Wetware Fiction: Cyberpunk and the Ideologies of Posthuman Bodies.
This paper explores the ideologies implicit in the representation of posthuman bodies in William Gibson's cyberpunk fiction. It first outlines a taxonomy of posthuman bodies. It then isolates four major forms of the posthuman in Gibson: the laboring body, the repressed body, the disappearing body an...
| Publicado en: | ICFAI Journal of English Studies Vol. 3; no. 2; pp. 30 - 41 |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Literary Criticism |
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IUP Publications
Jun2008
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=32507501&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 32507501 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 2WQ1 jtl: ICFAI Journal of English Studies maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jun2008 vid: 3 iid: 2 pid: 31374 pub: IUP Publications artinfo: ui: 32507501 ppf: 30 ppct: 11 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 236KB tig: atl: Wetware Fiction: Cyberpunk and the Ideologies of Posthuman Bodies. aug: au: Nayar, Pramod K. affil: Lecturer in English, University of Hyderabad, India su: Cyberpunk culture Ideology Gibson, William, 1948- Fiction Counterculture sug: subj: Cyberpunk culture Ideology Gibson, William, 1948- Fiction Counterculture ab: This paper explores the ideologies implicit in the representation of posthuman bodies in William Gibson's cyberpunk fiction. It first outlines a taxonomy of posthuman bodies. It then isolates four major forms of the posthuman in Gibson: the laboring body, the repressed body, the disappearing body and the marked body. The laboring body is mostly gendered, and tends to project the work of the body. However, cyberpunk sees bodies as subservient to the capitalist cause, and hence, represent them as laboring bodies, whether male or female. The repressed body is one where the 'original' tends to be subsumed under technology, and is placed under the control of devices and software. The disappearing body is one whose 'original' form is altered through replacements and additions. Finally, the marked body links the human form to consumer culture with acquisitions of prosthesis and the desirable appearances. After this taxonomy, the essay moves on to discuss the politics of posthuman bodies in three realms: families, aging and citizenship. It explores the implications of 'cyborg families', where traditional notions of a family are overturned through technological alterations. Cyberpunk does not offer anything other than expensive technology as a solution to aging--as this essay notes in its discussion of the ideologies of aging in the posthuman age. Finally, it addresses the question of citizenship, and the changing ideas of the individual and community in the age of cyborgs, as they alter the landscape of politics itself. It thus, calls into question several of the hagiographic assumptions made about the advent of the new technologies. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Literary Criticism src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of ICFAI Journal of English Studies is the property of IUP Publications and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: ICFAI Journal of English Studies holder: IUP Publications dt: @attributes: year: 2008 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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