ABSTRACT
This ecocritical reading of William Gibson’s novel The Peripheral (2014) shows how Gibson explores touch through the use of the term ‘haptic’. ‘Haptic’ is a term relating to sensory perception and is used here to identify the interdependence of humans with their environment, an important connection in the era of climate change and the Anthropocene. Gestalt therapy is increasingly in conversation with the emerging climate crisis and a gestalt perspective continues to prove useful in considering relationality in Gibson’s work. Embodiment is discussed in relation to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (described, using Timothy Morton’s term, as a ‘hyperobject’) and the importance of skin as a recurring image to represent the interface between the individual and the environment. Embodiment is also shown through the titular ‘peripheral’, a lifelike robot that can be remotely inhabited and controlled by someone from another time or space. I argue that this move from a visual emphasis to one that focuses on touch represents a development of the interest in affect found in Pattern Recognition (a move that I read through the lens of affect studies) and an awareness of the inability to escape into cyberspace in the age of the Anthropocene.
