Technologies of Authority, Technologies of Resistance: Power and the Urban Form in Transmetropolitan

Abstract

The cyberpunk comic series Transmetropolitan by author Warren Ellis and artist Darick Robertson describes an ongoing class war in a fictional urban setting known as the City between the underclass, known collectively as “the new scum,” and the political and economic elite. By following the career and exploits of the journalist Spider Jerusalem, the author and artist use the City as a gateway into the late capitalist city. Technological post-scarcity has helped create the conditions for a large and marginalized underclass, while also providing the tools to sustain the social divisions in the City. This elite uses both old strategies of urban “renewal” and institutional oppression and new technologies such as an omnipresent surveillance state. Meanwhile, the “new scum” embrace a variety of technologies in their vernacular strategies to survive, and even thrive, in a deeply unequal setting. Due to their flexible applications many technologies seem to empower the “new scum” in exposing government lies, cultivating subcultures, surviving, and transcending class boundaries.