Description
Book SynopsisCaroline Alphin presents an original exploration of biopolitics by examining it through the lens of cyberpunk science fiction.
Comprised of five chapters, Neoliberalism and Cyberpunk Science Fiction is guided by four central themes: biopolitics, intensification, resilience, and accelerationism. The first chapters examine the political possibilities of cyberpunk as a genre of science fiction and introduce one kind of neoliberal subject, the self-monitoring cyborg. These are individuals who join fitness/health tracking devices and applications to their body to self-cultivate. Here, Alphin presents concrete examples of how fitness trackers are a strategy of neoliberal governmentality under the guise of self-cultivation. Moving away from Foucaultâs biopolitics to themes of intensity and resilience, Alphin draws largely from William Gibsonâs Neuromancer, Neal Stephensonâs Snow Crash, Richard K. Morganâs Altered Carbon, along with the film Blade
Trade Review
"Intense burn out is ironically the goal of neoliberal biopolitics – this innovative book on Cyberpunk explores the temporality between the promises and the failures letting people slowly die in the accelerating shadows…"
Geoffrey Whitehall, Acadia University
"Caroline Alphin’s book is on the leading edge of international political theory. It aptly tells the story of how neoliberalism produces new forms of social, technological, and embodied existence. Alphin pushes the reader to ask difficult questions about the taken for granted ways in which neoliberalism perpetuates itself via mechanisms ranging from the fitbit to the biohacker. It is an impressive book, which should be read by anyone interested in understanding the politics of modern cityscapes."
Jessica Auchter, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Tennessee Chattanooga
Table of Contents
Introduction: Living on the Edge of Burnout 1. The Neoliberal Science Fictions of Cyberpunk 2. Self-Monitoring as Instrumentalized Self-Cultivation 3. Subtle State Killing as a Mode of Neoliberal Governmentality 4. Cyberpunk Necroscapes and Necro-temporality in Blade Runner 5. Reframing the Biohacker Within the Logic of Intensity 6. Conclusion: Defamiliarizing Neoliberalism Through Cyberpunk Science Fiction
