Khanh Nguyen: Cyberpunk 2077: Techno-Orientalism in Gaming Narratives

The cyberpunk genre, to massively generalize, springs the complex and racialized socio-political moment that defined the post-WWII era. In America and Western Europe, fears surrounding Japanese and Chinese technological advancement and economic superiority gave rise to a unique Orientalist figure that was both inferior and barbaric from one angle, while being lofty and inhuman from another. This contradiction defines the notion of techno-orientalism, a concept that this essay using to analyze Cyberpunk 2077, one of the biggest popular culture productions of cyberpunk in the 21^st century.