Meatspace is Cyberspace: The Pynchonian Posthuman in Bleeding Edge

Abstract

This article examines Thomas Pynchon’s indirect critique of utopian posthumanism in Bleeding Edge by analyzing the deleterious effects that an emerging Internet culture has on the novel’s characters. By seeping into every aspect of their lives, embedding itself in their minds, and becoming a prosthetic consciousness, the Internet has transformed the characters into posthumans and altered their subject positions within a technological global capitalist culture. Contrasting the novel’s take on the posthuman with the posthuman theories of Donna Harraway, N. Katherine Hayles, Robert Pepperell, Rosi Braidotti, David Roden and Seb Franklin, I argue that, while the dominant utopian strain in posthuman theory imagines the advent of posthumanism as an opportunity for liberation from the sexism, racism, and colonial oppression that are enabled by the positing of the classical humanist subject, Pynchon demonstrates that because the Internet technology that brought about the posthuman condition is controlled by governments and corporations, it has become just one more lost chance at freedom that was converted into an instrument of increased control and surveillance. Reading Bleeding Edge against William Gibson’s prototypical posthuman novel Neuromancer, I also contend that while Gibson, despite challenging the ontological primacy of meatspace over cyberspace, keeps the two realms separate, Pynchon, who borrows Gibson’s terms, shows that cyberspace has already merged with meatspace. As a result, Maxine Tarnow, the protagonist of Bleeding Edge, has nowhere to run in her attempt to find a provisional refuge for herself and her family.