The Souls of Cyberfolk: Posthumanism as Vernacular Theory

Abstract

"Thomas Foster traces the transformation of cyberpunk from a literary movement into a multimedia cultural phenomenon. He examines how cyberpunk defined a framework for thinking about the cultural implications of new technologies - a framework flexible enough to incorporate issues of gender, queer sexualities, and ethnic and racial differences as well as developments in nationalist models of citizenship and global economic flows. Beginning with William Gibson's paradigmatic text Neuromancer, and continuing through the works of Maureen McHugh, Melissa Scott, Neal Stephenson, Greg Egan, and Ken MacLeod, Foster measures cyberpunk's reach into social and philosophical movements, commercial art, comic books, film, and music video."--Provided by publisher. Cyberpunk's posthuman afterlife -- The legacies of cyberpunk fiction : new cultural formations and the emergence of the posthuman -- Meat puppets or robopaths : the question of (dis)embodiment in neuromancer -- The sex appeal of the inorganic : posthuman narratives and constructions of desire -- Trapped by the body : telepresence technologies and transgendered performance -- The souls of cyberfolk : performativity, virtual embodiment, and racial histories -- Replaying the L.A. riots : cyborg narratives and national traumas -- Franchise nationalisms : globalization, consumer culture, and new ethnicities -- The antinomies of posthuman thought.