. Sure, you can get the mind out of

its current body, she seems to be saying, but don’t expect it to remain exactly the

same when you put it into a new one. Indeed, by the end of Synners, Visual Mark

no longer seems to exist as an individual personality – he has merged with the AI

Art to become Markt. Through the differing presentation of digitised

consciousnesses in Gibson and Cadigan’s texts, we can see that, even within

generic cyberpunk, the idea of the cybernetic posthuman raises different

possibilities – possibilities not yet fully explored in cyberpunk critiques.

Indeed, even within the works of a single author differing attitudes

towards digital abstraction are present. In Gibson’s work, though, characters

remain overwhelmingly similar after their digitisation to themselves before it.

They remain, for most purposes, the same subjects; they are simply in different

circumstances. As one critic of cyberpunk notes,

Gibson’s subjectivities are, to be sure, vulnerable and flawed, but

they represent individual selves trying to survive, maintain control,
and even to preserve honour and dignity in a threatening world. This
preservation of individual subjectivity represents a major departure
from Baudrillard, for whom the subject is a term in a terminal, lost in
the ecstasy of communication. 41

The characters who inhabit these strange new worlds remain, quite noticeably,

human. Whilst aspects of their physical, mental and social selves seem to diverge

considerably from what is currently considered normative, they themselves seem

to retain a core of humanity which goes relatively unchallenged. Case, for

41
D. Kellner, Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics Between the Modern and the
Postmodern, Routledge, London, 1995, p. 309.
 107

example, despite his ability to access cyberspace, retains a human, ‘meat’, body,

even though, at Neuromancer’s behest, he could have ‘lived’ forever in

cyberspace, or at least in Neuromancer’s construct of the beach, in semi-marital

bliss with dead ‘Linda Lee and the thin child who called himself

Neuromancer.’ 42 Instead, Case follows Maelcum’s Zion dub back to himself – or

to his body at least. At this point, it is pertinent to ask why? Why would Case,

‘who’d lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace’, 43 reject a permanent

virtual life in favour of a fragile embodied one? This is not the easiest question to

answer. Indeed, Case’s successor in the Sprawl trilogy, his spiritual inheritor,

Bobby Newmark, makes precisely the opposite choice, choosing to ‘live’ in the

Aleph construct rather than continue to exist in the ‘real’ world. The answer may

well be that Case, unlike Bobby, learned that the outside world had things in it

that Neuromancer simply could not replicate – maybe the thrill of hacking, or ‘a

girl who called herself Michael.’ 44 The alternative to Case’s decision to remain

embodied in Neuromancer is imagined through the Dixie Flatline construct, a

ROM recording of Case’s mentor in hacking, McCoy Pauley. Through Case’s

discussions with the construct when it is ‘switched on’, it rapidly becomes

apparent that the only thing the construct really wants is to be erased. The

Flatline, having worked out ‘he’ is dead, says to Case, ‘“Do me a favour,

boy…This scam of yours, when it’s over, you erase this goddam thing.”’ 45 The

Flatline construct ‘knows’ that it isn’t what it once was, that it isn’t McCoy

Pauley, and the knowledge of humanity lost is too much for the construct. The

42
William Gibson, Neuromancer, p. 244.
43
William Gibson, Neuromancer, p. 6.
44
William Gibson, Neuromancer, p. 270.
45
William Gibson, Neuromancer, p. 106.
 108

Flatline is, unlike Linda Lee, a ghost who knows he’s a ghost, and he doesn’t like

it one bit. 46

Cadigan’s Synners also imagines different modes of being. Through the

characters of Visual Mark and Gina in particular, two different ways of being in

an information age are explored. Mark is, at best, tangentially connected to the

physical, ‘real’ world. He lives for simulation, or synthesisation, and is, in a

sense, similar to Gibson’s Case. Gina is more like Molly, although, as Bronwen

Calvert and Sue Walsh point out, ‘Readers of cyberpunk will recognise Gina as

paralleling Gibson’s Molly in her embodied nature; but whereas Molly never

gains access to the transcendental world of cyberspace and consequently never

has the opportunity to choose between the flesh and the mind, Gina has and uses

the same skills for her work as does Visual Mark; her choice of the body is an

informed one.’ 47 Both Mark and Case require rescuing by, respectively, Gina and

Molly, but whereas Molly provides a purely physical, and, as has been observed

by many critics, classically feminised counterpoint to Case’s mental activity,

Gina moves both in the mental world occupied by Mark and in her own active,

physical world. Their separate choices, however, create a stark divide in the

novel. Mark, in the end, decides to leave his body behind forever for an existence

in cyberspace as a digitised consciousness. Gina, on the other hand, opts to

remain human. 48 It is significant that Synners concludes with Gina, Sam and

46
For an interesting discussion of the implications of the digital reincarnation of McCoy Pauley
as the Flatline construct, see Chia-Yi Lee, ‘Beyond the Body: Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and
Gibson’s Neuromancer’, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, 30:2, 2004, pp. 201-222.
47
Bronwen Calvert and Sue Walsh, ‘Speaking the Body: The Embodiment of ‘Feminist’
Cyberpunk’, in Speaking Science Fiction: Dialogues and Interpretations, Andy Sawyer and
David Seed (eds.), Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 2000, pp. 96-108, p. 102.
48
Although it should be observed that Cadigan complicates even this choice – Gina opts to create
a digital ‘clone’ of her consciousness, so that she both chooses to remain embodied and become
digital.
 109

Gabe (the characters who opt to remain embodied as humans), rather than

Mark/Art/Markt. It seems that, for Gina, Sam and Gabe at least, life continues,

despite the upheavals caused by the Spike (a near-global computer virus caused

by Mark’s stroke as he gradually moved towards becoming a digitised

consciousness). All this is reminiscent of a comment made by Gibson in an

interview with Larry McCaffery:

LM: The cyberpunk/humanist opposition seems way off base to me.

There are a lot of scenes in both Neuromancer and Count Zero which
are very moving from a human standpoint. Beneath the glittery
surface hardware is an emphasis on the ‘meat’ of people, the fragile
body that can get crushed so easily.

WG: That’s my ‘Lawrentian’ take on things. It’s very strange to write

something and realise that people will read into it whatever they
want. When I hear critics say that my books are ‘hard and glossy,’ I
almost want to give up writing. The English reviewers, though, seem
to understand what I’m talking about is what being hard and glossy
does to you. 49

Despite the overwhelming presence of technology, be it prostheses, cyberspace,

artificial intelligences or any other of the plethora of technologies imagined by

cyberpunk authors, there remains, as McCaffery astutely points out, ‘an emphasis

on the ‘meat’ of people,’ an emphasis, in other words, on the people themselves.

Gibson’s work in particular maintains this emphasis on what technology does to

people, and this examination of the role of the human in an increasingly

technologised world is a humanist critique of an increasingly inhuman and anti-

human system. As Douglas Kellner has summarised the difference between the

philosophy of Jean Baudrillard and the novels of William Gibson:

49
Larry McCaffery, ‘An Interview With William Gibson’, in L. McCaffery (ed.) Storming the
Reality Studio, Duke University Press, Durham, 1991, pp. 263-285, p. 280.
 110

Both Gibson and Baudrillard describe a world where subjectivity,

reality and identity are called into question, but Gibson eschews the
intense nihilism of Baudrillard and foregrounds a quest for value,
identity and expression of human qualities as a main structuring and
motivating force of his future universe… As we shall see, Gibson
holds onto certain categories that Baudrillard abandons, in
particular the notion of a sovereign individual trying to control its
environment and maintain its sovereignty in a dangerous and
vertiginous world. 50

At the core of the philosophical conception of the posthuman lies a piece

of posthumanist doctrine; in opposing the humanist conception of the subject as

rational and sovereign over itself, posthumanist theory has consistently

maintained that the rational subject does not, and never did, really exist. N.

Katherine Hayles has argued that

The posthuman subject is an amalgam, a collection of heterogenous

components, a material-informational entity whose boundaries
undergo continuous construction and reconstruction… the
presumption that there is an agency, desire or will belonging to the
self and clearly distinguished from the “wills of others” is undercut
in the posthuman, for the posthuman’s collective heterogenous
quality implies a distributed cognition located in disparate parts that
may only be in tenuous communication with one another… If “human
essence is freedom from the wills of others,” the posthuman is “post”
not because it is necessarily unfree but because there is no a priori
way to identify a self-will that can be clearly distinguished from an
other-will. 51

Whilst one could argue that certain humanisms (the use of the plural indicating

that ‘humanism’ as the target of posthumanist thinking never existed outside the

pages of posthumanist philosophical tracts) 52 place significantly less emphasis on

50
Douglas Kellner, Media Culture, p. 305.
51
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, pp. 3-4.
52
As Martin Halliwell and Andy Mousley suggest, the plurality of the history of humanism is
conveniently ‘tidied up’ in posthumanist accounts of humanism. See Halliwell and Mousley,
 111

the Hobbesian ‘state of nature’ model of the subject, it is undeniably true that

Hayles’ ‘distributed cognition’ model of the human (or posthuman) represents a

significant challenge to the liberal humanist model. Hayles’ clear and insightful

formulations regarding the philosophical posthuman form the basis for

discussion in the following paragraphs. As we shall see, Hayles’ analyses of the

posthuman in cyberpunk throw up interesting new threads, particularly her

suggestion that the contemporary world has undergone an ‘epistemic shift toward

pattern/randomness and away from presence/absence’. 53 However, Hayles also

wishes, whilst imagining the posthuman, to recuperate ‘certain characteristics

associated with the liberal subject, especially agency and choice’. 54 These

attempts at revival, given the status of Hayles’ posthuman subject, are fraught

with difficulties. Conceptions of the philosophical posthuman in cyberpunk

criticism other than Hayles’ will also be examined, and this will be facilitated by

readings of the primary texts concerned.

Hayles insists early in her book that ‘the construction of the posthuman

does not require the subject to be a literal cyborg.’ 55 This thesis contends that, for

the literal (or perhaps literary) cyborgs of cyberpunk, the inverse of this

statement is also true; to whit, the construction of a literal cyborg does not

require the subject to be a posthuman (at least not in the senses which Hayles

intends). It is far from the first time this has been pointed out, however. In the

body of works on the cyborg in cyberpunk critique, there are voices of dissent,

Critical Humanisms: Humanist/Anti-Humanist Dialogues, Edinburgh University Press,

Edinburgh, 2003, p. 3.
53
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, p. 29
54
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, p. 5.
55
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, p. 4.
 112

ready to insist that certainly not all cyborgs in cyberpunk are examples of doing

away with the humanist subject. Mary Catherine Harper, for example, has argued

that ‘Gibson’s cyborgs deviate from, then reinstate, the humanist position’. 56

Cathy Peppers, in a similar vein, argues that:

The cyborgs Gibson constructs, while they do disrupt the boundary

between man and machine, are not what I would consider “radically
deconstructed subjects.” While his constructions of bodies traced
literally by technology are seductive, and there are moments when
boundaries between subjects blur pleasurably, we are, in the end,
presented with the same fantasy of transcendence beyond the body,
the feminine, and racial “otherness”, with the masculine rather
firmly reinscribed at the centre of this newly constructed, and quickly
colonised, space. 57

Whilst this thesis has clearly not agreed with some of the assumptions critics

have made about the humanist subject (specifically their attachment to the

Hobbesian model of the ‘state of nature’, or their insistence on the radically

centred subject), it appears that the figure of the cyborg has more than one fate in

cyberpunk critiques, even for those authors who agree that something similar to

Halliwell and Mousley’s description of liberal humanism is the humanist

paradigm. Hayles argues that the posthuman, in the contemporary world, is a

contested paradigm; cyberpunk, it could be said, is the version of the posthuman

where the bad guys won. Hayles herself intimates this, citing Gibson’s

construction of Case’s virtuality in Neuromancer as ‘a division between an inert

body that is left behind and a disembodied subjectivity that inhabits a virtual

realm.’ 58 However, whilst Hayles chooses the extreme form of the technological

posthuman in cyberpunk to illustrate her argument, one suspects that she could

56
Mary Catherine Harper, ‘Incurably Alien Other’, pp. 403-404.
57
Cathy Peppers, ‘‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’’ p. 175.
58
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, p. 290.
 113

equally have selected the cyborg subjectivity of Molly to support her case.

Cyberpunk is replete with precisely the kind of imagined future posthumans

Hayles fears: technologically posthuman, yet philosophically liberal humanist.

As Jenny Wolmark has put it:

Cyberpunk, for example, depicts the new and revised bodies that have
emerged from the imaginative engagement of sf with information and
virtual technologies… While predominantly masculinist cyberpunk
narratives recognised the startling possibilities of the boundaries
between human and machine, the disembodied posthuman subject in
cyberspace nevertheless retained its unitary identity, thus failing to
dislodge what Anne Balsamo describes as “the obsessive
reinscription of dualistic gender identity in the interactions between
material bodies and technological devices. 59

Hayles does well, therefore, to found her theories of the posthuman in

such a way as to not require ‘literal cyborgs’. This is more than a clever

rhetorical trick, however. Hayles’ analyses and arguments penetrate beneath the

surface play of biological human vs. technological posthuman, into the territory

of genuine philosophy about the nature (or not) of humans (or posthumans).

Hayles constructs her arguments so as to challenge both liberal humanist models

of the human and the foundational concepts of the cybernetic posthuman,

especially where, as she points out, they are one and the same. Hayles’

observations on this point are most apt – and have interesting results for those

accounts which imply that that the presence of cybernetic posthumans in a text

necessarily imply the deployment of posthumanist philosophy within that text.

Indeed, Hayles observes that many of the ideas underpinning the conception of

59
Jenny Wolmark, ‘Staying with the Body’, p. 76-77.
 114

the cybernetic posthuman are directly derived from liberal humanist philosophy,

or rather, that the cybernetic posthuman results from the ‘lethal… grafting of the

posthuman onto a liberal humanist view of the self.’ 60

Hayles’ primary issues with the liberal humanist conception of the human

seem to accord with Martin Halliwell and Andy Mousley’s identification of the

three main poles of liberal or ‘classical’ humanism. In particular, Hayles takes

issue with the first of these presumptions, namely the supposed sovereignty of

the subject. The liberal humanist subject was encoded as unitary, self-sufficient

and sovereign over itself; Hayles, in contrast, holds to a theory which proposes

that, internally, the self consists of ‘a posthuman collectivity, an “I” transformed

into the “we” of autonomous agents operating together to make a self’, 61 and

that, externally, cognition should be attributed to systems as much if not more

than it should be attributed to the humans acting within them. 62 This has some

profound implications, not least for Hayles’ proposed project of salvaging the

idea of agency from the wreck of the liberal humanist self.

Before confronting these, and other issues raised by Hayles’ work,

however, this chapter must confront two assumptions which Hayles makes, in

common with many other post/antihumanist authors. The first concerns the term

‘liberal humanist’; this thesis has insisted previously that liberal humanism is far

from the only option available to humanists, and now the time has come to
60
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, pp. 286-287.
61
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, p. 6.
62
See N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, pp. 288-290.
 115

discuss other humanisms. The plural form is used following Halliwell and

Mousley, in whose excellent book Critical Humanisms the diversity of humanist

worldviews is aptly summarised. This thesis, however, will only examine a

single alternative to ‘liberal’ humanism; that expressed in the work of Jürgen

Habermas. Abandoning the metaphysical self of earlier humanisms, and decrying

the use of instrumental rationality beyond its sphere, Habermas returns to a form

of Kant’s theory of lifeworlds in order to advance his social philosophy.

Habermas proposes that thinking can be divided into three broad spheres; the

rational/scientific, the social/political and the aesthetic/cultural. He argues that

the problem of the Enlightenment was not rationality per se, but the

misapplication of the mode of instrumental rationality, the form of rationality

appropriate to the sphere of the rational/scientific, to the other domains. He then

argues (and this is the main thrust of his project) that another form of rationality

is appropriate to the social/political sphere – a type of rationality Habermas calls

communicative rationality. As Halliwell and Mousley have summarised

Habermas’ response to totalising critiques of reason, ‘Habermas in The Theory of

Communicative Action responds by differentiating communicative rationality

from its instrumental counterpart.’ 63 However, the reason for raising Habermas’

ideas here is not to discuss them in depth; but rather to argue that humanism is

not the monolithic beast, unresponsive to critique, that it is often made out to be

in posthumanist theory. In fact, as Thomas McCarthy has pointed out regarding

Habermas’ work,

Habermas agrees with the radical critics of enlightenment that the

paradigm of consciousness is exhausted. Like them, he views reason

63
Halliwell and Mousley, Critical Humanisms, p. 90.
 116

as inescapably situated, as concretised in history, society, body and

language. Unlike them, however, he holds that the defects of the
Enlightenment can only be made good by further enlightenment. The
totalised critique of reason undercuts the capacity of reason to be
critical. It refuses to acknowledge that modernisation bears
developments as well as distortions of reason.64

Elsewhere, criticising both humanism and the posthumanist tendency towards an

uncritical triumphalism, Neil Badmington has compared humanism to the

mythological Lernean hydra. 65 Despite the negative connotations the simile has,

it is apparent that Badmington has grasped the great potential of the humanist

project for change and renewal. Indeed, as Halliwell and Mousley were at pains

to point out, singular references to ‘the Enlightenment project’ or ‘the humanist

project’, or, of course, ‘humanism’, do not do justice to the diverse and dynamic

nature of humanist thinking. 66 Considering all humanist thought as if it were

congruent with ‘liberal humanism’ is either shoddy philosophy or a very poorly

disguised form of straw man argument. Either way, the richness and diversity of

the humanist tradition is eclipsed by a construction, a simulacrum if you will,

which bears little relation to the original.

The second presumption is one of which both humanist and posthumanist

thinkers have both at times been guilty. It is a presumption which takes the

nature of a binary division, in this case a bifurcation in theories of the self. That

64
Thomas McCarthy, ‘Introduction’, in Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of
Modernity (trans. Frederick Lawrence), The MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1990, pp. vii-xvii, p.
xvii.
65
Neil Badmington, ‘Theorizing Posthumanism’, Cultural Critique, 53, 2003, pp. 10-27, pp. 10-
11.
66
For another commentary on the diverse meanings of the word ‘humanist’, see Terry Eagleton,
The Illusions of Postmodernism, pp. 128-130.
 117

various humanisms have manifested binary thinking is undebatable. However, as

Terry Eagleton has pointed out, postmodern (and posthumanist) thought has a

tacit traffic in binarism itself. Like its much-disparaged straw-man, liberal

humanism, posthumanist thought has a distinct tendency to draw up artificial

binaries and then simply privilege one side over another. Eagleton comments

that:

To try to think both sides of a contradiction simultaneously is hardly

their [postmodernists’] favourite mode, not least because the concept
of contradiction finds little place in their lexicon. On the contrary, for
all its talk of difference, plurality, heterogeneity, postmodern theory
often operates with quite rigid binary oppositions, with “difference”,
“plurality”, and allied terms lined up bravely on one side of the
theoretical fence as unequivocally positive, and whatever their
antitheses might be (unity, identity, totality, universality) ranged
balefully on the other… It [postmodernism] knows that knowledge is
precarious and self-undoing, that authority is repressive and
monological, with all the certainty of a Euclidian geometer and all
the authority of an archbishop. 67

The point at hand, regarding the fractured (or not) nature of the self is, one

suspects, a small case of this general problem. The standard liberal humanist

presumption about the self is that it is united, self-contained and sovereign; the

standard posthumanist response has simply been to posit the reverse, namely that

the self isn’t ‘the self’ – it is rather an agglomeration of multiplicitous

subjectivities. Speaking of these new models of subjectivity, Hayles states that

she ‘now finds [herself] saying things like “Well, my sleep agent wants to rest,

67
Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism, p. 26.
 118

but my food agent says that I should go to the store.”’ 68 In an examination of

Hayles’ example, it will become apparent that the apparent either/or distinction

between these two models of consciousness (the ‘humanist’ and the

‘posthumanist’) is artificial; there remains plenty of conceptual room for

reconciliation. In other words, it is, in fact, possible and most likely fruitful to

argue that both models of consciousness have something right. Such a

reconciliatory model may look something like this. Let us imagine that, as in

Hayles’ example, two different agents (or drives) are pulling in different

directions. So, at the same time, I am both hungry and sleepy. Under the pure

rationalist model, this situation is meaningless (which serves if nothing else to

indicate the innate problems of the model); I will reach a conclusion based on

rational grounds. Under the mulitplicitous subjectivities model of hard

posthumanism, however, we could simply say that there is no ‘I’ to make a

decision; the action which is undertaken (sleeping or going to the shop) is simply

a result of the victory of one urge or another. A reconciliatory model, however,

might propose that the two drives (hunger and tiredness) establish a conceptual

space. They create a moment of choice. This conceptual space, and myriad others

like it, are the conceptual space within which the rational consciousness (the self)

makes decisions. So the rational self, unlike the self of liberal humanism, is not

unaffected by its material situation; indeed, it is this very situation which gives it

the reason, as it were, to reason. This, one imagines, is by no means the only

such reconciliatory model which could be developed. 69 It is also, obviously, brief

in nature. The point that is being made is not so much that this model is correct,

but more to simply observe that such a model could exist. That being said, this
68
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, p. 6.
69
See also Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism, pp. 90-92, for other reasons why the
alleged opposition between ‘humanist’ and ‘decentred’ subjects may be a false dichotomy.
 119

reconciliatory model of consciousness has some explicatory power; it may even

manage to fulfil Hayles’ desire to maintain an idea of agency without recourse to

the problematic liberal humanist conception of the self.

Hayles’ specific discussions of texts within the cyberpunk canon are

limited. She makes brief mention of Neuromancer, and devotes a short but clear

analysis to Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. The interest, for the purposes of this

chapter, in Hayles’ analyses is in her identification of cyberpunk (particularly

Neuromancer) with the cybernetic conception of the posthuman, but not with her

more philosophical model of the posthuman. This is hardly surprising, when one

considers that early in her book Hayles states that:

If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who

regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the
ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that
embraces the possibilities of information technologies without
being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and
disembodied immortality, that recognises and celebrates
finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands
human life is embedded in a material world of great
complexity, one on which we depend for our continued
survival. 70

Hayles’ nightmare, she concludes, is ‘the grafting of the posthuman onto a liberal

humanist model of the self.’ 71 As we have observed, this is the usual model for

presentation of the posthuman in cyberpunk – cyberpunk, with a few exceptions,

70
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, p. 5. Hayles ‘nightmare’ in particular puts
me in mind of a more recent contributor to the science fiction field, Richard K. Morgan, in whose
works consciousness is recorded in ‘cortical stacks’ and bodies (referred to as ‘sleeves’) are
routinely changed.
71
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, pp. 286-287.
 120

sticks closely to the cybernetic model of the posthuman. The one cyberpunk text

which Hayles devotes significant analysis to is Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and

this is perhaps because it is in this text (rather than works by Gibson, Sterling or

Cadigan) that Hayles finds points of interest for her discussion. Having devoted

space to a critical analysis of Hayles’ reading of Snow Crash in the previous

chapter, it would be redundant to repeat such criticisms now. It is sufficient, here,

to simply repeat the conclusion of that analysis: that Hayles’ argument that ‘We

should value the late evolutionary add-ons of consciousness and reason not

because they are foundational but because they allow the human to emerge out of

the posthumans we have always already been’, 72 in fact allows a countering

response. This response is that if consciousness and reason allow the human to

emerge from the posthuman, then these attributes can indeed be argued to be

foundational – not of our existence as posthumans (or perhaps prehumans might

be a better term at this point, given the drift of Hayles’ argument), but of our

existence as humans.

No discussion of Hayles’ ideas on the posthuman would be complete

without an examination of her use of the embodiment paradigm. Hayles’ use of

the idea of embodiment is strategic; she deploys the concept of embodiment in

order to counteract the disembodying rhetorics of liberal humanism and the

cybernetic posthuman. Both of these systems, argues Hayles, privilege mind over

body to the point of wishing to discard the body altogether. This is not entirely a

new point, nor is the strategy of re-introducing embodiment as a paradigm a new

72
N. Katherine Hayles, ‘The Posthuman Body’, pp. 265-266.
 121

response to disembodying rhetorics. However, there is, this thesis contends, a

double-foundationalist move inherent in Hayles’ use of the embodiment

paradigm. Thomas Foster notes that Hayles’ deployment of embodiment within

her works smacks of foundationalism, but quickly dismisses Hayles’ usage as

necessary (given the extreme nature of the disembodying rhetorics with which

she engages) and strategic (in the sense, one suspects, that we can dismiss the

charge of foundationalism against Hayles because she is simply proposing her

embodiment foundationalism as a tool to combat rhetorics of disembodiment).73

It is not certain, however, that the importance of her foundationalist account can

be quite so easily glossed over when examining Hayles’ work. Indeed, since

Hayles’ argument against the aforementioned disembodying rhetorics depends

largely on her maintaining the critical importance of embodiment, and of

material presence in a material world, her foundationalism is central to her

alternative view of the posthuman. The very word embodiment encapsulates two

concepts – the body, and that which is embodied. Whilst this could be termed a

strict denotative interpretation of the word, even its connotative usages still carry

these implications. It is possible to read Hayles’ usage of the term embodiment as

carrying a new and complex form of foundationalism; one which insists it is not

only the reasoning mind nor only the material body which are foundational to the

experience of being human, but the (possibly inseparable) combination of the

two. Terry Eagleton has commented that ‘the new somatics restores us to the

creaturely in an abstracted world, and this represents one of its enduring

achievements; but in banishing the ghost from the machine, it risks dispelling

73
See Thomas Foster, ‘Review: The Reappearing Body in Postmodern Technoculture’,
Contemporary Literature, 42:3, 2001, pp. 617-631, p. 630.
 122

subjectivity itself as no more than a humanist myth.’ 74 It is to Hayles’ great

credit that, rather than a simple story of body-essentialism or mind-essentialism,

she manages to maintain, as Eagleton puts it, that ‘the truth of the body does not

lie, as the liberals like to think, somewhere in between, but in the impossible

tension between these two versions of bodiliness, both of which are

phenomenologically just. It is not quite true that I have a body, and it is not quite

true that I am one either.’ 75 Hayles’ double-essentialist story walks the fine line,

the impossible tension which Eagleton describe, and does it well. Whilst it could

be argued that Hayles’ is far from any traditional foundationalist account of the

human, to argue, as does Foster, that Hayles’ foundationalism is simply not that

important, is to miss a critical opportunity.

Hayles’ complex embodiment paradigm is key to her critical response to

what she views as the dominant notion in the discourse of the cybernetic

posthuman. This is, on her understanding, the ‘epistemic shift towards

pattern/randomness and away from presence/absence’. 76 This is prefigured by the

dominance of Claude Shannon’s information theory, which ‘reified information

into a free-floating, decontextualised, quantifiable entity’. 77 The problem, Hayles

argues, is not so much that the disembodied, informational paradigm of

pattern/randomness actually eclipses the material paradigm of presence/absence,

but that this supposition is often made. As Hayles put it, ‘The pattern/randomness

dialectic does not erase the material world; information in fact derives its

74
Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism, p. 75.
75
Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism, p. 75. My emphasis.
76
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, p. 19
77
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, p. 19
 123

efficacy from the material infrastructures it appears to obscure. This illusion of

erasure should be the subject of inquiry, not a presupposition that inquiry takes

for granted.’ 78 Hayles is insightful in making this claim; as she has observed

elsewhere, it makes no sense whatsoever to speak of disembodied minds, 79 and it

equally makes little sense to speak of dematerialised information. However

Hayles’ observation of the dominance of the pattern/randomness dialectic in

informatics is of critical importance in cyberpunk. This is particularly true of the

ways in which cyberpunk deals with consciousness. The mind, in cyberpunk, is

generally imagined to be informational pattern, only contingently embodied in

human form. Thus, for example, Case’s ‘flatlined’ EEG in a sequence near the

end of Neuromancer does not indicate the cessation of his cognitive function; the

‘substance’ of his mind is elsewhere, captured in the informational flows of

cyberspace. Similarly, as has been noted earlier, in Mona Lisa Overdrive Bobby

and Angie both translate their consciousnesses into cyberspatial forms. It could

be argued, however, that not all cyberpunk is as simplistic in its acceptance of the

dominance of the informational paradigm. Speaking of Pat Cadigan’s Synners,

for example, Bronwen Calvert and Sue Walsh have observed that ‘For Cadigan,

information has to have meaning…For information to have meaning it needs

what Gina calls “context”, the context of ‘social relationships with cultural

reference and value.’ Anne Balsamo suggests that Cadigan writes with an

understanding of information “as a “state of knowing” which reasserts a knowing

body as its necessarily materialist foundation”.’ 80 Gina, despite having been a

‘synner’, or a producer of synthesised experiences, insists on her rootedness in

78
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, p. 28. Hayles’ emphasis.
79
See N. Katherine Hayles, ‘The Posthuman Body’, p. 252.
80
Bronwen Calvert and Sue Walsh, ‘Speaking the Body: The Embodiment of ‘Feminist’
Cyberpunk’, in Speaking Science Fiction: Dialogues and Interpretations, Andy Sawyer and
David Seed (eds.), Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 2000, pp. 96-108, p. 104.
 124

the material, stating that ‘Only the embodied can really boogie all night in a hit-

and-run, or jump off a roof attached to bungi cords.’ 81 It could also be argued

that, in the character of the Rei Toi (the artificial personality construct whose

manoeuvres form part of the plot of Gibson’s Idoru) Gibson himself makes a

statement regarding embodiment. In spite of her digital incarnation as an idoru,

the Rei Toi opts for incarnation as a human in the concluding sequence of the

novel. Whilst in one sense this simply affirms priority of informational pattern

over material instantiation (in that the Rei Toi somehow becomes human – if

Gibson isn’t dealing in some sort of mystic trick, then her body would have to

have been somehow assembled according to code), in another, very important

sense it does just the opposite. It could be argued that, in the reverse

transcendence of the Rei Toi, her deliberate ‘fall’ into embodied humanity,

Gibson is making the argument that there is something critical about embodiment

to being human. Indeed, this seems to be the point of view of the Rei Toi. Tama

Leaver has argued that:

Her eventual decision to leave the digital realm for the

material world shows Gibson’s ultimate allegiance is to the
embodied material form as a necessary and significant site of
identity. Moreover, as the virtual disembodied Rei could be
considered the ultimate expression of the bodiless existence,
her desire and decision to become materially embodied
illuminates Gibson’s thorough rejection of the “will to
virtuality.” 82

81
Pat Cadigan, Synners, Four Wall Eight Windows, New York, 1991, p. 433.
82
Tama Leaver, ‘“The Infinite Plasticity of the Digital”: Posthuman Possibilities, Embodiment
and Technology in William Gibson’s Interstitial Trilogy’, Reconstruction, 4:3, 2004,
http://reconstruction.eserver.org/043/leaver.htm.
 125

Whether one accepts this argument or not it is clear, as Hayles herself recognises,

that cyberpunk ‘takes informatics as its central theme.’ 83 Given that this is the

case, Hayles’ powerful approach to the discourses of information technology can,

and does, provide illuminatory readings of cyberpunk texts.

In examining the concept of the posthuman, both in critical literature

specifically related to cyberpunk and in more general texts, this chapter has

attempted to untangle the often confused critical skeins of the subject in

cyberpunk critique. As has been observed, there are two significant and

diverging typologies of the posthuman at work, in both general literature and

cyberpunk critique. The foundational assumptions of these differing ideas of the

posthuman are radically different; it has been the contention of this chapter that

this difference is unresolvable. The cybernetic conception of the posthuman

depends, as Hayles points out, mainly on liberal humanist presumptions about

the nature of the human self. As such, it is questionable whether such an account

can be amalgamated with the approach to the posthuman which this thesis has

dubbed the philosophical posthuman. As the philosophical approach to the

posthuman derives much of its critical impetus from posthumanism, a way of

thinking which largely evolved as a critical response to the problems of liberal

humanism, it becomes obvious that the two competing theories of the posthuman

are just that: competing. Given the radically conflicting nature, of both their

foundational assumptions and the resulting accounts, the cybernetic and

philosophical theories of the posthuman cannot be accommodated with one

83
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, p. 30.
 126

another. This chapter has further contended that critical confusion between the

two modes of the posthuman has led to a lack of clarity in cyberpunk criticism.

Whilst it is obvious that cyberpunk deals thematically with the cybernetic

posthuman, it is not at all necessary that this means it approaches the

philosophical posthuman. As the previous chapter contended that arguments

regarding the posthumanist nature of cyberpunk are flawed, so it is the

contention that, despite dealing with the idea of the cybernetic posthuman,

cyberpunk remains determinedly humanist in it philosophical outlook.

In short, then, the posthuman both is and is not a key critical theme in

cyberpunk. It is, in the sense that cyberpunk authors frequently deploy the

cybernetic idea of the posthuman in their characters and worlds. It is not, in the

sense that, despite critical accounts to the contrary, the posthuman in cyberpunk

more often than not bears no trace of what this chapter has termed the

philosophical posthuman. In other words, the deployment of the posthuman in

cyberpunk more often resembles Hayles’ ‘nightmare’ than her ‘dream’.

Cyberpunk is most often set in worlds where the worst aspects of liberalism,

capitalism and technophilia have created a place which is certainly anti-human,

but is in no way posthumanist.

 127

Chapter Four: Cyberpunk Spatiality: The ‘Other’ Spaces of

Cyberpunk.

In recent times, spatiality has become something of a buzzword in

academic studies. Without wishing to denigrate the concept, this popularity is

perhaps attributable to the ‘fuzziness’ of the idea of spatiality; it encapsulates

concepts of geographical space, ideas of place and belonging, and the sense of

space associated with things which are at best debatably actual spaces, such as

cyberspace. 1 Nonetheless, because the concept of spatiality allows all of these

discursive threads to be drawn together under the same rubric, it has considerable

rhetorical power. This chapter will work in a similar way, drawing together

different threads of cyberpunk critique related to the concept of spatiality. It will

explore thematic and analytic similarities and differences between various

examinations of cyberpunk’s places, and will illuminate both critical successes

and critical impasses within these analyses.

Critical interpretations of cyberpunk which deal with concepts related to

spatiality can be examined in two main groupings. These, unsurprisingly, are

related to the different spaces which they interpret. Firstly, there are those

readings which deal with that much discussed novum of cyberpunk: cyberspace.

Whilst the status of cyberspace as a ‘space’ could be contested, it undeniably

functions as a ‘space’ in cyberpunk fiction. However, it is its functional

similarities to and differences from physical space which have provoked the most

interesting and provocative analyses. Within this broad theme of cyberspace

1
For a discussion of the ‘spatial’ characteristics of cyberspace, see Jonathan Taylor, ‘The
Emerging Geographies of Virtual Worlds’, Geographical Review, 87:2, 1997, pp. 172-192.
 128

spatiality, however, there are multiple interpretive strands. Secondly, and more

recently, critics have begun to discuss cyberpunk spatiality in terms of

conceptions of the ‘interstitial’ space. These discussions, perhaps triggered by

Gibson’s own comments on the interstitial, 2 have largely revolved around

Gibson’s second, ‘Bridge’, trilogy, consisting of Virtual Light, Idoru, and All

Tomorrow’s Parties. Whilst there is a clear differentiation between the different

‘spaces’ being examined in these threads of cyberpunk critique, there are also

considerable critical linkages.

It is impossible to discuss cyberpunk and its critical literature in any great

depth without an analysis of the role of cyberspace. It remains one of the great

conceptual innovations of the genre – indeed, many critics recognise it as the

crucial narrative device native to cyberpunk. 3 It is of no surprise, therefore, that

discussion of cyberspace in cyberpunk criticism is intense and complex.

Analyses of cyberspatial spaces and their meanings fall into three main

categories. Firstly, there are those critics who argue that the cyberpunk

conception of cyberspace is presented within a Cartesian dualist account of the

self. Secondly, there are those critics who agree that cyberpunk cyberspace is

Cartesian, but only in its spatial/mathematical format (it is important to draw this

2
See, for example, Gibson’s comments in Cory Doctorow, ‘William Gibson Interview
Transcript’, http://craphound.com/nonfic/transcript.html, viewed 23/02/09.
3
See, for example, Sabine Heuser, Virtual Geographies: Cyberpunk at the Intersection of the
Postmodern and Science Fiction, Rodopi Press, New York, 2003, p. 5; Victoria De Zwaan,
‘Rethinking the Slipstream: Kathy Acker Reads Neuromancer’, Science Fiction Studies, 24:3,
1997, pp. 459-470, p. 460. For another very interesting analysis of ‘newness’ and Neuromancer,
which contests this position, see John Huntingdon, ‘Newness, Neuromancer and the End of
Narrative’ in George Slusser and Tom Shippey (eds.), Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of
Narrative, University of Georgia Press, Athens (Georgia), 1992, pp. 133-141.
 129

distinction because one does not imply the other). 4 Lastly and perhaps most

influentially there are those critics who have argued that cyberspace in

cyberpunk is a literary affirmation and representation of Jean Baudrillard’s

theories regarding the hyperreal and simulacra. Whilst these three strands of

interpretation of cyberpunk may intertwine, it seems that mostly they do not –

either one speaks of cyberspace as Cartesian in the dualist sense, Cartesian in the

mathematico-spatial sense, or as a projection of Baudrillard’s vision of the

simulacral society. This strange lack of intersection between the different modes

of interpretation in the critical literature becomes more explicable when it is

observed that, at least in the cases of Cartesian dualist readings and

Baudrillardian readings, there is also a stark judgemental distinction. Those

critics who argue that cyberpunk cyberspace (and particularly Gibsonian

cyberspace) imagines the self on a dualist model tend to condemn that

conception of the self (and hence the cyberpunk idea of cyberspace), whereas

those who argue that cyberspace is a literary recognition of Baudrillardian

hyperreality often celebrate that ‘fact’ (both in its literary incarnation and in its

alleged real-world truth).

One of the most common and insistently repeated arguments in the

critical interpretation of cyberspace in cyberpunk is that it represents ‘a sustained

meditation, unrivalled in contemporary culture, on the Cartesian mind/body

dichotomy.’ 5 This thesis contends that, whilst it is true that the various depictions

4
One can agree, for example, that we reside in a space which can be mapped within a Cartesian
point-grid system, without necessarily agreeing that our mind and bodies are composed of
fundamentally different substances.
5
Kevin McCarron, ‘Corpses, Animals, Machines and Mannequins: The Body and Cyberpunk’, in
Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk, Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows (eds), Sage
Publications, London, 1995, pp. 261-273, p. 261.
 130

of cyberspace in cyberpunk often act to place the mind at a distance from the

human body, this is not the same as a simple Cartesian postulation of the radical

separation of mind from materiality. However, prior to making this argument, it

would be best to attend to the various ways in which cyberspace has been read as

a meditation on Cartesian dualism. At first glance, the connection between

cyberpunk depictions of cyberspace and Cartesian dualism are obvious. Both,

after all, argue that the mind is separable from the body. Descartes repeatedly

expresses himself as ‘having’ or ‘owning’ a body: 6 in other words being a

consciousness which is in possession of a material form. This, on the face of it,

accords with the disparaging tone regarding the physical body adopted in much

cyberpunk. Indeed, cyberpunk may in fact take this derogation of the physical

further than does Descartes. For whilst Descartes does insist on a radical

separation of body and mind, he does not condemn the physical as mere ‘meat’.

It is this way of seeing the body as ‘bio-flesh… grossly disgusting, a collection

of physical parts whose utility may have already been superseded’, 7 inherent in

much cyberpunk (though not necessarily all of it – characters in Pat Cadigan’s

work, and also Gibson’s later work, are more tempered in their views on their

physical existence), which has most likely led to the conclusion, drawn by many

critics, that cyberpunk imaginings of cyberspace, and indeed cyberpunk in its

entirety, were ‘a discourse conducted under the unquestioning hegemony of a

dominant Cartesian dualism’ and that ‘“escape from the meat” into the realm of

the mind was exposed for its abandonment of the discourses of the body-as-

6
See for example René Descartes, Discourse on Method and the Meditations (trans. John
Veitch), Prometheus Books, New York, 1989, pp. 113-114.
7
Louis J. Kern, ‘Terminal Notions of What We May Become: Synthflesh, Cyberreality and the
Post-Human Body’, in Simulacrum America: The USA and the Popular Media, Elisabeth Kraus
and Carolin Auer (eds.), Camden House, Rochester, 2000, pp. 95-106, p. 98.
 131

knowledge and power.’ 8 In keeping with contemporary academic fashion,

anything even vaguely tainted by association with Cartesian dualism is also

deemed to be profoundly reactionary. It is of interest to note, however, that an

artificial and unproductive binary opposition in the critical literature of

cyberpunk has also contributed to this condemnation of cyberpunk. This artificial

binary has been created between what we could term the ‘embodiment’ paradigm

of human nature and strict Cartesian dualism. That the two are conflicting views

of human nature is not in question. However, it seems as if critics reading

cyberpunk have begun to assume that these are the only possible accounts of

consciousness and the body. Whilst this thesis has clearly expressed sympathies

with the embodiment paradigm, this does not mean that any and all other

conceptions of human nature and consciousness, be they academic/philosophical

or extracted by analysis from the pages of a literary texts, can simply be

dismissed as ‘dualist’, and therefore reactionary or beneath our consideration.

The prospect, raised in cyberpunk imaginings of cyberspace, of human

consciousness being transferable from its original medium (the human body and

brain) into another medium (the processors of a computer) simply is not the same

as arguing, as does Descartes, that mind is of a fundamentally different substance

to body (or matter). It is rather the case that, as Russell Blackford has pointed out

‘that all of the cyberpunks… radically reject that Cartesian account of the self.

The philosophical position assumed… in cyberpunk is functionalist rather than

Cartesian: i.e., mind is seen by the cyberpunks as dependent on the functioning

of matter – rather than as separable from it. Descartes would not have been

pleased by Gibson’s work, though some of his contemporaries, such as Hobbes

8
Ross Farnell, ‘Posthuman Topologies: William Gibson’s “Architexture” in Virtual Light and
Idoru’, Science Fiction Studies, 25:3, 1998, pp. 459-480, p. 460.
 132

and Gassendi, might have been.’ 9 Thus the difference between an ‘embodiment’

account of human consciousness and the ‘cyberpunk’ account of consciousness

amounts less to a debate between materialist and dualist accounts of human

nature and more to a disagreement between factions of materialists; one school

which insists that human consciousness is dependent in very real ways on being

embodied as a human, and another which does not discount the fact that the

functioning of consciousness is dependent on matter, but insists that the exact

nature of that matter is not of such critical importance. 10 The argument that

cyberpunk presentations of cyberspace are a tacit reintroduction of dualist themes

appears, once this is realised, as more of a form of convenient labelling. The

consciousness paradigm clearly in play in cyberpunk is one which differs from

the currently popular model of embodiment; it is convenient, rather than

conducting time-consuming and difficult arguments regarding the difference

between different materialist accounts of the self, to simply condemn the

cyberpunk model of consciousness as ‘Cartesian’, and leave it to rot. Blackford

observes that Gibson may be ‘the victim of a contemporary penchant for literary

scholars to spot Cartesian dualism everywhere, and to treat it as a kind of

sociopolitical enemy.’ 11 With the possible exception of Abelard Lindsay’s

transcendence at the conclusion of Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix, cyberpunk

imaginings of consciousness tend to support Blackford’s point. Even those

consciousnesses which are translated completely from their human bodies into

other forms (such as 3Jane, Bobby Newmark, Angie and The Finn in Gibson’s

Mona Lisa Overdrive and Visual Mark in Cadigan’s Synners) remain dependent

9
Russell Blackford, ‘Review: Reading the Ruined Cities’, Science Fiction Studies, 31:2, 2004,
pp. 264-270, p. 269. Emphasis in original text.
10
For a fuller explanation of similar arguments, see Chapter 3, ‘But it Ain’t No Way Human:
Theories of the Posthuman and Cyberpunk.’
11
Russell Blackford, ‘Review: Reading the Ruined Cities’, p. 270.
 133

on the functioning of matter for their continued existence. Gibson emphasises

this near the conclusion of Mona Lisa Overdrive, when Slick Henry converses

with Molly. The conversation is about the continued existence of Bobby, Angie

and 3Jane in the cyberspace of the aleph biosoft. The point is made, however,

that their continued existence is dependent on the continued functioning of the

biosoft, when Slick asks:

‘What happens if you just cut the power?’

She [Molly] reached down and ran the tip of her index finger
along the thin cable that connected the aleph to the battery…
‘Hey, 3Jane,’ she said, her finger poised above the cable, ‘I
gotcha.’ 12

In Synners, the continued existence of the consciousness/es of Art Fish and

Visual Mark are contingent upon the continued functioning of their material

environment. The precariousness of their situation (contained within the memory

unit of a modified insulin pump attached to Sam) highlights this dependence on

materiality. In the light of these examples of cyberpunk examinations of human

nature and consciousness, it is plain that those critics who insist that the model of

consciousness deployed in cyberpunk is dualist do so in the face of the textual

evidence.

A possible argument, though one as yet unconsidered in the critical

literature, against the presentation of the mind/body problem in cyberpunk, arises

from the work of N. Katherine Hayles. Hayles’ theses on the shift from a

material (presence/absence) dialectic to the informational (pattern/randomness)

paradigm in recent years seems to apply well to cyberpunk imaginings of

12
William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Grafton Books, 1989, pp. 309-310.
 134

cyberspace and consciousness. 13 Consciousness in cyberpunk does appear to be

imagined within the second paradigm – the material circumstances of a particular

consciousness appear not to matter so much as the continued existence of the

informational pattern which describes it. There are many examples of this in

various cyberpunk works (one could argue that any time a character enters

cyberspace/the Metaverse/the matrix is just such an example), but the single best

examples are from William Gibson’s ‘Sprawl’ trilogy. These are the various

instances in which characters in the series have their consciousnesses transferred

completely into cyberspace – thus completely altering the material in which they

are contained, without, it is apparent, altering their informational pattern.

Notably, despite this privileging of something which, it could be argued, is

immaterial, over the matter in which it is conveyed, Hayles does not specifically

refer to dualism. This because, as Blackford has observed, cyberpunk imaginings

of cyberspace (and the broader technophilic dreams of cybernetics) are not,

strictly speaking, dualist. However, Hayles’ analyses provide a good reason to

critique the cyberpunk discarding of the body. Without wishing to prefigure the

later chapter on feminism and cyberpunk, the notion of consciousness as

embodied information, with privilege being applied to neither term, is a useful

standpoint from which to examine cyberpunk. The problem with cyberpunk

imaginings of cyberspace is not so much that they disembody information or

consciousness (a dualist problem) but that they assume that consciousness-as-

informational-pattern can be transferred relatively easily between media without

information loss. This assumption is problematic at best. Against such a context-

negating approach to information, we might do well to insist, with Carolyn

13
See N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,
Literature and Informatics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1999, p. 290 for Hayles’ very
brief view on Gibsonian cyberspace. It is largely condemnatory.
 135

Marvin, that ‘information cannot be said to exist at all unless it has meaning, and

meaning is only established in social relationships with cultural reference and

value.’ 14 In other words, information can only be said to be information when it

informs someone, and that, as the body may well provide critical context for who

that person is, we may want to very carefully consider the consequences of

discarding that body. 15

Even if it is concluded that the virtual places of cyberpunk, and the

consciousnesses contained therein, do not represent a tacit reintroduction of

Cartesian dualist themes, these spaces remain Cartesian in another way. The

nature of the spaces themselves is Cartesian in a mathematical sense; they consist

of grid-point spaces, extending infinitely in three dimensions. One of many

descriptions of cyberspace in these terms is also probably the first, in Gibson’s

Neuromancer. Cyberspace (in this case the cyberspace of the Sense/Net library

vault) is described as:

an infinite blue space ranged with colour-coded spheres strung

on a tight grid of pale blue neon. In the nonspace of the matrix,
the interior of a given data construct possessed unlimited
subjective dimension; a child’s toy calculator, accessed through
Case’s Sendai, would have presented limitless gulfs of
nothingness hung with a few basic commands. 16

Relatively few critics have discussed the Cartesian nature of cyberpunk

cyberspace, at least in comparison to the multitude who have examined the

allegedly dualist nature of the cyberpunk model of consciousness. This is perhaps

14
Carolyn Marvin, ‘Information and History’, in The Ideology of the Information Age, Jennifer
Daryl Slack and Fred Fejes (eds.), Ablex Publishing Corporation, Norwood, pp. 49-62, p. 51.
15
Further examination of the embodiment paradigm and cyberpunk will take place in a later
chapter on feminism and cyberpunk.
16
William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Grafton Books, 1989, p. 63. My emphasis.
 136

not surprising, as an analysis of the mathematical substructure of cyberpunk

cyberspace offers considerably less space for railing against the evils of humanist

models of the self. However, the Cartesian nature of cyberspatial spaces in

cyberpunk does bear more examination. Scott Bukatman has, albeit briefly,

examined the Cartesian spatial nature of cyberpunk cyberspaces, and has made a

couple of very important points regarding them. Firstly, Bukatman has observed

that cyberspace is ‘an abstraction of the data in all the computers in the human

system, a reprogramming which reduces the complexity to avoid an overload and

permit the[ir] assimilation by human perception…’ 17 Secondly, Bukatman has

observed that while the foundation of cyberspace is the infinite space of the

Cartesian grid, Gibson

transformed the virtual field of the Cartesian coordinate

system into the Newtonian spaces of concrete forces and
forms… This is no idle transformation; it reduces the infinite
abstract void of electronic space to the definitions of bodily
experience and physical cognition, grounding it in finite and
assimilable terms. Merleau-Ponty once raised objections to
the detachment of Cartesian coordinate space by noting that
he is inside space, immersed in it; space cannot be
reconstructed from an outside position. Cyberspace, with its
aesthetic of immersion, maintains the mathematical
determinism of the coordinate system, but it superimposes the
experiential realities of physical, phenomenal space upon the
abstractions of this Cartesian terrain. 18

It is the contention of this thesis that Bukatman has insightfully recognised the

key components of Gibsonian cyberspace. Gibsonian cyberspace is, on this

model, a quasi-physical abstraction of purely electronic data (which, it should be

pointed out, are represented in their original form in purely mathematical

17
Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction, Duke
University Press, Durham, 1993, p. 152.
18
Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity, p. 152.
 137

statements). However, Bukatman also observes that this does not invalidate the

mathematical underpinnings of the data, and similarly the phenomenological

experience of embodiment in cyberspace does not supersede its Cartesian

underpinnings. These observations will be of considerable importance when

examining those critical writings which have envisioned cyberpunk’s

cyberspaces as literary confirmation of Jean Baudrillard’s theories of simulation.

Before moving towards an analysis of the relationship which Baudrillard’s

theories have with cyberpunk, however, it is necessary to mention that there is

some dissent over the Cartesian nature of cyberspace. Marie-Laure Ryan, in

‘Cyberspace, Virtuality and the Text’, mentions several ways in which

cyberspace is different to physical space. Whilst Ryan is discussing cyberspace

as we know it (the Internet) her comments seem to apply equally to cyberpunk

cyberspaces. The differences are, as Ryan notes them:

It [cyberspace] is travelled by jumps and seemingly instantaneous

transportation… rather than being traversed point by point like
Cartesian space. It is not finite, but infinitely expandable: claiming a
territory as one’s own… does not diminish the amount of cyberspace
available to others. Being non-physical, it is equidistant from all
points in the physical world… Since it expands and changes
continually, it cannot be mapped. 19

Whilst Ryan is right in arguing that these points do to some degree differentiate

cyberspace from physical space (although one could argue that real space is

infinite too – it is simply the case that we cannot get access to most of it) they do

not, as Ryan inaccurately puts it, distinguish cyberspace from Cartesian space.

Cartesian space and cyberspace have much in common – not least their infinitely

19
Marie-Laure Ryan, ‘Cyberspace, Virtuality and the Text’, in Cyberspace Textuality: Computer
Technology and Literary Theory, Marie-Laure Ryan (ed.), Indiana University Press,
Bloomington, 1999, pp. 78-107, p. 86.
 138

expandable, mathematical basis. It is important to note, however, that Ryan’s

observations cannot be mapped perfectly onto cyberpunk cyberspaces. At the

very least, our perceptions of cyberspace (the Internet-as-it-is) do not have the

same phenomenological outcomes as cyberpunk’s electronic spaces – the same

perceptions of physical emplacement, movement etc. Scott Bukatman has

described the cyberspaces of science fiction as ‘produc[ing] a unified experience

of spatiality and thus social being,’ 20 but cyberspace-as-we-know-it is yet to

provide such experience.

The view that the worlds of cyberpunk are imagined within

‘Baudrillard’s new millennium, as hyperreality dominates’ 21 is the last

presentation of cyberspace to be examined in this chapter. It is unsurprising that

Baudrillard’s theories would be raised in the context of cyberpunk criticism.

Firstly, as most critics who have written about cyberpunk have written from a

postmodernist/posthumanist perspective, it is to be expected that Baudrillard’s

name should be mentioned. Secondly, and more importantly in the context of

this chapter, Baudrillard’s theories relating to the hyperreal and simulation seem

remarkably apt for adoption by critics wishing to examine the use of cyberspace

in cyberpunk. Before proceeding further with an analysis of the ways in which

Baudrillard’s theories have been utilised in cyberpunk criticism, however, some

examination of his theories of simulation is necessary.

It is safe to say that Baudrillard’s theory(ies) of simulation, the

simulacrum and the hyperreal are at best a little unclear. However, once one has
20
Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity, p. 156.
21
Graham Murphy, ‘Post/Humanity and the Interstitial: A Glorification of Possibility in Gibson’s
Bridge Sequence’, Science Fiction Studies, 30:1, pp. 72-90, p. 74.
 139

sorted through the apocalyptic debris which clutters much of Baudrillard’s work,

one thing at least becomes apparent. The ‘real’ is dead; in fact, according to

Baudrillard, it ‘is not just dead (as God is), it has purely and simply

disappeared.’ 22 It has been supplanted by a hyperreal procession of simulacra. In

order to establish this point, Baudrillard examines various phases of the image.

In ‘The Precession of Simulacra’, from Simulations, Baudrillard argues (or

perhaps states; there seems to be relatively little actual argument) that the image

goes through several phases until it reaches the point of simulation, namely:

- it is the reflection of a basic reality

- it masks and perverts a basic reality
- it masks the absence of a basic reality
- it bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure
simulacrum. 23

It is the contention of this chapter that, in establishing these principles of the

process of simulation, the foundation of his argument that society has already

become hyperreal, Baudrillard fundamentally confuses aesthetics with general

philosophy. In other words, he traces a path which initially deals with art, that

human activity which is most purely to do with representation, and overextends

his point, taking it to places where it frankly makes very little sense. Even if

Baudrillard’s system makes some sense when one considers it with relation to,

for example, a ‘painting’(and the cogency of Baudrillard’s argument could be

questioned even at this level), when one considers a more mundane, and yet

pervasive object, such as a brick, the chain of simulation begins to disintegrate.

22
Jean Baudrillard, The Vital Illusion, ed. Julia Witwer, Columbia University Press, New York,
2000, pp. 61-62. See also Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil: Or the Lucidity Pact, Berg,
Oxford, 2005, trans. Chris Turner, pp. 26-27 for a pithy summary of Baudrillard’s views on the
Real and the Virtual.
23
Jean Baudrillard, Simulations, Semiotext(e), New York, 1983, p. 11.
 140

For at all levels of Baudrillard’s chain of simulation a brick remains exactly that.

It is intended, for the most part, to be piled on top of other bricks, with

interspersing layers of mortar, for the construction of buildings. It does not

particularly matter whether it is produced according to the principle labelled

‘counterfeiting’, or that labelled industrial ‘production’, or produced according

to a code (‘simulation’). 24 This is, largely, because bricks, unlike works of art

(paintings, books, photographs etc.) are not primarily intended to represent

anything. This is not to deny that they both do represent things and are

represented, but rather to argue that their primary function is other than

representation (in the case of bricks, they are for building things!). Despite

Baudrillard’s dazzling rhetoric, there is never any justification for a founding, if

unstated part of his argument, namely that all the things created by humans in

our world are an attempt to represent something. Either Baudrillard must argue

that representing (or simulating) something is exactly the same as actually

making it (one might say that in this case he must argue that taking a photo of a

brick has the same purpose as the brick itself) or he must argue that

representation is always the primary function of any activity or creation (that the

primary function of a brick, for example, is to look like a brick – not to

physically be a brick). As he does not satisfactorily do either, there remains a

worrying hole in his argument, one which must cast a negative light on those

who depend on his theories for their own interpretive efforts with regard to

cyberpunk. However, since few if any cyberpunk critics writing about simulation

and cyberspace have, as it were, swallowed Baudrillard whole, there is still

valuable critical discussion to be had.

24
For Baudrillard’s usages of these terms, see Jean Baudrillard, Simulations, p. 83.
 141

The links drawn between the work of Jean Baudrillard and cyberpunk

have been extensive. Scott Bukatman goes so far as to describe Baudrillard’s

later works as ‘cyberpunk philosophy’ 25 and asserts that Baudrillard is

‘quintessentially cyberpunk,’ 26 the most explicit connection drawn between the

two by any critic writing on the subject. Victor Margolin agrees, although he

inverts the comparison, arguing that ‘Neuromancer is a fictional depiction of

Jean Baudrillard’s world of the simulacrum.’ 27 The links between the philosophy

of Baudrillard and cyberpunk are, it must be said, not difficult to discern.

Particularly in the work of William Gibson and Pat Cadigan, cyberpunk

explicitly deals with themes that concerned Baudrillard in his works on

simulation. The role of the media in creating a hyperreal universe of simulacra, a

reproduced and simulated layer of information and images which obscures

reality (or, as Baudrillard would have it, a lack of reality) is an overt theme in

many cyberpunk novels. Indeed, one could say that the questioning of reality

was an obsession in cyberpunk fiction from the start; that the cyberpunk

conception of cyberspace as an immersive experience is itself a meditation on

Baudrillardian themes of hyperreality. After all, cyberspace is a world unto itself

in cyberpunk; a world in which simulation has indeed supplanted reality.

However, it is not only this which raises the idea of the hyperreal in relation to

cyberpunk. As Lance Olsen puts it, in the fictional worlds of cyberpunk, ‘the

artificial and the real are fused and confused’. 28 It is precisely this confusion, the

inability to clearly distinguish between the ‘real’ and the simulated, the authentic

25
Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity, p. 7.
26
Scott Bukatman, ‘There’s Always Tomorrowland: Disney and the Hypercinematic
Experience’, October, 57, pp. 55-78, p. 72.
27
Victor Margolin, ‘The Politics of the Artificial’, Leonardo, 28:5, pp. 349-356, p. 353.
28
Lance Olsen, William Gibson, Starmont House, Mercer Island, 1992, p. 108.
 142

and the reproduced, which is at the heart of Baudrillard’s ecstatic/despairing

work on simulation and the hyperreal. Indeed, Olsen’s formulation is strikingly

similar to the entry on Baudrillard from the Encyclopedia of Contemporary

Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms, where Baudrillard’s simulacral

society is described as a place where ‘the boundaries between reality and

unreality blur, [and] the “artificial” becomes “realer” than the “real” itself.’29

Nowhere in cyberpunk is this fusion of reality and virtuality examined in more

depth than in Pat Cadigan’s Tea from an Empty Cup. In short, in Tea from an

Empty Cup, a police officer investigates a series of strange deaths of AR

(artificial reality) users, which turn out to be a series of orchestrated murders,

committed in AR, which also leave the victims dead in the real world. This

would seem to be the archetypal situation of the confusion of the real and the

artificial, or simulated, experience. Other incidences in cyberpunk have also

been viewed by critics as confirmation of Baudrillard’s hypotheses. Graham

Murphy, for example, has said regarding the character Rez in Gibson’s second,

‘Bridge’, trilogy that:

Rez’s transformation enacts a shift from corporeal presence to digital

pattern as the celebrity stardom of the Rez-pattern takes on a life of
its own. The corporeal Rez conforms to the rock-god pattern rather
than the pattern conforming to Rez.

Essentially, the physical presence of Rez is lost amidst the corporate

patterns surrounding his iconic status. As Laney says, “That isn’t a
person. That’s a corporation… I don’t know who he is. I can’t make
him out against the rest of it. He’s not leaving any traces that make
the patterns that I need”. The traces Laney needs are the patterns left
behind by the presence of an individual. Because Rez is an iconified
product packaged for mass consumption, the hyperreal patterns that
circulate in, around and through him indicate that nothing but
29
Steven Best, ‘Baudrillard, Jean’, in Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory:
Approaches, Scholars, Terms, Irena R. Makaryk (ed.), University of Toronto Press, Toronto,
1993, pp. 246-248, p. 247.
 143

pattern exists anymore. In essence, Rez has become Baudrillard’s

simulacrum. 30

Whilst it is important to point out that, in Idoru, not only does Rez still exist as a

physical person, and not simply as a simulation of himself-as-rock-god, and that

Laney’s inability to work his magic on the data stream surrounding Rez at this

point stems from only knowing the Rez/corporation/simulacrum and not Rez the

person, Murphy still makes an interesting point. To the majority of the people in

the world, Rez only exists as a media-filtered (or media-manufactured) image.

Indeed, it might be appropriate to say that this simulacrum-Rez is more real than

the real Rez, since it seems that there is in fact more evidence of it! Finally, at

the most extreme end of simulation sympathisers, there are those, like David

Porush, who seem to think that Baudrillard does not go far enough, that he is

afraid to plunge into the abyss which he had identified. Thus Porush writes of

Baudrillard and cyberpunk:

Cyberspace, hyperreality, virtual space, threatens to unseat the

dominion of the Logomatrix of mere words and grammars, projecting
it into the frothing uncertainties and romance of direct cognitive
access and neurology. Of course the high priests of words like
Baudrillard are upset at the imminent demolition of their temple of
the text. If you take a moment to reflect on the visions projected by
Gibson (for instance) you will see that the possibilities for
transcendence are definitely not sterilised; they are multiplied, and
re-fertilised. Gibson tells us as much, I think, in Neuromancer (1984)
when Case asks Wintermute/Neuromancer after the latter is
apotheosised by Case’s intervention: “So what are you now, God?”

Stop rattling the bars of your cage, Jean. You’re weeping in the
ruins. 31

30
Graham Murphy, ‘Post/Humanity and the Interstitial’, pp. 75-76.
31
David Porush, ‘The Architextuality of Transcendence: In Response to Jean Baudrillard’,
Science Fiction Studies, 18:3, 1991, pp. 323-325, p. 325.
 144

It is not so certain, however, that at the end of Neuromancer the possibilities for

transcendence have, in fact, been ‘fertilised’. After all, the full quote which

Porush paraphrases is (Case talking with Neuromancer/Wintermute):

‘“So what’s the score? How are things different? You running the show now?

You God?”

“Things aren’t different. Things are things.”’ 32

If anything, the conclusion of Neuromancer defuses any option for change, and it

seems apparent that transcendence requires alteration of present circumstances in

order to take place.

Against the proposition that cyberspace in cyberpunk, and indeed more

generally the idea of virtuality in general offers support for Baudrillard’s ideas on

hyperreality, this thesis will contend that a fundamental error has been made. The

mistake stems from considering the virtual not to be ‘real’. This confusion stems

from a dual usage of the word real. On the one hand, real is used to denote the

opposite of unreal – for example, ‘Dinosaurs were real. They actually existed.’

On the other hand, ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ are opposed – for example ‘Have you

really met? No, but we have chatted on the web.’ In the first case, to reverse the

claim, to state that dinosaurs were not real, is a total negation of the stated fact.

One would have to make the opposite claim, namely that dinosaurs did not exist,

that they were not real. However, in the second case, denying that we have

‘really’ met a person because we have not met physically does not actually

negate the statement that we have met online, or spoken on the telephone. We

would, in making such a statement, neither intend to imply that the experience of

32
William Gibson, Neuromancer, Ace Books, 1984, p. 270.
 145

chatting to someone online never happened, nor to imply that it was some kind of

fake experience (whilst people may be more able to lie online, this is no

indication that they will not do so in a face-to-face meeting), but rather implies

that a different category of real-world experience has taken place. The critical

mistake lies in treating virtual experiences (from representations such as

paintings through to simulations and virtual reality) as if they were intended to be

fakes of real things, rather than as actually beings things in their own right.33

They may, of course, be both: a flight simulator used for pilot training, for

example, is clearly intended to be a very close facsimile of actually flying a

plane. Upon emerging from such a simulator, however, it might be equally

correct to say that one had the ‘faked’ experience of flying a plane, or to say

simply that one had had the experience of operating a flight simulator. It would

not, however, be correct to say that the flight simulator, or the experience derived

from it, were in some way not real. Indeed, whenever we board a plane, we rely

on the real experiences gained by the pilot in such simulations. The point being

made is that it makes no more sense to treat that flight simulator as a fake plane

than it does to treat the Mona Lisa as a fake woman. To draw a contrast between

virtual experience and ‘real’ experience is, similarly, to create a false dichotomy.

This is even more so in the worlds of cyberpunk, where cyberspace can be just as

dangerous as the physical world. One might well pose the question, ‘If you can

die there, how hyperreal is it?’ As Marie-Laure Ryan puts it, in response to

Michael Heim:

To these theoretical arguments, Michael Heim opposes a gut feeling.

The difference between real and virtual worlds resides in three

33
Marie-Laure Ryan distinguishes at least two potential explanatory models for the virtual in
‘Cyberspace, Virtuality and the Text’, in Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and
Literary Theory, Marie-Laure Ryan (ed.), pp. 78-107, esp. pp. 88-100.
 146

constraints that ‘anchor’ us in the real world: our inevitable

mortality, the irreversible direction of time, and a sense of
precariousness arising from the possibility of physical injury. It is, in
other words, the final character of evil that provides the ontological
proof of the difference between real and virtual worlds: if I die or get
injured in a computer-generated reality, I can always exit the system,
rewind time and start all over again. This argument is valid for
currently available simulation systems, but it would not stand against
Laudal’s objections: one can conceive of a VR system in which time
would be irreversible and death final, because users would be locked
in. 34

The recognition that cyberspace, both in our world and the imagined worlds of

cyberpunk, is in fact a part of reality, not separate from it, has been made by

some authors. 35 Gibson himself has intimated as much in recent interviews,

expressing an idea of ‘ubiquitous computing’, 36 in which the ‘real’ and ‘virtual’

worlds become indistinguishable. This to some degree mirrors the views of

Baudrillard who has said that ‘We have moved, then, from objective reality to a

later stage, a kind of ultra-reality which puts an end to both reality and

illusion.’ 37 It is the contention of this thesis that the ‘virtual’ has since its creation

been a part of the real – however, that does not mean that its importance has not

shifted. What critics have seen as an indicator of the dominance of the hyperreal

in cyberpunk, be it from the overwhelming media saturation that is often a part of

cyberpunk worlds or the very device of cyberspace itself, is not an indication of

the death of the real – it is rather an indication that a new part of reality is

34
Marie-Laure Ryan, ‘Cyberspace, Virtuality and the Text’, in Cyberspace Textuality: Computer
Technology and Literary Theory, Marie-Laure Ryan (ed.), Indiana University Press,
Bloomington, 1999, p. 91. See also Dani Cavallero, ‘The Brain in a Vat in Cyberpunk: The
Persistence of the Flesh’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical
Sciences, 35:2, 2004, pp. 287-305, p. 302.
35
See, for example, Amy Novak, ‘Virtual Poltergeists and Memory: The Question of
Ahistoricism in William Gibson’s Neuromancer’, Hungarian Journal of English and American
Studies, 6:1, 2000, pp. 55-78.
36
See, for example, Andrew Leonard, ‘William Gibson, The Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary
Interview’,
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/17227831/william_gibson_the_rolling_stone_40th_an
niversry_interview, viewed 23/02/09.
37
Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil: Or, the Lucidity Pact, trans. Chris Turner, Berg,
Oxford, 2005, p. 27.
 147

asserting itself. In doing so, it will change the ways in which people respond to

the rest of the world (Case’s disgust for the ‘meat’ world being an extreme

example of this), but it neither denies nor supplants the existence of the rest of

reality. Some critics have recognised this, and warned of the dangers of a

Baudrillardian celebration of the technological sublime. Michael Heim, for

example, advises that, ‘As we suit up for the exciting future in cyberspace, we

must not lose touch with the Zionites, the body people who remain rooted in the

energies of the earth. They will nudge us out of our heady reverie in this new

layer of reality. They will remind us of the living genesis of cyberspace…’ 38 N.

Katherine Hayles, in a similar vein, warns that:

The borders separating simulations from reality are important

because they remind us of the limits that make dreams of
technological transcendence dangerous fantasies. Hyperreality does
not erase these limits, for they exist whether we recognise them or
not; it only erases them from our consciousness. Insofar as
Baudrillard’s claims about hyperreality diminish our awareness of
those limits, it borders on a madness whose likely end is
apocalypse. 39

In arguing that the ‘hyperreal’ is a part of the real, albeit a new and rapidly

growing part, one is making a similar point to Hayles’. An obsession with

hyperreality, to the point of the occlusion of the rest of the real (that bit where

we do things like eat, sleep, and reproduce!) is not only dangerous, but also

makes the fundamental mistake of arguing that the ‘hyperreal’ world of

simulation can completely replace the rest of the real. It is the contention of this

thesis that, even in the simulacral worlds of cyberpunk, this is patently not the

38
Michael Heim, ‘The Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace’, in Michael Benedikt (ed), Cyberspace:
First Steps, MIT Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts), 1992, pp. 59-80, p. 80.
39
N. Katherine Hayles, ‘In Response to Jean Baudrillard: The Borders of Madness’, Science-
Fiction Studies, 18, 1991, pp. 321-323, p. 322.
 148

case. In case anyone was going to make the mistake that Porush does, and see

the virtual realm as a wonderful place, full of transcendent possibilities, Gibson

reminds us that, regarding the ‘When It Changed’ mythology which grew up to

surround the time of the events described in Neuromancer (specifically the

fusion of Wintermute and Neuromancer) that ‘it would be more accurate, in

terms of the mythform to say that the matrix has a God, since this being’s

omniscience and omnipotence are assumed to be limited to the matrix’, and that

‘Cyberspace exists, insofar as it can be said to exist, by virtue of human

agency.’ 40 In this passage Gibson too seems to imply that that virtual world is

not a substitute for the physical world, but rather an addendum – and one which

is dependent on the physical world for its existence at that.

Lastly, some authors have observed that whether or not Baudrillard is

right about simulations and simulacra may not matter. This is because, they

argue, simulation and virtual reality are two different things, with different

organising principles and different outcomes for observers/participants. Mark

Poster, at least, believes that the fundamental difference between virtual reality

and simulation is the interactiveness of the medium of VR:

What distinguishes VR from simulation is its transformational

structure: subjects and objects interactively/immersively construct
cultural spaces and events. They do not do so in the present/absent
dialectic of the first media age but in the informational logic of
pattern/noise of the second. The cultural space of VR is not preceded

40
William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Grafton Books, London, 1989 (first published 1988), p.
138.
 149

by the model as in simulations but is continually invented and

reinvented through the material parameters of the media apparatus. 41

Whilst this continues a kind of binary thinking regarding stereotyped views of

the passive observer/active participant which postmodern reading theory rightly

called into question, Poster does make an important point. Specifically, his

‘even-if’ argument is ultimately successful, as he provides an adequate

distinction between forms of electronic media. Graham Murphy, examining

Gibson’s ‘Bridge’ sequence, finds that Gibson draws a similar distinction

between passive reception of simulations and hyperreality and active

participation in virtual reality (and ‘real’ reality) creations. 42

It is one of these virtual spaces, specifically the ‘Walled City’ of Hak

Nam (not the actual place, which has been destroyed, but rather an online version

of it, a kind of hacker’s castle) in William Gibson’s Idoru, which is frequently

cited as an example of a different type of place, celebrated in more recent

cyberpunk critiques as ‘interstitial spaces’. The idea of the interstitial space has

its roots in sociology, and has undergone an interesting transformation as it has

moved through time, and across disciplines. The term is first used in Frederic M.

Thrasher’s The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago. Thrasher’s usage is

clearly pejorative – he states that

41
Mark Poster, ‘Theorizing Virtual Reality: Baudrillard and Derrida’, in Cyberspace Textuality:
Computer Technology and Literary Theory, Marie-Laure Ryan (ed.), Indiana University Press,
Bloomington, 1999, pp. 42-60, p. 50.
42
Graham Murphy, ‘Post/Humanity and the Interstitial’, p. 85.
 150

gangland represents a geographically and socially interstitial area in

the city. Probably the most significant concept of the study is the
term interstitial – that is, pertaining to spaces that intervene
between one thing and another. In nature foreign matter tends to
collect and cake in every crack, crevice and cranny – interstices.
There are also fissures and breaks in the structure of social
organisation. The gang may be regarded as an interstitial element
in the framework of society, and gangland as an interstitial region
in the layout of the city. 43

Thrasher’s study, amongst other things, concludes that gang behaviour (which is

largely anti-social) diminishes as gang members are integrated into general

society, through employment, marriage or whatever else. The point here is not so

much to discuss the Thrasher’s conclusions as to give some idea of the

intellectual roots of the idea of the interstitial.

The idea of the interstitial space began a course of intellectual re-

evaluation in the 1940s through to the 1960s. Without specifically referring to

the areas they dealt with as ‘interstitial’ (recalling that this is Thrasher’s largely

derogatory term) books such as William Foote Whyte’s Street Corner Society,

Herbert J. Gans’ The Urban Villagers and Maurice R. Stein’s The Eclipse of

Community began to develop a more nuanced understanding of the places and

people to which and to whom Thrasher had given the term ‘interstitial.’ As

William Foote Whyte put it in the conclusion of Street Corner Society, ‘The

trouble with the slum district, some say, is that it is a disorganised community. In

the case of Cornerville such a diagnosis is extremely misleading… Cornerville’s

problem is not lack of organisation but failure of its own social organisation to

43
Frederic M. Thrasher, The Gang: A Study of 1, 313 Gangs in Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, 1937, p. 3. Emphasis in original text.
 151

mesh with the structure of the society around it.’ 44 Herbert J. Gans also

emphasised that there were positive aspects of society inside interstitial zones –

that ‘life in the area resembled that found in the village or small town’ 45 in its

sociability and overall neighborliness. Interestingly, Gans also states that, within

the area of his study, ‘Deviant behaviour… was, of course, highly visible. As

long as the West Enders were not affected personally, however, they were highly

tolerant.’ 46 This tolerance of ‘deviant’ behaviour seems to be a generally

acknowledged feature of interstitial spaces. The difference is in the way this

tolerance is interpreted. For Thrasher, this is an almost entirely negative aspect of

the function of interstitial spaces, whereas Gans is less judgemental. It is plain

that this tolerance for difference is a part of why interstitial places are valued,

both by Gibson and critics writing about cyberpunk. As Gibson said in an

interview with Cory Doctorow, ‘The absence of the interstitial I find unbearable.

But not as unbearable as the idea that [the] interstitial is necessarily as banal as

the infrastructure, so I think of what I do with that stuff as a glorification of

possibility.’ 47 Gibson certainly places a value on the ability of the interstitial

space to sustain lifestyles different to the everyday; and this theme is

unsurprisingly developed by critics.

However, in order to reach the unashamedly laudatory discussions of the

interstitial which take place within cyberpunk critique, the concept had to

44
William Foote Whyte, Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1955 (Enlarged Second Edition: First published 1943),
pp. 272-273.
45
Herbert J. Gans, The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans,
Macmillan, New York, 1962, p. 15.
46
Herbert J. Gans, The Urban Villagers, p. 14.
47
Cory Doctorow, ‘William Gibson Interview Transcript’,
http://craphound.com/nonfic/transcript.html, viewed 23/02/09.
 152

undergo a further revision. This re-evaluation took place, unsurprisingly, with the

advent of posthumanist theory. Postmodernism and posthumanism have both

placed emphasis on the margins of things – they have often valorised these

margins, at the expense of the centre. The notion of the interstitial space has

undergone a similar transformation – from being the place (at the margins of the

dominant culture) where, baldly put, bad people went and bad things happened,

to being the place (still located at the margins of the dominant culture) which had

both positive and negative aspects, yet was internally relatively cohesive, to a

final stage in which both the isolation of the interstitial space from general

society and its internal development of a cohesive, if markedly different, society

and culture came to be viewed as positive. One does not intend to disparage the

achievements or the importance of the recognition of traditionally marginalised

groups within the context of Western society; Terry Eagleton has astutely argued

that one of the most important achievements of the postmodern epoch has been

the gradual recognition of the histories and rights of such groups. 48 It is,

however, in the context of the theorising of these achievements that the

revalorisation of the idea of the interstitial space takes place. In particular, in the

work of Edward Said and Homi K. Bhabha on the place of the diasporic

intellectual, that place which is between cultures and between nations, the notion

of the interstitial is re-evaluated. Bhabha, in the introduction to The Location of

Culture, strongly associates the idea of interstitiality with those of hybridity,

multiculturalism and the role of the diasporic intellectual. Specifically of the idea

of interstitiality, however, Bhabha states,

48
See Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1996, p.
121.
 153

What is theoretically innovative, and politically crucial, is the need to

think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to
focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the
elaboration of cultural differences. These “in-between” spaces
provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood – singular
or communal – that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites
of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining society itself.

It is in the emergence of the interstices – the overlap and

displacement of domains of difference – that the intersubjective and
collective experience of nationness, community interest, or cultural
value are negotiated. 49

Bhabha’s reading of the interstitial not only draws the concept in a more positive

light; it also serves to expand the idea so that conceptual as well as physical

spaces can legitimately be described as ‘interstitial’.

It is in this new, positive light which the idea of the interstitial is raised

within cyberpunk criticism. In particular, critics identify spaces within cyberpunk

texts as interstitial when they fulfil certain characteristics – specifically, that they

stand apart from the mainstream world physically and socially, and that they

offer cultural protection (difference) from mainstream hegemony. Two

cyberpunk spaces in particular are referred to as interstitial by critics. Both are

spaces from William Gibson’s second, ‘Bridge’ trilogy. The first of these is the

ruin of the San Francisco Bay Bridge itself. It plays an important part throughout

the trilogy as a haven for the sympathetic characters within the scripts. The other,

the Walled City in Idoru, is also a haven of sorts, although, being ‘of the net, but

not on it’,50 the Walled City does not qualify as a physical space. However, since

one of Gibson’s characters refers to it as ‘interstitial’, and given Gibson’s

49
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, Routledge, London, 1994, pp. 2-3.
50
William Gibson, Idoru, Berkley Books, New York, 2003 (first printing 1996), p. 225.
 154

expressed interest in interstitial spaces, it stands to reason that critics interested in

the interstitial would make reference to the Walled City. It is of interest that both

the Walled City and the Bridge are ‘places’ where there are, effectively, no laws

– the constraints of normative society simply do not apply. In the case of the

Bridge, the police will not go there; in the case of the Walled City, as it exists

outside the bounds of ordinary cyberspace, they cannot get in. These outlaw

spaces are of critical importance for cyberpunk as a genre; not only because its

plots tend towards those of the heist/detective story, or that its protagonists are

frequently criminals, but also because these spaces help to lend cyberpunk its

edge of (trendy) transgressiveness.

This chapter contends that interstitial spaces serve multiple purposes,

both within cyberpunk writing and within the critical literature. They at once

serve as spaces within the system of late capitalism and without it; they provide

critique, it will be argued, without the threatening posture of

modernist/Enlightenment critical thought (particularly, it will be argued, without

raising the spectre of Marxist theory). It will also be argued that the largely

laudatory commentaries on interstitial spaces given by critics and the largely

beneficial roles assigned to them within cyberpunk are dependent on a

fundamentally libertarian and entrepreneurial view of the way societies should

work. This view is largely characterised by a distrust of government and large

corporations, and an invocation of individual freedoms and small business.

Interstitial spaces also allow postmodern aesthetic theory to reclaim some of the

critical distance which modernist aesthetics assigned to the individual work of

art. Terry Eagleton has argued that ‘Modernism is amongst other things a
 155

strategy whereby the work of art resists commodification’, 51 in other words, a

strategy by which the dialectical and critical tension between creation and

commodification is maintained, whereas postmodernism consists of a collapse of

this dialectical tension in favour of commodification. Eagleton sums up the

postmodern attitude, ‘If the work of art is really a commodity then it might as

well admit it, with all the sang-froid it can muster.’ 52 The result of this collapsing

of dialectical tension in postmodernism is a concurrent degradation of the ability

for sustained cultural critique within art. 53 Thus postmodern theory can no longer

depend upon the elitist, high cultural critical capacities of modernism; it must

turn to other sources, and other places for its alternatives. It is perhaps

unsurprising that postmodernism turned to precisely the opposite places to those

which modernism utilised. Thus the interstitial space (otherwise known, it should

be pointed out, as a ghetto or slum 54), which could be described as the place

where the lowest of low culture takes place, supplants the role which high

cultural art and critique played within the modernist aesthetic paradigm.

However, within cyberpunk, as well as in the real world, interstitial places do not

seem to fulfil quite the resistant, critical role ascribed to them by critics. In the

real world, it is important to remember that a slum (or interstitial space) is largely

where one resides if one is too poor to live elsewhere – even if poverty increases

one’s resistance to systemic pressures (and this is questionable), this is no reason

to valorise being poor.

51
Terry Eagleton, ‘Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism’, New Left Review, 152, pp. 60-
73, p. 67.
52
Terry Eagleton, ‘Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism’, p. 68.
53
For an excellent discussion of the role of the work of art in cyberpunk see Sherryl Vint, ‘“The
Mainstream Finds its Own uses for Things”: Cyberpunk and Commodification’, in Sherryl Vint
and Graham J. Murphy (eds.), Beyond Cyberpunk: New Critical Perspectives, Routledge, New
York, 2010, pp. 95-115.
54
See, for example, Francesco Cordasco and Rocco G. Galatioto, ‘Ethnic Displacement in the
Interstitial Community: The East Harlem Experience’, Phylon, 31:3, pp. 302-312, esp. p. 302.
 156

Gibson, as well as those writing about interstitial spaces in cyberpunk,

seems to recognise that these zones also serve another purpose within the

structure of capitalism. Capitalism, as others have observed, is an endlessly

dynamic and boundary-defying creature; it consumes novelty and emits product.

Terry Eagleton notes that ‘there are now a whole range of competing cultures,

idioms and ways of doing things, which the hybridising, transgressive,

promiscuous nature of capitalism has itself helped to bring into being.’ 55

‘Autonomous zones’, ‘bohemias’ and ‘interstitial spaces’ seem to be the places

where such novelties evolve, at least in the universe of Gibson’s ‘Bridge’ cycle. 56

As early as Neuromancer, in fact, Gibson recognises that this is an integral part

of such outlaw zones: ‘He [Case] also saw a certain sense in the notion that

burgeoning technologies require outlaw zones, that Night City wasn’t there for

its inhabitants, but as a deliberately unsupervised playground for technology

itself.’ 57 Capitalism requires the new in order to continue the dynamic drive to

profit; interstitial, hybrid spaces provide the new without too much risk of

broader social contamination. 58 Note that the recognition that such resistant

spaces are essential to the continuation of a dominant capitalism does not leave

one with only the lapse into silence and apathy a la Baudrillard 59 as a method of

resistance to systemic hegemony. Rather, the recognition that such spaces still

55
Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism, p. 39.
56
See William Gibson, All Tomorrow’s Parties, Berkley Books, 2003 (first published 1999), pp.
209-210. Scott Bukatman mentions that a similar sector appears in Bruce Sterling’s The Artificial
Kid. See Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity, p. 169.
57
William Gibson, Neuromancer, p. 11.
58
See Tom Moylan, ‘Global Economy, Local Texts: Utopian/Dystopian Tension in William
Gibson’s Cyberpunk Trilogy’, in Sherryl Vint and Graham J. Murphy (eds.) Beyond Cyberpunk:
New Critical Perspectives, Routledge, New York, 2010, pp. 81-94, p. 91, where Moylan states
that ‘in terms of economic structures and practices the heroes and enclaves [of Gibson’s fiction]
become little more than useful cogs in those larger machines [of corporate capitalism].’
59
See Douglas Kellner, Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond, Polity
Press, Cambridge, 1989, p. 89.
 157

exist within the broader system should provide critics with the will to examine

systemic issues, rather than give up on the majority for the sake of the

exceptional few. This argument, that interstitial spaces in cyberpunk serve a

crucial role in the continuance of capitalist hegemony as well as, or possibly

rather than, offering an alternative to it, is one which critics have been loath to

acknowledge. Ross Farnell, for example, argues that ‘Gibson develops the

Bridge motif as the last place of resistance to all pervasive consumer

consumption and privatisation,’ 60 and that the society of the Bridge is ‘a place of

Otherness that represents a “war on totality,” a heteropology and paraspace that

imagines “radical alternatives to late capitalism.”’ 61 With respect, this not only

ignores the express role that the ‘villain’ capitalist of the Bridge sequence assigns

to the Bridge (noticeably one which fulfils a requirement of late capitalism) but

also wilfully ignores the fact that social fragmentation does not necessarily

conflict with the needs of the capitalist order. Whilst this chapter does not seek to

deny that interstitial spaces in cyberpunk do to some degree play the role which

critics desire them to (providing protective safe havens for those who differ from

normative social expectations) their other roles are equally important.

It is with this in mind, as well as with the history of the idea of the

interstitial in consideration, that this thesis suggests that interstitial spaces have

been a part of cyberpunk from the start. Night City in Neuromancer could be

described as an interstitial space; as could (although this is more debatable) the

Freeside spindle. Freeside is a particularly interesting case in point, however. We

could call it an interstitial space as it fulfils several of the criteria for becoming

60
Ross Farnell, ‘Posthuman Topologies’, p. 464.
61
Ross Farnell, ‘Posthuman Topologies’, p. 466.
 158

such a space. Firstly, it exists physically outside the ordinary spaces of society.

Secondly, it exists legally outside the normal spaces of society; this makes it very

similar to other interstitial spaces, which are de facto outside normal law,

whereas Freeside is de jure outside normal law. Lastly, within its society,

normative rules which differ greatly from those of general society prevail. It is

debatable, however, whether the interstitial zone which is Freeside has any

significant benefits; its protection of difference may simply be the protection of

that which is justifiably considered dangerous and potentially criminal. The

bizarre cloning program of the Tessier-Ashpool family appears to have led to

abuse and insanity; without wishing to appear judgmental, these can hardly be

good outcomes for the participants in this interstitial society. The problem with

contemporary writings on the interstitial is that, in keeping with the discursive

modes of recent times, they have a tendency to treat difference as unquestionably

good; this has the effect of casting normative behaviours as bad. These are both

problematic assumptions; one would rather suggest that normative society is by

no means all bad (there are often good reasons for normative rules – try

imagining a city where which side of the road people drove on was left to

individual choice), and that difference from normative rules can be either or both

good or bad. As Terry Eagleton has put it, regarding the postmodern tendency to

celebrate marginality, ‘One could envisage much celebration of the marginal and

minority as positive in themselves – an absurd enough view, since margins and

minorities currently include neo-Nazis, UFO buffs, the international bourgeoisie

and those who believe in lashing delinquent adolescents until the blood runs

down their thighs.’ 62 Neither normativity nor difference are unalloyed goods, and

62
Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism, p. 3.
 159

to treat them as such is to underestimate the manifest complexity of

contemporary society. The same can be said of interstitial spaces; spaces where

the disciplinary gaze of normative society is blocked are not necessarily either

beneficial or detrimental. In a failure of vision which is common to much recent

theorising, cyberpunk critics have latched onto Gibson’s rhapsodic portrayals of

interstitial spaces perhaps too quickly; in a critical mindset where difference is

always valorised, and the potential for systemic change of mass society

continually underplayed, there is no need to consider the system as a whole. 63 As

long as somewhere still exists which qualifies as ‘interstitial’, things must be

going along alright. However, one must ask whether such tiny islands in the vast

sea of oppression are, in fact, enough. For some critics, at least, they are not.

John Huntingdon, for example, has questioned whether cyberpunk is capable of

envisioning ‘any political solution’ to ‘the overwhelming power of the world

symbolised by multinational corporations.’ 64 Ross Farnell’s proposition that the

society of Gibson’s Bridge be considered a case of neo-regionalist

reterritorialisation is an interesting one. 65 However, whereas Farnell seems to

treat this as a positive move, the alternative interpretation is more likely correct:

namely, that such reterritorialisation only becomes necessary when a systemic

alternative to late capitalism can no longer be conceived. In other words, neo-

regionalism only looks good when we have abandoned the world at large to

capitalist domination. This thesis argues that we can do better than hunt the

fringes of the capitalist world for places to hide – and that the message we should

63
Once again, this idea has its genesis in Terry Eagleton’s The Illusions of Postmodernism.
64
John Huntingdon, ‘Newness, Neuromancer, and the End of Narrative’, in Tom Shippey (ed.)
Fictional Space: Essays on Contemporary Science Fiction, Oxford, Humanities Press, 1991, pp.
59-75, pp. 72-73.
65
Ross Farnell, ‘Posthuman Topologies’, p. 466.
 160

likely take from cyberpunk is one which is critical of the dominance of capital in

contemporary society.
 161

Chapter Five: Women, Men and Machines: Feminist Cyberpunk

Criticism.

From the very beginnings of cyberpunk critical writing, feminist criticism

of cyberpunk has provided important and arresting contributions. Indeed, there

has often been lively debate within feminist criticism about the nature and role of

cyberpunk fictions, with critical perspectives running across a broad track of

theoretical interpretations. Critics have insisted that cyberpunk is everything

from active feminist writing to the worst kind of misogynist literature. As will be

observed in this chapter, there are good reasons for this diversity of feminist

responses to cyberpunk. These differences in critical response can be attributed

to a number of factors. Most obviously, individual critics will always have

differing responses to a given text or group of texts. To expect feminist critics to

all have the same or similar responses to cyberpunk writing is foolish. Indeed,

this thesis has elsewhere observed that an unproductive critical unity has all too

often eventuated in critical literature about cyberpunk, and has argued that room

needs to be made for alternative interpretations. This certainly cannot be said of

the lively community of debate which characterises feminist responses to

cyberpunk.

There are, however, other, less prosaic factors which lead to the wildly

differing interpretations which feminist critics have given to cyberpunk. Firstly,

different critics seem to place different weightings on critical/interpretive ideas.

The allegedly antihumanist nature of cyberpunk writing is one key paradigm in

 162

certain feminist critical discussions of cyberpunk. 1 Some critics place significant

weight on the deconstructive activities undertaken in cyberpunk texts, and argue

that these activities, of necessity, constitute a form of feminist discourse. 2 There

are, of course, other critics who take issue with this particular form of

interpretation – and with good reason. Another interpretive device oft-deployed

in cyberpunk criticism is the embodiment paradigm. 3 In feminist theory, the

embodiment paradigm carries different tones than it does in more general

criticism. Nevertheless, it remains a centre of critical focus in feminist

discussions. Some critics maintain that cyberpunk visions of different modes of

embodiment constitute a form of feminist discourse – others disagree. It is

likewise impossible to discuss feminist interpretations of cyberpunk without

raising the monstrous figure of the cyborg – or at least Donna Haraway’s vastly

influential examination of it. 4 This, it would seem, is one of the places where

cyberpunk imagination and feminist theory most obviously intersect. It is no

surprise, then, that the idea of the cyborg as expressed in cyberpunk fiction has

also spawned feminist critical debates.

1
Since I have already devoted a chapter of this thesis to discussion of post/antihumanist
interpretations of cyberpunk, I feel it is unnecessary to reproduce the bulk of my arguments from
that chapter here. It will suffice to say that I believe that the problems with more general
antihumanist accounts of cyberpunk hold true for antihumanist feminist accounts of cyberpunk.
2
See, for example, Mary Catherine Harper, ‘Incurably Alien Other: A Case for Feminist Cyborg
Writers’, Science Fiction Studies, 22:3, 1995, pp. 399-421; Karen Cadora, ‘Feminist Cyberpunk’,
Science Fiction Studies, 22:3, 1995, pp. 357-371. Arguably both these authors conflate
antihumanism and feminism, leading to the conclusion that (for them) anything which
undermines humanism must also undermine patriarchy.
3
See, for example, Vivian Sobchack, ‘Beating the Meat/Surviving the Text, or How to Get Out
of this Century Alive’, in Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk, Mike Featherstone and Roger
Burrows (eds.), Sage Publications, London, 1995, pp. 205-214. Sobchack emphasises the
importance of the body as a counter to disembodying rhetorics.
4
It would be impractical to attempt to list all of the authors who reference Haraway here. Suffice
to say that ‘The Cyborg Manifesto’ is a continual presence in feminist cyberpunk criticism, from
Sharon Stockton, ‘‘The Self Regained’: Cyberpunk’s Retreat to the Imperium’, Contemporary
Literature, 36:4, 1995, pp. 588-612, through to the most recent feminist writing on cyberpunk,
for example, Helen Merrick, The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of Science Fiction
Feminisms, Aqueduct Press, Seattle, 2009.
 163

Before proceeding with a more specific discussion of feminist criticism as

it relates to cyberpunk, some preliminary examination of feminist science fiction

criticism is desirable. Feminist criticism about science fiction definitely precedes

cyberpunk, and as a result of its rich history, feminist criticism about cyberpunk

exists within the broader disciplinary discourse of feminist science fiction

criticism. Feminist science fiction criticism, cast in the role of disciplinary

discourse, has, obviously, profoundly effected feminist criticism of cyberpunk

fiction, and, critically, feminist cyberpunk criticism has been a very important

part of the overall critical community for cyberpunk. Many of the programmatic

ideas in cyberpunk criticism have their intellectual genesis in feminist writing

about cyberpunk.

Feminist cyberpunk criticism was not, however, born whole and complete

unto itself. It follows on from a venerable tradition of feminist science fiction

critique which dates back almost as far as the genre itself. In order to gain a

greater hermeneutic understanding of feminist cyberpunk criticism, this chapter

will briefly illuminate some key phases and ideas in the history of feminist

science fiction critique. This will, of necessity, be a fairly truncated discussion,

as to claim that one could represent the full richness of feminist contributions to

science fiction criticism in a few paragraphs would either be reductionist,

arrogant or both. However, in order to prepare the ground for a discussion of

feminist contributions to cyberpunk criticism, some of the background of

feminist science fiction criticism must be examined.

 164

Feminist criticism of science fiction more generally has a history which,

arguably, dates back almost a far as generic science fiction. Helen Merrick, in

The Secret Feminist Cabal, discusses in some depth the ‘sex scandal’ of science

fiction in the 1920s and ‘30s. Merrick makes a number of important points in her

examination of the science fiction critical culture of the early-to-mid twentieth

century. The first, is, most obviously, that opposition from women readers of

science fiction to the hackneyed and misogynistic gender portrayals in the genre

literature (and, for that matter, in the critical literature) was extant from the ‘20s

onwards. 5 The second point that can be inferred from Merrick’s work is an

understanding that will not be novel to anyone familiar to the field of science

fiction criticism. If we wish to understand science fiction criticism prior to the

1960s, we must look outside the academic circuit. Prior to the ‘60s, science

fiction was largely unexamined by academics – and as a result such critical

debates as existed largely took place in the pages of science fiction magazines

and fanzines. It is of great importance that, in touching upon the history of

feminism and science fiction, these early, fannish contributions to the history are

not lost.

Despite the importance of these early contributions, Merrick is justified in

observing that feminist criticism within science fiction went through a period of

growth in the 1960s and ‘70s. Merrick associates this with the ‘sociopolitical

debates [of the time] … the impact of the women’s liberation movement, as well

as a result of trends within the field itself.’ 6 This last could be taken to either

mean the emergence of more radical feminist science fictions (such as Joanna
5
See Helen Merrick, The Secret Feminist Cabal, pp. 34-39.
6
Helen Merrick, The Secret Feminist Cabal, p. 34.
 165

Russ’ The Female Man), or potentially the gradual emergence of academic

science fiction criticism creating a new conceptual space within which feminist

science fiction criticism could be written. Either would be true. The boundaries

between fans, authors and academic writers at this point in time seem to be

blurred (as indeed they may still be), with many people seeming to occupy more

than one of these positions. Joanna Russ’ critical contributions seem to move

freely between academic papers and contributions to magazines, for example –

and Russ was actively writing science fiction at the time as well.

The critical work of Joanna Russ is a better place than most to start any

discussion of the veritable explosion of feminist science fiction (both criticism

and writing) which took place in the 1970s. In a piece entitled ‘What Can a

Heroine Do or, Why Women Can’t Write’, Russ herself provides some

explanation for why generic science fiction (along with a list of other

marginalised, non-realist genres) provides a useful space for feminist

speculation. Having heavily criticised the literary myths which realist fiction has

inherited as innately sexist, Russ, late in the paper, argues that ‘science fiction,

political fiction and the modes (if not the content) of much medieval fiction all

provide myths for the kinds of experiences we are actually having now, instead

of the literary myths we have inherited, which only tell us about the kinds of

experiences we think we ought to be having.’ 7 Of the traditional roles and myths

used by convention in realist fiction, Russ scathingly concludes:

Our traditions, our books, our morals, our manners, our films,
our speech, our economic organisation, everything we have
inherited, tell us that to be a Man one must bend Nature to one’s

7
Joanna Russ, ‘What Can a Heroine Do, or, Why Women Can’t Write’, in Joanna Russ, To Write
Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction, Indiana University Press, Bloomington,
1995, pp. 79-93, p. 92.
 166

will – or other men. This means ecological catastrophe in the first

instance and war in the second. To be a Woman, one must be first
and foremost a mother and after that a server of Men; this means
overpopulation and the perpetuation of the first two disasters.
The roles are deadly. The myths that serve them are fatal.

Women cannot write – using the old myths.

But using new ones - ? 8

This line of argument bears a striking resemblance to those which conclude that

science fiction bears a special relationship to philosophy. It is science fiction’s

innate (though not always realised) capacity to explore new ideas, and create

new myths, that both feminism and general philosophy find attractive. Sarah

Lefanu also argued that the mode of science fiction lends itself to feminist

projects, stating that:

[I]t lets writers defamilarise the familiar, and make familiar the
new and strange. These twin possibilities, apparently
contradictory (but SF is full of contradictions), offer enormous
scope to women writers who are thus released from the
constraints of realism. The social and sexual hierarchies of the
contemporary world can be examined through the process of
‘estrangement’, thus challenging normative ideas of gender roles;
and visions of different worlds can be created, made familiar to
the reader through the process of narrative. 9

Science fiction is uniquely useful to feminist authors because it has the power of

‘what if’ – what if things were not as they are now?

Whilst Russ’ observations belong to the first part of published academic

feminist science fiction criticism, Lefanu’s book belongs in what might rightly

be termed a second, consolidating phase. As Merrick comments, ‘Feminist

8
Joanna Russ, ‘What Can a Heroine Do, or, Why Women Can’t Write’, p. 93.
9
Sarah Lefanu, In the Chinks of the World Machine: Feminism and Science Fiction, The
Women’s Press, London, 1988, pp. 21-22.
 167

criticism did not become an established presence in sf scholarship, however,

until the 1980s, when it became more common in the sf journals, the first edited

collections on women in sf appeared, and the first two monographs on feminism

and science fiction were published.’ 10 Indeed, in a footnote Merrick lists

Lefanu’s book as one of these two early monographs on feminism and science

fiction, the other being Marleen S. Barr’s Alien to Femininity: Speculative

Fiction and Feminist Theory. Whilst neither of these texts discuss cyberpunk,

their dates of publication (Lefanu, 1987 and Barr, 1988) are not far removed

from the first frenetic period of academic discussion of cyberpunk fiction, which

largely took place in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. This may go some way to

explaining the consideration given by feminist critics to cyberpunk. As feminist

science fiction criticism emerged from the academic wilderness, a place to which

it had no doubt been relegated by a largely conservative and patriarchal critical

establishment, cyberpunk was the newest, hippest form of science fiction around.

An intellectual thread which is particularly germane to discussion of

cyberpunk fictions is the ways in which feminist science fiction and, more

importantly, feminist science fiction criticism have related to technology. Joanna

Russ once again has a formative opinion on the subject of technology. In her

paper ‘SF and Technology as Mystification’, Russ elaborates an argument that

discussion of technology has become a substitute for discussion of other things –

politics and economics are the specific examples Russ gives. 11 Drawing on

10
Helen Merrick, The Secret Feminist Cabal, pp. 14-15.
11
Joanna Russ, ‘SF and Technology as Mystification’, in Joanna Russ, To Write Like a Woman:
Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1995, pp. 26-
40, particularly pp. 34-39.
 168

Rebecca West, Russ argues that discussions of technology taking place in an

abstract way, without reference to real lives, represent a masculine ‘lunacy.’12

Russ does not associate technology and masculinity tout court – she is too

skilled a critic to do such a thing – but the association between the reification of

technology and a masculine, sexist outlook is clearly there in her analysis.

The association between misogyny and technology is also present in

much of the feminist science fiction work of the time, with a contrast being

drawn between pastoral, feminist societies and high-tech, dirty, sexist

counterparts. In another article discussing ‘Recent Feminist Utopias’, Russ made

the observation that, ‘Without exception the stories are ecology-minded. Such

concern is common in science fiction nowadays. However, many of the stories

go beyond the problems of living in the world without disturbing its ecological

balance into presenting their characters as feeling a strong emotional connection

to the natural world.’ 13 Marleen S. Barr observes something similar about Marge

Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time. Barr notes that ‘The exaggerated

“feminine” humanistic concepts prevailing in Mattapoisett are certainly better

than the exaggerated “masculine” technological concepts prevailing in the

novel’s dystopian future.’ 14 Whilst Barr’s use of hyperbolic quotation marks

around “feminine” and “masculine” in her analysis indicates that she must have

some suspicions regarding the association of the masculine with technology and

12
Joanna Russ, ‘SF and Technology as Mystification’, p. 34.
13
Joanna Russ, ‘Recent Feminist Utopias’, in Joanna Russ, To Write Like a Woman: Essays in
Feminism and Science Fiction, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1995, pp. 133-148, p.
137.
14
Marleen S. Barr, Alien to Femininity: Speculative Fiction and Feminist Theory, Greenwood
Press, New York, 1987, p. 55.
 169

the feminine with the natural world, the association is still undeniably there in

this piece of analysis (and in the novel itself). This reciprocal relationship

between a pernicious masculinity and hard technology is one which later,

cyberpunk inspired, feminist criticism would come to question. 15

Cyberpunk fiction and contemporary feminism have a number of

intersecting interests – or, to put it another way, they often seem to be discussing

similar ideas, if in different modes. Feminist critical interpretations of cyberpunk

often consist of the working through of these apparent intersections, and the

examination of the similarities and differences in the ideas proposed in theory

and imagined in cyberpunk. It should come as no surprise that this process of

working through feminist concerns in cyberpunk has raised issues relevant to the

critical process more broadly. Indeed, it is apparent when reading much of the

feminist criticism relating to cyberpunk that some of the key conceptual

developments within cyberpunk criticism have emerged from feminist

discussions.

Academic feminist discussions of cyberpunk begin with Joan Gordon’s

article ‘Yin and Yang Duke it Out’, which was originally published in Science

Fiction Eye in 1991, in which Gordon proposed not so much that cyberpunk was

actively feminist, but that cyberpunk had something to offer feminist science

fiction. Gordon’s criticism of the extant canon of feminist science fiction was

that ‘virtually every feminist SF utopia dreams of a pastoral world, fuelled by

15
An interesting article on the negative association of women with the natural world prevailing in
masculinist science fiction is Scott Sanders, ‘Woman as Nature in Science Fiction’, in Future
Females: A Critical Anthology, Marleen S. Barr (ed.), Bowling Green State University Popular
Press, Bowling Green, 1981, pp. 42-59.
 170

organic structures rather than mechanical ones, inspired by versions of the

archetypal Great Mother.’ 16 Gordon’s problem with such fictions is not so much

that they do not have value, but that the far future worlds imagined in such

feminist science fiction typically struggle to extrapolate their meanings back into

contemporary society. Gordon argues that ‘cyberpunk may be feminist SF’s

salvation.’ 17 This, Gordon argues, is largely due to the gritty, near-future settings

of cyberpunk; as she puts it, ‘It isn’t likely that the earth will pull back from its

movement towards high technology and the Sprawl for a long time, if ever.

Cyberpunk, with all its cynicism, shows a future we might reasonably expect,

and shows people successfully coping, surviving and manipulating it.’ Further,

Gordon observes that, ‘I for one am not convinced that I am an earth mother.

What else might I be? If science fiction can show what it means to be female in

the world toward which we hurtle, I want to read it.’ 18

Gordon draws a distinction between overt and covert feminist science

fiction, stating that, ‘Overt feminist science fiction always grapples with the

definition of femaleness and at least implies the possibility of a world whose

values support a feminist definition of female identity. Covert feminist science

fiction ignores the definition, showing a sexually egalitarian world; furthermore,

its values often ignore specifically feminist issues, making its morality more of a

generally applied one.’ 19 In the part of her argument which has induced the most

intense analysis and debate, Gordon goes on to argue that cyberpunk writing

constitutes covert feminist science fiction, that ‘On that night foray into the

16
Joan Gordon, ‘Yin and Yang Duke it Out’, in Larry McCaffery (ed.) Storming the Reality
Studio, Duke University Press, 1991, pp. 196-202, p. 199.
17
Joan Gordon, ‘Yin and Yang Duke it Out’, p. 197.
18
Joan Gordon, ‘Yin and Yang Duke it Out’, p. 200.
19
Joan Gordon, ‘Yin and Yang Duke it Out’, p. 196.
 171

underworld which is the central experience of what we conveniently call

cyberpunk, men and women travel as equals.’ 20 Citing Molly from Gibson’s

Neuromancer and Deadpan Allie from Cadigan’s Mindplayers as examples,

Gordon argues that they ‘[perform] the covert feminist act of entering the human

army combat-ready and on equal footing.’ 21

It is this component of Gordon’s argument which has triggered the

greatest debate amongst feminist critics of cyberpunk. Gordon herself comments

that cyberpunk ‘seems to be overt masculinist science fiction – men are men,

waving guns and knives, competing like all getout and plugged up to the gills

with pollutant technology.’ 22 Despite this appearance, Gordon maintains that

cyberpunk in fact constitutes a form of covert feminist science fiction. Other

critics, most prominently Sharon Stockton and Nicola Nixon, disagree. 23 They

both argue, in different ways, that the appearance of cyberpunk texts is not

deceiving – that if it walks like a sexist text, and quacks like a sexist text, then it

probably is a sexist text. Of course, their arguments are vastly more involved

than this, and their interpretations have each left a lasting impact on cyberpunk

criticism, so some explanation of these arguments is merited here.

Nicola Nixon’s ‘Cyberpunk: Preparing the Ground for Revolution or

Keeping the Boys Satisfied?’ is another early and important piece of feminist

criticism of cyberpunk. In it, Nixon takes issue with the ‘revolutionary’ tone of

20
Joan Gordon, ‘Yin and Yang Duke it Out’, p. 196.
21
Joan Gordon, ‘Yin and Yang Duke it Out’, p. 197.
22
Joan Gordon, ‘Yin and Yang Duke it Out’, p. 196.
23
See Sharon Stockton, ‘‘The Self Regained’: Cyberpunk’s Retreat to the Imperium’,
Contemporary Literature, 36:4, 1995, pp. 588-612; Nicola Nixon, ‘Cyberpunk: Preparing the
Ground for Revolution or Keeping the Boys Satisfied?’, Science Fiction Studies, 19:2, 1992, pp.
219-235.
 172

much discussion of cyberpunk, be it the propaganda produced by genre writers,

or the adoption of a similar tone by critics. Nixon stresses that ‘If we are to take

such promotion seriously as something other than hyperbolic advertisement, we

need to examine cyberpunk contextually – not only as an SF “movement” in the

wake of, and contemporaneous with, particular forms of political, feminist SF,

but also as a response to (or perhaps a reflection of) the Reaganite America of the

‘80s.’ 24 Nixon here emphasises that cyberpunk did not emerge in a cultural

vacuum – and also that its cultural context must be of importance when assessing

the nature of cyberpunk texts. Nixon proceeds with a commentary on the much

discussed omission of feminist texts from Bruce Sterling’s list of cyberpunk’s

influences. Nixon comments that

his [Sterling’s] elision of specific ‘70s texts seems even more

striking when we consider that William Gibson’s novels, for
example, inscribe quite overt revisions of the very texts which
form the potentially (anxiety producing?) absent referent in
Sterling’s delineations of cyberpunk’s origins. Russ’s dauntingly
powerful (and emasculating) Jael in The Female Man, for
example… is effectively turned into Molly, a “razor-girl” who
sells her talents (razor implanted fingernails) to the highest
bidder in Gibson’s “Johnny Mnemonic” and Neuromancer, or
into Sarah, the dirtgirl/assassin… in Walter Jon Williams’
Hardwired. Explicit reworkings of an antecedent female
character, Molly and Sarah are effectively depoliticised and
sapped of any revolutionary energy. 25

Whilst Nixon’s argument undeniably has a core of truth (the physical parallels

between Jael and Molly only reinforce their jarringly different circumstances)

she has overstated the point. To claim, on the basis of this, that Neuromancer is a

covert reworking of The Female Man is to do both texts a grave disservice. The

24
Nicola Nixon, ‘Cyberpunk: Preparing the Ground for Revolution or Keeping the Boys
Satisfied?’, p. 221.
25
Nicola Nixon, ‘Cyberpunk: Preparing the Ground for Revolution or Keeping the Boys
Satisfied?’, p. 222.
 173

Female Man can hardly be reduced to the single character of Jael; nor can

Neuromancer legitimately be cast as purely a chauvinist reworking of The

Female Man.

It is entirely possible that feminist criticism of cyberpunk could have

continued along these separate lines of development for some time, but this

would have required that cyberpunk as a sub-genre remain unchanged in itself.

This was not the case. Almost as if in response to Gordon’s call for feminists to

engage with the cyberpunk imaginary, new feminist cyberpunk authors began to

emerge in the early 1990s, challenging the previously male-dominated regime of

cyberpunk writing (Pat Cadigan came on to the cyberpunk scene earlier than this,

of course, but her writing is often considered as somewhat of a special case by

feminist critics). 26 Authors such as Laura Mixon, Mary Rosenblum and Melissa

Scott began to construct fictions which were both cyberpunk in setting and

overtly feminist in intent. In Trouble and Her Friends, for example, Scott

constructs a narrative in which patriarchal hegemony in the online world is

contested by a central character who is both female and queer – precisely the

type of subject position which is almost completely absent from earlier

cyberpunk.

This period of change in cyberpunk writing also precipitated a change in

the critical literature. As these new, overtly feminist fictions came into being,

feminist critics began to discuss the politics of these new contributions at least as

26
Jenny Wolmark, for example, distinguishes Cadigan from the other, male, early cyberpunk
authors. See Jenny Wolmark, Aliens and Others: Science Fiction, Feminism and Postmodernism,
University of Iowa Press, Iowa City, 1994, pp. 121-127. Sherryl Vint does likewise in Bodies of
Tomorrow: Technology, Subjectivity, Science Fiction, University of Toronto Press, Toronto,
2007, pp. 111-118.
 174

much as those of earlier cyberpunk. It is the goal of the remainder of this chapter

to examine feminist discussions of cyberpunk in a thematic way, but with an

awareness of the changing nature of cyberpunk writing. Cyberpunk writing and

feminist criticism about cyberpunk will be observed to exist in a complex

symbiosis. Themes which are explored in one strand are often adopted or

absorbed into the other.

Feminist criticism about cyberpunk often revolves around key thematic

components. In this respect feminist criticism is no different from other forms of

critical literature – each form of criticism tends to bring its own interpretive

matrices to the project of reading literature. Despite this, some of the interpretive

ideas key to feminist criticism about cyberpunk will be recognisable from

previous chapters of this thesis. Donna Haraway’s idea of the cyborg, for

example, is such a pervasive theoretical construct in cyberpunk criticism that it

has escaped the circle of feminist criticism and become a fixture of cyberpunk

criticism in general. The same is true of other feminist interpretive models. The

embodiment paradigm, in particular, is a feminist theoretical matrix which has

been deployed in cyberpunk criticism more generally. Whilst both of these, and

other of the key thematic components of feminist discourse about cyberpunk

have been discussed elsewhere in this thesis, it will be observed through the

course of this chapter that the feminist uses of these paradigmatic concepts,

whilst obviously bearing significant similarities to the more general deployment

of them, maintain unique and focussed applications which differentiate their

usage from the ways in which these concepts are used in cyberpunk criticism

more generally.
 175

It was perhaps inevitable that Donna Haraway’s theoretical conception of

the cyborg would become a central feature of feminist writing about cyberpunk.

Firstly, Haraway’s importance as a feminist theorist meant that her theoretical

frameworks were unlikely to be ignored by feminist critics. Secondly, the

presence in the cyberpunk imaginary of a veritable plethora of cyborgs of a

variety of descriptions gave at least a prima facie case for the application of

Haraway’s theoretical construct in the analysis of cyberpunk texts. Lastly,

Haraway’s conception of the cyborg is contemporaneous with the rise of

cyberpunk as a sub-genre. With such a confluence of factors impelling the use of

Haraway’s interpretive explorations in the understanding of cyberpunk, it would

have been a surprise if feminist critics had not deployed Haraway’s model in

their critical work. As it is, it is almost impossible to read feminist criticism

about cyberpunk without encountering various discussions of the idea of the

cyborg.

Haraway’s initial positing of her idea of the cyborg seems to be a method

of grappling with the tendency in Western philosophy to express problems in

terms of subject unities and binary oppositions. For example, one (allegedly)

united category might be that of women (or perhaps worse, ‘Woman’) – the

united subject of (some) feminist theory. A most apposite binary opposition,

given the topic at hand, might be that problematic opposition between male and

female. While it has been the case that feminist theory has often turned its

attention towards the analysis of this binary distinction, and the undeniable

privilege which Western cultures have attached to the male half of this binary,
 176

Haraway’s cyborg theory seeks not only to contest the privileges attaching to the

male, in other words to contest patriarchal oppression, but to undermine the

structure of the binary itself. Haraway’s conception of the cyborg is a sort of

theoretical wedge – a way of breaking up the categories which have structured

Western thought in an attempt to find a new way of theorising our existence.

It is the boundary-defying nature of Haraway’s cyborg which has led to

its popularity as a theoretical metaphor, and its continual deployment as an

interpretive tool. Debate in feminist analyses of the cyborgs of cyberpunk

imaginings has centred not so much on whether they are cyborgs (this seems

beyond dispute) but rather on whether these cyberpunk cyborgs have all that

much in common with Haraway’s model of the cyborg. Haraway’s idea(l) of the

cyborg is one way in which the cyborg may be imagined as a ‘hopeful

monster,’ 27 to steal a phrase from Bruce Sterling, a promise of future

understandings divorced from systems of oppression. However, it may be that

there are other meanings to the cyborg metaphor, interpretations which have far

more sinister overtones. Haraway herself acknowledges this, when she states that

‘The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate

offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state

socialism.’ 28 As we have seen, it remains debatable whether the cyborgs of

cyberpunk are, like those of Haraway’s imagination, unfaithful to their

oppressive heritage, or instead contribute to the systems of domination from

which they stem. There is certainly a divergence of opinion in the feminist

27
Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix Plus, Berkley, New York, 1996, p. 225. (Schismatrix first
published 1985)
28
Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York,
Routledge, 1991, p. 151.
 177

critical community as to the nature of cyberpunk’s cyborgs. This divergence

arises as much from which cyberpunk texts critics choose to analyse as from an

actual divergence of critical interpretations – it is important to note that the

cyborgs of cyberpunk do not always have the same representative value.

However, there are still significant differences of opinion regarding the liberatory

power of the image of the cyborg as it is deployed in cyberpunk texts, and these

debates will be examined below.

Early examinations of the figure of the cyborg in cyberpunk fictions often

do not directly examine whether cyberpunk figurations of the cyborg can be

considered feminist. Thus Veronica Hollinger’s seminal piece ‘Cybernetic

Deconstruction: Cyberpunk and Postmodernism’ considers feminist science

fiction, cyberpunk and posthumanism – but does not consider whether or not

cyberpunk could be considered feminist fiction. She does, however, foreshadow

later contributions to the cyberpunk/feminism debate, concluding her article by

raising Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto as ‘one of the most brilliant visions of the

potential of cybernetic deconstructions.’ 29 It is significant that Hollinger also

concludes that ‘the critique of humanism in these [cyberpunk] works remains

incomplete…’ 30 It should be noted that there are similarities between the

proposition that the relationship between humans and technology in cyberpunk

(particularly as figured through the cyborg) represents an attempt to deconstruct

the ‘humanist’ binary distinction between human and technology and the claim

29
Veronica Hollinger, ‘Cybernetic Deconstructions: Cyberpunk and Postmodernism’, Mosaic,
23:2, 1990, pp. 29-44, p. 42. Cybernetic deconstructions is the term which Hollinger uses to
describe the interactions between humans and technology in cyberpunk.
30
Veronica Hollinger, ‘Cybernetic Deconstructions’, p. 41.
 178

that the figure of the cyborg as deployed in cyberpunk represents a

deconstruction of the masculine/feminine binary.

The figure of the cyborg is key to any understanding of cyberpunk. By

any measure, almost all the characters in cyberpunk novels are cyborgs – to

varying degrees enmeshed in cybernetic technologies, from access to cyberspace

(by whatever name individual authors give it), to body modifications and

implanted technologies. Given the key nature of the idea of the cyborg to

understandings of cyberpunk, it is unsurprising that various critics wish to claim

this figure as support for their own interpretations of the sub-genre. A common

claim in feminist criticism about cyberpunk is that the cyborg is essentially a

figure of boundary disruption. Take, for example, Mary Catherine Harper, who,

having discussed potential disjunctures between Haraway’s ideal of the cyborg

and the fictional cyborgs of William Gibson, states that ‘This is not to say that

Haraway’s cyborg and the figures in Gibson’s cyberpunk novels are necessarily

incompatible… They both offer to late 20th-century American culture an

imaginative bio-technological form which by its nature undermines the split

between humanity and its technology.’ 31 While this is not different from much of

the posthumanist rhetoric which abounds in cyberpunk criticism, Harper also

links the figure of the cyborg, and its attack on humanism, to feminism. Later in

the same article, Harper posits that: ‘Even in its simplest form, the ontological

category of “cyborg” is an oscillation of humanist subject and post-humanist

commodity-based subjectivity. Most importantly, cyborgs, through similarly

embracing the post-apocalyptic body… share close kinship with the Feminine

31
Mary Catherine Harper, ‘Incurably Alien Other: A Case for Feminist Cyborg Writers’, Science
Fiction Studies, 22:3, 1995, pp. 399-421, pp. 403-404. My italics.
 179

Other, that gendered, slippery discursive body given the power to effect, and

perhaps unbind, humanist dreams of escape from the body and entry into the vast

world of the mind.’ 32 It is obvious that Harper considers the cyborg’s status as

deconstructor of humanist paradigms to be strongly linked to its power as a

theoretical tool for feminism. This is no doubt linked to the boundary-defying,

binary-thought breaking nature of the cyborg figure – although this thesis, as

discussed in earlier chapters, remains unconvinced by this argument.

Cyborgs are, in fact, complex creatures – and it could be argued that ‘by

their nature’ they are nothing in particular. They are rather what they are made to

be. This seems to be the position taken by the bulk of feminists examining

cyberpunk and its cyborg characters. Karen Cadora, for example, argues that

there is a difference between masculinist cyberpunk and feminist cyberpunk, and

that the cyborgs they portray embody, so to speak, this difference. As Cadora

puts it,

What is often ignored about the cyborg is that it arose out of

Haraway’s desire “to build a political myth faithful to feminism,
socialism and materialism”. Masculinist cyberpunk is faithful to
none of these. In fact, one might say that it builds itself in
opposition to these concepts…This apparent contradiction
resolves itself when one considers that there is more than one way
to be a cyborg… the image of the cyborg is one of both hope and
terror. 33

Having drawn this distinction between masculinist and feminist cyberpunk, and

the cyborgs which they respectively portray, Cadora goes on to argue that

feminist cyberpunk authors such as Mary Rosenblum and Laura Mixon ‘depict

32
Mary Catherine Harper, ‘Incurably Alien Other’, p. 406.
33
Karen Cadora, ‘Feminist Cyberpunk’, pp. 359-360.
 180

female characters who find ways to work around or within the system.’ 34 What

matters most, according to Cadora, is not so much that cyborgs are present within

a work, but what kind of cyborgs these beings are – what they do, and,

thematically, what they represent.

Other feminists have also recognised the problem with adopting the

metaphor of the cyborg wholesale, of maintaining that the boundary disruptions

imputed to the figure of the cyborg must of necessity be good disturbances. It is

worth restating Cathy Pepper’s warning regarding Haraway’s ‘post-gender’

cyborg, to whit that it

sounds like a deconstructionist’s dream come true, but the reality

is that a cyborg might equally be represented by a fighter pilot
plugged into his intelligent headgear as by the ‘ideal’ replicants
in Blade Runner, by Robocop as well as by Laurie Anderson in
performance, should give us pause. If cyborgs can equally be
represented by the technofascist bodies of a Terminator or a
Robocop, as by the “women of colour” affinity identities
Haraway describes, can the cyborg really be “post-gender”? 35

While Peppers’ question is stated generally, its relevance to the cyborgs of

cyberpunk is obvious. With this question in mind, it cannot be taken for granted

that the cyberpunk cyborgs act to disrupt the boundaries of gender in positive

ways. Cyberpunk texts cannot be read as feminist texts simply because they

contain cyborgs – a point which occasionally seems to have been lost from

Haraway’s ‘Manifesto’. Haraway herself warns that ‘the cyborg is also the awful

apocalyptic telos of the “West’s” escalating dominations of abstract

34
Karen Cadora, ‘Feminist Cyberpunk’, p. 359.
35
Cathy Peppers, ‘’I’ve Got You Under My Skin’: Cyber(sexed) Bodies in Cyberpunk Fictions’,
in Bodily Discursions: Genders, Representations, Technologies, Deborah S. Wilson and Christine
Moneera Laennec (eds.), State University of New York Press, 1997, pp. 163-185, p. 164.
 181

individuation, an ultimate self untied at last from all dependency, a man in

space.’ 36 It is with warnings such as these in mind that one imagines Lauraine

Leblanc commenting that ‘Writers such as Gibson and Cadigan present female-

gendered cyborgs undertaking a role-reversal into masculinity; in many senses

these are transgendered representations, rather than radical revisions of gender.’37

Later in the same piece, Leblanc states that ‘Molly’s character can best be

described as a reversal of traditional gender roles… No longer human through

technological augmentation, she is in no sense a ‘woman,’ in that she participates

in none of the traditional female-gendered roles nor presents any feminine

characteristics. In this sense, Gibson has presented us with a nominally female

character, but one who uses her cyborg identity not to rethink what it is to be a

woman, but rather one who does little but take on a masculine role.’ 38 With

respect, Leblanc may in fact give Gibson more credit that he deserves here –

Molly does indeed function in numerous traditionally feminine roles in

Neuromancer, not the least as Case’s lover. Molly exists as an objectified and

sexualised character – most pointedly indicated by the scene in which Riviera

creates a holographic (and pornographic) image of her for a restaurant full of

fascinated viewers. Riviera states, appropriately enough, that ‘The title of the

work is “The Doll”.’ 39

36
Donna Haraway, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the
Late Twentieth Century’, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New
York; Routledge, 1991, pp.149-181, pp. 150-151.
37
Lauraine Leblanc, ‘Razor Girls: Genre and Gender in Cyberpunk Fiction’, Women and
Language, 20:1, 1997, pp. 71-76, p. 72.
38
Lauraine Leblanc, ‘Razor Girls’, p. 73.
39
William Gibson, Neuromancer, Ace Books, 1984, p. 138.
 182

Mary Catherine Harper has commented that ‘cyberpunk can be said to

invite a critique of humanist subjectivity as well as to suggest the possibility of

liberation from the constraints of such oppositional categories as masculinist

rationality and feminised meat.’ 40 Whilst this may or may not be true of other

cyberpunk fictions, to read Neuromancer and in particular the central characters

of Molly and Case this way requires a very liberal interpretation indeed. Case,

with his hacker skills and casual contempt for the ‘meat,’ is very much a

character who prides himself on his ability to become disembodied – to lose

himself in the abstractly rational world of cyberspace. Molly, on the other hand,

is all body – her skills pertain purely to the physical world. Harper is too subtle

to fall into such a trap, arguing for a distinction between Haraway’s vision and

Gibson’s imagination: ‘Haraway’s cyborg never stops resisting the series of

narratives it produces while Gibson’s, however initially critical of humanist

tenets, succumbs to the pattern of the humanist rebirth narrative.’ 41

Harper, however, considers many texts other than Neuromancer, and

many authors other than Gibson. This is most appropriate, as cyberpunk, and

particularly feminist cyberpunk, cannot simply be reduced to the work of

William Gibson. For Harper, novels such as Pat Cadigan’s Synners, Misha’s Red

Spider White Web and Laura Mixon’s Glass Houses typify feminist cyberpunk.

Each of these novels engage with the technological near-future environment of

the cyberpunk imaginary, but infuse their narratives with feminist values. In

particular, the technological disruption of boundaries which is inherent in the

40
Mary Catherine Harper, ‘Incurably Alien Other’, pp. 399-400.
41
Mary Catherine Harper, ‘Incurably Alien Other’, p. 405.
 183

cyberpunk imagination is employed, argues Harper, by feminist cyberpunks to

undermine stable humanist binaries such as self/other, and subject/object. For

example, Harper discusses Gina from Cadigan’s Synners, stating that, ‘Gina is a

hybrid, existing as both Subject and Object, perhaps as both in each of her two

worlds, the virtual and the biologic. Thus she exhibits both similarity to and

difference from the instrumental rationality that Lloyd discusses.’ 42 Harper

argues that rational agency, in feminist cyberpunk texts, is presented as one of

numerous options for embodied subjectivities, a marked break from the

Enlightenment model of the rational subject, where being a Subject and rational

agency were logically inseparable. Rather than presenting the subject as a

singular and unchanging unity, feminist cyberpunk transmits ‘the knowledge that

subjectivity is an interchangeable and mutable set of identities, powers and

strategies.’ 43 The cyborg is an excellent vehicle for such a message, since among

its strategies of subjectivity is the power to alter its physical self, the physical self

which is the visible sign of the human subject.

There are similar interpretations of cyberpunk cyborgs in other

feminist criticism of the sub-genre. Karen Cadora also distinguishes between the

‘masculinist’ cyberpunk of Gibson and Bruce Sterling, and the feminist

cyberpunk of Pat Cadigan and later feminist cyberpunk authors. Cadora

comments, in reference to masculinist cyberpunk, ‘That Haraway’s cyborg has

become the metaphor of choice for such a movement is both strange and

42
Mary Catherine Harper, ‘Incurably Alien Other’, p. 413.
43
Mary Catherine Harper, ‘Incurably Alien Other’, p. 417.
 184

ironic.’ 44 While observing that the cyborg is hardly a concept which is

uncontested, and that Haraway’s model of the cyborg is simply one of the

interpretations contesting the figure of the cyborg, Cadora’s comment still stands.

The cyborgs of early, masculinist cyberpunk do sit very much at odds with the

liberatory potential of Haraway’s vision. The cyborgs portrayed in the work of

Pat Cadigan and later, overtly feminist cyberpunk authors are, however, another

matter entirely. Cadora maintains, in common with Veronica Hollinger, that

feminist cyberpunk inherits from its sexist predecessor the potential for the

disruption of the human/machine boundary. However, Cadora argues that

feminist cyberpunk also undertakes numerous other disruptions of binary

distinctions. The inclusion of positive blurrings of the animal/human boundary in

texts such as Glass Houses and Mary Rosenblum’s Chimera, argues Cadora,

‘represents a significant departure from traditional cyberpunk.’ 45 Cadora

continues by arguing that, in feminist cyberpunk, cyborgs transgress one final

boundary – that between the real and the unreal. 46 Cadora’s interest in this

blurring of the line between reality and unreality is not so much in the blurring

itself, but rather in its result, leading her to claim that ‘The blurring between real

and unreal has profound implications for notions of identity. Stable, coherent

concepts of self are impossible if there is no universally consensual reality upon

which to ground them.’ 47 While it could be said that the key feature of the ‘real’

world, as opposed to the virtual world, is that it remains real without our consent,

and consequently that virtual reality actually constitutes the first-ever form of

44
Karen Cadora, ‘Feminist Cyberpunk’, pp. 359-360.
45
Karen Cadora, ‘Feminist Cyberpunk’, p. 366.
46
This thesis has examined the inherent terminological problems facing those trying to describe
cyberspatial experience and/or cyberspatial forms of being, particularly in the context of the
cyberpunk imaginary, in Chapter Four, ‘Cyberpunk Spatiality: The ‘Other’ Spaces of
Cyberpunk.’
47
Karen Cadora, ‘Feminist Cyberpunk’, p. 368.
 185

consensual reality (a reality established quite literally by the consensual

participation of its members), Cadora’s point is essentially that ‘Feminist

cyberpunk is full of fragmented and partial selves.’ 48 These fragmented selves

are ‘just the kind of identities with which feminism must come to terms…

Feminist cyberpunk writers have gone far in demonstrating what a cyborg, a

multiply-positioned subject, might look like. More than that, they show how

cyborgs can function in the world.’ 49 These fragmented, multiply-positioned,

cyborg subjects are at the core of feminist cyberpunk – and their ability to

function within the imagined worlds of cyberpunk, argues Cadora, presents new

visions for feminist appropriation.

Cadora also briefly touches on another key concept in understanding

feminist criticism of cyberpunk fictions, namely the idea of embodiment.

Embodiment as a paradigm is at once a feminist response to both the

disembodying rhetorics of Enlightenment rationality and postmodern abstraction.

Its main purpose is to remind purveyors of both radical transcendence and radical

deconstruction that there remains an undeniably physical, material component to

being human – and that, frankly, no amount of rational thinking or

deconstructionist apocalyptic discourse can actually remove this component of

being human. On this note Anne Balsamo has asked

Is it ironic that the body disappears in postmodern theory just

as women and feminists have emerged as an intellectual force
within the human disciplines? ... Faced with the prospect of
being strategically eclipsed within the modern episteme once

48
Karen Cadora, ‘Feminist Cyberpunk’, p. 368.
49
Karen Cadora, ‘Feminist Cyberpunk’, p. 370.
 186

again, feminists have a political stake in constructing and

critiquing theories of the body within postmodernism… The
final fate of “the body” should not be left entirely to the panic
postmodernists – that is, Jean Baudrillard, Deleuze and
Guattari, and Arthur Kroker. 50

Restating the importance of embodiment, in the face of various attempts to

ignore, write off, or deconstruct the body, is critical to many feminist

understandings of cyberpunk fictions.

The links between a discussion of cyborgs in cyberpunk and an

examination of embodiment are obvious. Indeed, Balsamo has argued that ‘By

reasserting a material body, the cyborg rebukes the disappearance of the body

within postmodernism… The cyborg connects a discursive body with a

historically material body by taking account of the ways in which the body is

constructed within different social and cultural formations. Ultimately, the

cyborg challenges feminism to search for ways to study the body as it is at once

both a cultural construction and a material fact of human life.’ 51 While this could

be said to be the function of the cyborg in feminist theory, it is not necessarily

the function of cyborgs within cyberpunk fictions. As will be examined below,

an analysis of discourse about embodiment within cyberpunk criticism reveals

that the cyborgs of cyberpunk are not immune to disembodying rhetoric. In fact,

according to some critics at least, some cyberpunk fictions actually affirm ideas

of disembodiment.

50
Anne Balsamo, Technologies of the Gendered Body, Duke University Press, Durham, 1996, p.
31. For a similar argument, see N. Katherine Hayles, ‘The Posthuman Body: Inscription and
Incorporation in Galatea 2.2 and Snow Crash’, Configurations, 5:2, 1997, pp. 241-266, p. 245.
51
Anne Balsamo, Technologies of the Gendered Body, p. 33.
 187

Feminist interests regarding embodiment in cyberpunk fictions have

largely centred on the construction of its cyberspaces. This is unsurprising,

because the way in which a particular cyberpunk text implements cyberspatial

concepts obviously contributes to whether the novel can be said to be supporting

a holistic view of the embodied mind, or a view which proposes that mind and

body can be (or should be) separated digitally, by the translation of a person into

a cyberspatial consciousness. This thesis has elsewhere defended even the most

extreme forms of cyberspatial disembodiment in cyberpunk from the charge of

Cartesian dualism, 52 but that, one suspects, is not crucial to the feminist case

against radical disembodiment in certain cyberpunk texts. It is rather that, in the

case of incidences of disembodiment in cyberpunk novels, such as the digital

translation of Bobby Newmark and Angie Mitchell in Gibson’s Mona Lisa

Overdrive, such disembodying rhetorics encourage a forgetfulness regarding the

material foundations of consciousness, and the situations of oppression within

which many cyberpunk characters reside. However, there are also those critics

who consider the employment of overtly feminist embodiment paradigms in

cyberpunk. As was the case with the figure of the cyborg, cyberpunk uses of

disembodiment and/or embodiment paradigms defy simple affirmation as

feminist fiction or simple deriding as masculinist propaganda. The final

interpretation of a given critic depends not just on his or her own critical

position, but also on which texts they choose to examine as representative of

cyberpunk as a whole. This means that feminist critical literature on

dis/embodiment in cyberpunk runs a gamut from affirming the feminist

52
See Chapter Four – Cyberpunk Spatiality: The ‘Other’ Spaces of Cyberpunk.
 188

credentials of (some) cyberpunk to condemning the bulk of the genre as

reinstated sexism.

When critics assail cyberpunk for its rhetoric of disembodiment, it is

William Gibson’s first, ‘Sprawl,’ trilogy and particularly Neuromancer which are

selected as the primary target. Karen Cadora, for example, states that ‘For

women, the realities of the flesh are all too present in the imperfect world of

cyberpunk. Because of this, embodiedness is a central issue in feminist

cyberpunk in a way that it is not in masculinist cyberpunk. In Neuromancer, for

example, Case moves through cyberspace as a disembodied gaze which sees

from nowhere.’ 53 In a similar vein, and referring back to the problem of

deconstructionism which Balsamo touched on, Cathy Peppers has stated that:

Cyberpunk fiction could be seen in the context of the host of

radical disruptions of white male privilege in the 1970s. If it is a
fiction obsessed with dissolving boundaries, it is also possible to
see the genre’s emergence as the privileged site for postmodern
subjectivity as a re-enactment of Susan Bordo’s description of
deconstructionist postmodernism’s embrace of a “disembodied
view from everywhere” as a way to remain indifferent to concerns
about gender, and to the women writers who brought that
concern to science fiction. 54

It is undeniably true that Gibson, in Neuromancer at least, appears to follow what

Sherryl Vint has termed the ‘misogynistic heritage’ of Cartesian dualism.55

53
Karen Cadora, ‘Feminist Cyberpunk’, p. 364.
54
Cathy Peppers, ‘‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’’, p. 169.
55
Roger Luckhurst observes that, ‘Although there are signs of more ambivalence about the body
in Neuromancer than is generally credited, Gibson works unquestioningly with a Cartesian
dualism of mind and body.’ Roger Luckhurst, Science Fiction, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2005, p.
208. This thesis finds reason to question the generally held view that Gibson specifically, and
 189

Inside this paradigm, Vint explains, ‘The transcendence of the pure mind is

available to the male subject, while the female subject must remain immanent,

absorbing all the limits of materiality that man has cast off in his construction of

his own subjectivity.’ 56 On first glance, the main characters of Neuromancer

seem to be the very image of this paradigm – Case, the male hacker who had

‘lived for the bodiless exaltation of cyberspace,’ 57 and Molly, the warrior and

assassin who, as far as we know from the novel, does not even have access to

that realm.

Vint’s reading of Neuromancer, however, moves past this surface

impression of the text, and discovers that such a simplistic interpretation of

Neuromancer is unsatisfaactory. In an important piece of analysis, Vint argues

that the scene in the novel where Case is offered a cyberspatial existence with his

dead girlfriend, Linda Lee, and refuses it, means that Case ‘still insists on a

reality based in bodily existence. His love for and connection with Linda cannot

be valued if it exists only in a virtual world.’ 58 With reference to Cadora’s

comment regarding Case moving through cyberspace as a disembodied gaze

which sees from nowhere, it would also seem that this passage refutes that claim.

Not only does Case have a cyberspatial body, a location from which he views

cyberspace (at least sometimes) but he is capable of being trapped in it. It is also

apparent that he has at least as much distaste for this condition as for the state of

cyberpunk more generally, hold to a Cartesian model of consciousness. See Chapter Four
‘Cyberpunk Spatiality: The ‘Other’ Spaces of Cyberpunk.’
56
Sherryl Vint, Bodies of Tomorrow, p. 104.
57
William Gibson, Neuromancer, p. 6.
58
Sherryl Vint, Bodies of Tomorrow, p. 108.
 190

being trapped in the ‘prison of his own flesh.’ 59 There are also other passages in

Neuromancer where it is apparent that Case has a cyberspatial body – a sense of

location which denies the ‘disembodied view from nowhere,’ not least the final

hack of the novel, where, engaging the Kuang program, Case ‘had the strange

impression of being in the pilot’s seat in a small plane.’ 60 Gibson is too subtle a

writer to produce a text which simply advocates doing away with the body. His

attitude towards disembodiment in Neuromancer and his other, later, works is far

more ambivalent. As Vint puts it:

Gibson’s novel articulates a particular type of subjectivity that is

interested in repressing the body, and it suggests why this stance
would be desirable: the subject wishes to sustain a construction of
mastery and the body undermines this construction. Despite the
appeal of this fantasy, the body is continually shown to be an
inescapable part of Case’s subjectivity and the actual condition of
being without a body is shown to be an absence of subjectivity. 61

One might also add that Case’s desire for escape from embodiment in

Neuromancer might have at least one other source: namely, a desire to escape

from the actual oppression in which that physical body finds itself. Heather J.

Hicks has made a similar observation with regards to James Tiptree Jr’s The Girl

Who Was Plugged In, commenting that, ‘In Tiptree’s vision, human subjectivity

is sufficiently contingent upon the social status of the subject’s body that those

who have suffered the ordeal of the “worthless” body willingly flee to a more

validated one. Disembodiment, then, is not about the body ceasing to “matter” –

59
William Gibson, Neuromancer, p. 6.
60
William Gibson, Neuromancer, p. 256.
61
Sherryl Vint, Bodies of Tomorrow, p. 109.
 191

it is about the body mattering so much that it becomes uninhabitable.’ 62 For

many of the heroes and heroines of cyberpunk fiction, and even some of its

villains (Virek in Gibson’s Count Zero for example), this is definitely the case.

Returning to a point which was raised but not discussed in depth earlier,

another critical paradigm which has emerged from feminist criticism of

cyberpunk is the examination of the subject positions portrayed in cyberpunk

fictions. It has become academically fashionable to advocate the idea of the

multiply-positioned subject – a view of the human subject where identity is

neither stable nor unitary, but rather fluid, fractured and determined. The

opposite view – that human subjects are unitary, stable, and autonomous – has

been attributed to humanist arrogance, often using the rather ugly fused term

‘liberal humanism.’ 63 The debate in feminist cyberpunk criticism has therefore

centred around whether or not cyberpunk can be said to be portraying characters

who are suitably multiplicitous – with positive interpretations of cyberpunk

arguing that it does portray such characters, and more negative criticism arguing

that it does not.

Early criticism about cyberpunk quickly began to identify the fracturing

of the subject within its texts. Veronica Hollinger alludes to, but does not

62
Heather J. Hicks, ‘“Whatever it is That She’s Since Become”: Writing Bodies of Text and
Bodies of Women in James Tiptree, Jr.’s The Girl Who Was Plugged In and William Gibson’s
“The Winter Market”’, Contemporary Literature, 37:1, 1996, pp. 62-93, p. 71.
63
This thesis has elsewhere argued, in Chapter Two: “Posthumanism With a Vengeance”:
Cyberpunk and Posthumanist Literary Criticism, that the resources available to a humanist
thinker are not reducible to a liberal or libertarian paradigm, and as such those who reduce
humanism in this way are making critical argumentative mistakes.
 192

directly discuss, such fragmentation, when she refers to the ‘radical decent[ring]

… of the essential self’ 64 in cyberpunk fictions. Brian McHale also identified

cyberpunk with the postmodern deconstruction of the unitary self, claiming that

‘For the most part, fragmentation and dispersal of the self occurs in

postmodernist fiction at the levels of language, narrative structure and the

material medium (the printed book), or between these levels, rather than at the

level of the fictional world’ 65 and later that

Cyberpunk practice, here as elsewhere, is to actualise or

literalise what in postmodern poetics normally appears as a
metaphor at the level of language, structure or the material
medium. Where postmodernism has figurative representations of
disintegration, cyberpunk texts typically project fictional worlds
which include (fictional) objects and (fictional) phenomena
embodying and illustrating the problematics of selfhood: human-
machine symbiosis, artificial intelligences, biogenetically-
engineered alter egos, and so on. 66

In other words, for McHale, cyberpunk realises at the fictional level of character

and narrative the disintegration of the unitary self which postmodernist writing

preferred to place at the metafictional level of language and structure.

The first specifically feminist responses to the claim that cyberpunk

depicts characters with partial and/or fragmented selves predominantly contest

this claim, and posit the reverse. Nicola Nixon, for example, in ‘Cyberpunk:

Preparing the Ground for Revolution or Keeping the Boys Satisfied?’, points out

that cyberpunk novels depict the ‘exceptionally talented, very masculine hero…

pitting his powerful individualism against the collective, domesticated

64
Veronica Hollinger, ‘Cybernetic Deconstructions’, p. 29.
65
Brian McHale, Constructing Postmodernism, Routledge, New York, 1992, p. 254.
66
Brian McHale, Constructing Postmodernism, p. 255.
 193

feminised… Japanese “family” corporations.’ 67 Nixon also points out that ‘It

seems telling that the icon of the cowboy, realised so strongly in Reaganite

cowboyism, the quintessence of the maverick reactionary, should form the

central heroic iconography in cyberpunk.’ 68 While Nixon does not specifically

contest the idea that cyberpunk depicts or supports the idea of fractured

subjectivities, it is fairly clear from her argument that she considers that it in fact

does quite the opposite, instead narrating and valorising a powerfully

individualist, quite reactionary subject.

Sharon Stockton agreed, stating that:

Veronica Hollinger, for example, argues that cyberpunk is “anti-

humanist”, and Brian McHale claims that the multiple realities
and inset points of view of cyberspace “entail a model of the self
which is correspondingly plural, unstable and problematic”. My
own sense is that the genre of cyberpunk does not go so far, and I
would take issue with the argument that it portrays a
schizophrenic, “Baudrillardian” subject. It seems clear to me that
it is cyberpunk’s project to remythologise an earlier, powerfully
autonomous subject through a literary form that is, in effect, a
latter-day version of adventure/romance. 69

Unlike Nixon, however, Stockton examines both Kathy Acker and Pat Cadigan

as feminist reworkings of cyberpunk generic writing, noting that ‘As is not the

case with cyberpunk generally, it is a part of Acker’s project to destabilise the

narratives of regained (masculine) subjectivity’ 70 and that ‘Pat Cadigan… puts

into question the status of the matrix apparently available for inscription in the

67
Nicola Nixon, ‘Cyberpunk: Preparing the Ground for Revolution or Keeping the Boys
Satisfied?’, p. 225.
68
Nicola Nixon, ‘Cyberpunk: Preparing the Ground for Revolution or Keeping the Boys
Satisfied?’, pp. 224-225.
69
Sharon Stockton, ‘“The Self Regained”’, p. 588.
70
Sharon Stockton, ‘“The Self Regained”’, p. 603.
 194

fiction of authors like Gibson and Stephenson, and… she makes explicit the

connections between the enabling “matter” of cyberspace and the enabling

female body.’ 71 Stockton clearly distinguishes between masculinist cyberpunk

and female/feminist responses to and critiques of it – a distinction which became

increasingly important in feminist analysis of cyberpunk fictions.

Later feminist critics writing about cyberpunk have begun to associate the

portrayal of such unstable, partial selves with specifically feminist cyberpunk.

Karen Cadora, for example, in identifying the fiction of Mary Rosenblum and Pat

Cadigan as feminist cyberpunk, specifically states that ‘feminist cyberpunk is full

of fragmented and partial selves.’ 72 Following on from this comment, Cadora

point out that ‘this novel [Chimera] gives that construction of identity a moral

imperative. All the ‘good guys’ – David, Jewel, Flander, Susana, Serafina – are

patchwork people… The ‘bad guy’ in this novel, Harmon Alcourt, is the one who

can’t let go of his rigid notions of identity.’ 73 Cadora also comments on

Cadigan’s work, particularly Mindplayers. Cadora observes that at the climax of

the novel, the heroine, Allie, ‘comes to realise that she must “Choose: a whole

self, or just an accumulation of elements that soon wouldn’t be more than the

sum of their parts. Madness. Fragmentation.” Allie chooses the state of existence

that is her “whole self,” even though, in reality, it is a conglomeration of

different parts and different people.’ 74 There is certainly something in Cadora’s

commentary on these texts – the models of subjectivity portrayed in them do

71
Sharon Stockton, ‘“The Self Regained”’, p. 605.
72
Karen Cadora, ‘Feminist Cyberpunk’, p. 368.
73
Karen Cadora, ‘Feminist Cyberpunk’, p. 368.
74
Karen Cadora, ‘Feminist Cyberpunk’, p. 369.
 195

differ from the completely unitary subject which is (apparently) the focus of

humanist thought. However, particularly in the case of Cadigan, one cannot help

but wonder whether the point was rather that each individual subject is a union

made up of parts, rather than an unstable mass of different people’s perceptions

waiting to fly apart at the drop of a hat.

Cathy Peppers also distinguishes between masculinist and feminist

cyberpunk, arguing, with reference to early, predominantly male-authored

cyberpunk that:

Cyberpunk could be seen in the context of a host of radical

disruptions of the security of white male privilege in the 1970s. If
it is a fiction obsessed with dissolving boundaries, it is also
possible to see the genre’s emergence as the privileged site for
postmodern subjectivity as a re-enactment of Susan Bordo’s
description of deconstructionist postmodernism’s embrace of a
“disembodied view from everywhere” as a way to remain
indifferent to concerns about gender, and to the women writers
who brought that concern to science fiction. 75

What is interesting about Pepper’s analysis here is her explicit disentanglement

of deconstruction, deconstructed subjects and feminist concerns. Indeed, Peppers

seems to be making the point that not only can such deconstructionist activities

be seen as not necessarily feminist, they can in fact sometimes be deliberately

anti-feminist. Peppers illustrates this with an analysis of William Gibson, stating

that,

Ultimately, then, I find that the cyborgs Gibson constructs, while

they do disrupt the boundary between man and machine, are not
what I would consider “radically deconstructed subjects.” While

75
Cathy Peppers, ‘‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’’, p. 169.
 196

his constructions of bodies traced literally by technology are

seductive and there are moments when boundaries between
subjects blur pleasurably, we are, in the end, presented with the
same fantasy of transcendence beyond the body, the feminine and
racial “otherness,” with the masculine rather firmly reinscribed
at the centre of this newly constructed, and quickly colonised,
space. 76

Continuing to draw the distinction between reactionary, masculinist cyberpunk

and feminist cyberpunk, Peppers concludes that ‘what is at stake for women in

the deconstruction of the subject is more than a mere philosophical play with

boundaries; what is at stake are the very terms under which we know our bodies.

The women writers of cyberpunk show why we should not be in a hurry to leave

those bodies behind.’ 77 The points made by Cadora, Peppers and others are valid

critiques of both deconstructionist postmodernism and of early, masculinist

cyberpunk. The erasure of the body in cyberpunk’s cyberspaces and its

deconstruction have similar outcomes: both result in a blindness to the ways in

which people’s physical being determines them. This blindness in turn allows a

wilful refusal to consider feminist contributions to both science fiction and

philosophical debate. Alluquere Rosanne Stone acerbically but very accurately

points out, in response to the wilful ignorance of the body common to much

cyberpunk, that, ‘it is important to remember that the virtual community

originates in, and must return to, the physical. No refigured virtual body, no

matter how beautiful, will slow the death of a cyberpunk with AIDS. Even in the

age of the technosocial subject, life is lived through bodies.’ 78 Feminist

cyberpunk authors perhaps have the same task within the genre as do feminist

academics within academic discourse – to point out, as forcefully as possible,

76
Cathy Peppers, ‘‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’’, p. 175.
77
Cathy Peppers, ‘‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’’, p. 182.
78
Alluquere Rosanne Stone, ‘Will the Real Body Please Stand Up? Boundary Stories About
Virtual Cultures’, in Jenny Wolmark (ed.), Cybersexualities: A Reader on Feminist Theory,
Cyborgs and Cyberspace, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1999, pp. 69-98, p. 94.
 197

that it may neither be an easy nor a good thing to attempt to do away with, or

even to ignore, the body. This has, in fact, already occurred. One could argue that

Visual Mark, from Pat Cadigan’s Synners, in many ways parallel the various

console cowboys of Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy. He has the same fervent contempt

for his own physical being, and is similarly obsessed with spending as much time

as possible in cyberspace. His digital apotheosis differs considerably, however,

from that of Bobby Newmark, whom he most closely resembles. Where Bobby

seems to be offered the free ride, his consciousness and character remaining

almost entirely unaltered by his digital translation, Mark suffers strokes,

malignant versions of himself attempting to control the Net, compression of his

data self, and finally a merger with the AI Art Fish. Leaving the meat, for Mark,

is an apocalyptic experience which endangers both himself and the rest of the

world, and does not result in something which is merely a digital copy of the old,

physical Mark. One suspects that Cadigan deliberately emphasised the danger

inherent in the process to highlight that bodies matter. Kaye Mitchell makes

precisely this point regarding embodiment in Cadigan’s fiction, observing that,

‘The hotsuit suggests the irreducibility of the body, which becomes here a

receptive surface through which information is transmitted in both directions.

Rather than being left behind, the body is the point of transfer and contact

between AR and RL, between the “human” and the machine/computer – it is

through the body, and the senses, that AR is experienced by the user.’ 79

79
Kaye Mitchell, ‘Bodies that Matter: Science Fiction, Technoculture and the Gendered Body’,
Science Fiction Studies, 33:1, 2006, pp. 109-128, p. 121.
 198

A last interesting piece of feminist analysis of cyberpunk has been

feminist examinations of the nature of cyberspace. In her critically important

early article, Nicola Nixon, amongst her many other valid criticisms of genre

cyberpunk, made the point that ‘The computer matrix, a construct culturally

associated with the masculine world of logic and scientific wizardry, could easily

constitute the space of the homoerotic. But it doesn’t… the matrix itself is

figured as feminine space.’ 80 Nixon goes on to argue that it is against this

feminised background that Gibson’s masculine heroes demonstrate their mastery;

that ‘their very masculinity is constituted by their success both within and against

it.’ 81 In other words, in order to restate a hackneyed story of powerful masculine

hero succeeding in a difficult quest, and proving his mastery over both world and

women, masculinist cyberpunk must figure cyberspace as feminine, dangerous

and, ultimately, conquerable. Sharon Stockton both agrees with and expands

upon Nixon’s arguments: to Nixon’s comments about the gendered nature of

cyberspace in cyberpunk, she adds an examination of its mythic roots in early

capitalism. Stockton’s argument is deeply nuanced, and difficult to summarise

with any accuracy, but she does argue that simply to examine the gendered

nature of cyberspace or to examine its capitalist/imperialist roots without

examining the other theme is to miss a critical point. This point is that the

‘rhetoric of phallic projection and passive field [which] encompasses Western

paradigms of both gender and capitalism – is precisely the structuring base of

cyberpunk fiction. The protagonist hackers “project” into a feminised field; the

80
Nicola Nixon, ‘Cyberpunk: Preparing the Ground for Revolution or Keeping the Boys
Satisfied?’, p. 222.
81
Nicola Nixon, ‘Cyberpunk: Preparing the Ground for Revolution or Keeping the Boys
Satisfied?’, p. 228.
 199

plot complication consists in the revolt of this terrain which should be passive.’82

Stockton’s explicit linking of feminist critique and Marxist critique is both

welcome and apposite; and the analysis which results from it is complex and

rewarding.

There are, however, feminist critics who disagree with the stance taken

by Nixon and Stockton. Karen Cadora, for example, agrees that cyberspace as it

is portrayed by Neal Stephenson and William Gibson is a feminised space, but

argues that this does not complete the story of cyberpunk’s cyberspaces. In

keeping with the division she draws between masculinist and feminist

cyberpunk, Cadora argues that in feminist cyberpunk cyberspace is often either

an androgynous space or is in fact associated with the male body. Cadora argues

that masculinist cyberpunk is a ‘genre which lacks female characters’ and that in

such a genre ‘it is necessary to construct a feminine space in which male heroes

can establish and assert their masculinity. The feminisation of cyberspace is

necessary to insure that these male characters remain heterosexual.’ 83 Cadora

observes that, in Cadigan’s Synners, both gender identity and sexuality are more

fluid than in, for example, Gibson’s work. Referring to Visual Mark’s fluid

gender identity following his digital translation, his relationship with the AI Art

Fish, and the androgynous nature of the AI itself, Cadora comments that in

Synners, ‘If cyberspace is associated with androgyny, then it is not automatically

a feminine space reserved for heterosexual male domination.’ 84

82
Sharon Stockton, ‘‘The Self Regained’’, p. 591.
83
Karen Cadora, ‘Feminist Cyberpunk’, p. 361.
84
Karen Cadora, ‘Feminist Cyberpunk’, p. 362.
 200

When this chapter is read as a part of the whole of this dissertation, the

true impact of feminist criticism on genre cyberpunk criticism becomes apparent.

There are almost no paths which cyberpunk criticism has taken where feminist

critics have not brought significant new and important ideas to the field.

Foremost amongst these, of course, has been the feminist idea of the cyborg,

stemming from the work of Donna Haraway. The discussion of cyberpunk’s

cyborgs, and cyberpunk generally, would be inconceivable without a significant

examination of the role and impact of this model on critical discussions.

Similarly, it is difficult to imagine how discussions of cyberpunk’s cyberspaces

would (could?) have progressed without feminist contributions. Discussions of

embodiment and disembodiment are one of the logical outcomes of the

separation of human consciousness from embodied human which cyberspace

inevitably raises; and feminist criticism, due to its ongoing concern with the

body, and its varying fates in postmodern theory, capitalism and, of course, in

cyberpunk literature, has provided both the base from which many of these

discussions have built and the structure of these discourses as they have

progressed. It is also apparent that feminist critics have very rarely absorbed

without questioning cyberpunk’s self-promotion. As a consequence, feminist

criticism has often projected useful questions into the field of cyberpunk

criticism - a field which at times seems absorbed with the positive potentials of

the worlds portrayed in cyberpunk fictions, to the detriment of a balanced critical

community. The true impact of feminist contributions on cyberpunk criticism as

a whole is difficult to assess - however, it would not be stretching the point too
 201

far to say that there is no avenue of inquiry into cyberpunk which has not been in

some way or another impacted by the ideas of feminist critics.

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Chapter 6: A Future Without a Past: Cyberpunk and History.

In a thesis examining the intellectual history of cyberpunk it is

perhaps inevitable that a chapter seeking to place cyberpunk criticism in

historical context, and examine the issue of historicity in both the fiction

and the generic critical literature, would come to be written. Historicity

has a number of potential meanings, and these must be disentangled

before proceeding with the analytic component of this chapter. Literary

scholars, for example, tend to mean something slightly different to

historians when they use the word historicity. This chapter follows

Fredric Jameson in taking historicity to be the general sense of historical

time passing, the ability of a society to place its events in historical time,

and the capacity of that society to place itself in historical context. In

order to place cyberpunk criticism and fictions in historical context, both

cyberpunk fictions and the generic critical literature will be read in the

light of three contemporaneous historical theories. These theories -

Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis, Fredric Jameson’s ideas

pertaining to the waning of historicity in postmodernity, and Jean-

François Lyotard’s arguments relating the death of grand narratives in

postmodern culture - are linked in having a certain millenarian

temperament. All of these theories, in their own way, express the feeling

that something is drawing to a close – that there are fundamental

differences between the postmodern and the modern which necessitate

the termination of modernist understandings of the world. Despite Bruce

Sterling’s comments regarding cyberpunk’s ‘boredom with the

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apocalypse,’ 1 these strangely millenarian sentiments also run deeply

through the heart of much cyberpunk fiction. As an example of this

millenarianism, in William Gibson’s Virtual Light, the character

Yamazaki muses, ‘We are come not only past the century’s closing… the

millennium’s turning, but to the end of something else as well. Era?

Paradigm? Everywhere, the signs of closure.’ 2 This chapter will argue

that these sentiments situate both the theories referred to above and

cyberpunk fiction firmly in historical time. Neil Easterbrook quotes

Gibson as saying that ‘science fiction is always, really, about the period it

is written in.’ 3 This chapter aims to prove that this is equally true of

cyberpunk as it is of any other science fiction, and to draw conclusions

about the nature of cyberpunk and its critique. This chapter differs

somewhat from the previous parts of the dissertation, in that it contains

more direct criticism of the cyberpunk source material, and less meta-

critical analysis of the extant cyberpunk critical literature. This was

necessitated by the relative dearth of critical material discussing

cyberpunk and history. Despite the high quality of most discussion of

cyberpunk and history or historicity, the relatively low volume of

discussion means that this chapter often has to fill in the interpretive

blanks.

The first of these theories is overtly about history, and will be easily

recalled by any historian working in the last 20 years: Francis

1
Bruce Sterling, ‘Preface’, in William Gibson, Burning Chrome, Voyager, London,
1995 (first published 1986), pp. 9-13, p. 12.
2
Virtual Light, William Gibson, Bantam, 1993, p. 105. Emphasis in original text.
3
Neil Easterbrook, ‘Alternate Presents: The Ambivalent Historicism of Pattern
Recognition’, Science Fiction Studies, 33:3, 2006, pp. 483-504, p. 485.
 204

Fukuyama’s (in)famous ‘End of History’ thesis. 4 While there had been

previous attempts to declare that History (the capital ‘H’ is intentional)

had in some way finished, Fukuyama’s thesis hit home powerfully in

1980s academic culture. Fukuyama’s thesis, and the ensuing controversy,

ensured that debates about the ‘End of History’ would continue for some

time. This chapter will make the claim that there are strong affinities

between Fukuyama’s claims and the world view of cyberpunk. It will

seek to examine these connections, and in the process will situate

cyberpunk firmly in historical context.

A theory which makes a less overt statement about history itself,

but is rather about our understanding of the historical process, is Fredric

Jameson’s complicated idea about the disappearance of historicity in

postmodern culture. 5 Historicity, understood as the sense of history, the

understanding that the present is a part of a chain of historical events, has

faded, Jameson argues. Postmodern culture is unable either to interpret

the present as a succession to a heroic past (as in the early modernist

historical novel) or as the past of an imagined future (as in the late

modernist science fiction of the ‘Golden Age’). 6 While postmodern

culture continues to crave historicity, and still desires to understand itself

4
Fukuyama’s original thesis can be found in The National Interest Special Reprint,
‘The End of History?’, pp. 1-16, National Affairs, Inc, Washington D.C., 1989. His
considerable expansion of his original thesis takes the form of a book, The End of
History and the Last Man, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1992.
5
For Jameson’s explication of the disappearance of history in postmodern culture, see
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke
University Press, Durham, 1991, pp. 283-287.
6
Note that interpreting science fiction as a late modernist phenomenon is my own
adaptation of Jameson’s ideas. Jameson generally characterises science fiction as
postmodern; I struggle to understand ‘Golden Age’ science fiction under any
philosophical paradigm but that of the Enlightenment. Hence my decision to
characterise this science fiction as modernist.
 205

historically, it is incapable of actually doing so. Instead it substitutes

artefacts of history and pastiches of historical images to satisfy its

historicity craving. Jameson argues that, under postmodernism,

historicity passes entirely. This may not necessarily be the case. It may be

more accurate to say that the modernist (or Enlightenment) understanding

of history has waned. This understanding of temporality and historicity is

essentially holistic, causational and uni-directional – it argues that history

can be understood as a series of contiguous events, which progress in a

single direction and can be understood as a whole. In contrast to this

modernist understanding of history, Jameson argues, essentially, that

postmodernism has no historicity at all. 7 However, there is a sense in

which postmodernism has historicity. In keeping with the general

postmodern suspicion of all things holistic and Enlightenment, this sense

of historicity is almost exactly the opposite of that described above. It is,

in a sense, historicity – but it is almost completely unrecognisable from a

modernist viewpoint. This atemporal, ahistorical postmodern form of

historicity is also internally incoherent, as well as bearing little

resemblance to the way we actually perceive and interpret events-in-the-

world. However, for Jameson to argue that in postmodernism, historicity

has died completely is to miss the critical opportunity to examine the

sense of temporality and historicity that postmodernism does contain.

7
This, to my mind, is one of the key observations of Postmodernism: Or the Cultural
Logic of Late Capitalism. If it is indeed true that, under the sign of postmodernity,
people perceive both time and history in a fundamentally different manner, then this is a
truly great intellectual upheaval – one which must be accounted for and examined.
 206

This chapter will demonstrate that Jameson has reason to be

concerned for the passing of modernist historicity, at least as far as

cyberpunk is concerned. It will be argued that cyberpunk displays a

marked inability to locate its texts in historical time; events in cyberpunk

novels seem to take place in a kind of eternal present, devoid of historical

context. Whilst this is not necessarily always the case, and cyberpunk

does display some ambivalence regarding the role of both history and

historicity, in general terms significant support for Jameson’s ideas can

be found in cyberpunk fiction. This, in turn, means that Jameson’s work

provides an ideal critical tool for both the analysis of cyberpunk and,

oddly enough, its contextualisation in history.

The last theorist from the 1980s whose work will be used to

illuminate cyberpunk is Jean-François Lyotard. Whilst Lyotard’s theories

about the postmodern bear perhaps the least immediately obvious

relevance to history and historical theory, this chapter will contend that

Lyotard’s claims constitute a historical theory. In particular, his ideas

about the death of ‘grand narratives’ of legitimation in postmodern

culture constitute an attempt to theorise the shift from modernism to

postmodernism. Whilst this thesis retains its scepticism as to whether our

world can actually be said to be postmodern (or could legitimately have

been said to be postmodern in the 1980s), it is undeniably true that

Lyotard taps a strong vein of criticism, and that his arguments are, at

times, persuasive. Lyotard, in particular, argues that the legitimation

narratives of the Enlightenment have failed in postmodern culture; that,

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for example, the doing of science can no longer justify itself in terms of

the pursuit of “Truth.” Lyotard extends his theory to include other, and

eventually all grand narratives – in other words, he argues that no global

or holistic narrative offers explicative value in postmodern culture.

Whilst it could be (and probably should be) argued that Lyotard’s

argument in and of itself constitutes a grand narrative of sorts, making

this argument is not the purpose of the chapter. Instead, as with Jameson

and Fukuyama, Lyotard’s theories will be used to judge the ‘spirit of the

times,’ for want of a better phrase. The chapter will examine cyberpunk

for evidence of the vanishing of grand narratives (in so far as one can

find evidence of an absence). It will be observed that, although as far as

cyberpunk is concerned Lyotard is often correct, both Lyotard and

generic cyberpunk often suffer from a problematic failure to understand

the centrality of the function of capital. It will be argued that for

contemporary society (society contemporaneous to the writing of most

cyberpunk and, indeed, society today) and in cyberpunk fiction, capital

functions as both foundation myth and legitimation narrative. Capital is

the be-all and end-all; it is the alpha and the omega; it is cause, purpose

and justification all in one. Whether or not this is right or justified is

another issue.

Before proceeding with the analysis which combines these

theories with cyberpunk criticism, however, it is appropriate first to

examine the theories themselves. Debate surrounding these theories,

particularly Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis, has at times been

 208

intense, and can be of significant assistance in positioning each of these

theories, both in intellectual and temporal terms. In understanding these

debates, we will be able better to place cyberpunk within an intellectual

tradition – and the similarities which can be observed between the

cyberpunk mode of thought and other intellectual traditions

contemporaneous with it will become obvious.

Debate surrounding both Fukuyama’s original article and the later

book The End of History and the Last Man was intense. Criticism flew

from both the academic Left and Right – the Left often accusing

Fukuyama of an unjustified capitalist triumphalism, and the Right of

seeing a victory where none had, as yet, been won. 8 There were, of

course, many critics who failed to grasp Fukuyama’s argument

altogether, and subsequently argued at cross purposes to him, putting

forth arguments demonstrating the continuance of events and so forth. It

is of the utmost importance to state (as Fukuyama does in commentaries

subsequent to his original essay) 9 that Fukuyama is referring to a specific

type of historical process. This capital ‘H’ history, history conceived of

as ideological conflict, as a battle for control of the historical process tout

8
There is a good edited collection of responses to Fukuyama’s thesis, which also
includes his reply to those critiques. See Timothy Burns (ed.), After History: Francis
Fukuyama and His Critics, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, 1994. Saul Friedlander
made an interesting argument that the very nature of modern consciousness may
preclude an ‘end of history’. See Saul Friedlander, ‘The End of Innovation?
Contemporary Historical Consciousness and the “End of History”’, SubStance, 19:2/3,
pp. 29-36. For an example of scholarly cautions about triumphalism, see Jerry W.
Sanders, ‘Retreat from World Order: The Perils of Triumphalism’, World Policy
Journal, 8:2, 1991, pp. 227-250.
9
See, for example, Francis Fukuyama, ‘Reflections on the End of History: Five Years
Later’, History and Theory, 34:3, 1995, pp. 27-43, p. 31.
 209

court, is the history which Fukuyama wished to claim had ended. 10 He in

no way attempts to claim that, in some strange (perhaps Baudrillardian)

way all events no longer happen – such a claim would be at best

frivolous. Fukuyama’s claim is anything but frivolous. Fukuyama makes

a serious statement about the nature of historical process in the twentieth

century. His claim is, essentially, that in the battle of ideologies which

characterised twentieth century history, one economic practise and one

political system have emerged as victors – the twins, liberal capitalism

and liberal democracy. This is a most serious claim, and one that, in the

1980s and 1990s, seemed to have some validity. Communism had

collapsed in Eastern Europe, and statist and autocratic regimes

throughout South America and South-East Asia appeared to be struggling

at best.

Having said this for the credibility of Fukuyama’s thesis, it must

also be said that any thesis which claims that the ‘End of History’ has

happened is never likely to lack for detractors (not least from the ranks of

historians). Critics of every political persuasion emerged to savage

Fukuyama’s work. As far as examining these critical debates goes, the

point must be made that one could devote an entire thesis simply to this

process. As a result, this thesis must restrain itself to a small sample of

the critical commentaries on Fukuyama’s work. This small sample will

be constituted mainly by critics from the Left. This is largely because

Leftist critics of Fukuyama’s thesis have written most of the material

10
Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’, The National Interest Special Reprint,
National Affairs, Inc, Washington D.C., 1989, pp 48-55, p. 1-2.
 210

which is particularly germane to this thesis – their points bear the most

relevance not only to Fukuyama’s ideas but interlock best with the

intellectual history of cyberpunk and its criticism.

Responses to Fukuyama’s thesis from the political Left have

varied from robust denunciation to wary acceptance. Alex Callinicos, for

example, takes Fukuyama to task on a variety of issues, not least for

Fukuyama’s dismissal of ‘Ruritanian’ conflicts in Eastern Europe, Africa

and other less developed parts of the world. Fukuyama maintains that

such conflicts are not important – that they are a sort of historical

hangover and will not effect the closure of history in any way. Callinicos

makes the point that not only is maintaining that such conflicts are

unimportant to the progress of history a chauvinist Western view, such

conflicts are, in the case of trouble in Eastern Europe particularly, a little

too close to home to dismiss in such a way. As Callinicos himself puts it:

‘Fukuyama’s claim is about History with a capital H, that is, “history

understood as a single, coherent, evolutionary process.”… Fukuyama

doesn’t deny that conflict is likely to persist in the “New World Order,”

but he tends to see it as a hangover, a reflection of backward, “historical”

societies in the Third World, “Ruritanias,” as he dismissed them in an

extraordinary article written after the end of the Gulf War.’ 11 Callinicos’

argument is, one suspects, that if history continues anywhere then it

continues everywhere – that we cannot insulate the West from the

11
Alex Callinicos, ‘Liberalism, Marxism and Democracy: A Response to David Held’,
Theory and Society, 22:2, 1993, pp. 283-288, p. 283. Fukuyama’s original claim was
that ‘Clearly, much of the Third World remains very much mired in history… But let us
focus on the larger and more developed states of the world, who after all account for the
greater part of world politics.’ Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’, p. 13.
 211

growing pains of the rest of the world. This, in turn, is likely to instigate

changes in the economic and political forms of the West – the supposedly

triumphant, and eternal, liberal capitalism and liberal democracy.

In a very different response to that of Callinicos, Perry Anderson

examines seriously, from a Marxist perspective, whether Fukuyama may

actually be correct. Anderson astutely realises that Fukuyama makes no

claim that the systems he identifies as finishing history actually solve all

of the world’s problems. Fukuyama in no way claims that liberal

capitalism and liberal democracy provide us with a utopia – he rather

argues that they have exhausted all systemic competition. This means

that pointing out the problems in the liberal/capitalist system does not

suffice as a rebuttal of Fukuyama’s argument. As Anderson himself puts

it: ‘Quite expressly his [Fukuyama’s] schema did not require the

suppression of every significant social conflict or the solution of every

major institutional problem. It simply asserted that liberal capitalism is

the ne plus ultra of political and economic life on earth. The end of

history is not the arrival of a perfect system, but the elimination of any

better alternatives to this one.’ 12 In response to the differing argument

(that European-style social democracy represents a genuine alternative to

capitalism) Anderson is stinging. He reminds the reader that the

underlying economic system of a social democratic system on the

contemporary European model remains capitalist by any definition. To

present such economies as a genuine alternative to capitalism is to

12
Perry Anderson, ‘The Ends of History’, in Perry Anderson, A Zone of Engagement,
Verso, London, 1992, pp. 279-375, p. 336.
 212

misrepresent their structure in the search for a hiding place from the

outcome of Fukuyama’s arguments. Indeed, Anderson ends up

condemning the attempt to escape the finality of Fukuyama’s thesis

through the attempt to define capitalism out of existence (by arguing that,

as all capitalist economies are functionally different, and more or less

social-democratic) as ‘fruitless, a search for a nominalist bolt-hole in the

sand… Fukuyama’s inventory of the world seems unpalatable: but if it is

difficult to find forces capable of altering the world, why not change the

inventory. With the wand of a redescription, we can dispose of capitalism

and reassure ourselves of the growth of socialism.’ 13 In the section which

contains these analyses, Anderson also deals with a few other major

objections to Fukuyama’s argument – namely the continuing role of

nationalism in the less developed world and the existence of

fundamentalism (particularly Islamic fundamentalism). He dismisses

these arguments against Fukuyama in a similar style to those above.

However, for the purposes of the argument of this chapter, it is

Anderson’s commentary on socialism and utopianism which are

important.

Anderson goes on to argue that Fukuyama’s argument is, at its

core, about the failure of socialism in the battle between socialism and

capitalism. In a sense, Anderson argues, the end of history can be

reduced to the end of socialism. As Anderson puts it: ‘If the end of

history has arrived, it is essentially because the socialist experience is

13
Perry Anderson, ‘The Ends of History’, pp. 240-241.
 213

over. Much of the intuitive appeal of Fukuyama’s argument comes,

indeed, from the sense that we are witnessing across what was once the

Soviet bloc a gigantic historical upheaval that for the first time in history

seems to bear no new principle within it, but rather to move as in a vast

dream where events are already familiar before they happen.’ 14 For if

there is no systemic alternative to capitalism and liberal democracy, then,

under the terms of Fukuyama’s argument, we must be at the end of

history. Anderson points out that the popular view in many circles

(including academia) is that socialism has become increasingly less

relevant. However, Anderson briefly interrogates this common view, and

finds that there may be life in the Marxist corpse yet. The challenge (and

Anderson frames it as a challenge) is for socialism to make itself, once

again, the genuinely systemic alternative to capitalism that would

disprove Fukuyama’s thesis. This is a point to which this thesis will

return when examining the relationship between cyberpunk and the ‘End

of History.’

Fredric Jameson’s landmark text Postmodernism: Or, the

Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism establishes a systematic, thorough and

magisterial understanding of the operation of postmodern culture. One of

Jameson’s many observations throughout the book is that, with the

arrival of postmodernity, our ability to understand things historically, to

place the present within historical time, has become blocked. Historicity

is denied within postmodern culture. This is, of course, a completely

10
Perry Anderson, ‘The Ends of History’, pp. 351-352.
 214

different argument to that put forward by Fukuyama. Fukuyama argues

that History (Fukuyama later uses a deliberate capital ‘H’) 15 has come to

a close; Jameson is not speaking of the historical process itself, but rather

of our ability to understand things as a part of that historical process.

Jameson draws parallels between the emergence of science fiction as the

privileged narrative form of postmodernism and the historical novel in

the early nineteenth century. In doing so, he relates the downfall of the

historical novel, claiming that ‘the historical novel… has fallen into

disrepute and infrequency, not merely because, in the postmodern age,

we can no longer tell ourselves our history in that fashion, but because

we also no longer experience it that way and, indeed, perhaps no longer

experience it at all.’ 16 This inability to imagine the present as the

continuance of a heroic past may have a corollary in an inability to see

the present as the past of an imagined future – though Jameson is more

ambivalent towards this prospect, musing that

If catastrophic “near future” visions of, say,

overpopulation, famine and anarchic violence are no
longer as effective as they were a few years ago, the
weakening of these effects and the narrative forms that
were designed to produce them is not necessarily due to
overfamiliarity and overexposure... Perhaps, however,
what is implied is an ultimate historicist breakdown in
which we can no longer imagine the future at all, under
any form – Utopian or catastrophic. Under those
circumstances, where a formerly futurological science
fiction (such as so-called cyberpunk today) turns into
mere “realism” and outright representation of the
present, the possibility that Dick offered us – an

15
He does this in order to distinguish between history seen as a series of events, and his
Hegelian definition of History as the clash of ideas. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of
History and the Last Man, p. xii.
16
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke
University Press, Durham, 1991, pp. 283-284.
 215

experience of our present as past and as history – is

slowly excluded. 17

What the dearth of historicity in postmodern culture causes,

amongst other things, Jameson argues, is a kind of ‘historicity craving,’

where, despite the inability to actually achieve historical thinking, people

still desire historicity. In postmodernism, historicity hunger pangs are

satisfied with the artefacts of historical thinking – images, writings etc.

However, these are positioned in such a manner as to provide a blank

pastiche (another famous postmodern trope). In Jameson’s words,

nostalgia art gives us the image of various generations

of the past as fashion-plate images that entertain no
determinable ideological relationship to other moments
of time: they are not the outcome of anything, nor are
they the antecedents of our present; they are simply
images. This is the sense in which I describe them as
substitutes for any genuine historical consciousness
rather than as a specific new form of the latter. 18

There is a problem, of course, for Jameson in attempting to situate

postmodernism historically in this way. Due to its own inability to

comprehend things in a historical manner, postmodernism is incredibly

resistant to such temporal categorisation. In an interview with Anders

Stephanson Jameson suggests that his project constitutes an attempt to

‘outflank’ postmodernism, and to return a sense of historicity through the

back door.

17
Fredric Jameson Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, pp. 285-
286.
18
Anders Stephanson and Fredric Jameson, ‘Regarding Postmodernism – A
Conversation with Fredric Jameson’, Social Text, 21, 1989, pp. 3-30, p. 18.
 216

AS: The historical dimension counteracts the

postmodernist immersion in the present, the
dehistoricising or nonhistorical project. In That sense it
goes outside the postmodernist paradigm.
FJ: That is essentially the rhetorical trick or solution that
I was attempting: to see whether by systematising
something which is resolutely unhistorical, one couldn’t
force a historical way of thinking at least about that. And
there are some signs that it is possible to go around it to
outflank it. 19

This could be said to be en extension of Jameson’s exegesis of the

postmodern valorisation of the synchronic over the diachronic. Jameson

notes that:

One’s occasional feeling that, for poststructuralism, all

enemies are on the left, and that the principal target always
turns out to be this or that form of historical thinking, could
conceivably lead to something other than impatience and
exasperation if we drew a rather different kind of
consequence. For it does not follow, for that tireless and
implacable search-and-destroy mission of poststructuralism
that finds traces and contaminations of the diachronic with
more precision than any previous theoretical or
philosophical technology, that it is synchronic thought that
is thereby privileged. Synchronic thought is not particularly
vindicated by the deficiencies of the diachronic; indeed, it
remains peculiarly contradictory and incoherent (the
demonstration of this is often referred to as the “critique of
structuralism”), with this difference: unlike the diachronic,
the conceptual antinomies of the synchronic are at once
obvious and unavoidable; synchronic “thought” is a
contradiction in terms, it cannot even pass itself off as
thinking, and with it the last traditional vocation of
classical philosophy vanishes.

What results then is the paradox that the diachronic

becomes coterminous with thinking itself… If
“poststructuralism,” or, as I prefer, “theoretical
discourse,” is at one with the demonstration of the
necessary incoherence and impossibility of all thinking,
then by the virtue of the very persistence of its critiques of
the diachronic, and by way of the targeting mechanism
itself, which consistently finds temporal and historical

19
Anders Stephanson and Fredric Jameson, ‘Regarding Postmodernism’, p. 30.
Emphasis in original text.
 217

conceptualities positioned at the centre of its objective the

attempt to think “history”… at length becomes identified
with the very vocation of thought itself.20

It is on the basis of this preference for synchronic “thought” that Jameson

argues that postmodernism is incapable of historicity. However, as briefly

mentioned above, this may be a slight critical inaccuracy. Postmodern

culture does have historicity of a sort – however, in common with the

sense of history one would expect from a philosophical project so

resolutely opposed to historical thinking, it is a profoundly incoherent

historicity. The theme of historicity, in the sense in which Jameson means

it, is one to which this chapter’s commentary linking Jameson’s work and

cyberpunk fictions will return.

Last of the theorists of postmodernity whose works will be used in

this chapter, Jean-François Lyotard, and his theories, remain a critical part

of our understanding of postmodern culture. In The Postmodern

Condition, and later works, Lyotard argues that Enlightenment narratives

of legitimation have failed. Indeed, this argument expands, to become an

‘incredulity toward [all] meta-narratives.’ 21 In an argument that can be at

times persuasive, Lyotard concludes that the epistemological bases of

such meta-narratives is no longer firm. As a result, the narratives

themselves no longer have the legitimation power they once had. In the

place of Enlightenment ideas of truth and the pursuit of knowledge,

20
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke
University Press, Durham, 1991, pp. 217-219.
21
Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Trans.
Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,
1984, p. xxiv.
 218

Lyotard argues, contemporary science now pursues technological advance

as an end in itself. This ‘false’ legitimation story has led to the corruption

of the purpose of scientific inquiry. 22

Without wishing to engage vwith the debates which surrounded

Lyotard’s work (as with the Fukuyama debates, one could write a tome of

intellectual history purely about these discussions), a number of problems

with Lyotard’s thesis should be pointed out. Firstly, whilst decrying the

explicatory power of meta-narratives in the postmodern age, it is

immediately apparent that Lyotard himself constructs a meta-narrative; 23

in doing so, he assists in our understanding of postmodernism. This would

seem to lead one to a slightly different conclusion than the one which

Lyotard describes: namely, that rather than drawing from the fact that

Enlightenment meta-narratives now lack explicatory and legitimatory

power the conclusion that all meta-narratives must lack such power, we

should possibly conclude that the systemic understandings developed in a

previous age will at the very least need to be revised to remain relevant in

this one. Secondly, and Lyotard’s theory has much in common with

cyberpunk fictions on this point, the role of the narrative of capitalism as a

meta-narrative in postmodern societies is glossed over in Lyotard’s work.

These points will be expanded upon in later analysis.

22
Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, pp. 45-46.
23
See, for example, Andreas Michel, ‘Differentiation vs. Disenchantment: The
Persistence of Modernity from Max Weber to Jean-François Lyotard’, German Studies
Review, 20:3, 1997, pp. 343-370, p. 343.
 219

When the critical literature about cyberpunk refers to history at all

(which is, in terms of the volume of criticism written about cyberpunk,

not often), Fredric Jameson’s name is usually not far behind. This

correlation should come as no surprise. Jameson is recognised as perhaps

the foremost commentator on postmodernism; he has also written

extensively on science fiction generally and, very rarely and briefly, on

cyberpunk in particular; and, as this chapter will go on to detail, his theory

regarding the dearth of historicity in postmodernism resonates strongly in

cyberpunk fictions. There are a few critics who devote whole articles to

this topic, usually in relation specifically to the works of William Gibson,

and more who mention historicity in passing. In addition to examining

this somewhat sparse body of criticism, the following analysis will also

conduct original critical and historical investigation. In particular, it will

be argued that the Jamesonian lack of historicity apparent in many

cyberpunk texts in fact helps us to locate cyberpunk temporally – that is to

say that, ironically, the very ahistoricity of cyberpunk situates it

historically. 24

The treatment of history and historical artefacts in cyberpunk texts

varies, of course, from author to author, but also within the oeuvre of the

same authors across time. William Gibson is a particularly good example

of this variation, and a close reading of Gibson’s cyberpunk works, with

Jameson’s theory of historicity and the postmodern in mind, offers

24
For observations about post-historical time and Gibson’s later work, Pattern
Recognition, see Veronica Hollinger, ‘Stories about the Future: From Patterns of
Expectation to Pattern Recognition’, Science Fiction Studies, 33:3, 2006, pp. 452-472,
pp. 462-463.
 220

significant analytic revelations. In Neuromancer, on the surface at least,

Gibson displays almost precisely the attitude to history and historical

artefacts which one would expect having read Jameson. Neuromancer’s

attitude towards history and historicity is summed up and conveyed

through the character Julius Deane. Established by Gibson as being more

than a century old, Deane is in this way himself a kind of historical object.

Deane is Case’s go-to-man for information: specifically, for historical

information. When Case wishes to know about the history of the

Screaming Fist commando raid into Russia, he asks Deane for the

information. Deane’s response includes the line ‘Don’t they teach you

history these days?’ 25 Clearly, this is a use of a rhetorical line, delivered

from the old to the young since time immemorial, but it could be argued

that it has a deeper meaning in this context. It is as if historical knowledge

itself is, like Deane, a semi-comical relic; something which ultimately has

no place in the (post)modern world of biz.

The meaning of Deane as a character, and its implications for

Neuromancer’s approach to history, are further complicated by the

surroundings in which Deane is placed. Specifically, Deane surrounds

himself with historical artefacts:

His [Julius Deane’s] offices were located in a warehouse behind

Ninsei, part of which seemed to have been sparsely decorated,
years before, with a random collection of European furniture, as
though Deane had once intended to use the place as his home. Neo-
Aztec bookcases gathered dust against one wall of the room where
Case waited. A pair of bulbous Disney-style table lamps perched
awkwardly on a low Kandinsky-look coffee table in scarlet-

25
William Gibson, Neuromancer, Ace Books, New York, 1984, p. 35.
 221

laquered steel. A Dali clock hung on the wall between the

bookcases, its distorted face sagging to the bare concrete floor…

… If the furniture scattered in Deane’s makeshift foyer suggested

the end of the past century, the office itself seemed to belong to its
start.

Deane’s seamless pink face regarded Case from a pool of light cast
by an ancient brass lamp with a rectangular shade of dark green
glass. The importer was securely fenced behind a vast desk of
painted steel, flanked on either side by tall, drawered cabinets
made of some sort of pale wood… The desktop was littered with
cassettes, scrolls of some yellowed printout, and various parts of
some sort of clockwork typewriter, a machine Deane never seemed
to get around to reassembling. 26

At first blush this might appear to contradict the previous paragraph’s

claim of a marginalised place for historicity in Neuromancer. However,

looking more carefully at these historical artefacts, we begin to understand

that they are precisely the sort of postmodern past(iche) which Jameson

identifies in Postmodernism. That is, they are things from the past which

actually in no way represent the past. As Jameson said in an interview

with Anders Stephanson, ‘Finally, historicity and historical depth, which

used to be called historical consciousness or the sense of the past, are

abolished. In short, objects fall into the world and become decoration

again; visual depth and systems of interpretation fade away, and

something peculiar happens to historical time.’ 27 Cut adrift from any

ideological connection to a real or imagined past, and even from each

other, they are jumbled together in an ultimately meaningless mess which

spans centuries. John R. R. Christie makes a similar observation about the

treatment of historical artefacts in Neuromancer (albeit a different set of

historical artefacts) when he observes that:

26
William Gibson, Neuromancer, pp. 12-13.
27
Anders Stephanson and Fredric Jameson, ‘Regarding Postmodernism’, p. 4. My
emphasis.
 222

As Case nears the end of his mission, he finds himself amid

the vast historical and cultural collections of the industrial
clan of Tessier-Ashpool. In these collections is a library;
but Case does not know what it is, for books are unknown to
him, as indeed are all the historical and cultural treasures
of the collection. Jumbled and juxtaposed, these artefacts of
civilisation are now only a residuum, recognisable for
readers, but lacking meaning and content for the text’s
actors. In this sense, they are torn loose from history, from
cultural memory, from depth of being, obliged by necessity
to live in the perpetual present of electronic reality. 28

Claire Sponsler, too, has observed that, ‘Tellingly, many of these objects

are seen as the detritus of civilisation, decaying remnants of an otherwise

demolished, meaningless and inaccessible past. This treatment of found

objects from the past is clearly an instance of the “past as pastiche”

typical of the postmodern sense of history so persuasively analysed by

Jameson.’ 29 The critical consensus (and indeed the analysis of this

section) concludes that the historicity of Gibson’s early texts (or the lack

thereof) makes them decidedly postmodern.

Jameson, in his interview with Anders Stephanson, briefly analyses

the way in which historical images proliferate in postmodernism, without

any real connection to history itself. The question and response are as

follows:

28
John R. R. Christie, ‘Science Fiction and the Postmodern: The Recent Fiction of
William Gibson and John Crowley’, in T. Shippey (ed.) Fictional Space: Essays on
Contemporary Science Fiction, Oxford, Humanities Press, 1991, pp. 34-58, p. 47.
29
Claire Sponsler, ‘Cyberpunk and the Dilemmas of Postmodern Narrative: The
Example of William Gibson’, Contemporary Literature, 33:4, 1992, pp. 625-644, p.
630.
 223

AS: Despite the disappearance of a sense of history, there is no

lack of historical elements in postmodern culture.

FJ: When I talked about the loss of history, I didn’t mean the
disappearance of images of history, for instance, in the case of
nostalgia film. The increasing number of films about the past are
no longer historical; they are images, simulacra and pastiches of
the past. They are effectively a way of satisfying a chemical craving
for historicity, using a product that substitutes for and blocks it.30

This is precisely the status of the historical artefacts described in the

Sprawl trilogy. They exist as a sort of cover for the fact that the books

take place in an atemporal eternal present, whose past is indistinct and

future seems unreadable. One critic, however, has raised objections to

this Jamesonian interpretation of historicity in Gibson’s work.

Amy Novak has attempted to re-frame the cyberpunk/historicity

debate by asking if ‘the proliferation of media representations, providing

us with diverse images of the past, articulate a new relationship between

the past and the present?’31 Novak argues that the postmodern pastiche

of images of the past created in cyberspace constitute, rather than a

flattened spectacle stripped of ideological reference points, a genuine

new form of historical narrative. As Novak puts it:

Neuromancer demonstrates that postmodern simulacra of the

past created by the culture of the spectacle does not simply
create a pervasive cultural amnesia, as Jameson argues, in
the inability to think historically, or, as Baudrillard claims, in
the dissolution of history. Memory is not devalued or lost
here. The ‘semiotic ghosts’ produce an alternative present
within the cyberspace matrix, reminding the present of the

30
Anders Stephanson and Fredric Jameson, ‘Regarding Postmodernism’, p. 18.
31
Amy Novak, ‘Virtual Poltergeists and Memory: The Question of Ahistoricism in
William Gibson’s Neuromancer’, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies,
6:1, 2000, pp. 55-78, p. 59.
 224

space of the past. But this alternate plane of existence does

not reside separate and apart from ‘reality.’ Instead, it
penetrates and haunts ‘reality.’…Incessantly circulating, the
‘semiotic ghosts’ of virtuality and a media culture haunt the
memory of the present and continually force it to renegotiate
the process of historical representation. 32

Novak’s approach is original, and offers considerable insights into the

workings of what this chapter has termed postmodern historicity. In

particular, Novak’s analysis supports the idea that, contra Jameson, there

is a definite sense of history at work in postmodernism. However, the

bulk of Jameson’s arguments regarding postmodern historicity still stand.

His point, one suspects, was not so much that in postmodernism we

forget the past completely (this sort of ‘cultural amnesia’ is difficult to

imagine) but rather that we forget the organising principles of history.

The events and people of history may be remembered, but in a very real

way history is dismembered – the problem of postmodern historicity lies

in its inability to organise historical happenings in a temporally

consistent fashion. It is actually possible for Novak’s ‘ghosts’ to co-exist

with Jameson’s ‘death of historicity.’ Indeed, perhaps we should not be

surprised that the dead choose to inhabit the graveyard; endlessly

haunting the present, but unable to communicate their messages of the

past to us, because we no longer possess the tools with which to interpret

them.

Whilst the remainder of the Sprawl trilogy (Count Zero and Mona

Lisa Overdrive) largely continue in this ahistorical, even anti-historical,

32
Amy Novak, ‘Virtual Poltergeists and Memory’, p. 74.
 225

fashion, the approach to historical thinking in Gibson’s work does soften

over time. In his second, ‘Bridge,’ trilogy, a markedly different attitude

towards history can be seen. This concurs with the impression given by

the critical literature about Gibson’s work that his writing moved away

from postmodernity as time went on. 33 In the Bridge trilogy, in contrast

to the Sprawl trilogy, artefacts of historical importance appear with their

contexts intact; they still have historical meaning. In the last work of the

Bridge trilogy, All Tomorrow’s Parties, this old-become-new-again take

on history surfaces particularly strongly. Through the characters of

Laney and Fontaine (and various support characters), Gibson in fact

raises two (possibly competing) meta-historical theories.

With the character of Laney, chemically altered by exposure to the

drug 5-SB, Gibson raises a holistic, teleological approach to history. This

kind of historical thinking posits that history not only has a pattern but

that it may be possible for us to discern it; that there is a master story

through which all history can be understood; that there is not just a

journey but a definite destination. Laney states that:

His compulsive study of Harwood and things Harwoodian

had led him to the recognition that history too was subject
to the nodal vision, and the version of history that Laney
came to understand there bore little or no relation to any
accepted version.

He had been taught, of course, that history, along with

geography, was dead. That history in the older sense was
an historical concept. History in the older sense was
33
For the genesis of this ongoing theme in cyberpunk criticism, see Istvan Csicsery-
Ronay, Jr., ‘Antimancer: Cybernetics and Art in Gibson’s Count Zero, Science-Fiction
Studies, 22, 1995, pp. 63-86.
 226

narrative, stories we told ourselves about where we’d come

from and what it had been like, and those narratives were
revised by each new generation, and indeed always had
been. The digital had not so much changed that as made it
too obvious to ignore. History was stored data, subject to
manipulation and interpretation.

But the “history” Laney discovered, through the quirk in

his vision induced by having been repeatedly dosed with 5-
SB, was something very different. It was that shape
comprised of every narrative, every version; it was that
shape that only he (as far as he knew) could see. 34

That Laney is convinced of the rectitude of his historical account is

undeniable; that Laney is not fully sane is, by this point in the novel, also

a sad truth. The most important part about this, for the purposes of the

present chapter, however, is not whether Gibson could be said to support

such a meta-narrative for history, but that historical thinking enters his

text.

The other kind of historical thinking which Gibson entertains in

All Tomorrow’s Parties, is a much more localised, social history, form of

historical thinking. Raised through the character Fontaine, this form of

historical knowledge is content to relate the individual stories of ordinary

lives – which, of course, is a powerful form of historical narrative.

Fontaine does this through the collection of historical artefacts. For

example:

Fontaine was crazy about old things, and sometimes, he’d

bring different pieces over, show them to Skinner.

34
William Gibson, All Tomorrow’s Parties, Berkley, New York, 2003 (first published
1999), pp. 198-199.
 227

Sometimes she’d thought he’d done that to get the old man
started, and then Skinner’s own stories would come out. He
hadn’t been much for stories, Skinner, but turning some
battered treasure of Fontaine’s in his hands, he’d talk, and
Fontaine would sit and listen, and nod sometimes, as
though Skinner’s stories confirmed some long-held
suspicion.

Made privy to Skinner’s past, Fontaine would then handle

the objects himself with a new excitement, asking
questions…

Everything, to Fontaine, had a story. Each object, each

fragment comprising the built world. A chorus of voices, the
past alive in everything, the sea upon which the present
rose and tossed. 35

The difference between the mute, decontextualised historical artefacts of

Neuromancer and Fontaine’s understanding of historical artefacts as the

bearers of context, as the containers for the stories that make up history,

could not be more pronounced. However, Fontaine’s way of looking at

history also differs strongly from Laney’s. Once again, the difference

between the Gibson of All Tomorrow’s Parties and the Gibson of

Neuromancer is obvious. In Neuromancer, historicity is a dead thing,

represented in the novel by other dead things, with the exception of

Julius Deane, who is established as a kind of anachronism, stretched out

beyond his time by medical treatments. By the time of All Tomorrow’s

Parties, however, Gibson has changed enough that not only does

historicity play a central role in his text, but he also uses the pages of his

novel to stage a debate between two differing historical theories. Neil

Easterbrook’s analysis of Laney’s position on historicity (and through

35
William Gibson, All Tomorrow’s Parties, pp. 190-191.
 228

the character of Laney, Gibson’s position) is that, understanding ‘history

as a shape, a figure of all narratives, may be the historicist position par

excellence, yet here too Gibson’s scene demonstrates a profound

ambivalence, for Laney thinks that he is surpassing the “old history” that

he has been taught, though this “old history” similarly resembles a

historicist understanding of history.’ 36 That there is significant

ambivalence in this scene is debatable. Easterbrook is correct in arguing

that Laney thinks he is surpassing one historicist understanding of

history, when he is simply replacing it with another, essentially, identical

understanding. Does this not, then, simply establish historicist

understandings of history as the unsurpassable end of a discipline? It

could easily be argued that, in order to have any real understanding of

history at all, from the history of ordinary lives to the most abstract

political and diplomatic histories, the common thread must be the ability

to place these events, large and small, into a broader historical context. In

other words (and through Laney, Gibson certainly seems to be in

agreement with this) to have any understanding of history as history,

rather than as a non-causational series of temporally disparate events, our

understanding must be historicist.

Some of the critical literature about Gibson’s work has picked up

on this change in tone from the Sprawl trilogy to the Bridge sequence. In

particular, James H. Thrall has observed the importance given to

36
Neil Easterbrook, ‘Alternate Presents: The Ambivalent Historicism of Pattern
Recognition’, Science Fiction Studies, 33:3, 2006, pp. 483-504, pp. 494-495. Note that
Easterbrook’s usage of the term historicist and the associated concept of historicity are a
little different to the way in which they are used by Jameson and in this chapter.
 229

historical artefacts in the Bridge trilogy. As Thrall puts it: ‘What has

history and some heft, it would seem, is always worth something,

especially when made into something new.’ 37 Later in the same

paragraph, Thrall observes that ‘The master of cyberspace, it would

seem, wants to suggest that his readers, too, should “like the sound of”

such an interplay between change and the concrete, with some emphasis

on the concrete.’ 38 Thrall observes that Gibson creates an apparent

dynamic tension between the high-speed perpetual present in which his

characters exist and the historicity in which the Bridge and its

community are encased. Thrall states that, through the figure of the

Bridge, ‘Gibson seems to create yet another tension…, describing and

lamenting the loss of history, acknowledging the plastic nature of all

memory while simultaneously suggesting how the importance of history

– even invented history – as the defining metaphors for a community

might be preserved.’ 39 It could be argued that the passage in which

Fontaine and Skinner interact (quoted above) implies that Gibson

believes history to be a little more ‘solid’ than a series of mutual myths.

For Fontaine, at least, it is in the intersection of solid object (artefact) and

story (narrative) that history is realised. It is the contention of this thesis

that this is ultimately the kind of history-telling (or history-making) that

is privileged in the Bridge sequence.

37
James H. Thrall, ‘Love, Loss and Utopian Community on William Gibson’s Bridge’,
Foundation, 91:3, 2004, pp. 97-115, p. 104.
38
James H. Thrall, ‘Love, Loss and Utopian Community on William Gibson’s Bridge’,
p. 104.
39
James H. Thrall, ‘Love, Loss and Utopian Community on William Gibson’s Bridge’,
pp. 105-106.
 230

A further interesting aspect of the progress of Gibson’s work

(which continues into his most recent novels, which only the bravest

critic would term cyberpunk) is his gradual progression towards a present

day setting. This seems, at first glance, to be innocuous enough. As Neil

Easterbrook reveals, in an interview on Gibson’s website, regarding his

then newly released novel Pattern Recognition, when Gibson is asked

‘Why did you decide to set this novel in the present, unlike your previous

novels?’ he responds: ‘I’ve been threatening to do it for a while. The last

three books felt more to me like “alternate presents” than imaginary

futures. Science fiction is always, really, about the period it is written in,

though most people don’t seem to understand that.’ 40 One has to wonder

whether Jameson’s comments about a ‘futurological’ cyberpunk turning

into a form of ‘realism’ have been prophetic. In other words, we must

wonder whether Gibson’s increasing tendency towards present-set

writing is indicative of a temporal blockage – precisely that deficit of

historicity which Jameson described. 41 The answer to this question

depends on perspective, one suspects. It is interesting to note that

Gibson’s cyberpunk novels seem to become more involved with history

as they increasingly approach present setting. This would seem to

indicate that, as Gibson increasingly writes the present, he becomes more

40
Neil Easterbrook, ‘Alternate Presents’, p. 485.
41
Veronica Hollinger has, in her usual perceptive manner, also observed this, stating
that ‘Gibson’s move from near-future sf in novels from Neuromancer to All
Tomorrow’s Parties to the present-tense “sf realism” of Pattern Recognition seems
inevitable – at least in the hindsight of pattern recognition. The novel freezes in the face
of the sheer impossibility of extrapolation, the sheer opacity of the future.’ Veronica
Hollinger, ‘Stories about the Future: From Patterns of Expectation to Pattern
Recognition’, Science Fiction Studies, 33:3, 2006, pp. 452-472, pp. 462-463.
 231

aware of its historical context. This seems to contradict Jameson’s

musings about the descent of science fiction into realism.

Historicity (or the lack thereof) also plays a part in the work of

other cyberpunk writers. Pat Cadigan, for example, despite differing

form the bulk of (male) cyberpunk writers in the connectedness of her

characters, in her refusal to glorify lone, ultra-masculine heroes, tends to

follow the pattern of other early cyberpunk when it comes to the sense of

history in her works. The past is either fundamentally uninteresting, or

frankly inaccessible, for characters in her novels. They exist in the kind

of eternal present in which Case and Molly find themselves in

Neuromancer; whether or not they wish to have some understanding of

the past, or to think historically, doesn’t matter. The ability to frame the

present in a historical way (historicity) is simply unavailable.

Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, on the other hand, is a novel

which is continually historically aware. Indeed, its very plot is

dependent, above all, on an understanding of the Sumerian myth of Enki

and Asherah. While the events of Snow Crash appear to take place in the

recognisable post-government, corporation dominated societies which

are also the setting for Gibson’s cyberpunk world, the difference in

Stephenson’s case is that this does not seem to necessitate them also

being post-historical. Despite starting out as a high-tech character

resembling Case in Neuromancer, Hiro Protagonist in Snow Crash must

evolve in a different direction. His computer skills are, of course,

 232

required, but he is also asked to evolve a sense of history, an

understanding that the present is a continuation of a chain of events and

ideas that began in the past and continues into the future. Most notably,

this involves his development of the understanding that the snow crash

drug/virus/meme is actually a way of reversing the linguistic

development of mankind first caused (mythologically speaking) by Enki.

In this way the past (in the form of Sumerian myth) is brought back into

the present and its relevance restated. This, it could be said, is the heart

of historicity.

This is not the only way in which historicity permeates

Stephenson’s novel, however. The personal histories of some of his

characters (and indeed their families) intertwine in a way which makes

the reader acutely aware that the present is always a moment which was

shaped by moments past; even if our ability to sense such a thing fails, it

is, in fact, always true. In particular, the story of Hiro’s father and that of

Raven’s father (the fathers, respectively, of the main male heroic

protagonist and a significant antagonist) intertwine with the stories of

their sons. The stories told by the two men of their fathers serve to

remind the reader of the links between the past and the present. Raven’s

story, of his own life and his father’s life before him, is used in the plot

of the novel to explain his almost maniacal desire to inflict destruction on

the United States of America (even though it can barely be said to exist

anymore). As Raven puts it late in the novel, ‘My father got nuked twice
 233

by you bastards.’ 42 Hiro’s personal history, as the son of a black Army

sergeant major and a Korean, is described as the cause of Hiro’s ‘general

disorientation.’ 43 Of course, the life stories of Hiro and Raven’s fathers

intersect as well – they participated in the same prisoner of war escape in

the Second World War (Raven’s father deliberately – Hiro’s father

caught up in events). The importance that Stephenson’s narrative places

on these stories is markedly different to the characterisation of, for

example, Case and Molly in Gibson’s Neuromancer. Their family pasts

are murky – an unknown, for the text places no value on such things.

These reminders of the flow between the past and the present also

exist in the writing of Bruce Sterling. Sterling is often celebrated in the

critical literature about cyberpunk as the most postmodern of cyberpunk

authors. For example, in a pioneering review piece, Istvan Csisery-Ronay

states that ‘Two of Ross’ concrete models of cyberpunk are Gibson’s

fiction and the role-playing game Cyberpunk. The first is a natural choice,

even though I believe by now it is apparent there is more postmodern c-p

[cyberpunk] to be found in Sterling and SF film than in Gibson, who more

and more seems to me to be, as an artist, a “late modernist.”’ 44 This thesis

has contended that there is reason to question this assessment of Sterling’s

work, and an examination of the role of historicity in his stories only

serves to further reinforce such questions. In particular, Sterling’s novel

Schismatrix, hailed as his most posthumanist text, seems to be, when the

42
Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, Bantam, 2008 (reissue), first published 1992, p. 448.
43
Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, p. 61.
44
Istvan Csisery-Ronay, Jr., ‘Review: Postmodern Technoculture, or the Gordian Knot
Revisited’, Science Fiction Studies, 19:3, 1992, pp. 403-411, p. 408.
 234

role of historicity is examined, perhaps one of the least postmodern and

posthumanist texts of the whole cyberpunk movement. If the absence of a

sense of history is one of the defining marks of the postmodern (as per

Jameson’s theory) then Schismatrix is a long way from being postmodern.

For one thing, the novel displays both internal and external

understandings of history. By this it is meant that the novel is able to see

events both within the logic of its own train of events and it is able to

place them within the history of the human race as a whole. Despite

occasionally viewing the past as dead (and the humans and posthumans of

its worlds as better off for that) Schismatrix never displays the inability to

manifest historical thinking that one might expect of a postmodern book.

On the other hand, there is a certain ambivalence in the attitude to

history displayed in Schismatrix. Despite its clear sense of its own

history, of the century-spanning nature of the plot, Sterling, in

Schismatrix, at times displays what can only be described as a dismissive

or even disgusted attitude towards understandings gained from

knowledge of the past. Early in the novel, for example, in a discussion

between Lindsay and Ryumin, Ryumin states of languages that:

“I speak four[languages] myself,” Ryumin said. “But then,

I don’t clutter my mind with their written forms.”
“You don’t read at all?”
“My machines can do that for me.”
“Then you’re blind to mankind’s whole cultural heritage.”
Ryumin looked surprised. “Strange talk for a Shaper.
You’re an antiquarian, eh? Want to break the interdict with
Earth, study the so-called humanities, that sort of thing?” 45

45
Bruce Sterling, ‘Schismatrix’, in Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix Plus, Berkeley, New
York, 1996, pp. 1-236, p. 20.
 235

What is of interest here is Ryumin’s casual dismissal of Lindsay’s

interest in the past of the human people as an ‘antiquarian’ obsession.

This section seems to display a “proper” postmodern disaffection for

historicity; however, the fact that Sterling locates the strange desire for

historical understanding in the (relatively) sympathetic and heroic

character of Lindsay serves to complicate the issue. Further muddying

the waters, Lindsay sometimes considers his personal history to be an

inescapable horror, as the following passage illustrates:

The attenuated blossoms of the Shaper garden mildewed and

crumbled at the touch of raw humanity. The vegetation took
strange forms as it suffered and contorted, its stems corkscrewing
in rot-dusted perversions of growth. Lindsay visited it daily, and
his very presence hastened the corruption. The place smelled of
the Zaibatsu, and his lungs ached with its nostalgic stench.

He had brought it with him. No matter how fast he moved, he

dragged behind him a fatal slipstream of the past. 46

However a sense of historicity in which the past is a horror is still one in

which that past is both understood and given a sense of importance.

One of the reasons for the postmodern inability to place the

present in the chain of historical events is the corollary inability to

imagine progress, or even significant change. Thus when Darko Suvin

says of Gibson, ‘His work does not accept the values of the black, closed

world he evokes with such skill: he hates the status quo. But his

balancing act accepts the status quo a bit too readily as inevitable and

46
Bruce Sterling, ‘Schismatrix’, p. 103.
 236

unchanging,’ 47 what he is talking about is, in part, the lack of historical

thinking. It is impossible to think historically, to understand the

historicity of a moment in time, without the understanding that it must be

in some way different from other moments in time. In the attempt to

overthrow the progress narratives of the Enlightenment, it is the

contention of this thesis that postmodernism throws the baby that is

historicity out with the bathwater of the idea of progress. Returning from

this digression to Schismatrix, it is apparent that Sterling does not do

this. Indeed, in Schismatrix the Enlightenment narrative of technological

advance being equated to progress itself is reasserted. This in and of

itself necessitates the novel’s historical thinking; for one cannot imagine

progress without thinking historically. As Schismatrix moves towards its

conclusion, Lindsay and some companions pay a clandestine visit to

Earth (long since a forbidden zone to those who live in the Outer Solar

System). In an extended section of text, Lindsay muses on the fate of the

humans left on Earth:

“Stability,” he said. “The Terrans wanted stability, that’s why

they set up the Interdict. They didn’t want technology to break
them into pieces, as it’s done to us. They blamed technology
for the disasters. The war plagues, the carbon dioxide that
melted the ice caps…. They can’t forget their dead.”
“Surely the whole world isn’t like this,” Vera said.
“It has to be. Anywhere there is variety there is the risk of
change. Change that can’t be tolerated.”

(And later)

But life moved in clades. Lindsay knew it as a fact. A

successful species always burst into a joyous wave of

47
Darko Suvin, ‘On Gibson and Cyberpunk SF’, in Larry McCaffery (ed.) Storming the
Reality Studio, Duke University Press, Durham, 1991, pp. 249-365, p. 357.
 237

daughter species, of hopeful monsters that rendered their

ancestors obsolete. Denying change meant denying life.
By this token he knew that humanity on Earth had become a
relict. 48

It is clear that Lindsay considers those humans remaining on Earth to be

a failed branch of the tree of (post)humanity. Whilst one can doubt the

excessively rationalist association of technological change and progress

which Schismatrix seems to affirm, it is easy enough to see that with no

change, there can be no progress. Change is something which can only be

seen through the lens of historical thinking – and Schismatrix abounds

with precisely this kind of thought.

It is with both thinking historically and the idea of progress in

mind that we come to the next of the theorists this chapter wishes to

relate to cyberpunk: Francis Fukuyama, whose famous ‘End of History’

thesis changed historical discussion and philosophy of history

dramatically beginning in the 1980s and continuing through the 1990s.

Fukuyama’s is perhaps the most millenarian of the theories being used in

this chapter; the idea that history has come to an end, even if that end is a

predominantly positive one, cannot avoid such overtones. Fukuyama

argues in both his original article and the book The End of History and

the Last Man that, with the conclusion of the ideological conflict

between Soviet socialism and Western democracy and capitalism, and

the collapse of the Soviet Union, liberal democracy and capitalism have

been left without any serious, globally viable competitors as an

48
Bruce Sterling, ‘Schismatrix’, pp. 222-226.
 238

economic/political system. 49 The triumph of capital is a theme which

also runs throughout generic cyberpunk, though the worlds of cyberpunk

novels are hardly the moderately successful ones which Fukuyama

imagines for the future after the end of history. What is really of interest,

however, is the inability of cyberpunk writers to see beyond capitalism to

any other future economic system. 50 They certainly hold this cognitive

impasse in common with Fukuyama.

What marks a difference between Fukuyama and a broad swathe

of cyberpunk is the fate of liberal democracy. Fukuyama holds that

liberal democracy is the political system of the capitalist world; that, in

other words, liberal democracy and capitalism not only can coexist but to

some extend predetermine each other. Cyberpunk literature, on the other

hand, abounds with the presence of capital, but very rarely mentions the

topic of governance, and, when it does, it is usually in the past tense.

Nation-state governments, in cyberpunk fictions, are usually a thing of

the past, done away with by the forces of capital. This thesis contends

that, ultimately, the cyberpunk view is more realistic than Fukuyama’s;

in a world where there is no systemic resistance to the dominance of

capital, eventually even governments will fall before it.

This seems particularly to be the view of William Gibson. His

two cyberpunk trilogies (the so-called ‘Sprawl’ and ‘Bridge’ sequences)

49
See, for example, Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’, p. 12.
50
Richard K. Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels may be an exception, but Morgan is a
relatively recent addition to the cyberpunk spectrum – one might even be tempted to
term him ‘post-cyberpunk’ were the term not so thoroughly ugly.
 239

feature worlds in which corporate greed rules. Governments largely seem

to have collapsed or fragmented (the USA in the Bridge sequence seems

the most obvious example of this). Nothing, in these novels, is allowed to

stand in the path of capitalism and technological advance. It is apparent

that, in the context of the deregulation politics of the 1980s (Reagan and

Thatcher in the USA and the UK, respectively, whilst here in Australia

the Hawke Labor government pursued similar deregulatory schemes)

capital-rule penetrated into the cyberpunk imaginary. Regulation is bad

for business, the theory went – and in cyberpunk, this seems to have been

extended to its logical extreme: regulators are bad for business. It could

be argued, and it seems Gibson takes this tack, that the only way to have

a truly free market is to get rid of all the institutions which might stand in

the way of the market – including institutions of governance. Whether

one accepts that this is a good thing or not is not necessarily the point.

The point made by Perry Anderson about Fukuyama’s thesis is of use

here as well; it need not be a utopia, or even a pleasant place, to offer a

realistic view of an ‘end of history’ future. Gibson’s world has in

common with Fukuyama that it sees no economic alternative to

capitalism; the difference is that where Fukuyama sees capitalism and

liberal democracy as mutually compatible and even supportive, Gibson’s

vision proclaims them to be, ultimately, enemies, and even predicts a

victor. The same is true of the world of Stephenson’s Snow Crash. Most

global governments are referred to in the past tense, with the possible

exception of China. The USA seems to have collapsed and fragmented

under the weight of its own hubris – in fact, the Government of the
 240

United States of America has been reduced to the ‘largest, and yet the

least efficient, producer of computer software in the world.’ 51 Set

(physically, at least) almost entirely within the bounds of what is

presently the USA, Snow Crash portrays a world where the only

effective form of governance is provided by corporations. Policing seems

to be a largely privatised matter; the internal policing of the ‘burbclaves’

(suburban enclaves, usually owned and controlled by one of the

corporations) seems to be entirely so. There is no effective form of

democracy.

If Gibson and Stephenson give us a world after the end of history

(the cyberpunk end, rather than the Fukuyaman one) then Cadigan differs

in that she presents us with a world in the process of political collapse.

The same forces seem to be at work in Cadigan’s novels as in Gibson’s

or Stephenson’s. The rampant corporate greed in Synners, for example,

and the unethical behaviour of the corporations portrayed in the novel,

mirror the behaviour of corporate players in Gibson’s novels. However,

in Cadigan’s novels it is obvious the state still exists, to a degree which it

clearly does not in Gibson or Stephenson’s work. In Synners, Gina is at

one point remanded to appear before a court – and no matter how

overworked that court appears to be, this is clear evidence of the kind of

state-based, centralised justice system which is clearly absent from

Neuromancer or Snow Crash. Even more obviously, the protagonist from

Tea from an Empty Cup and Dervish is Digital is a policewoman – and a

51
Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, p. 437.
 241

state police officer, rather than a rent-a-cop, or private security guard.

Despite the clear presence of nation-states and their apparati in her texts,

Cadigan (with the possible exception of Synners) seems to hold out little

more hope than Gibson for the future of the nation state – her

governments are continually outmanoeuvred by their corporate

opposition and seem to survive by luck as much as anything else. It is on

this basis that Pat Cadigan’s worlds can be described as worlds on the

slide towards the cyberpunk end of history, rather than, as in Gibson’s

Sprawl Trilogy or Stephenson’s Snow Crash, books about events taking

place after the final end of history.

In Bruce Sterling, cyberpunk has an author who pushes out the

other side of the end of history. In Schismatrix, one feels that the author

had the idea that history was over – but didn’t really want that to be the

case. In order to re-start history, therefore, Sterling takes the huge step of

removing his dramatis personae to outer space. This is relatively odd in

a cyberpunk text, most of which are resolutely confined to earth-orbit

activities. This has a couple of advantages for Sterling in re-starting the

engine of history. It enables him the re-write Enlightenment narratives of

colonisation, expansion and heroism in the tabula rasa of the outer Solar

System. It also allows him (with the narrative trick of an interdict

between Earth and Space) to cut off the moribund body of Earth history.

The combination of these two effects – the removal of the dead heart of

human history and the opening up of a new space in which history can be

written – enables Sterling to overcome posthistory, and to begin the

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historical process over again, in a new sphere. In keeping with the theme

of resurrection of older science fiction ideas in Sterling’s work, the idea

of a moribund Earth, and a vibrant external galactic/solar/colonial culture

is far from new in the History of science fiction. Novels of this type can

be traced back a considerable way in science fiction. 52 The

representation of the colonial renewal process in space is to some degree

an apologetic for the excesses of white colonialism; it also can be seen as

a representation of post-colonial hatred for the stale regimes and culture

of Europe. Schismatrix continues in the vein of many of these novels,

insisting that to progress (white?) humanity must transcend its

boundaries, physical and technological, and conquer new territories.

History is, of course a narrative (although whether that means it is

subject to the same kinds of analysis as fictional narrative is another

debate) and it is with narratives that the last theorist whose work will be

used in this chapter concerned himself. Jean-François Lyotard wrote The

Postmodern Condition shortly before cyberpunk began to emerge as a

genre of science fiction. In The Postmodern Condition Lyotard posits the

theory that all the explanatory and legitimatory grand narratives of the

Enlightenment either have broken down or are breaking down.

Enlightenment ideas such as truth/knowledge (epistemology),

tolerance/justice (law) and especially Marxism, with their pretence

52
See, for analysis of examples of this literature, Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint, The
Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction, Routledge, Abingdon, 2011, pp. 71-73.
Roger Luckhurst observes that interplanetary travel represents ‘the vehicle of
transcendent possibility’ in the work of Arthur C. Clarke. The corollary of this is that
the Earth itself comes to represent stagnation – precisely the situation in Sterling’s
Schismatrix. See Roger Luckhurst, Science Fiction, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2005, pp.
134-135.
 243

towards total explication, have failed, and in postmodernism have been

discarded. Particularly of interest to this chapter is the role which capital

plays in Lyotard’s theories. For Lyotard, the collapse of the

Enlightenment narratives of legitimation of science (the pursuit of

knowledge for its own ends) enables the corruption of science in the

pursuit of capital accumulation (the pursuit of technology to further

monetary profit). Andreas Michel associates Lyotard’s views on

technoscience with the narrative of disenchantment stemming from

Horkheimer and Adorno. As Michel puts it:

In unison with Horkheimer/Adorno’s view of the purely

instrumental character of science and technology in
modernity, Lyotard claims that, with the onset of
technoscience, science’s former preoccupation with truth has
turned into cohabitation with and therefore justification of
power – which is at the same time its only legitimation. At
fault is the criterion, or language game, of efficiency whose
sole purpose consists in output maximisation. Disconnected
from pursuits of truth and justice (ends), the goal of output
maximisation is a cynical one because technoscience, as an
end in itself, now services nothing but the needs of its own
apparatus. Thus, Western society has replaced the loss of
legitimation with practices of false, de facto legitimation in
the guise of technological progress. 53

Lyotard is particularly concerned, argues Michel, with the rationalisation

of the knowledge process. By this he means that Lyotard feels that

knowledge is increasingly not valued as an end in itself – it instead has

been twisted to serve the purposes of instrumental rationality. 54

53
Andreas Michel, ‘Differentiation vs. Disenchantment’, p. 357.
54
See Andreas Michel, ‘Differentiation vs. Disenchantment’, pp. 358-359, for Michel’s
argument and supplementary quotes from Lyotard. For an argument against the
Lyotardian position, and in favour of continuing the processes of modernity and
rationalisation, see Harry F. Dahms, ‘Democracy and the Post-Enlightenment: Lyotard
 244

In general terms, cyberpunk fiction seems in accord with Lyotard

on this front. There would be nothing so incongruous as the classic

picture of the lab-coated boffin pursuing his/her arcane knowledge,

inserted into the fast-paced, high-tech cut and thrust of most novels in the

cyberpunk genre. In cyberpunk, on the contrary, technology is pursued

both as an end in itself and, frequently, as a pathway to the accumulation

of capital. The idea of ‘pure’ research in a cyberpunk setting is, frankly,

laughable. The black clinics of Chiba City are the archetype for research

in the cyberpunk world. They conduct unethical (and incredibly

expensive) experimentation on their subjects in the hope of striking the

motherlode – the next big medical patent. Similarly, in Pat Cadigan’s

Synners, ethical concerns about the new technology being developed

throughout the novel are usually swept away by the massive potential for

profit the new implants entail. This is the model of science in cyberpunk

– research always conducted towards commercialisation, towards profit.

In this way, cyberpunk fictions seem to concur with Lyotard’s

assessment of the failure of Enlightenment legitimation stories for

science (the grand narrative of the pursuit of knowledge as an end in

itself).

However, this thesis contends that Lyotard, in The Postmodern

Condition and later works, greatly underestimates the role of capital as a

legitimation narrative, and indeed as the last grand narrative of the

and Habermas Reappraised’, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 5:3,
1992, pp. 473-509.
 245

Enlightenment left untouched by postmodernism. Profit, as we can see in

economics lecture theatres everywhere, is a legitimation narrative all on

its own. In cyberpunk it is capital, through the guise of growth and/or

profit, which has stepped in to fill the blanks left in scientific research by

the failure of previous legitimation narratives. The results of this are dire.

In our contemporary world, there are many who make the claim that the

market can and will solve all ills – who attribute the same miraculous

power to the invisible hand that Adam Smith did centuries ago. As far as

cyberpunk is concerned, the evidence is against this. In cyberpunk

novels, the authors frequently imagine a future in which all regulatory

environments have failed: either the regulators have disappeared, or they

are simply too slow to keep pace with the changes engendered by

technology. Without the restraint provided by regulation (which, whether

the grand narrative of justice is dead or not can continue to function)

capital is free to pursue its own ends. These ends, as imagined in

cyberpunk novels, have nothing to do with truth, justice, or fairness.

Epistemology and ethics are closed books, and quite possibly buried

books, in the arch-capitalist worlds portrayed in cyberpunk fictions. In

their place is an exploitative environment where profit is the only

motivating factor in people’s lives. The imagined worlds of cyberpunk

are certainly exciting – but one imagines that they would be quite poor

places to live. The overarching role played by capital in their societies is

one of the reasons for this. If Lyotard is correct in stating that the meta-

narratives of the Enlightenment have failed (and this thesis questions that

he is) then he surely underestimates the impact of capital rushing in to

 246

fill the gap. In cyberpunk fictions, we see Lyotard’s vacuum of

legitimation filled by a tide of capitalist greed – and the worlds presented

are bleak, indeed. Still, there are significant ways in which Lyotard’s

discussion of the death of grand narratives bears upon cyberpunk

fictions.

All three theorists discussed in this chapter share a certain sense

of ending, a millenarianism which they have in common with cyberpunk

fictions. This is deferred in the work of Jameson – whereas Fukuyama

and Lyotard argue that certain things have actually come to an end

(History and meta-narratives respectively), Jameson merely argues that

our ability to think in a certain manner has become blocked. Nonetheless,

all three accounts have significant resonances in cyberpunk fictions.

Cyberpunk, when placed in its historical context, acts very much like an

intellectual and cultural barometer. Like its historiographical

counterparts, cyberpunk is obsessed with a sense of ending without

apocalypse, a sort of drawn-out barrenness at the end of historical time.

This intellectual tendency, so readily identifiable, allows for the

historical contextualisation of cyberpunk. Its inverted millenarianism,

and indeed its ahistoricity, allow us, at last, to historicise cyberpunk. It

remains, as do all fictions, a product of its times.

 247

Conclusion.

Throughout its length, this thesis has borne witness to the depth and

diversity of cyberpunk criticism. The critical literature which forms the basis of

this intellectual history is neither monolithic nor unitary; instead it speaks with

many voices, from many different perspectives. This is to be expected, given the

multiplicitous backgrounds and interests of the many critics writing about

cyberpunk. Despite this diversity, however, certain key intellectual threads may

be identified in the overall progress of cyberpunk criticism, and this thesis has

identified and examined those threads. It has related them back to broader

movements in philosophy and intellectual culture, and in doing so explained why

cyberpunk criticism is the way it is. No critical ‘school’ (for want of a better

term) is created ex nihilo; cyberpunk criticism, as an intellectual trend, is no

different to any other in this respect. This dissertation has contended that

cyberpunk criticism has emerged primarily from a postmodern and posthumanist

intellectual milieu, and that at times a blind adherence to the philosophical

project of posthumanism, or the cultural legacy of postmodernism, has led to

critical inaccuracies and infelicities.

The first substantive chapter of this dissertation, ‘“Posthumanism With a

Vengeance”: Cyberpunk and Posthumanist Literary Criticism’, examined the

links between posthumanist philosophy and cyberpunk criticism. It is quickly

recognisable that cyberpunk burst onto the literary field at a time in which post-

and anti-humanist sentiment was particularly strong in the Western academic

sphere. It was also apparent, at the time, that cyberpunk was different to much
 248

preceding science fiction. Certainly, it contained much less of the imperial

certainty of Golden Age science fiction. It also lacked the utopian instincts of the

pastoral science fictions of the ‘70s. Here, proclaimed posthumanist critics, was

the dirty new science fiction for the dirty new age of posthumanism. Gone, the

unitary self, the untainted body, and the unchallenged empire of reason.

Welcome in the new sense of fractured being, body modification, and the assault

on instrumental rationality. ‘“Posthumanism With A Vengeance”’ as a chapter

delved into the critical literature which identified cyberpunk with posthumanism,

and quickly found that, despite surface similarities, cyberpunk is nowhere near as

posthumanist as many critics would have liked. Instead, this chapter concluded

that, despite a surface affiliation with posthumanism, the philosophical roots of

cyberpunk fictions lie in the humanist tradition; even in models of humanism

which many contemporary humanists find questionable.

The next chapter, ‘“But It Ain’t No Way Human”: Cyberpunk and

Theories of the Posthuman’ examined an idea which is frequently very closely

linked to posthumanism – the posthuman. It found that the posthuman, while

potentially a very useful interpretive category, was confused as an idea.

Following the enlightening work of N. Katherine Hayles this dissertation insisted

that a division be drawn in ideas of the posthuman, between the ‘cybernetic’

posthuman and its more ‘philosophical’ counterpart. Having noted that this

division ought to be drawn, it quickly became apparent that in cyberpunk

criticism it largely had not been. As a result, evidence of the cybernetic

posthuman (which abounds in cyberpunk fictions) was largely being taken, in the

critical literature, as evidence of support by the genre of the philosophical

 249

posthuman. Again drawing upon Hayles’ work as a critical resource, this thesis

suggested that not only was this not necessarily the case, but that the presence of

the cybernetic posthuman might also preclude the presence of the philosophical

posthuman (which has strong links to posthumanist philosophy) and may instead

entail a model of self which even many humanists find troubling. This chapter

concluded that, despite the great critical potential entailed within theories of the

posthuman, and their relationship to cyberpunk, the failure to adequately

elaborate precisely what the posthuman actually is often makes the resulting

critiques suspect.

Chapter Four, ‘Cyberpunk Spatiality: The “Other” Spaces of Cyberpunk’,

examined two kinds of space in cyberpunk which are discussed in some depth in

the critical literature: cyberspace, the critical novum of cyberpunk; and the idea

of interstitial spaces, which William Gibson in particular holds close to his heart.

Despite the significant volume of discussion of cyberspace as a construct, this

chapter concluded that almost all of the analysis which has been done on

cyberpunk’s fictional cyberspaces is seriously flawed. It has often been

concluded that the presence of cyberspace in cyberpunk fictions indicates that

they maintain a dualist model of the self; with respect, this is demonstrably

untrue. Whilst cyberspace, in the manner in which it is usually put in cyberpunk,

may be indicative of a version of materialism which many would find

unattractive, it at no point seriously raises the idea that mind is contained in or

composed of a substance which is fundamentally different to that which

composes everything else. Similarly, those who hail cyberpunk’s cyberspaces as

the confirmation of Jean Baudrillard’s theories of the hyper-real have a tendency

 250

to leave massive questions unanswered in their quest to support the master’s

work. This chapter made the case that, in Baudrillard’s work as well as those

who deploy his ideas on their criticisms, fundamental mistakes have been made,

not least the deployment of the idea that the virtual (cyberspatial) environment is

in some way ‘unreal’. If the alternative case is put, that cyberspace be treated as a

real virtuality, rather than a fake, ‘unreal’, reality, then Baudrillardian

interpretations of cyberspace founder. This chapter argued that this is precisely

the interpretation of cyberpunk’s cyberspaces which we should consider; and that

we ought to be very dubious about Baudrillardian apocalypticism. In a similar

vein, this chapter examined the intellectual history of interstitial spaces. Despite

the tendency of both cyberpunk fiction and criticism to valorise the interstitial,

this chapter found significant reasons to doubt that the interstitial can play the

role that both authors and critics desire of it.

It was the contention of the next chapter, ‘Men, Women and Machines:

Cyberpunk and Feminist Criticism’, that feminist discussions of cyberpunk

proved to be the most fruitful terrain of cyberpunk criticism. This was not mere

happenstance; it was due to the fact that feminist critics displayed less of a

tendency to uncritically accept both cyberpunk self-promotion and the

enthusiasm of other academics, and instead manifested more of a tendency to

engage in debates regarding the status of cyberpunk. One thing which feminist

critics did, and do, much better than critics of any other persuasion is continually

examine and interrogate the role of the body in cyberpunk fictions. Whether it is

through the lens of Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory, or via a more general notion

of embodiment, feminist critiques of cyberpunk literature often powerfully

 251

reminded the critical community of the danger of disembodying rhetorics. It was

the contention of this chapter that, primarily through the analysis of the body

politics of cyberpunk, feminist critics made contributions to cyberpunk critique

without which an enlightening critical discussion would have foundered, or

perhaps not even have begun, given the import of some early feminist critical

contributions.

In the final, and most historically minded, chapter this thesis examined

themes of history, historicity and cyberpunk fiction and criticism. In particular,

‘A Future Without a Past: History, Historicity and Cyberpunk’ examined three

historical theories in relation to cyberpunk: firstly, Fredric Jameson’s proposition

that postmodern culture suffers from a deficit of historicity, an inability to place

events in historical time; secondly, Francis Fukuyama’s famous ‘End of History’

thesis; and finally Jean-François Lyotard’s ideas regarding the death of

Enlightenment grand narratives under postmodernism. Whilst the direct impact

of any of these ideas on cyberpunk criticism (or cyberpunk fictions) is

questionable, raising them was never intended to propose such direct links. They

were instead raised as models of academic thought contemporaneous to the

production of much cyberpunk fiction and criticism. The examination of the

critical literature in the light of these theories was thus intended to elucidate a

certain intellectual milieu. This chapter identified that milieu as a certain

millenarianism, a sense of ending, which is present in the historical theories,

cyberpunk fictions and cyberpunk criticism. It proposed that it is precisely these

 252

qualities which allow us to locate cyberpunk and its critical discussions in

historical time and historiographical context.

Overall, then, this dissertation has been conceptualised as a meta-

critique. Its intention was to examine the intellectual history of cyberpunk

criticism, to locate and examine key ideas, to place cyberpunk criticism

historically, and to illuminate critical successes and failures. In the process of

doing so it has, perforce, been called upon to examine some of the key

intellectual threads of the last twenty-five years. The rise of postmodernism and

posthumanism as cultural and philosophical movements has, in significant part,

been contemporaneous with the rise of cyberpunk as a genre, and subsequently

with cyberpunk criticism. The interrogation of posthumanism has therefore been

a constant theme throughout this thesis; it could even be said that it was the

constant theme. This thesis has often found cause to celebrate the success of

cyberpunk critique. It has found that novel and significant interpretive

contributions have been made by many academics, and that the vibrant

community of discourse about cyberpunk has generated a depth of critical

opinion which is both fascinating and, often, praiseworthy. However, it has also

found that cyberpunk criticism is a discourse which has become bound within

certain intellectual traditions - those of postmodernism and posthumanism,

respectively. It has concluded that, due to these limits in the disciplinary

discourse, cyberpunk criticism frequently displays an intellectual myopia

concerning alternative methods of interpretation. An unwillingness on the part of

the majority of critics to engage in any real way with the intellectual resources

provided by the Enlightenment (be it humanism, Marxism, or modernist critical

 253

paradigms) has caused cyberpunk discourse to miss key opportunities to broaden

our understanding of the genre literature. This thesis has not only sought to

observe these lacunae in the critical literature, but where possible it has also

attempted to begin the process of filling these interpretive voids. Cyberpunk is

too important to be left solely to critics of the posthumanist persuasion, however

valuable their critical insights have proven.

 254

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