Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction

Type:

Book

Author:

Mark Fisher

Published:

2018

Publisher:

University of Warwick

Cyberpunk fiction has been called “the supreme literary expression, if not of postmodernism then of late capitalism itself.” (Jameson)
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\nThis thesis aims to analyse and question this claim by rethinking cyberpunk Action, postmodernism and late capitalism in terms of three - interlocking - themes: cybernetics, the Gothic and fiction. It claims that while what has been called “postmodernism” has been preoccupied with cybernetic themes, cybernetics has been haunted by the Gothic.
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\nThe Gothic has always enjoyed a peculiarly intimate relation with the fictional. Baudrillard's theories, meanwhile, suggest that, in a period dominated by (cybernetic) simulation, fiction has a new cultural role. By putting “theory” into dialogue with “fiction”, the thesis examines Baudrillard's suggestion that the era of cybernetics (what he calls “third order simulacra”) “puts an end to science fiction, but also to theory, as specific genres”.
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\nThe version of the Gothic the thesis presents is one stripped of many of its conventional cultural associations; it is a material (and materialist) Gothic.The machinery for re-thinking the Gothic comes from Deleuze-Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. Deriving not from the familiar literary sources (the so-called Gothic novels of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth century) but from Wilhelm Worringer’s work on “barbarian art”, Deleuze-Guattari’s version of the Gothic departs from any reference to the supernatural. The cru…

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