An Interpretation Of Posthuman Spaces In Neuromancer

William Gibson is a pioneer of cyberpunk science fiction.His famous work Neuromancer,which won three authoritative awards for science fiction,namely the Nebula Award,the Hugo Award and the Philip K.Dick Award,and thus established his literary position,is considered to be the pioneering work of cyberpunk genre.In this novel,Gibson sets the background of the story in the near future and focuses his attention on the effects caused by collision and fusion of high-tech and low-life through unique spatial description,thus presenting readers with the survival landscape of posthumans in the future society.By applying the spatial theories of Henry Lefebvre and Michel Foucault to analysis of the urban space,body space and electronic space in this novel,this thesis makes an exploration of the living conditions and mental states of the posthumans in these three spaces so as to reveal the posthuman social landscape.Chapter one analyzes the urban space,pointing out that the living conditions in this space represented by the Japanese Chiba City is deteriorating with ecocide,and that the natural is replaced by the artificial.In order to adapt to the deteriorating external environment,human beings,through melding their bodies with machines,transform into cyborgs,thus evolving into posthumans.These posthuman beings not only suffer fromthe affliction brought about by the social stress and the deterioration of the environment,but also have to endure the isolation and loneliness resulting from the collapse of social relations and their obsession with consumption of images.Chapter two analyzes the posthuman body space,pointing out the identity changes caused by the transformed body and inner anxiety brought in by the breaking of the body space.Through the fusion of body and machine,almost all of the characters in the novel like Case,Molly and so forth turns into cyborgs,blurring the boundary between man and machine and changing the traditional concept of human.The cyborgs' contempt for body forces them to remould themselves,which makes their identity variable and malleable.Moreover,they treat their bodies as shackles and desire to pursue a living state of separation of mind from body.All of these will disrupts the rhythms of body,leading to identity crisis and inner anxiety.Chapter three analyzes the electronic space represented by cyberspace,which compensates for the deteriorating physical space with its infinity,complexity,orderliness and bright colors.As a heterogeneous space,cyberspace attracts a large number of cyber cowboys like Case and becomes a place for them to quest for freedom,escape from the stress of daily life as well as the deteriorating external environment.But the cyberspace is controlled by the artificial intelligences Wintermuter andNeuromancer,who use data and information to keep abreast of the posthumans.The two AIs' final combination makes the entire electronic space a Panopticon,putting posthumans under control and surveillance.Urban space,body space and electronic space together constitute the posthuman social landscape in the novel.Through the description of these three spaces,Gibson presents the reader with a decadent,corruptive and depressive posthuman social apocalyptic scenario.On the one hand,posthuamans rely on technology to survive,but on the other hand they have to endure the pains brought by technology.By describing such a landscape,the author conveys his thinking about the relationship between technology and life,identity and cognition,which will bring introspection to the contemporary society with rapid and radical development of science and technology.