Cyberspace liminality in William Gibson's neuromancer : a decentralization from the cybernetic to the posthuman

Abstract EN

This paper examines the notion of liminality in William Gibson's cyberpunk novel Neuromancer(1984).

As a postmodern science fiction narrative, this novel is a deliberate representation of the hegemonic cyberculture that defined the eighties in American Science Fiction, through which high technology and hyperreality designed new virtual settings termed as 'cyberspaces' and portrayed hybrid organic characters, entapped in both real and digital worlds, labelled by theorists as 'cyborgs'.

This work studies the nature of such new characterization and scrutinizes its inbetweeness using Homi Bhabha's theories about transitory spaces to be defined in this paper as liminal cyberspaces.

Cyberspace is an electronic space which overwhelms characters, and provides them with extensive digital superpowers, however, it is no more original, and has become a threatening spatial dimension to cyborg identity, who tends to avoid its cybernarcissism and quest more independent humanism in contemporary world.