Twenty-Third International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Cyberpunk is a well-established subgenre of science fiction, but what about its predecessors? This study seeks to define proto-cyberpunk as a type of literature that exists both within and outside of science fiction, delineated by cyberpunk’s typical concerns with rapid technologization, capitalist inequality, urban crime and decay, and sexual and gender experimentation. In particular, it focuses on German author Alfred Doblin’s 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz, three films by the Filipino director Lino Brocka, and the early works of Taiwanese director Ming-liang Tsai. These texts are analyzed for their cyberpunk-adjacent qualities, including those related to their political milieu, as part of a broader effort to understand how cyberpunk literature transcends the bounds of traditionally accepted works like William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer and the Wachowski sisters’ Matrix films. Particular attention is paid to the gendered and sexual elements of these texts and how they relate to concerns with gender and sexuality that are intrinsic to the cyberpunk genre.