Labour in Cyberpunk: On the Frictions of the Virtual Frontier

In years when a pervasive rhetoric was deterministically hailing the advent of “friction-free capitalism” thanks to computer technology, by definition associated with notions of complete malleability, updating to Post-Fordist times the traditional imagery of the Frontier, in North America some crucial cyberpunk science fiction went against the grain. In William Gibson’s works, beginning with the ground-breaking Neuromancer (1984), a main focus is on the characters’ role as labor-force, and on their strategies for gaining a degree of autonomy and self-determination against the forces of alienation. Connected by Gibson (an author whose Appalachian origins should not be downplayed) with earlier generations of workers and working-class cultures, their strategies are about survival and endurance. At the same time, in their struggle as subaltern subjects, they often appear endowed with a standpoint conducive to a better understanding of the power roles at play in the new dispensation. In later years, in dialogue with Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory, women’s and feminist cyberpunk will further elaborate on the centrality of labor in cyberspace, from Pat Cadigan’s Synners (1991) to works by Laura J. Mixon, Melissa Scott, and others. In their attempt to reclaim a place for embodiment as a site of resistance, these works (associated by Tom Moylan and other critics with a “critical” renewal of dystopian fiction) open up spaces of utopian hope.