Univerzita PardubiceFakulta filozofická

Univerzita Pardubice

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Publikace detail

Future Identity in Dear Cyborgs by Eugene Lim

Autoři: Kohlová Petra

Rok: 2025

Druh publikace: ostatní - přednáška nebo poster

Strana od-do: nestránkováno

Tituly:

Jazyk	Název	Abstrakt	Klíčová slova
eng	Future Identity in Dear Cyborgs by Eugene Lim	This conference paper explores how Eugene Lim’s Dear Cyborgs (2017) reimagines Asian American identities through a blend of speculative storytelling, philosophical dialogue, and formal experimentation. The novel’s fragmented structure, metafictional features, drifting voices, and superhero allegories suggest a world and identity that resist confinement to a single place and category. Two critical frameworks guide the discussion. The first is techno-Orientalism, as theorized by scholars such as David S. Roh, Betsy Huang, and Greta A. Niu (2015). This concept describes how Western media often imagines Asians and Asia in hyper-technological terms—both advanced and emotionally vacant, robotic and inscrutable. While Lim’s novel does not directly reproduce these tropes, it subtly plays with their echoes. Through its speculative motifs—cyborgs, surveillance, digital alienation—Dear Cyborgs invites readers to consider how Asian American characters are situated in narratives of the future, and what it means to be (in)visible within American society. The second framework is transnationalism, particularly as it has been developed in Asian American literary studies to trace how histories of migration, empire, and economic ambition shape diasporic narratives. Scholars like Lisa Lowe (1996) and Christopher T. Fan (2024) have shown how post-1965 Asian American fiction often engages with global networks of meaning. Lim’s novel, in its own oblique way, captures that sense of drift: a disconnection from fixed place, nation, or even personal identity. Rather than offer a clear path to resolution, Dear Cyborgs leans into dissonance and deferral. This paper suggests that the novel’s formal strategies mirror its political ones: resisting closure, embracing ambiguity, and locating power in the refusal to simplify. In doing so, Lim gestures toward a different way of imagining Asian American identity, one shaped by movement and speculative possibility. In doing so, Lim gestures toward a	future; identity; Dear Cyborgs; Eugene Lim; liminality