Jacked In: Fordism, Cyberpunk, Marxism

Rosenthal, Pam. "Jacked In: Fordism, Cyberpunk, Marxism." Socialist Review 21.1 (January/March 1991): 79-103.

Cited in Hal Hall's "Approaching Neuromancer: More Secondary Sources". Cited and quoted approvingly in Heather J. Hicks's "The Culture of Soft Work: Labor, Gender, and Race in Postmodern American Narrative" as a "meditation on cyberpunk and post-Fordism, noting "Rosenthal's straightforward assertion that 'the contemporary transformation of production and consumption is changing the way [...] we experience our everyday lives," an analysis Hicks sees as bridging "the gap that other cyborg theorists, including [David] Brande, erect between themselves and those they inadvertently portray as somehow more obliviously awash in capitalism. That bridge is constituted by our shared experience as workers [...]."

Note: "Fordism" refers to the assembly lines of Henry Ford and rationalized, sometimes "[[Taylor, Frederick W., The Principles of Scientific Management|"Taylorized" industrial production. 

Post-Fordism ... poses a whole new approach to time on and off the job; the hyped-up, insecure syncopations of workaholism and unemployment, the increasing employment of part-time and contract workers, and more layoffs as flexible transnationals decamp to avail themselves of cheaper labor overseas, or as they retrofit their plants with computerized automation technologies at home. What until fairly recently had seemed a reasonably self-evident positive dynamic within a well-defined arena now seems at best a set of mixed messages within an environment of shifting boundaries and rapidly transmuting rules. (Rosenthal, p. 89; Hicks p. 89 [sic])

Cf. and contrast such Modern and postmodern meditations on labor and social organization as We, METROPOLIS, MODERN TIMES, R. U. R., Player Piano, THE CIRCLE (film) and novel, and the works crosslisted there.[1][2]

Maly, 02/07/02' RDE, finishing, 30July23