Me in 2007: I’ll make a game that exposes the secret links between Big Oil and U.S. covert interventions in Venezuela. Gamers will finally see through smoke and mirrors!
Trump in 2026: We kidnapped Maduro, we’ll run Venezuela, and steal its oil.
what would mark fisher think of bangface
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i think the study of games and gaming can be an interesting way to approach these questions. gaming makes us think about how the structural constraints and possibilities of technological and imaginative environments impact us - where is the power to make things do-able or be-able located ?
i think what this begins to lead me towards is the desire to not ask ‘which stories/imaginaries make people want to participate in fascism’ but rather ‘which structures make fascism be-able and do-able? who is in charge of them? can they be broken? what structures wouldmake other things possible?’
but i think these questions only began to emerge during and after the research and so the article to me falls a bit short on making tangible, solution-oriented conclusions which aid an antifascist struggle. i feel dissatisfied with the conclusions i ended up making in this article.
- how does technocultural constraint shape subjectivity more generally?
- how can placing far-right gaming under a magnifying glass inform antifascist strategy?
- are we/am i asking the right questions about the relationship between popular culture, stories, imagination and fascist participation?
questions that puzzle(d) me during/since this research:
- what is distinctive about the discourse of platformed play?
- how do the constraints of a ludic environment impact and co-construct discourse?
- what are the political consequences/possibilities of these constraints?
article by me on far right influencers, let’s plays of historical fiction games, temporal cultural imaginaries and the different subjectivities that are negotiated in far right platformed play www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
⚡ Out now: Javnost-The Public special issue "The far-right and the politics of films, series and videogames", co-edited w @benjamindecleen.bsky.social, Omran Shroufi, Joke Bauwens & me. Full issue here www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjav20/3...
