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Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Vol. 27, No. 1, 71-80 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0270467606295974

The Poetics of Pattern Recognition: William Gibson's Shifting Technological Subject

Alex Wetmore

Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

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.

Key Words: William Gibson • cyberpunk • posthumanism • Michel de Certeau • urban space • science fiction


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