Cyberpunk Women, Feminism and Science Fiction : A Critical Study

by Carlen Lavigne

This analysis of cyberpunk science fiction written between 1981 and 2003 positions women's cyberpunk in the larger cultural discussion of feminist issues. It traces the origins of the genre, reviews critical reactions, and outlines the ways in which women's cyberpunk advances specifically feminist points of view. Novels are examined within their cultural contexts; their content is compared to broader controversies within contemporary feminism, and their themes are revealed as reflections of feminist discourse at the end of the 20th century. Chapters cover topics such as globalization, virtual reality, cyborg culture, environmentalism, religion, motherhood and queer rights. Firsthand interviews with feminist cyberpunk authors are provided, revealing both their motivations for writing and their experiences with fans. The study treats feminist cyberpunk as a unique vehicle for examining contemporary women's issues and analyzes feminist science fiction as a complex source of political ideas.

Genres: Feminism, Cyberpunk, Science Fiction, Academic, Literary Criticism

212 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2012

Reviews

[Lit Bug (Foram) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was originally her doctorate thesis, now a book - it examines various feminist themes from feminist cyberpunk works with reference to early cyberpunk, noting how cyberpunk has evolved from a male, white POV to encompassing themes of cyborg-human conflicts, queer domains, mythology, globalization, issues of motherhood in cyberpunk and environmental decay - all domains which had been excluded from first-wave cyberpunk.

A good book for those wishing to explore the ways in which these issues have shaped feminist cyberpunk and how contemporary concerns are reflected in a near-future world while still being firmly rooted in the concerns of the present.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to come. Short read, but I finally just finished this book. It's probably more helpful for people who have already read a ton (and I do mean a ton) of cyberpunk works, as there are some book spoilers to be had here, but man...my book queue just got larger as a result of reading this, and I loved the topics they chose to explore. I'll have a thorough review of this to up by this weekend. Probably giving this a solid 4 stars.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting analysis of cyberpunk, with a heavy focus on works produced by U.S. authors. I found it a thought-provoking read, if a bit simplistic in some areas of analysis (fans of cyberpunk = primarily IT workers so primarily men? Debatable). I would have liked to have seen more on Justine Robson and a mention of Lauren Beukes, as well as more discussion of Misha's "Red Spider, White Web" (the only POC writer mentioned). That said, I liked Lavigne's use of Donna Haraway's work and thought this book would make a good intro text for a class on recent science fiction. I'll be interested to see if the author does more critical analysis in the field.

[August Bourré · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is good work done in this book, particularly with regard to how family--and motherhood in particular--operates in cyberpunk work, and with regard to LGBTQ characters, authors, and themes. Lavigne also highlights writers who deserve both greater acknowledgement for their roles in the development of cyberpunk and wider readerships (Melissa Scott's Trouble & Her Friends, for instance, is better than pretty much anything by Pat Cadigan or Rudy Rucker, and Maureen F. McHugh is perhaps the only cyberpunk writer whose work approaches William Gibson's in terms of quality).

But the book is plagued with problems, some large and some small. On the small side, Lavigne frequently contradicts herself, for instance declaring the fluidity and breadth of subject matter/themse shown by early writers in on sentence, and literally two sentences later decrying those same writers for the narrow rigidity of their subject matter and themes *in the same collection of books*. Her use of the term "masculinist" and her conflation of all women's writing with feminist writing are both problematic, often bordering on being essentialist and sometimes crossing that border and being flatly essentialist. On the large side, Lavigne discards readings that she admits are more accurate--Gibson's attitude toward cyperspace in Neuromancer as a critique rather than glorification; the fact that Snow Crash is not just satire, but that it is painfully obviously satire--for readings that fit her (stated) preconceptions better, rather than embracing the idea that a feminist reading of either text is less straightforward.

This book is also far more aggressively middle class than the "first wave" writers and works she critiques for being middle class focused. Many early cyberpunk works were built on themes of class-based political resistance to Reagan/Thatcherite cold war politics, and on the way in which class oppression warps other systems/identities (including gender, sexuality, family), but Lavigne ignores or strips away that context and focuses instead on surface level aspects of those works that could be seen as negatively influencing specifically middle class women, lauding works by women writers as inherently more class-progressive even though some of those works reject the legitimacy of class struggle and may even resolve themselves with the embrace of classist oppression and the valourization of middle class ideals, even sometimes specifically through the betrayal of economically oppressed communities.

It is also not clear that Lavigne has read all of the "first wave" books she critiques; there is very little direct reference to the texts the way there is of the later cyberpunk works she discusses, and she chooses to instead engage with those texts primarily through what other scholars and critics have said about them, making for readings that are sometimes idiosyncratic or that (from my perspective, having read nearly all of them *and* much of the scholarship she cites) seem to miss the point entirely.

All that being said: as a conversation starter and an introduction to many unfairly neglected works, this book is a success, and is also an essential book for anyone interested in the scholarship around and critical response to cyberpunk as a genre.

[Nicolas Lontel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Une lecture certainement intéressante et instructive pour moi qui n'a jamais lu aucun des livres mentionnés dans cet essai... J'ai donc évidemment pris en note quelques ouvrages et auteures. Pour le reste, l'analyse tourne beaucoup plus autour de thèmes du cyberpunk que d'analyses nécessairement textuelles.

L'essai analyse comment les femmes élaborent autour des thèmes communs au cyberpunk des hommes (notamment les 4 C de Frances Bonner: Corporations, Crime, Computers et Corporeality auquel elle ajoute Cyborg), elle touche aussi aux questions d'écologie, de spiritualité, de maternité et de queer, bien que ces sujets sont abordés plus rapidement et semblent se concentrer sur un plus petit nombre d'oeuvres. L'analyse des oeuvres se concentrent sur les écrits de tous les genres d'auteur·es autour des thématiques que l'essayiste choisie et comment le traitement des thèmes se démarquent chez les écrivain·es.

Je me questionne toutefois par rapport à la mobilisation de certains éléments lexicaux, dont l'utilisation du mot "masculiniste" comment pendant au "féminisme" et désignant l'écriture des hommes dans le cyberpunk. J'avoue ne pas comprendre comment elle utilise ce terme pour désigner l'écriture des hommes considérant l'immense charge péjorative du terme et aucune justification préalable pour en parler. Il semble aussi y avoir une certaine confusion entre le féminisme et l'écriture des femmes (ou de leurs thématiques); il aurait été intéressant de vraiment séparer les deux de manière beaucoup plus claire bien que p.106 Lavigne précise bien que "it is of course not necessary to be female in order to be a feminist [...]" pour justifier l'inclusion de Raphael Carter dans le corpus féministe.

Bref, ma méconnaissance complète du corpus étudié m'empêche de juger adéquatement de cet essai qui m'a certainement introduit à des thèmes du genre cyberpunk, mais j'ai été un peu déçu par ce survol uniquement thématique plutôt qu'une attention narrative et littéraire au niveau du texte. Certaines mobilisations de concepts m'ont aussi surpris un peu ou même déçu (l'écologie, la spiritualité).

[Noémie J. Crowley · Rating 3 out of 5]

De tous les sous-genres de la SF, le cyberpunk est sûrement celui que je connais le moins, et pourtant, un de ceux qui me parlent le plus en terme de thèmes. Il est vraiment celui qui permet, à mon sens, de discuter le plus ouvertement de divers sujets sociaux actuels, comme l’identité, l’importance de la technologie dans la vie quotidienne … Ou la place de la femme dans nos sociétés modernes.

Disclaimer cependant : Bien que ce livre utilise le terme « féminisme », il est utilisé pour décrire l’importance des femmes autant en tant qu’auteures que de personnages dans le cyberpunk et la littérature SF, pas en tant qu’idéologie.

J’ai beaucoup apprécié ce livre, pour toutes les questions qui y sont explorées. 📖 On en apprend plus notamment sur la place des femmes auteures de SF, leur style d’écriture et les thèmes abordés dans leurs oeuvres, mais également sur les personnages féminins ou queer dans ces mêmes oeuvres ( LGBT+, notamment non-binaires ou transgenre, ainsi que de minorités éthniques, offrant ainsi une vraie profondeur aux différents thèmes abordés.).

S’il serait plus avisé d’avoir une bonne connaissance de base sur les oeuvres cyberpunks avant de lire ce livre (surtout pur éviter les spoilers), il n’est pour moi pas nécessaire d’avoir tout lu non plus : le livre offre suffisamment de contexte pour pouvoir suivre la pensée de l’auteur, et offre une bonne variété de sources pour ceux qui souhaiteraient aller plus loin.

Pour tous les amoureux de littérature SF et cyberpunk qui souhaiteraient approfondir leurs connaissances et leur appréciation sur le genre, je recommande Cyberpunk Women, Feminism and Science Fiction. Il est très agréable à lire, académique sans trop l’être, et offre de vraies perspectives de questionnements sur un sujet encore très peu évoqué aujourd’hui.


[Jessie B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had some interesting arguments but it incurs these by seeing female authors as feminist and male authors as not even when the authors do not identify themselves as such.