Assembling An End: The Aesthetic Categories of Finitude

Aesthetic category theory and assemblage theory are both underutilized in the context of media studies. This dissertation argues that the application of these methods to media objects can generate productive ways of understanding how those media objects address human finitude. Developing three aesthetic categories of human finitude (bleakness, post-apocalypse, and annihilation), this dissertation then outlines those categories in their material and historical contexts. These categories are argued through in a linear manner, and they progressively are characterized by a change from stasis to movement, and this argument takes them to their limit within annihilation, arguing that the only way to move beyond the limit point of human finitude would be the utter destruction of aesthetics itself

The Nonhuman Lives of Videogames

Videogames are not subjects to be operated on, but rather bodies that humans live both with and inside of. In order to reconcile human existence with this nonhuman life, this thesis looks to evaluate the exact relationships developed between humans and assemblages in order to understand how humans are disciplined to return to games time and time again. The recognition of the nonhuman life of videogames necessitates a rethinking of the word “life,” as well as a reformulation of ethics around the new sets of obligations humans have toward videogames if we begin to recognize them as alive

Cybernetic irony:racial humour from mecha-Hitler to nuclear Gandhi

This chapter investigates relations between race and humour in digital games. Registering these complexities, we then focus on irony with particular focus on ‘Nuclear Gandhi’: the widespread gamer meme that an overflow error in Civilization caused Gandhi to appear as a hyper-aggressive character which, ironically, clashed with the historical record from which the game drew design and aesthetic legitimacy. However, Civilization eminence Sid Meier has recently stated that this is false: the humorous Nuclear Gandhi is in fact a complex entanglement of technical, social, and cultural factors. Drawing on Bhabha’s discussion of ‘sly civility’, we theorise Nuclear Gandhi as ‘cybernetic irony’ in which the collective element of humour is mediated by techno-racial claims to objectivity