The quest for understanding identity in the postmodern world Gibson creates in “Neuromancer” is even more complex because identity itself is something that is easily replicated and dispensed for mass consumption. In terms of many of the characters (and this includes Wintermute and other forms of artificial intelligence) Most are “reproductions, digital representations (or manifestations) of someone who was already alive, already human, and in that sense already someone who thinks” (Stevens 414). The markers for true human identity are now even further obscured by the more ephemeral nature of that of non-human entities and what makes matters more perplexing is that these entities are intertwined with the identities of actual living beings.

It is almost mind numbing to think of a creation such as the Flatline, which is described as “a hardwired ROM cassette replicating a dead man’s skills, obsessions, knee-jerk responses” (Gibson 76). In this world man stands a chance of being alienated by the intelligence and false humanity of a machine which may explain why the outward construction of identity is so important to many characters, both minor and major. In the midst of this world of digitally reproduced “human” intelligence, the fight to define the self must obviously manifest itself in the way so many characters seek to show who they are with products or through the rampant buying of modifications of the body and mind.

Even the main character in “Neuromancer” by William Gibson, Case, has an identity that is not entirely separate from the world of digital reproduction. As Armitage tells him at one point, “You’re a console cowboy. The prototypes of the programs you use to crack industrial banks were developed for Screaming Fist for the assault n the Kirensk computer nexus…. I was there, Case; I was there when they invented your kind” (Gibson 41). It is significant that Case’s main claim to identity, his status as a successful console cowboy, is based in the world of digitized information and reproduction. Other characters, such as Molly for instance, also walk the line between having a mass-produced and a real identity. For one thing, she is what is called a “razorgirl” and the reader is led to believe that since there is a title for such a woman, there are many others like her. Her identity is that she is specialized and her specialization is that she has been modified in order to give her function.

By being so defined by outward manifestations of “purpose” and “function” and also by being part of a group of others like her, she is essentially without an identity. Everything about her is a construction. It is revealed that at one point Case, “realized the glasses were surgically inset, sealing her sockets. The silver lenses seemed to grow from smooth pale skin above her cheekbones…The fingers curled around the Fletcher were slender, white, tipped with polished burgundy. The nails looked artificial” (Gibson 40). While she is essentially female, there is little about her aside from the most obvious identity marker—her gender—that sets her apart. Her only outstanding feature (and thus her only guard again alienation) are her modifications and inhuman qualities. Disturbingly, the lenses in her eyes are described as “empty quicksilver, regarding him with an insect calm” (41). In other words, what she sees and knows is reflected back onto the world. There is no sense that she is taking in the constant steam of visual cues around her. She is more machine than woman and do machines have identities? It is also interesting that she is described as being like an “insect” since this implies both a hive mentality as well as brutal unthinking functionality. Again, with such inhuman descriptions the reader tends to question the meaning of identity even more. It is only when she is naked, when she sheds the bonds of her outward identity that the reader can truly identify with her. Without her modifications, she loses the functionality that seems so vital in this reality Gibson creates, thus like Ai when he thinks of human men and women, we can begin to feel more in our “comfort zone” in terms of understanding her on our own level.

In Neuromancer, the value upon true identity has been eclipsed, partly because of the overloaded quality of information, outward deception, and masking of personal truth. In other words, “The technological order has been so successful in achieving its primary aim of converting the real into a traffic of information that the circulation itself becomes the ground of reality” (Csicsery 221). Circulation in this sense does not just mean the modes by which information flows, is transmitted, and received, it also means that it is like blood in the veins of mass consciousness. Even nature and Case’s identity as it relates to the natural world around him is colored with the hue of technology and reproduction. The first lines of the novel, “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel” (3) are significant in these terms because they show just how one’s identification with the environment and setting are based in the way information about others and the self are processed.

In this world, there is too much input and the final result is the fact that the value and meaning of identity as a concept has been swept away. As Case describes his home he instructs us to, “Program a map to display frequency of data exchange, every thousand megabytes a single pixel on a very large screen. Manhattan and Atlanta burn solid white. Then they start to pulse, the rate of traffic threatening to overload your stimulation” (59). This pulse, this rate of traffic, all consumes one and “overloads” the sense of identity that makes stimulation possible and personal. It is because of this stream of information and modes of identity that Case spends much of the novel oscillating between an understanding of himself and complete oblivion or, as he puts it, “totally engaged but set apart from it all, and all you the dance of biz, information interacting, data made flesh in the mazes of the black market” (30). The man is inseparable from the input and thus identity is slippery and alienation is the only guarantee.

Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include : Feminism & Science Fiction : “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” and “When It Changed”

Works Cited

Cornell, Christine. “The Interpretative Journey in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.” Extrapolation (Kent State University Press) 42.4 (2001): 317

Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Istvan. “The sentimental futurist: Cybernetics and art in William Gibson’s Neuromancer.” Critique 33.3 (1992): 221.

Fair, Benjamin. “Stepping Razor in Orbit: Postmodern Identity and Political Alternatives in William Gibson’s Neuromancer.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 46.2 (2005): 92.

Gibson, William. Neuromancer New York; Ace, 1986.

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness. 1st ed. New York: Ace, 1969.

Rudy, Kathy. “Ethics, reproduction, utopia: Gender and childbearing in Women on the Edge of Time and the Left Hand of Darkness.” N W S A Journal 9.1 (1997): 22

Stevens, Tyler. “‘Sinister Fruitiness’: Neuromancer, Internet Sexuality and the Turing Test.” Studies in the Novel 28.3 (1996): 414.