The Network and the Archive: The Specter of Imperial Management in William Gibson's Neuromancer more

This article argues that William Gibson’s Neuromancer registers a tension between two historical moments of managerial power: while steeped in the moment of the “network society,” with its simulated authority and flattened hierarchies, the text exhibits nostalgia for the more hierarchical moment of imperialism, best manifested in its lauded treatment of Straylight. While the network society provides mobility primarily for elites, it nevertheless offers possibility for subaltern masses to be visible within its networks. The network society, then, would seem to offer less masculine domination than the earlier moment of imperialism, an idea Gibson reinforces by dissolving the globalized manager Armitage. And yet managerial power does not dissipate with Armitage; the hacker Case, seemingly an outsider to power, emerges as a kind of manager by the novel’s end. Similarly, the subaltern subjects who seemed to gain power throughout the book’s plot—most notably the Rastafarians—are ultimately subordinated to the imperial power represented by Straylight.