After the dispute over my opinions about the nihilistic elements of cyberpunk role-playing, I did a little more digging and found that this element of cyberpunk is not exactly considered unique. I also discovered that, rather unsurprisingly, cyberpunk is a rich field of theoretical endeavour. I discovered a cyberpunk course at the peer to peer university (!?) which includes explicit analysis of the nihilistic elements of cyberpunk, along with some interesting discussion of the narrative components of the style. The conclusion of this post is that nihilism is a fundamental component of the genre (and some nice hat tips to the theoretical concept of nihilism are identified in The Matrix).
The P2PU course on cyberpunk also includes links to a lot of open access journal articles about cyberpunk, some of which could be worth reading.
Finally, I found an interesting-looking article on Cyberpunk and Orientalism, which might give an interesting insight into some of the things I’ve noticed before in Cyberpunk – particularly the 90s wave of Gibson et al – which seems to have a heavy degree of romanticisation of the far East. I have my suspicions about Said’s critique of Orientalism, but it does provide an interesting platform from which to analyse Western opinions of Asia, so I’m going to give this essay a go – even though it’s a PhD thesis so probably therefore hideously difficult to read – and I may provide a few interpretations of it on a future post. How’s that for taking one for the team?
February 17, 2010 at 6:52 pm
[…] postmodernism, stupid stupid things, virtual worlds, William Gibson | Leave a Comment In my previous post I mentioned stumbling across an analysis of cyberpunk and orientalism, which interests me for a lot […]
February 26, 2010 at 11:08 am
Yes, nihilism is one of cyberpunk’s hallmarks. There is also post-cyberpunk, which incorporates the technology aspects of cyberpunk but without the dystopian settings. It’s sometimes also referred to as “cyberprep.”
And then there’s steampunk, which is derivative of cyberpunk and incorporates an interesting aesthetic that looks very different from cyberpunk but has the same “feeling.”
I did a somewhat lengthy write-up on the cyberpunk genre a few days ago, you might be interested – http://sunnypumpkin.lizabethliu.com/2010/02/cyberpunk/
February 26, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Thanks for the comment Elizabeth. I haven’t gotten around to looking at steampunk yet, because although the aesthetic dimensions of that genre are well covered, I’ve found its literary and gaming aspects a little sparser. It seems to bleed too easily into straight fantasy or horror … but maybe I just haven’t been looking hard enough. From what I’ve read, I’m not sure that the “punk” part of the genre’s name is so apt as it is in (at least classical) cyberpunk. It’s a shame really because I think steampunk is a slightly more fun genre than cyberpunk, if it’s explored well.
(I’ll be getting around, at some point, to describing my slight disappointment with cyberpunk as a “revolutionary” genre).