Reality Or Illusion: Criticism Of Postmodern Cultural Representation In William Gibson’s Cyberpunk Science Fictions

William Gibson is the founder of school and a representative of American science fiction.His cyberpunk works combine the concepts of “cybernetics” and “punk”,and create an“illusory” future under the background of “real” capital competition,scientific proliferation,cultural hybridity and spiritual emptiness in the United States at the end of the 20 th century.This thesis takes Gibson’s Neuromancer and Burning Chrome as the research object,combined with Stuart Hall’s cultural representation theory,analyzes the representation characteristics and function of the text as a language symbol in these two works,so as to explore the relationship between Gibson’s works and reality and his implied critical thought.After paying attention to the text,this thesis finds that Gibson’s works have targeted representation techniques from the three themes of technological ethics,dystopian society and punk rebellion.In order to express the sense of technology in the cyberworld,Gibson uses a lot of obscure technical terms,and arranges the words as external information in the form of computer code or neon lights,that realize the role of code representation in Hall’s theory.When using decoding theory to interpret the meaning to the audience,this theme corresponds to the publicity of capital interests and the guidance of people’s ideas by American public opinion in the middle and late 20 th century.The two-way effect is that Gibson’s text reflects and criticizes the “real” world,and reality limits his “illusory”.This thesis uses Hall’s cultural representation theory,studies the critical thought embodied in Gibson’s cyberpunk works by focusing on his three themes.Combining the representation techniques in the text with the real world,this thesis aims to analyze the influence of the social and cultural context constructed by the works on the audience,and the cultural representation characteristics of language for the reproduction of the reality,and then demonstrates Gibson’s criticism of postmodern culture through literary imagination,so as to provide a new research perspective for cyberpunk literary school.