Snow Crash: An Analysis of Postmodern Identities in Cyberpunk
Carla Zeltzin Tirado Morttiz · 2013
Neal Stephenson is considered one of the most important writers of the second Cyberpunk wave. One of his most important novels is Snow Crash, originally published in 1991. Even though in his novel he explores traditional cyberpunk themes such as the oversaturation of technology, cyberspace, and the hybridisation of antinomies such as, male/female, machine/human, past/future, reality/artificiality, he does so from a satirical perspective that sets him apart from predecessors such as William Gibson, and establishes him as a paradigmatic example of this second wave. Stephenson’s novel is set in an alternative contemporaneity in an attempt to enhance the critical function of the text in relation to the transformation of existence due to technological entities that aim to overcome human limitations. These modifications may be in the physical plane (cyborgs) or in a psychological plane, with the constitution of a reality based on simulation (cyberspace). In either case, the microcosmical diversification in postindustrial societies based on objects, images, and information, ends up eroding social identities, causing a destabilisation of the individual. In Snow Crash, both reality and cyberspace are equally important, constituting parallel universes in which the story takes place. Nevertheless, the implosion of traditional identities, as well as the overlapping of worlds in both society and the different characters, makes the construction of identity a more complex and liquid phenomenon. Cyberpunk initially had a speculative function—wondering what the near future would be like in a Post Cold War society, under the domain of technology, corruption, and multinational capitalism. The refraction of contemporary ideology in this genre, and particularly in this novel, establishes it as a paradigmatic postmodern example in which the so-called evolution of humanity, both in the present and in a near future, is greatly criticized and reflected upon.