Sürdürülebilir Kalkınma Amaçları
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- MakaleAçık Erişim2026The Cybernetics of Gomi: Transhumanism, Materiality, and the Expulsion of the Subject in William Gibson’s The Winter Market (1986)
Uruk, Ahmet
Referred to by Julian Huxley in his 1957 work New Bottles for New Wine, transhumanism champions the use of science and technology to transcend human biological limits and attain a “posthuman” state. While science fiction frequently familiarizes audiences with these speculative dimensions, William Gibson’s short story The Winter Market (1986) exposes the dehumanizing impacts of technological immortality and mind uploading in a cyberpunk world. Rather than presenting a seamless techno-utopian future, Gibson’s narrative centers on the concept of gomi—Japanese for trash or junk—to illustrate the literal and psychological expulsion of the human subject. Therefore, this paper argues that The Winter Market uses the material reality of gomi as its core structural and thematic focus, exposing how advanced capitalism and cybernetic technology reduce the organic body, human experience, and artistic expression to marketable, discarded commodities. Through a close reading of Gibson’s distinct language and narrative form, this study, ultimately, interrogates the trade-offs of technological transcendence, demonstrating how the pursuit of disembodied immortality culminates in alienation and the fragmentation of authentic identity.
- MakaleAçık Erişim2025Mapping the Individual: A Psychogeographical Reading of Iris Murdoch’s Under the Net
Uruk, Ahmet
Introduced firstly by Guy Debord, the founder of the Letterist International, in 1955, psychogeography intersects with the study of the psychological and emotional effects of an urban city on individuals. Proposing that both space and psychology complete one another, psychogeography, as a term juxtaposing psychology and geography, seeks to unearth the estrangement and the dehumanizing impacts of global urbanism consolidated by advanced capitalism and industrialization. In this sense, psychogeography focuses mostly on the act of walking so as to comprehend the ongoing conflict between the mind and city and suggests walking as a conscious activity can function as a protest and subversion against the commodification and repressive constraints of the city. Likewise, Iris Murdoch's debut novel titled Under the Net captures the story of Jake Donaghue and his unstable psychology alienated and decentred by the formation of an urban city, that is, London. Thus, this study aims to analyze Iris Murdoch's Under the Net in order to emphasize the fragmentation and displacement of individuals in accordance with the global urbanism by employing a psychogeographical lens.