Deconstruction, Posthumanism, Digital Gaming – Laurent Milesi
Posthumanism and Digital Gaming
Abstract for the essay ‘Posthumanism and Digital Gaming’, published in the Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism, ed. Stefan Herbrechter et al. (Springer, 2022). This forms the ‘matrix’ for a monograph in progress to be completed in the not-too-distant future, very likely under a different title.
“While play has always constituted an important aspect of human activity, the advent of video games, in tandem with the development of computer technology, has revolutionized our everyday lives to such an extent that digital gaming has become not only a crucial form of entertainment but also, increasingly, an educational means of addressing current global issues. This chapter will first provide a background for the emergence of digital gaming alongside the rise of posthumanism as a discipline concerned with the impact of technology on the human, then with the questioning of anthropocentrism and of the nature of humanity itself. After a brief presentation of the greater symbiosis between the human and the machinic in videoludic entertainment, the role of this integration on the gamer’s affect and identification with a virtual avatar will be analyzed, with a focus on the theme of empathy for androids in Detroit: Become Human. The new millennium’s mounting awareness of the Anthropocene has led video games to address our precariousness, and the study will then reflect such an evolution, from the earlier superhero saving the world (traditional games) to a more humble character struggling for their life (survival horror games) or to assert their singularity (LGBT+- and disabled-friendly games), to a responsible citizen aware of their situatedness in the world trying to empathize with the endangered planet (ecocritical and nonhuman, object-oriented games).”
A Conceptual Genealogy of the Virtual
This project of a ‘conceptual genealogy’ is the first of its kind to allow us to understand the full significance of the contemporary phenomenon of the virtual by situating it in a complex line of cultural and philosophical descent not reducible to our ubiquitous ‘virtual reality’ (minimally defined as a computer/software-generated interface that gives the impression of being physically inside a simulated space) but which will ultimately help us challenge our ready-made assumptions about what the real ‘is’. While there exist many studies related more specifically to several facets of our contemporary epoch’s trendy ‘digital culture’, these stem from areas and disciplines (media studies, cultural studies, etc.) that are often impervious to, or do not engage in, a patient historical excavation and reconstruction of the past in order to set up a critical dialogue with the present – with the exception of now canonical works by Michael Heim (in particular, The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality (1993) and Virtual Realism (2000)) and especially Rob Shields’s The Virtual (2003).
Although ‘conceptual histories’ are seldom attempted as they potentially require significant time investment into a range of disciplines across a broad historical spectrum, such projects are crucial to help us gain a deeper knowledge of the evolution of the human mind-set in time – in this case, brought about by the redeployment of a known, if problematic concept through recent technological advances.
