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The World Politics of Disco Elysium analyses the distinctive political claims and original arguments on a wide range of international political issues of the highly-acclaimed Marxist video game Disco Elysium (2019), which takes place in a speculative fictional world anchored in a post-Soviet Estonian perspective.
List of contents
Part 1: An Introduction to Disco Elysium 1. Introduction to
The World Politics of Disco Elysium 2. What Kind of Cop Are We, Detective? Community Engagement on r/DiscoElysium
Bart Part 2: Disco Elysium and Late Capitalism 3. "I have holes in my brain" - The Traumatic Memory of the Commune of Revachol 4. "Thought Cabinet": Imagining Ludic Alternatives to Capitalist Realism 5. The Detective Dandy and the Marxist Hypothesis:
Disco Elysium as Critique of the Millennial Left
Part 3: World Order, Liberalism, and Security in Disco Elysium 6. A Real Kerfuffle: Sovereignty and Intervention Beyond the Pale in
Disco Elysium 7. The EU and
Disco Elysium - Second-order Representations as Vessels of Criticism 8. Who Bears 'La Responsabilité?': The Objective Violence of Liberal Order in
Disco Elysium 9. Imaginaries of Ontological (In)Security in
Disco Elysium Part 4: Oppression and Liberation in Disco Elysium 10. "I don't want to be this kind of animal anymore!": Unthinking Policing in
Disco Elysium 11. Vows of Blööd and Flesh: The Aggrieved Entitlements of Fascist Ideology in
Disco Elysium 12. Decomposing the Body Politic: Sick and Disabled Resistance in
Disco Elysium 13. The Ecstasy of Ruin: Sartre, Euphoria, and the Pleasure of Undoing
Part 5: Conclusions 14. Playing like:
Disco Elysium and the making of IR subjects Afterword.
About the author
Vic Castro is an independent scholar with a PhD in political science (2024) from the University of Copenhagen. Their work has been published in journals including
Security Dialogue and
European Journal of International Security. They are a former Communications Officer for the STAIR section of ISA.
Nicholas Kiersey is Professor of Political Science at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. His research addresses austerity, biopolitics, and the crises of the neoliberal capitalist state. He is currently working on a book about socialist governmentality and the cultural political economy of the end of capitalism.
