10/01/2022
CYBERPUNK FACES A CHOICE BETWEEN STARK MATERIALISM AND SUBJECTIVITY
by Lapo Lappin
"The release of the long-awaited Cyberpunk 2077 was expected to be something of a turning point for the cyberpunk genre. Christening a work after a whole subculture is a bold move—even so, Cyberpunk 2077 managed to provide this turning point, if only by clearly staking out the battle-lines between two competing factions for the legacy of the genre. We might broadly think of these factions as those pursuing a “Hegelian” vision of cyberpunk, in which the focus is a materialist analysis of a technocratic future, and “Kierkegaardian” cyberpunk, pursuing a more subjective and existential approach that concerns itself primarily with individual experience of both the now and of an imagined future. Hegelian cyberpunk focuses on what the future would look like, from a God’s-eye view; Kierkegaardian cyberpunk focuses on what the future would look like for us."
The empty dystopia of Cyberpunk 2077 highlights the dangers of modern cyberpunk's pure Hegelian materialism.
