Myerson, Sasha Rosalind (2022) The neon ferris wheel: collective subjects and communities in second wave feminist cyberpunk. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.
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Abstract
This thesis examines the different subjectivities and communities imagined by second wave feminist cyberpunk. It argues that through feminist cyberpunk can be traced a vision of a queer, multiple and collective subject that is capable of entering into community with a diverse range of human and non-human others. In this sense, subjects and communities in feminist cyberpunk operate in a similar manner to Deleuze and Guttari’s rhizome. This thesis reads the work of cyberpunk writers outside of the canon, including Janine Ellen Young, Laura Mixon, Amy Thompson and Emma Bull. Like Donna Haraway’s cyborg, these authors operate at the intersection of multiple boundaries. Therefore, in order to elucidate the subjects and communities imagined by these texts, feminist cyberpunk is read through the lens of feminist writing on multiplicity (Allucquère Rosanne and Sherry Turkle); resistance and utopian studies (Howard Caygill and Tom Moylan); queer utopian and spatial theory (José Esteban Muñoz and Elizabeth Wilson); and contemporary feminist ecological theory (Astrida Neimanis and Julietta Singh). The rhizome also informs the methodological approach of the thesis, which builds upon Steven Brown’s method of rhizomatic reading. In this practice, the relationship between texts are examined horizontally and at multiple levels. In this sense, this thesis works to decentre the analysis of cyberpunk. Cyberpunk has been followed since its inception by hyperbolic, aggrandised statements of its own importance. Following Samuel Delany’s assertion that science fiction works best when it operates from the margins, each chapter of this thesis works to produce an off-centre analysis of feminist cyberpunk, where various debates and discourses are found to be warped and made strange by these literary texts.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Copyright Holders: | The copyright of this thesis rests with the author, who asserts his/her right to be known as such according to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. No dealing with the thesis contrary to the copyright or moral rights of the author is permitted. |
| Depositing User: | Acquisitions And Metadata |
| Date Deposited: | 09 May 2022 11:08 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Nov 2023 15:31 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/48190 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.18743/PUB.00048190 |
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