ABSTRACT
Autopoiesis, developed by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, is a means of defining life as relational; so, rather than defining a living being by one ability or characteristic (for example, its ability to breathe), autopoiesis defines life as a system that maintains and develops itself. Autopoiesis opens the ontological category of a living being to include many of the forms Gibson uses in the Sprawl trilogy (Neuromancer , Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive): corporations (or, ‘zaibatsus’), holograms constructed from data, and artificial intelligences are all granted ontological status as defined through autopoiesis. Autopoiesis defines identity through gestalt properties such as pattern, moving the importance of identity from biological systems to patterns of information. Like the gestalt, autopoiesis gives primacy to the relations between parts rather than the parts themselves, thereby recognising cyborg identities as wholes that are greater than the sum of their parts. As well as looking at the implications of networked models for posthuman being I show how Gibson’s aesthetic in these novels (drawing on pastiche and bricolage, or a gomi aesthetic) encourages the reader to approach his work as relational, echoing the ontological points in the novels.
