Gender resistance: interrogating the ‘punk’ in cyberpunk

• In this paper, I examine two cyberpunk texts to assess whether their apparentresistance to mainstream society includes resistance to gender stereotypes.Writing from a feminist perspective, I suggest that much of the disruptivepotential of this genre is derived from its integration of ‘punk’ as a discourseor practice of resistance to social ‘norms’. I focus on Candas Jane Dorsey’sshort story ‘(Learning About) Machine Sex’ and Neal Stephenson’s novelSnow Crash. I have deliberately chosen texts whose relationship with firstwavecyberpunk is complicated either by an explicitly feminist standpoint(Dorsey) or a generational distance (Stephenson), in order to assess whetherthese authors avoid or succumb to the same critiques levelled at earlycyberpunk about gender representation. I am concerned with who and whatthese texts are resisting, and how this resistance is performed. This line ofenquiry, however, also demands a closer examination of the positiveconnotations attached to ‘resistance’ in cyberpunk, and, consequently, to askwhose interests are not represented. To do this, I use the disruptiveassociations of ‘punk’ as a tool, looking not only at particular themes ofresistance within the text, but also how the authors’ innovative stylisticmanoeuvres resist genre conventions.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Tvärvetenskapliga studier inom samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Gender

Cyberpunk

Dorsey

Stephenson

Technology

Punk

INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH AREAS

TVÄRVETENSKAPLIGA FORSKNINGSOMRÅDEN

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kap (subject category)