The rise of technocapitalism profoundly reshapes societal structures, sparking critical debate and demanding new analytical frameworks to grasp its multifaceted implications. This article argues that cyberpunk, far from mere speculative fiction, can function as a retrospective experimental laboratory for social theory. Its central claim is not that sociological theory simply enriches literary interpretation, but that literature – in this case, the foundational cyberpunk works of the 1980s – provides conceptual resources for apprehending technocapitalism in its current forms. Rather than focusing on detailed case studies of individual texts, the article develops a synoptic framework based on four recurring ‘refractions’ – existential, social, cultural and moral – that consistently structure the genre's portrayal of ‘high tech, low life’. By situating these fictional worlds alongside contemporary debates (from Kellner's work on technocapitalism to the effects of an era dominated by widespread uncertainty and systematic precarity, as analysed by Bauman), the article demonstrates how cyberpunk illuminates the paradoxes of technological advancement accompanied by social disintegration. Its contribution is twofold: first, to show how cyberpunk fiction remains heuristically valuable for understanding precariousness, marginality and moral deregulation under technocapitalism today; and second, to position literature as a resource for social theory, offering imaginative yet analytically illuminating insights into contemporary civilizational challenges.
AloisiA.De StefanoV. (2022). Your boss is an algorithm: Artificial intelligence, platform work and labour. Hart Publishing.
2.
AlphinC. (2021). Neoliberalism and cyberpunk science fiction: Living on the edge of burnout. Routledge.
3.
BarrèreA.MartuccelliD. (2009). Le roman comme laboratoire. De la connaissance littéraire à l’imagination sociologique. Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.
4.
BaumanZ. (2003). Wasted lives. Modernity and its outcasts. Polity Press.
5.
BaumanZ. (2006). Liquid times: Living in an age of uncertainty. Polity.
6.
BeckU. (1986). Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Suhrkamp Verlag.
7.
BeckU. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity (M. Ritter, Trans.). Sage. (Original work published 1986).
8.
BeyH. (1991). T.A.Z.: The temporary autonomous zone. Autonomedia.
9.
BourguignonF. (2015). The globalization of inequality. Princeton University Press.
10.
BrunelleD. (1988). L’héritage des années Reagan: Un premier bilan. International Review of Community Development/Revue Internationale D'action Communautaire, 19, 69–74. https://doi.org/10.7202/1034241
11.
BurrowsR. (1997). Cyberpunk as social theory: William Gibson and the sociological imagination. In WestwoodS.WilliamsJ. (Eds.), Imagining cities: Scripts, signs, memory (pp. 235–248). Routledge.
12.
CadiganP. (1991). Synners. Bantam Books.
13.
CadiganP. (1998). Tea from an empty cup. Harper Voyager.
14.
CastelR. (2003). L'insécurité sociale. Qu'est-ce qu'être protégé?Seuil/La République des idées.
15.
CastelR. (2009). La montée des incertitudes. Travail, protections, statut de l’individu. Seuil.
FisherM. (2009). Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative?Zero Books.
27.
FittingP. (1991). The lessons of cyberpunk. In PenleyC.RossA. (Eds.), Technoculture (pp. 295–315). University of Minnesota Press.
28.
GibsonW. (1984). Neuromancer. Ace Books.
29.
GibsonW. (1986a). Burning chrome. Ace Books.
30.
GibsonW. (1986b). Count zero. Gollancz.
31.
GibsonW. (1988). Mona Lisa overdrive. Gollancz.
32.
GoodwinM. (2006). Black markets: The supply and demand of body parts. Cambridge University Press.
33.
GranthamM. (2015). The transhuman antihero: Paradoxical protagonists of speculative fiction from Mary Shelley to Richard Morgan. McFarland.
34.
HimanenP. (2001). The hacker ethic and the spirit of the information age. Random House.
35.
HuwsU. (2014). Labor in the global digital economy: The cybertariat comes of age. Monthly Review Press.
36.
JeterK. W. (1985). The glass hammer. Bluejay Books.
37.
JonesG. (1986). Escape plans. Allen & Unwin.
38.
KalifaD. (2019). Vice, crime, and poverty: How the western imagination invented the underworld. Columbia University Press.
39.
KellnerD. (1989). Critical theory, Marxism and modernity. Polity Press.
40.
KellnerD. (2003 (1995)). Media culture: Cultural studies, identity and politics between the modern and the post-modern. Routledge.
41.
LongoM. (2015). Fiction and social reality: Literature and narrative as sociological resources. Routledge.
42.
McFarlaneA.SchmeinkL.MurphyG. (Eds.). (2019). The Routledge companion to cyberpunk culture. Routledge.
43.
MurphyG. J. (2019). Cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk. In CanavanG.CarlE. (Eds.), The Cambridge history of science fiction (pp. 519–536). Cambridge University Press.
44.
MurphyG. J.VintS. (Eds.). (2010). Beyond cyberpunk. New critical perspectives. Routledge.
45.
NegriA. (2017). Marx and Foucault: Essays (Vol. 1). Polity.
46.
PalanR. (2006). The offshore world: Sovereign markets, virtual places, and nomad millionaires. Cornell University Press.
47.
RuckerR. (1982). Software. Ace Books.
48.
SamacherJ.-Y. (2017). Gloire et décadence du cybernaute. Les paradoxes de l’espace virtuel dans les œuvres cyberpunk, ReS Futurae, (10). http://journals.openedition.org/resf/1098
49.
SeegerS.Davison-VecchioneD. (2019). Dystopian literature and the sociological imagination. Thesis Eleven, 155(1), 45–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513619888664
50.
ShirleyJ. (1980). City come a-walkin. Dell Publishing.
StieglerB. (2022). Adapt! On a new political imperative. Fordham University Press.
53.
Suarez-VillaL. (2012). Globalization and technocapitalism. The political economy of corporate power and technological domination. Routledge.
54.
SuckertL. (2021). The coronavirus and the temporal order of capitalism: Sociological observations and the wisdom of a children’s book. The Sociological Review, 69(6), 1162–1178. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261211024890
55.
SwirskiP. (2007). Of literature and knowledge: Explorations in narrative thought experiments, evolution, and game theory. Routledge.
56.
TroyG.CannatoV. J. (Eds.). (2009). Living in the eighties. Oxford University Press.
57.
UrryJ. (2013). The super-rich and offshore worlds. In BirtchnellT.CaletríoJ. (Eds.), Elite mobilities (pp. 226–240). Routledge.
58.
WallD. S. (2012). The devil drives a Lada: The social construction of hackers as the cybercriminal. In GregoriouC. (Ed.), Constructing crime. Discourse and cultural representations of crime and ‘deviance’ (pp. 4–18). Palgrave Macmillan.
59.
WilliamsW. J. (1986). Hardwired. Night Shades Books.
60.
WolfM. J. P. (2012). Building imaginary worlds: The theory and history of subcreation. Routledge.
61.
YaszekL. (2002). The self wired: Technology and subjectivity in contemporary narrative. Routledge.
