Voices from the Margins:

Finding American Identity in the Countercultures

“You’re going to have to learn to live with the fact that we live in a different world today. You have the right to speak your mind of course, but you have to be prepared for the consequences of doing so” (Doctorow 217)

            Walk down the halls of any American high school and undoubtedly the conversations of “no freedom”, “prison-like-standards” and “infringed upon constitutional rights” will be spewing out of some teenager’s mouth. As their teacher, I continually remind my passionate students of how far we’ve come, but as someone not much older than they are I can sympathize with their mantras. And all the while, in the back of my mind I wonder, where are we headed? Cory Doctorow proposes to answer this question in his young adult novel Little Brother. By incorporating history, especially the period of the 1960s, Doctorow dares to follow George Orwell’s lead in warning Americans about the ubiquitous government capable of much more than mere protection.

 To understand where we are headed, let’s first glance back. Midway through the twentieth century America and her citizens were in the middle of a tumultuous transformation. And sixty years later it seems that transformation is still ensuing. As art often imitates life, in the 1950s, a rowdy bunch known for the Beat movement emerged in light of the shattering American myth and dream of opportunity and equality which left Americans still in search of a unifying identity. Fast forward to now, in the shadow of 9/11 and in the midst of a controversial war, we are still searching, and art and literature is still responding. Enter the lesser known genre with a select cult following: Cyberpunk – although Cyberpunk has been around since 1984 with the publication of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, it is even more powerful in today’s day and age. Known for their divergent and often pessimistic views of the future, Cyberpunks, “aka counterculture philosopher[s]” incorporate all things technological and forecast a future run by and for machines (Leary 63).  The “great” leaders of Cyberpunk, Gibson and Bruce Sterling, have paved the way for newer authors, such as Cory Doctorow, to become known on the scene and cause quite a stir. Doctorow specifically has made great strides within the genre simply by shifting his focus to a certain audience – teens.  Taking its lead from the Beats, Cyberpunk authors, reject modern American society to such an extent as vehemently ridiculing and dismissing the brash rule and narrow glances of the government and embrace the cultural margins and America for what she once was and still stands for, all the while striving to create or to find the lost sense of identity – an identity that can be applicable to all walks of life – computer nerds and technologically challenged individuals alike.  

            From the very beginning of American literature, a common motif is that of searching for a unifying sense of self. The 1950s and 60s saw a new search begin with the Beat Movement. A society that was rooted on questioning authority and overcoming such trials as oppression and unjust wars raised new questions and introduced the broad public with aspects of the time that had long been hidden. In response to the restrictive and conservative rut into which America was falling, poets and other artists, including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (author of Howl, and father of the so-called Beat Movement), shocked their readers by introducing the many diverse and underground subcultures that sought recognition and equality in America. They dared to venture outside of the Protestant suburban life in hopes of finding America’s diversified reality and truer identity. The Beats did for America what the genre of Cyberpunk has the possibility to do – gather the voices from the margins and create a truer American identity. 

While the Beats and Cyberpunks deliver the same dissidence-is-patriotism sort of message, the topics (technology) are clearly different. A major part of Cyberpunk is focusing on technology and its influence among everything else going on in life – war, famine, global warming, and the devastation of the world we once knew.  According to fellow educator and Cyberpunk guru himself, Alex Reid proposes that “Cyberpunk shows us a world where the divisions of public and private no longer function. Privacy still exists, if you can secure it, but it is fragmented spatially. Our interior conscious is now splayed open and distributed across a global network” (digitalage.ning.com).  Furthering this point, Sharon Stockton points out that in this world there is “no longer room for interiority and intimacy,” rather the individual has turned into a “disempowered individual of corporate capitalism who has become ‘a switching center for all the networks of influence’” (588). Just like in the 1960s, the disempowered individual needs to take action against the injustices in the world and by doing so declare the strong sense of self America has sought for its countrymen/women since the 15^th century.

Cyberpunk like many other forms of science fiction is not widely accepted into the notion of a canonical text. However, neither were the novels of Kerouac or the poetry of Ginsberg.  When the Beat authors first emerged, their texts were not welcomed on too many coffee tables, but now their work appears in any canonical collection of American literature. By dismissing and often outright ridiculing the oppressing dominant culture, the Beats found a voice that would become essential to understanding American identity. For this reason, we, as teachers and connoisseurs of great literature, should not cast any negative light on Cyberpunk or science fiction. For within both of these genres may lurk great truths or subtle messages essential to our understanding our past as Americans, our present, and our future.

            First, to define the genre Cyberpunk is to do exactly what it defies. There is no set definition to tie it down. Rather, it is most implicitly understood when Timothy Leary explains:

Cyberpunks are the inventors, innovative writers, technofrontier artists, risk-taking film directors, icon-shifting composers, expressionist artists, free-agent scientists, technocreatives, computer visionaries, elegant hackers, bit-blitting Prolog adepts, special-effectives, cognitive dissidents, video wizards, neurological test pilots, media explorers – all of those who boldly package and steer their ideas out there where no thoughts have gone before. 67

 To further comprehend the term cyberpunk and to appreciate Cory Doctorow’s novel Little Brother, we first must look at the word cyberpunk – the genre or those who would define themselves in that light. The word cyberpunk is related to the term cybernetics. Leary suggests by going back to the Greek root word kubernetics which means “pilot,” one will see the connection of self-reliance (64). Over the course of centuries of semantic manipulation, the word “pilot” underwent tremendous changes thus losing its original meaning of self-reliance and transforming into something more similar to obeying and governing. However, what Cyberpunk is now doing, as Leary states, “[is] liberating the term, teasing it from serfdom to represent the autopoetic, self-directed principle of organization” (65). Individuals who are self reliant are also ones who will stand up for their own rights. And this is exactly what Little Brother stands for – those who question authority and think for themselves.

Given that explanation of what Cyberpunk(s) embodies, one may quickly attach a negative stigma to this genre. While screaming, “Stick it to the man!” may not have many positive effects in a high school, there are valuable lessons and themes to be discussed. By focusing specifically on Doctorow’s Little Brother we can discuss both the valuable themes this marginal genre presents and also discover how important these themes are for young adults to recognize. Not only is this novel geared toward young adults, but its setting is not in some far off remote time and place; rather, it could be tomorrow. By setting this novel in the possible near future, Doctorow forces the reader to examine his/her life, not just the looming sure-it-could-happen future.

Little Brother presents a teenage hero, Marcus Yallow, who is also a techno-genius. Marcus’ story begins like any other high school student sick of being constantly under scrutiny. In an effort to skip school to play a computer game, Marcus and his friends find their lives forever changed. San Francisco is bombed and in the aftermath of the terrorist attack, Marcus and his friends go through a sort of counterattack by their very own Department of Homeland Security who mistake them for terrorists. Thus leading our young hero on an adventure to “fight the man” in order to reestablish his supposed freedoms granted at birth. It is through this story where we can truly see into the heart of America. Doctorow follows Leary’s lead by showing that the “‘good person’ in the cybernetic society are the intelligent ones who can think for themselves. The ‘problem person’ in the cybernetic society of the 21^st century is the one who automatically obeys, who never questions authority, who acts to protect his/her official status, who placates and politics rather than thinks independently” (63). Marcus not only stands up for himself, but also calls his fellow teens – our future – to come together for a cause.

By delivering a story based on something as heinous and familiar as a terrorist attack, Doctorow is able to strike many chords among readers young and old. He presents America in a not-so-far-off light in that this could happen. Knowing that our students are the future of this country, opening a discussion about what it means to be patriotic or what is means to be an American is extremely powerful and something that dates back to our founding fathers.

It is important to note that in the history of our country there have always been terrorists. The difference now is how you define said persons. During one history lesson, Marcus and his classmate, Charles debate on this topic. Charles claims that those individuals who support America are with us, but “if you support the people who are shooting at Americans, you’re them” (179). This is exactly what we as Americans should be weary of – given that we are currently in a time of war, it is important to support our troops; however, if you think that government is wrong in its actions, by standing up and saying so is being more patriotic than sitting back and taking the injustices dealt.

In commenting on the Beats and American identity, literary scholar Matthew Corrigan points out, “America, in its rude beginnings, its crude lists, did not see itself. We never see ourselves at the moment of our becoming. How can we, the event is so overpowering, so inclusive? What we see is the struggle, which is not seeing but feeling, and involvement, a way of life to be lived. Later, thought clears. Later still, images appear” (221). It is this moment that Beat authors were after – the moment when the image of existence and purpose appears. Doctorow’s journey with Marcus is much like this. These are the moments in life that, as teachers of literature, we should be seeking for meaningful connections to our students.

With the constant message of questioning authority and the idea of patriotism, there is no doubt that Doctorow is inspired by the Beats – he directly refers to and quotes Kerouac and Ginsberg and Marcus even writes a paper on them.  There is little coincidence that the Beats called San Francisco home as it was the epicenter for the movement, and Doctorow sets his novel in the Bay Area as well. Doctorow even points out that despite how restrictive and oppressive the government is now, it was worse – Ginsberg was charged with obscenity because of a line about “gay sex” in Howl. And even though Marcus was captured and tortured by his own government, “it made [him] happy somehow, knowing that we’d made some progress” (219).  But Doctorow also suggests that we could easily slide backwards.

The history lessons on the 1950s and 60s hippies, Yippies, and Civil Rights movement continue to surface in Little Brother. At one point while discussing the Civil Rights movement, Marcus asks his history teacher Ms. Galvez, “Did they win?” referring to the Yippies. She replied, “They didn’t lose. […] But they did change the world. The war in Vietnam ended, and the kind of conformity and unquestioning obedience that people had called patriotism went out of style in a big way. Black rights, women’s rights and gay rights came a long way. […] Today’s protest movement is the direct descendant of those struggles” (178).  By juxtaposing America in mid twentieth century and America’s future in the same setting, Doctorow astutely points out the dire need of recognizing this pattern. While there have always been and always will be injustices, there will also be those people willing to fight for their rights. And these are the people who truly make up what it means to be an American.

Doctorow intelligently captures the myriad of attitudes held by present day Americans: the patriots, the terrified, the proud, and most importantly, the paranoid. In Little Brother in order to survive, one must be paranoid; in today’s society, the same is true – it is more important now than ever to be politically active, and part of that is constantly questioning the government’s actions. Ask yourself and your students, “Where are we heading?” More importantly, use Little Brother as an illustration that it is never too late to fight for what’s right. While Doctorow paints a gloomy picture of what lies ahead, he is by no means a pessimist. Rather, he presents Marcus, a young teen who embodies what it means to be an American hero of the 21^st century.

            Marcus ends with a message for all Americans. One that will resonate with the coming presidential election of 2008 that has many people talking about not wanting to vote because of a lack of “feelings” for or against either candidate – we don’t have many chances to control who sits in office, this is it. “Talk to your neighbors. Make them promise to vote. Make them promise to take the country back from the torturers and thugs. The people who laughed at my friends as they lay fresh in their graves at the bottom of the harbor. Most of us choose none of the above. It’s not working. You have to choose – choose freedom” (363). For many naïve or it-can’t-happen-to-me-mindset people, this call to action may seem a bit farfetched. After 9/11 can we afford to take these chances? Remember, “the world isn’t the same place as it was last week” (109).

            As a teacher, a student, an American or a Cyberpunk, remember, “if you love freedom, if you think the human condition is dignified by privacy, by the right to be left alone, by the right to explore your weird ideas provided you don’t hurt others, then you have common cause with the kids whose web-browsers and cell phones are being used to lock them up and follow them around. If you believe that the answer to bad speech is more speech – not censorship – then you have a dog in the fight. If you believe in a society of laws, a land where our rulers have to tell us the rules, and have to follow them too, then you’re part of the same struggle that kids fight when they argue for the right to live under that same Bill of Rights that adults have” (Doctorow electronic intro).  In short, what does it mean to be an American, a part of this information society? Doctorow makes it very clear that “it’s not just a noun, it’s a verb, it’s something you do” (intro).

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the self-hood or every one of its members. The virtue in most request it conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

                                                                                                Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

Works Cited

Corrigan, Matthew. “Materials for a Nexus.” Charles Olson: Essays, Reminiscences,

Reviews 2. (1973):  201-228.

Doctorow, Cory. Little Brother. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 2008.

Doctorow, Cory. Little Brother. 25 July 2008. <http://craphound.com/littlebrother>

Leary, Timothy. “The Cyberpunk: The Individual as Reality Pilot.” Chaos & Cyber

Culture. (1988) 62-69.

Reid, Alex. “The Digital Age: emergence and education.” 30 July 2008.

<http://digitalage.ning.com/group/cyberpunkliterature/>

Stockton, Sharon. “The Self Regained: Cyberpunk’s Retreat to the Imperium.”

Contemporary Literature XXXVI 4. (1995) 588-612.