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ERIC Number: EJ749623
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007
Pages: 10
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0270-4676
EISSN: N/A
The Poetics of "Pattern Recognition": William Gibson's Shifting Technological Subject
Wetmore, Alex
Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, v27 n1 p71-80 2007
William Gibson's 1984 cyberpunk novel "Neuromancer" continues to be a touchstone in cultural representations of the impact of new information and communication technologies on the self. As critics have noted, the posthumanist, capital-driven, urban landscape of "Neuromancer" resembles a Foucaultian vision of a panoptically engineered social space in which no activity (even unofficial and illegal activity) eludes the disciplinary gaze of power. On the other hand, William Gibson's latest novel, "Pattern Recognition," marks an important ideological shift from "Neuromancer." Though the novel retains a deep ambivalence toward new technologies' potential impact on the self, "Pattern Recognition" nevertheless locates a new source for hope and agency in embodied everyday experience. This article maintains that the change can best be understood as a complex transition from the worldview of Michel Foucault to that of Michel de Certeau. (Contains 3 endnotes.)
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: http://sagepub.com
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion Papers; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A