Fighting the Freaks: Secular Individualism Vs Religion in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash

Abstract

Neal Stephenson’s classic science fi ction Snow Crash endeavours to map out the paradigm of modernscientifi c world where the characters try to fi nd more freedom but more they are controlled by the power ofinternet, religion and modern systematic cybernetic world. The novel reoccupies some of the positions andpriorities of an older notion of the secular, enforcing a religion/secular binary. Stephenson has created in hisnovel such a world where the followers of the Reverend Wayne are put in an eternal vortex to fi nd theiridentity that remains unfi xed and fractured through friction and fraction between secular individualism andreligion. The critical and popular success of Snow Crash is a reminder that the novel’s chief protagonists, whoenforce a binary separation of the secular from the religious, remain deeply relevant expressions of secularsubjectivity.