I, Posthuman:embodying entangled subjectivities in gaming

We live in an era where the fundamental principles of what it means to be human are being reconsidered and reconceptualised, and we are moving towards a more entangled and relational understanding of the human’s ontology. The “boundaries” of what constitute a human as separate from both its surroundings and human and non-human others are being problematised. How do you separate “the human” from its contexts? In an age where advanced technology often constitutes these contexts, how can you separate the human from technology? Whilst we have always been entangled, today this occurs in a context that is more technologically driven, and this has provoked further debate on the status of the “posthuman”. This PhD thesis is concerned with what it means and how feels to be posthuman, by exploring how posthuman subjectivities are enabled and embodied. What we are capable of doing emerges contextually: it is profoundly dependent on our environments. In my view of the posthuman, the stable “human” self is disrupted, giving way to a subjectivity where our interactions in the world are more intra-active. But how might we consider the emergence of posthuman subjectivities in more depth? I suggest using a particular example of posthuman subjectivity, the MMORPG avatargamer, to demonstrate how the humanistically separated entities of “avatar” and “gamer” can provide a context to explore how “other” and “self” are not ontologically distinct. In doing so, I ask: what specific practices enable or provoke this ontological entanglement? Engaging in an autoethnographic inquiry, I use my intra-action with my avatar Etyme in the MMORPG World of Warcraft as one example of posthuman subjectivity. This methodology in itself is intriguing to explore the multiplicity of selves we experience, and negotiates the humanistic overthrows of “selfhood” whilst experiencing the self as entangled. Through my construct of the posthuman, where the human cannot be meaningfully separated from its environment, we are nevertheless still drawn to speak of an “I” and have a desire to understand ourselves as independent agents. However, the fieldnotes analysed in this thesis disrupt the “I”, and instead reflect on the shifting sense of self with and through an entity that is experienced as both me-and-not-me. Whilst an autoethnographic posthumanism might seem contradictory, I argue that it is a fundamental step in acknowledging our humanistic tendencies and beginning to reflexively engage with, and critique, these ideals. To do so, this thesis “posthumanises” traditionally humanistic constructs: acting and empathy. To widen this concept further, a third analytic re-interrogates different aspects of subject formation to consider how these too could be “posthumanised”. This suggests a broader application of posthumanism, demonstrating how previous notions of mastery, autonomy, and individuality can be critiqued and destabilised in order to view our practices and “selves” as emergent and entwined

Transformative Images, Temporality and Infra-structures of Feeling: An Interview with Rebecca Coleman

In this follow-up interview to her keynote lecture at the MeCCSA-PGN 2015 Conference in Coventry, Rebecca Coleman discusses the affective relations between bodies, images and environments. Coleman offers an overview of her work on images and the body, as well as her interest in theorising the present and the future, and explains her engagement with feminism, new materialism and Deleuze, in particular. To understand how bodies ‘become’, she argues for the need to understand both process, transformation and change, and what stays, sticks or gets stopped

Revisiting Edward Said’s Representations of the Intellectual: A Roundtable for Perspectives on Academic Activism

In this roundtable discussion, we revisit Edward Said’s Representations of the Intellectual (1993) as a departure for examining how and where academic activism can take place. This is situated both within and apart from existing public struggles, including #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) and other current movements. Academic activism will be explored as an intellectual project that may at times problematise notions of the public, the intellectual, and the activist. We will examine how academic activism contributes to activist projects, while also interrogating how “public” representational claims are made. This includes important questions: who is responsible for publics that are not yet constituted as such? What voices are not yet heard, seen, or understood? And what is the role of academic activists in relation to these? This in turn raises ethical questions of how to represent and be accountable to the disadvantaged and/or subaltern. In addressing these issues, the roundtable will explore activism both inside and outside the classroom, offering various figurations of academic activism. The discussion will draw on the participants’ experiences of university teaching and popular education within local contexts, as members of staff at Birmingham City University in the UK

Empathy at Play:Embodying Posthuman Subjectivities in Gaming

In this article, we address the need for a posthuman account of the relationship between the avatar and player. We draw on a particular line of posthumanist theory associated closely with the work of Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti and N. Katherine Hayles that suggests a constantly permeable, fluid and extended subjectivity, displacing the boundaries between human and other. In doing so, we propose a posthuman concept of empathy in gameplay, and we apply this concept to data from the first author’s 18-month ethnographic field notes of gameplay in the MMORPG World of Warcraft. Exploring these data through our analysis of posthuman empathy, we demonstrate the entanglement of avatar–player, machine–human relationship. We show how empathy allows us to understand this relationship as constantly negotiated and in process, producing visceral reactions in the intra-connected avatar–player subject as well as moments of co-produced in-game action that require ‘affective matching’ between subjective and embodied experiences. We argue that this account of the avatar–player relationship extends research in game culture, providing a horizontal, non-hierarchical discussion of its most necessary interaction

Diffractively Watching Queer Eye: difficult knowledge through critical posthumanism and neoliberalism

Utilising a method of “diffractive watching” of the first of the 2018 series Queer Eye (Netflix) this article explores how qualitative methods can respond to different approaches to research brought to the forefront through philosophies of critical posthumanism and new materialism, whilst still understanding how these operate with neoliberal structures and discourses. Using Lather’s concept of difficult knowledge, the article suggests that posthumanism and neoliberalism might be read diffractively through one another, despite their potentially contradictory value structures of individuality vs. multiplicity, and individual agency vs. emergence. The supposed contradictions in the research are drawn through different diffractive prepositions, to demonstrate the insights offered by embracing complexity and avoiding representational readings of texts. This article, therefore, contributes an original methodological approach to textual analysis, as well as an original theoretical negotiation of the ways in which we can extend neoliberal and posthuman critique by diffractively reading them through one another

Moral Ambiguity and the Zombie Scapegoat in Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare

Red Dead Redemption celebrates the White male hero of the Western in a classical twist of anti-heroism, as the protagonist John Marston becomes our bad-guy-gone-good-but-still-badass. The story allows the character to occupy various positions on the spectrum between outlaw and government-hired protagonist. The player of RDR therefore has more ambiguity in the classic choice of good vs. evil, creating instead a “tentative moralism” in Marston .1 In this chapter I explore this theme of morality in RDR’s downloadable content (DLC) expansion, Undead Nightmare (UN), which operates as a separate story from the main RDR game and can therefore be played in isolation. UN is tentatively positioned within the timeline of the main story – encompassing events that supposedly took place during the few months that Marston is at home tending to his farm and teaching his son Jack, before Marston’s inevitable (and inevitably heroic) demise at the end of the main RDR game

Zombies, Deviance and the Right to Posthuman Life

Zombies have become increasingly prolific in popular culture. Films from Dawn of the Dead to Shaun of the Dead, books such as the Mira Grant Newsflesh series, zombie games including Dying Light, are all excellent examples of affective zombie mediations. There are some fantastic zombie podcasts, including We’re Alive, and the audiobook of After the Cure, by Deirdre Gould, creates a wonderfully creepy atmosphere that should appeal to any horror fan. But what is it with zombies? Societies and cultures are overcome (or overrun) with morbid fascination, but why? As Sarah Lauro asks, ‘[w]hence does our cultural fascination with zombies come?’ The answer is both obvious and not so obvious. Post-apocalyptic type scenarios allow access to view a world that is both similar-yet-strange. Audiences get to watch/read/play out stories and journeys of survivors and victims and ask those self-reflexive questions – “what would I do, how long would I survive, where would I go?”, and this imaginative exploration allows the consideration of how humans would fare in this world, but not as it is presently known

Storytelling the Multiple Self: Posthuman Autoethnography as Critical Praxis

This chapter will argue for the autoethnographic-I and its use as a capturing of multiplicity and as a site for discovery. Drawing on Braidotti’s argument that we are constituted of a multiplicity of ‘others’ and that the notion of ‘self’ is ‘laziness of habit’, (Braidotti, 2013, p. 100) I extend these ideas to consider in more critical detail how the autoethnographic-I can embrace the idea of ‘non-unitary subjectivity’ (Braidotti, 2013, p. 93) whilst working within the humanist capacities that formed it in order to dismantle humanistic notions from within. Ultimately, this means a newfound definition and appreciation for what is meant by the posthuman-I, and an exploration of how storytelling the ‘self’ can allow an opportunity for acknowledgement of the entangled and distributed nature of self-as-emergent. Considering this in pedagogical terms, I argue that storytelling the multiple self allows an opportunity to radically reconsider what ‘self’ means and to disrupt humanistic hierarchies and the sanctity of the individual. Furthermore, I suggest that this aligns with Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) notion of becoming-child, and that through the posthuman-I we are able to unlearn the problematic aspects of self, such that we might begin to recognise how to teach children and students in more deterritorialized ways. This piece will draw together both critical and creative writing as an opportunity for different modes of expression that also breakdown binaries and boundaries between academic and affective writing. In many ways, this praxis will offer different insights into both lines of consistency and lines of flight. Rather than dismissing humanistic practices in their entirety, this work sees humanism as always-already entangled within us, and therefore a part of the assemblage of what we become. Yet by giving space to lines of flight, different provocations for the reader are intended to allow different journeys through the work

Avatar affectivity and affection

Avatars and gamers create channels of affective flow through their connection to a gameworld. Elsewhere (Wilde and Evans) I have explored this flow as an empathic exchange, wherein the desires of each must be aligned with the other in order to progress in-game. More than this, avatars themselves incite a range of affective and emotional responses. Drawing on my autoethnographic immersion in the game World of Warcraft, in the following article I consider feelings I have towards my avatar, ranging from affection to annoyance. Exploring her affective potential, I ask what these feelings can tell us about our relationships with technology and conclude that the way we are able to affect and be affected by others and environments around us shows us to be the entangled beings posthumanism suggests, and the avatar-gamer is one example that demonstrates the intimacy that emerges between human and machine in contemporary societies. This paper therefore contributes to debates that renounce the view of technology as subservient, seeing it instead as equal, thereby reworking past considerations through affective understanding