* * *
“I don’t see [inspiration] as a state of grace, nor as a breath from heaven, but as the moment when, by tenacity and control, you are at one with your theme […] You spur the theme on and the theme spurs you on too […] All obstacles fade away, all conflict disappears, things you never dreamt of occur to you and, at that moment, there is absolutely nothing in the world better than writing”
–Gabriel García Márquez
“Word to Live By,” Feature Article, Tri-C Times
* * *
“The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent. From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star.”
― Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography
Literature, Video Games, Photography, Woodworking, Travel, Writing, Teaching, Game Studies, Cultural Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Critical Theory, Continental Philosophy, and Creative Writing
* * *
“When the starry sky, a vista of open seas, or a stained-glass window shedding purple beams fascinate me, there is a cluster of meaning, of colors, of words, of caresses, there are light touches, scents, sighs, cadences that arise, shroud me, carry me away, and sweep me beyond the things I see, hear, or think.”
― Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: an Essay on Abjection
Available at:
Palgrave Macmillan
Amazon
Video Game Chronotopes and Social Justice examines how the chronotope, which literally means “timespace,” is an effective interpretive lens through which to understand the cultural and ideological significance of video games. Using ‘slow readings’ attuned to deconstruction along the lines of post-structuralist theory, gender studies, queer studies, continental philosophy, and critical theory, Mike Piero exposes the often-overlooked misogyny, heteronormativity, racism, and patriarchal structures present in many Triple-A video games through their arrangement of timespace itself. Beyond understanding time and space as separate mechanics and dimensions, Piero reunites time and space through the analysis of six chronotopes―of the bonfire, the abject, the archipelago, the fart as pharmakon, madness, and coupled love―toward a poetic meaning making that is at the heart of play itself, all in affirmation of life, equity, and justice.
Available for purchase at:
McFarland & Company
Amazon
Being Dragonborn: Critical Essays on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (forthcoming from McFarland Press) takes the massive video game hit, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, as its site of multidisciplinary, scholarly interrogation. This epic fantasy role playing game hails its player as “dragonborn,” a calling that merges political, social, and religious narratives in the game toward the player’s assumption of the dragonborn identity position: savior of Skyrim. Our collection identifies and explores these positions within the cultural ecology of the game. The outstanding authors featured in this collection unpack Skyrim as a topological space that encodes and extends cultural ideologies in the game’s design, gameplay experience, modding tradition, and online game forums. In other words, the dragonborn player is interpellated into a series of ideological roles that mirror the gendered, racially inscribed, neoliberal, and colonialist attitudes and subject positions proffered to players in their out-of-game-existence. For a game like Skyrim that goes to great lengths to construct a fantasy world that is detailed and immersive, the hidden ideologies encoded into the game are important to understanding how a game this popular—and by extension, the video game medium itself—reinscribes the familiar in ostensibly unfamiliar ways.
A collaboration between the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) and WAMC Northeast Public Radio, The Academic Minute features short, two-minute segments on cutting-edge research from professors around the world. Check out my segment on “Studying Games as Culture.”
© 2023 mikepiero.org
