From a Biopolitical ‘Will to Life’ to a Noopolitical Ethos of Death in the Aesthetics of Digital Code

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 67-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Munster
Keyword(s):  
Computer Games ◽  
The Other ◽  
Artistic Expression ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Digital Code ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Digital Entertainment ◽  
The One ◽  
Networked Publics

In a range of digital creative productions and digital culture, questions of how to deal with finitude are on the rise. On the one hand, sectors of the digital entertainment industry – specifically computer games developers – are concerned with the question of how to manage `death' digitally. On the other hand, death and suicide have become the impetus for humorous artistic expression. This article tracks the emergence of a digital ethos that is cognizant of consequence, finitude and even death. Rather than pit a 1990s `will to life' against an emerging `death drive', I argue that the shift to an ethos in which dark consequences ensue from digital actions must be understood by working through digital code's technicity and unfolding this relation of technics to both ethics and politics. Although Bernard Stiegler's analysis of technicity goes some way toward unfolding a political analysis of the aesthetics of digital code, his articulation of noopolitics fails to provide us with a way to conduct ourselves digitally in an era of cognitive capitalism. I look to critical software practices and their provisional networked publics, with potential lines of flight for contemporary technoculture via novel digital `codings'.

scholarly journals Computer Gameplay and the Aesthetic Practices of the Self: Game Studies and the Late Work of Michel Foucault

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
The Self ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Work ◽  
Practices Of The Self ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

This paper aims to critically introduce the applicability of Foucault’s late work, on the practices of the self, to the scholarship of contemporary computer games. I argue that the gameplay tasks that we set ourselves, and the patterns of action that they produce, can be understood as a form of ‘work on the self’, and that this work is ambivalent between, on the one hand, an aesthetic transformation of the self – as articulated by Foucault in relation to the care or practices of the self – in which we break from the dominant subjectivities imposed upon us, and on the other, a closer tethering of ourselves through our own playful impulses, to a neoliberal subjectivity centred around instrumentally-driven selfimprovement. Game studies’ concern with the effects that computer games have on us stands to gain from an examination of Foucault’s late work for the purposes of analysing and disambiguating between the nature of the transformations at stake. Further, Foucault’s tripartite analysis of ‘power-knowledge-subject’, which might be applied here as ‘game-discourse-player’, foregrounds the imbrication of our gameplay practices – the extent to which they are due to us and the way in which our own volitions make us subject to power, which is particularly pertinent in the domain of play.

Explaining Ethnic Political Participation

1979 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelson Kasfir
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
Relative Ease ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Sudden Rise ◽  
Ethnic Category ◽  
The One

Most concepts of ethnicity are unsuitable for political analysis because they ignore either subjective or objective aspects, and because they ignore the fluid and situational nature of ethnicity. The approach flowing from the concept proposed here permits the observer to examine empirical variations that tend to be treated as rigid assumptions by modernization analysts on the one hand and class analysts on the other. The concept is applied to a study of the Nubians of Uganda because of the intermixture of class and ethnic features involved in their fall from status at the beginning of the colonial period and their subsequent sudden rise following the 1071 coup d'état of Idi Amin. The fairly recent creation of the Nubians as an ethnic category and the relative ease with which others can become members illustrate other features of the proposed concept of ethnicity. Finally, this concept is used to examine and criticize overly restrictive notions of ethnicity found in theories based upon both cultural pluralism and consociationalism.

scholarly journals Still Ekphrasis? Visual and Non-Visual Art in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Jarosław Hetman
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
The Other ◽  
Artistic Expression ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
Contemporary Novels ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of

<p>The article explores the ancient notion of ekphrasis in an attempt to redefine it and to adjust it to the requirements of the contemporary literary and artistic landscape. An overview of the transformations in the world of art in the 20<sup>th</sup> century allows us to adjust our understanding of what art is today and to examine its existence within the literary context. In light of the above, I postulate a broadening of the definition of ekphrasis so as to include not only painting and sculpture on the one side, and poetry on the other, but also to open it up to less conventional forms of artistic expression, and allow for its use in reference to prose. In order to illustrate its relevance to the novel, I have conducted a study of three contemporary novels – John Banville’s <em>Athena</em>, Kurt Vonnegut’s <em>Bluebeard</em> and Don DeLillo’s <em>Mao II </em>– in order to uncover the innovative ways in which novelists nowadays use ekphrasis to reinvigorate long prose.</p>

scholarly journals Articulation of media on juvenile delinquency with special reference to India

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-44
Author(s):  
Nandini Chakraborty
Keyword(s):  
Juvenile Delinquency ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Special Reference ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
The Other ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
The One ◽  
Higher Doses ◽  
Society Today

Media plays a vital role in our society today. With the advent of mass media, including television and more recently, video and computer games, children and teenagers are exposed to increasingly higher doses of aggressive images. Media is a double-edged tool. On the one hand, it plays an important role in framing public opinion, and on the other, its character is to sensationalize issues to attract readers. But its objective should be clear; that is, to reform a juvenile and not to penalize him or her.  The article depicts the media's influence on juvenile delinquency and the tendency for delinquency. Several media reports show the cases of juvenile delinquency, with special reference to India.

Play as Work

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-40
Author(s):  
Daniel Pargman ◽  
Daniel Svensson
Keyword(s):  
Computer Games ◽  
Leisure Activity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Competitive Activity ◽  
Cross Country Skiing ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
The One ◽  
Standardization Organization ◽  
Over Time

Abstract Contemporary images of desirable work (for example at gaming companies or at one of the tech giants) foregrounds creativity and incorporates and idealises elements of play. Simultaneously, becoming one of the best in some particular leisure activity can require many long hours of hard, demanding work. Between on the one hand work and on the other hand leisure and play, we enter the domain of games and sports. Most classical sports originally developed from physical practices of moving the human body and these practices were, through standardization, organization and rationalization, turned into sports. Many sport researchers, (sport) historians and (sport) sociologists have pointed out that sports have gone through a process of “sportification”. Cross-country skiing is an example of an activity that has gone through a historical process of sportification, over time becoming progressively more managed and regulated. Computer games are today following a similar trajectory and have gone from being a leisure activity to becoming a competitive activity, “esports”, with professional players, international competitions, and live streams that are watched by tens of millions of viewers.

scholarly journals The freedom of alienated reflexive subjectivity inThe Stanley Parable

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Modern Subject ◽  
Quest For Meaning ◽  
Theory Of The Novel ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

The Stanley Parable (Galactic Cafe, 2013) is a game that self-reflexively meditates on the relationship between the structure in which choices are presented to the player in first-person exploration games and contemporary concerns over freedom. It takes, as its subject matter, its own ‘variable expressiveness’, yet must also delimit that expressiveness in order to direct the player towards a self-reflexive mindset. The article proposes, by analysing three of the endings in the game, that this endeavour necessitates the game to compromise its ‘gameness’ and to move towards being a Lukácsian novel caught in an endless interiority; it must maintain a tension between giving the player freedom and room for expression, on the one hand, and being tightly focused on reflections concerning freedom and meaning, on the other. This reveals something about what computer games must sacrifice in order to grasp at meaning and also what would be required for a work to indicate that in which freedom consists. It will be argued that neither of the two kinds of subjectivity that are detailed by Lukács ((1971) The Theory of the Novel. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press) – the Homeric subject without interiority and the alienated modern subject on a Sisyphean quest for meaning – are compatible with freedom. Instead, the carefully conceived tensions to which The Stanley Parable gives rise initiates a ‘dance’ that gestures towards freedom inhering in a subjectivity which avoids these possibilities. This could only be accomplished by being more than both a game and a novel. The implications bear upon the form of a medium that can most suitably function as a homology for the aforementioned subjectivity that transcends the two Lukácsian poles.

scholarly journals Violent Boys and Precocious Girls: Regulating Childhood at the End of the Millennium

2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Walkerdine
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
The Other ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
Male Adult ◽  
The One

This article explores the regulation of childhood at the end of the twentieth century by focusing on the figures of the proto-violent boy and the proto-sexual girl in relation to the figure of the dangerous and predatory male adult. These figures, who represent the Other to normal childhood, are explored with respect to popular culture, examining computer games on the one hand and popular song and dance on the other. It is argued that conceptions of childhood for the next century need to engage with the specificity of the sites in which subjectivities are constituted and to move away from the simple dichotomies of normality and pathology.

Acoustic Ladies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiman Wang
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Vocal Performance ◽  
Singing Voice ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Peking Opera ◽  
The One

July 1935, a British newspaper reported, “China’s own most famous actress, Miss Butterfly Wu, of Shanghai, shook hands yesterday with Hollywood’s most famous Chinese star, Miss Anna May Wong,” at a reception in honor of both Wu and Mei Lan-fang, “China’s leading stage actor.”  All three performers became involved in filmmaking as it was emerging into a new dominant entertainment industry. Interestingly, if Mei needed to foreground the visual choreography at the expense of his vocal performance in 1920 when some of his repertoire pieces were filmed as silent shorts, Wong and Wu played a key role in ushering in the talkie era with their singing voice.  This chapter explores how the two instances of female singing voice were triangulated and intermediated with Mei Lanfang’s female impersonation derived from Peking Opera on the one hand, and on the other hand, remediated through new filming and recording technologies at the cusp the sound era.  It thus unpacks the cultural phenomenon of the emerging female singing voice, using it as a lens to examine the reconfiguration of gendered performance and performative gender identity in relation to colonial modernity and cosmopolitanism, national identity and international aspirations.

The Bloody Brood

2019 ◽  
pp. 350-366
Author(s):  
Scott Preston
Keyword(s):  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Horror Films ◽  
The Other ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
David Cronenberg ◽  
Canadian Culture ◽  
The One

The horror film in Canada is a remarkable site of contradictions. On the one hand, it is almost entirely ignored by scholarship. On the other, it plays a part in the nearly two dozen books written about David Cronenberg, who built his reputation in the genre. Like Cronenberg’s early work, horror presents a challenge because of its association with the American entertainment industry—an institution Canadian cinema (like Canadian culture, broadly conceived) has always defined itself in opposition to. The very existence of a Canadian horror film blurs the boundary between “us” and “them.” Perhaps for this reason, previous scholars emphasize those horror films that most resemble Canada’s auteurist art cinema or otherwise evinced an identifiable “Canadianness.” This chapter avoids thematic analysis of individual works to instead resituate the genre as a whole to the center of the nation’s evolving conversation about its identity and its cinema.

scholarly journals RECEPTIVE STRATEGIES OF Y. KLAVDIEV'S PLAY "THE YAKUZA DOGS"

2017 ◽  
pp. 184-188
Author(s):  
T. N. Volkova
Keyword(s):  
Computer Games ◽  
The Other ◽  
Eastern Philosophy ◽  
Cultural Codes ◽  
First Case ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Child Reader ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Adult Reader

The article discusses the play by contemporary playwright Yuri Klavdiev "TheYakuza Dogs." Here is a detailed (but not exhaustive) analysis of the cultural codes. According to the author of the study, the languages of animation, cinema, classical  and  fictional  literature,  computer  games  and  eastern  philosophy  form in the play, a specific "dialect" addressed to its teenage reader. The article emphasizes that a reading teenager is different from a child-reader and an adult reader: their receptive capabilities are largely defined by puberty crisis. On the one hand, in fiction a teenager looks for dynamics and heroics, and, on the other hand, they are eager to face  the  social  reality  fierce  with  its  innumerable  conflicts.  In  the  first  case, the teenagers manifest  themselves  as a  child-reader with  their interest for action and the  struggle  between  good  and  evil.  In  the  second  case,  on  the  contrary, as an adult, since the ability to see the border that separates the tale from life belongs only to a well-formed reader. 

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