| William Gibson is well known for his science fiction writing within the cyberpunk literary genre, which often evoke themes of economic disparity, environmental desolation, and the breakdown of the contracts between state and populace allowing corporate power to emerge dominant. In his most recent series of novels, commonly dubbed the Blue Ant trilogy, Gibson focuses on themes of national decay compounded by the real-time emergence of post-national corporate power that degrades or usurps control over borders, identities, and infrastructures.;My intent is to examine how Gibson's writing attempts to address the issue of the rise of post-national corporate power by singling out instances of anxiety in the white Western discursive sphere, and how Gibson's Blue Ant trilogy has difficulty addressing this anxiety due to a historically constituted, culturally imposed barrier that prevents both the narrative and the characters inside it from being able to articulate them. This essay further attempts to explore this barrier, best understood as a reinforcement of white, Western cultural hegemony, can be deconstructed and understood as a subjective position as opposed to a universal, and moved beyond it. |
