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Video Game Chronotopes and Social Justice examines how the chronotope, which literally means "timespace," is an effective interpretive lens through which to understand the cultural and ideological significance of video games. Using 'slow readings' attuned to deconstruction along the lines of post-structuralist theory, gender studies, queer studies, continental philosophy, and critical theory, Mike Piero exposes the often-overlooked misogyny, heteronormativity, racism, and patriarchal structures present in many Triple-A video games through their arrangement of timespace itself. Beyond understanding time and space as separate mechanics and dimensions, Piero reunites time and space through the analysis of six chronotopes-of the bonfire, the abject, the archipelago, the fart as pharmakon, madness, and coupled love-toward a poetic meaning making that is at the heart of play itself, all in affirmation of life, equity, and justice.
List of contents
Introduction: Queering Video Game Timespace through Threshold Chronotopes.- 1. The Chronotope of the Bonfire: Reconfiguring Community in Medieval-Themed Role-Playing Games.- 2.The Chronotope of the Archipelago: Archipelagic Maps and Playing Colonial Conquest in Real-Time Strategy Games.- 3.The Chronotope of the Abject: Understanding Video Game Abjection under Sovereign State Power.- 4.The Chronotope of the Fart as Pharmakon: Laughter, Censorship, and Social Justice in Carnivalesque Games.- 5.The Chronotope of Madness: Medical Rhetorics and Mental Illness Stigma in Video Games.- 6.The Chronotope of Coupled Love: Compulsory Monogamy, Video Games, and Polyamorous Possibilities Beyond Belonging.- Afterword: Future Areas of Research Opened by Threshold Chronotopes.
About the author
Mike Piero is a Professor of English at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio. In addition to winning national awards for innovative teaching, his work has recently appeared in
The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Transnational Literature, MediaCommons, MediaTropes, and
Teaching English in the Two-Year College. He is co-editor of
Being Dragonborn: Critical Essays on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2021). He teaches courses in game studies, British literature, college composition, and the humanities.
