55 research outputs found
Time invaders:conceptualizing performative game time
This chapter characterizes framing devices and other game elements as unstable signifiers, evaluating performances according to how they generate diachronic or synchronic effects by acting on those signifiers. Videogames make use of computersâ capabilities to present a very large set of these signifiers and thus generate highly complex forms of temporal experience. Because neither diachrony (exemplified by player performance) nor synchrony (computer-coded rule structures) can complete their respective operations and always leave a differential margin, videogames can be understood as diachrono-synchronic systems.Performative multiplicities of various sizes can be analyzed in terms of how they draw together or separate performances, creating a comparative methodology for describing temporal experience in videogames. One of the key synchronic effects is the Game Over, which has a high-level effect on all performances of a game. Considered as a synchronic horizon of experience, the Game Over provides a concept capable of addressing the heterogeneous and composite set of videogame elements in terms of how players interpret unstable signifiers. This includes narrative, which can be rigorously defined in terms of its synchronizing effect on a gameâs performative multiplicity
Idiographische und nomothetische Forschung in wissenschaftstheoretischer Sicht
Die Biographik als Forschungsrichtung rekonstruiert also sowohl die Regeln, die in Biographien exemplifiziert sind, als auch die spezifische Art, wie diese Regeln im Leben des Biographierten modifiziert werden. Allerdings wird diese Blickrichtung nicht durch einen direkten Bezug zum "Leben" ermöglicht, denn dieses liegt ja nicht als Gegenstand, sondern nur in Zeichen vor. Auch dieser Blick ist also auf das Zeichenmaterial der Biographie angewiesen, sieht es jedoch unter dem Gesichtspunkt, der gerade nicht auf die Einstimmigkeit des Regelvollzug abhebt, sondern auf die Vielschichtigkeit und WidersprĂŒchlichkeit der ĂuĂerungen, in denen diese Regeln modifiziert werden
Intimate strangers: perspectives on female converts to Islam in Britain
This article explores the relationships between female converts to Islam in Britain and their close friends and family. It pays attention to the perspectives of converts but focuses on the reactions of their intimates to the conversion. We argue that converts become âintimate strangersâ through conversionâestranged on the level of understanding and belief but intimate on the emotional plane. This strangeness is symbolised by the Orientalist stereotypes associated with the converts. At the same time, friends and family shun engagement with the conversion itself, thus keeping alive the stereotypes and precluding understanding. In refusing to engage with matters of belief even within the intimate space of the family, secularismâs orthodox private/public divide gets busted where religiosity, instead, becomes an issue between the (individual) private and the (family) public. Lacking reciprocity and with no access to the inner depths of the people they are closest to, the liberal rhetoric of friends and family about personal choice and equal acceptance of all paths amounts to bigotry and turns out to be painful for both the converts and their intimates.Arts and Humanities Research Council, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studie
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