Shamdani Sara 2020 Phd.Pdf (3.001Mb)

AFFECT & PLAY: SOCIO-POLITICAL VIDEOGAMES AS A SITE OF FELT- KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION SARA SHAMDANI A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO NOVEMBER 2020 ©Sara Shamdani, 2020 ii Abstract Videogames are affective networks, made up of organic and in-organic matters that come to create a space, where the player learns through doing and watching herself do. For decades, videogames researchers and players have discussed the myriad of ways in which videogames carry enormous pedagogical potentials through their procedures and the creation of a space of play that immerses the player in those procedures and the story of the game. This dissertation builds on this body of knowledge by bringing together the different understandings of affect and affective capacities to further examine the pedagogical potentials of socio-political games through the creation of a felt-knowledge-producing assemblage. I argue this felt knowledge is achieved through the processes of acting in the space of play, watching that action while it takes place, and then engaging with the consequences of the said action. The socio-political videogames curated for the purposes of this research are primarily from the perspectives of civilians living in a warzone, engaging in revolutionary efforts, or civilians who are forced to cross borders as refugees and immigrants as a result of chaos and violence of their homelands. I examine the affective capacities of the space of play through the works of D. W. Winnicott, and I assert that the unique space of videogame play is not only a space where we work through sensations that impact us through play, but we also experience affective intensities that would otherwise remain invisible. In order to access this space of play, I claim the player becomes an assemblage, a network of connectivity, with the power to observe itself forming and reforming through the connections that make the entity: the player+avatar. For this I turn to the work of Gilles Deleuze and assemblage theory. This dissertation, itself, is an assemblage of affect theories and socio-political videogames that capture the invisibilities of our socio-political reality and make them known through the process of play. These games put the player in the story of another’s suffering and iii oppression by capturing the affective sensations and intensities of a refugee camp or a war zone and ask the player to engage and experiment with what would have been otherwise remained unknown. These socio-political videogames are a new genre of art for an age of digital (mis)information that bring forth a space of play where we can experience and experiment with sensations, vibrations, and affective forces of oppression in order to feel something of it and to know it differently. iv For Mom and Dad, whose stories of revolution, war, and immigration could be made into many videogames, and For Barry, who kept saying ‘you’ve got something here, keep going.’ v Acknowledgments The process of completing one’s PhD is often a long and an arduous path, which without the help of many would be near impossible to finish. Mine was no different. First, I would like to thank my supervisor, Shannon Bell, for her support and guidance. I am immensely grateful to you for having faith in my ideas and for your thoughtful and constructive feedback which helped me materialize them. Your continuous encouragement about the contribution and the value of my research got me through some of the toughest parts of this climb. I am grateful to my committee members, Jennifer Jenson and Dina Georgis, for their close reading of my works throughout the years and providing invaluable feedback. Thank you for introducing me to theories that not only provided answers in these pages but also in life. I am grateful to my GPD, Gamal Abdel-Shehid, for his support and my GPA, Judith Hawley, who has often been a lighthouse for me trying to navigate the world of academia. I am grateful to a group of friends who read my work, attended my conference talks where I presented the early versions of this work, helped me with my defense preparation and continuously cheered me on. Thank you to Maija Duncan, Stephanie Latella, Tyler Correia, Lisa Sloniowski, and Aliya Amarshi. There were also my friends who provided me with much emotional support, laughter, and kindness. Thank you to Dory Noorafkan and Sarah Sibany for your words of support, encouragement, and holding me accountable in a way that only a friend who is also a sister could do. To my family, whose numerous supports throughout the years are far too many to list, I owe the greatest thank you. I am grateful to my parents, Shahnaz and Mansour, who guided my research with their stories, books, articles, and anything they thought would help my dissertation. Thank you for all the food, words of wisdom and invaluable knowledge. I am very thankful to vi my sisters, Setareh and Maryam, who have always been in my corner and cheered me through the thick and thin. I am grateful to my in-laws, Patricia and Barry, who opened their doors so that I could write the early versions of this work in their basement uninterrupted; a big thank you to Jen, my sister-in-law, for her letters that nourished me in the last years of my PhD. To my family in Iran, thank you for all the love, all the music, and all the hours we played and laughed together. I am grateful to Varooj Patatanian (1949-2018), an uncle and a friend, who was the first person to call me a doctor, despite my protestations, because he believed that I would finish one day. Lastly and most significantly, I am eternally grateful to my partner, Barry Spinner, who walked this path with me from the last year of my undergraduate degree to the finish line of my PhD. Thank you for planting this research idea, encouraging me to keep going, and becoming my first reader. Thank you for all the games, all the strategizing, all the philosophical discussions, and all the food. Our play and conversations nourished my soul and helped me to understand and ultimately write better. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract...……………………………………………………………………………………….. ii Dedication………...…………………………………………………………………………….. iv Acknowledgements………...…………………………………………………………………….v Table of Contents…………...………………………………………………………………...vii Lists of Figures…………………………………………………………………………………..ix Chapter One: An affective play, an Introduction…………………………..………………….1 Socio-political videogames: Ambassadors of sensual knowledge………………………...4 Why these games?…………………………………………………………...…………...11 An affective analysis & A methodological tool………………………………………….16 Chapters’ summary: Where are we headed?......................................................................27 What this dissertation is not……………………………………………………………...30 Chapter Two: Assemblages of Theories………………………………………………………35 The pedagogical potentials of videogames………………………………………………35 The ‘Affective (re)turn’………………………………………………………………….40 Tracing Spinoza’s understanding of affect………………………………………………42 Affect from its psychoanalytic trajectory………………………………………………..48 Affect & emotion………………………………………………………………………...52 Attention to Affect……………………………………………………………………….54 Methodology: ‘What method have you adopted for your research?’……………………56 Chapter Three: Play & The Space of Playing…………………………...……………………62 Bury Me, My Love..............................................................................................................62 Winnicott and the transitional space……………………………………………………..65 Play……………………………………………………………………………………....68 Human-centered design & ‘good-enough’ games……………………………………….75 Branching storylines……………………………………………………………………..79 Failure & Repetition……………………………………………………………………..85 Why do we play, even when it is so hard?........................................................................92 Chapter Four: The Augmented Body: The Player+avatar Assemblage……………………95 The extended self………………………………………………………………………..99 Blurred boundaries & first-person narration…………………………………………...103 Augmentation: A cyborg existence…………………………………………………….107 The player+avatar assemblage…………………………………………………………108 Case Study: 1000 Days of Syria…………………………………………………….….116 Becoming………………………………………………………………………………122 Chapter Five: Capture of Sensation: Socio-political Games as an Art of Empathy.……126 This War of Mine……………………………………………………………………… 126 Videogames as art………………………………………………………………………129 Deleuze, sensation & art………………………………………………………………..131 Case Study: Papers Please……………………………………………………………..147 Case Study: Neverending Nightmares………………………………………………….153 viii Aesthetic creation & its artist…………………………………………………………..157 Games & fidelity of context……………………………………………………………159 Chapter Six: Games & Ghosts: 1979 Revolution………………………...…………………162 Revolutionary affects…………………………………………………………………..166 Realism & one’s proximity to the game……………………………………………….169 Ghosts of social injustice: a detour through the ghosts of American’s slavery………..174 Ghostly affects…………………………………………………………………………178 Case Study: The Cat and the Coup…………………………………………………….185 Working through intensities……………………………………………………………189 Complexities of affect theory…………………………………………………………..193 Affect & music…………………………………………………………………………196 Case Study: Tonight We Riot…………………………………………………………...201 Chapter Seven: Trajectories of Potentials: a Conclusion………………………….……….205 Affective intensities of socio-political games…………………………………………..207 Harvesting

Load more