Objects, Embodiment, and Patterning Disability in William Gibson

This chapter focuses on objects in William Gibson’s work in order to explore how his fiction creates narratives of physical presence and associated ideas of bodily difference and disability. It asserts that the excess with which Gibson writes about objects translates into its own form of ‘pattern recognition’, processes of complex interactions between bodies, minds and the materiality of the environments through which they move. Gibson’s objects are more than simply the details of person or place; they are facilitators of what we can understand as perceptual change in his fiction. The chapter pays particular attention to the ways in which patterns of embodiment suggest emergent modes of disability and bodily difference, especially when bodies and embodied cognitive states are perceived as, or are interwoven with, objects. Ideas of disability are strangely absent from critical work on Gibson, despite his fiction returning frequently to clear moments of disability presence. This chapter suggests that an analysis of Gibson’s work within a critical disability framework not only offers valuable additional insight into his writing, but also highlights how that writing provides creative and productive perspectives on the complexities of bodies, identity and agency.