Rechercher

This thesis analyzes and discusses the complexities of digital representations involving Indigenous peoples through video games. Connecting both Game Theory and Native Studies, I analyze how digital games incorporate identity, culture, and relationships in diverse and intellectual ways and provide new spaces for Indigenous agency and semiotics. Beginning with an analysis of several historical and negative representations of Indigenous peoples, I then compare those tropes to projects within today’s environment and mainstream video game companies, independent companies, and educational service providers. I assert that while some digital media representations of Indigenous cultures are stereotypical and problematic, others facilitate a sense of cultural continuance and survivance. Lastly, some video games display both stereotypical and cultural continuance within them.

To date, game studies has largely undertheorized the co-production of postcolonial stories, exploration, and mapping in games. Furthermore, as has been noted before (Carr, 2006), the work that has been done on postcolonialism and play so far often leaves the player out of the equation, even sometimes as a theoretical construct. Yet player experience is crucial to understanding such games, as narratives are not only built on the ‘master’ level of game mechanics, but also through the personal stories players processually (Ash, 2009; Thrift, 2008) develop through their journey of touring and mapping, thereby developing spatial stories (De Certeau, 1984; Jenkins, 2004; Lammes, 2009) that may present us with conflicting spatio-temporal accounts. Through a comparative and collaborative auto-ethnographic analysis of Civilization VI (Sid Meier, 2016) – a turn-based strategy game – we want to push this discussion further and improve our theoretical understanding and analytical purchase of the triad relation between narrative and postcolonialism in games, thereby contributing to the field of postcolonial theory and game studies. Drawing on postcolonial geography, science and technology studies (STS), non-representational theory and game studies, we argue that games, through their playful, explorative and emergent qualities, are a powerful means of rethinking and reimagining colonial (hi)stories in this postcolonial era (Lammes, 2009, 2010) including issues of spatio-temporality, cartography and the hybrid relation between women and machines.

Thunderbird Strike, a 2D side-scroller developed by Elizabeth LaPensée, allows a player fly from the Tar Sands to the Great Lakes as a thunderbird protecting Turtle Island with searing lightning against the snake that threatens to swallow the lands and waters whole. The game encouraged players to learn about the indigenous culture, reflect on water protection and alternative energy sources, and gain awareness of risks posed by oil pipeline construction for the conveyance of tar sands.Thunderbird Strike was developed through residencies including O k’inādās Residency, The Banff Musicians in Residence Program, and Territ-Aur(i)al Imprints Exchange thanks to the 2016 Artist Fellowship grant from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council.

Karl Schoonover and Rosalind Galt attempt a formidable feat in Queer Cinema in the World: to take three charged yet indispensable concepts and theorize their interconnections. A tour-de-force analysis of the triangulation between “queer,” “cinema,” and “world”, this coauthored monograph largely succeeds in drawing out threads between crucial issues in cinema studies, queer theory, and global studies.

Avertissement: le texte qui suit a pour objet de rassembler les prolégomènes du workshop à venir. Il n’est pas le fruit d’une recherche strictement personnelle et doit sa teneur en grande partie à une enquête consultative de divers travaux cités avec leurs auteurs en fin de divers travaux cités avec leurs auteurs en fin de billet.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including where and how queerness is produced, the use of paratexts to expand and stop queer readings of films, and queers' non-reliance on mainstream media to produce queer stories.

Resident Evil 5is a zombie game made by Capcom, featuring a White Americanprotagonist and set in Africa. This article argues that approaching this as a Japanesegame reveals aspects of a Japanese racial and colonial social imaginary that are missedif this context of production is ignored. In terms of race, the game presents hybridracial subjectivities that can be related to Japanese perspectives of Blackness andWhiteness, where these terms are two poles of difference and identity throughwhich an essentialized Japanese identity is constructed in what Iwabuchi calls“strategic hybridism.” In terms of colonialism, the game echoes structures of Japa-nese colonialism through which Japanese colonialism is obliquely memorialized and a“normal” Japanese global subjectivity can be performed.

Whose Land Is It Anyway? A Manual for Decolonization provides a variety of Indigenous perspectives on the history of colonialism, current Indigenous activism and resistance, and outlines the path forward to reconciliation. This audio version features renowned Indigenous writers Taiaiake Alfred, Glen Coulthard, Russell Diabo, Beverly Jacobs, Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Kanahus Manuel, Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour, Pamela Palmater, Shiri Pasternak, Nicole Schabus, Senator Murray Sinclair, and Sharon Venne. The late Arthur Manuel’s writings are read by his grandson, Mahekan Anderson.

In interviews the comedian Wanda Sykes describes being a successful black, openly gay woman in Hollywood as akin to being a unicorn. Clearly Sykes is majestic. Yet her joke hinges on a bitter truth: the mainstream media industry grants few women, not to mention lesbians of color, access to power. Despite shifts in the cultural imaginary around civil rights, Hollywood continues to maintain an embarrassing lack of diversity in its labor force, especially at decision-making levels. To battle this long-standing reputation, studios have developed diversity-hiring programs.

Much has been written about Nina Simone’s song “Mississippi Goddam” because it lyrically achieves the political consciousness of the embattled community whose experiences and energy it intends to speak to, through, and for. With its curse words, impatient tone, and energetic rhythm, it could never be mistaken for the traditional, Christian-inflected civil rights dirge. “Alabama’s got me so upset,” the chorus complains. “Tennessee made me lose my rest, and,” as if its atrocities need not be spelled out, “every body knows about Mississippi, goddam!” The song was banned from radio airplay but still became part of the civil rights sound

Este artículo propone una reflexión sobre las prácticas vitales, artísticas y políticas de Liliana Felipe y Jesusa Rodríguez y sus experiencias de desobediencia frente a los regímenes de sexualidad y género articulados a regímenes de terror en México y Argentina. La metodología usada para llegar a la reflexión fue un análisis crítico multimodal del discurso hecho desde una perspectiva interseccional y descolonial que supone el análisis tanto de contextos como de los textos, subtextos y texturas que componen la obra y vida de estas artistas. Desde esta postura epistemológica, la obra performática y musical de Liliana y Jesusa es vista como un acervo de discursos multimodales. Nuestra reflexión muestra cómo la creación, la experiencia —entendida como lugar político— y las propuestas colectivas de Liliana y Jesusa se ponen en juego en un campo de lucha performativa donde sus discursos desobedientes proponen maneras de resistencia y fuga a los regímenes coloniales-modernos- capitalistas de género y sexualidad. Jesusa y Liliana proponen una obra multimodal y multimedial que fisura los límites de los géneros discursivos, los géneros musicales, el género gramatical y el sistema sexo género, lo cual amerita una mirada indisciplinada. Este artículo resulta ser un abordaje novedoso en la medida en que se acerca a la experiencia y a la obra de estas dos mujeres, no desde una visión disciplinar, sino a partir de una mirada transdisciplinaria, interseccional y descolonial que asume la producción artística como una apuesta política donde los límites entre lo personal y lo público se borran. This article seeks to do a reflection both on the vital, artistic and political practices of Liliana Felipe and Jesusa Rodríguez and on their experiences of disobedience to the regimes of sexuality and gender, which are articulated to regimes of terror in Mexico and Argentina. The methodology used in order to make this reflection was a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis from both an intersectional and decolonial perspective. This methodology implies the analysis of contexts, texts, subtexts and textures that make up the work and life of these artists. From this epistemological position, the performative and musical work of Liliana and Jesusa is seen as a collection of multimodal discourses. Creation, experience —understood as a political locus— and the collective proposals of Liliana and Jesusa are put into play in a field of performative struggle where their disobedient discourses propose ways of resistance to colonial-modern-capitalist regimes of gender and sexuality.Jesusa and Liliana propose a multimodal and multimedial work that fissures the limits of the discursive genres, the musical genres, the grammatical gender and the gender sex system, which deserves an undisciplined look. This article proposes an original approach insofar as it approaches the experience and work of these two women not from a disciplinary view, but from a transdisciplinary, intersectional and decolonial point of view, that assumes artistic production as a political commitment in where the boundaries between the personal and the public are erased.

The postcolonial has still remained on the margins of Game Studies, which has now incorporated at length, contemporary debates of race, gender, and other areas that challenge the canon. It is difficult to believe, however, that it has not defined the way in which video games are perceived; the effect, it can be argued, is subtle. For the millions of Indians playing games such as Empire: Total War or East India Company, their encounter with colonial history is direct and unavoidable, especially given the pervasiveness of postcolonial reactions in everything from academia to day-to-day conversation around them. The ways in which games construct conceptions of spatiality, political systems, ethics, and society are often deeply imbued with a notion of the colonial and therefore also with the questioning of colonialism. This article aims to examine the complexities that the postcolonial undertones in video games bring to the ways in which we read them.

The potential of video games as storytelling media and the deep involvement that players feel when they are part of the story needs to be analysed vis-a-vis other narrative media. This book underscores the importance of video games as narratives and offers a framework for analysing the many-ended stories that often redefine real and virtual lives.

Today over half of all American households own a dedicated game console and gaming industry profits trump those of the film industry worldwide. In this book, Soraya Murray moves past the technical discussions of games and offers a fresh and incisive look at their cultural dimensions. She critically explores blockbusters likeThe Last of Us, Metal Gear Solid, Spec Ops: The Line, Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed to show how they are deeply entangled with American ideological positions and contemporary political, cultural and economic conflicts.As quintessential forms of visual material in the twenty-first century, mainstream games both mirror and spur larger societal fears, hopes and dreams, and even address complex struggles for recognition. This book examines both their elaborately constructed characters and densely layered worlds, whose social and environmental landscapes reflect ideas about gender, race, globalisation and urban life. In this emerging field of study, Murray provides novel theoretical approaches to discussing games and playable media as culture. Demonstrating that games are at the frontline of power relations, she reimagines how we see them - and more importantly how we understand them.

"Si tous les groupes humains sont touchés par la violence à grande échelle, les femmes la subissent sous des formes spécifiques, comme en témoignent les assassinats systémiques des femmes et des filles autochtones en Amérique du Nord et en Amérique latine, ou encore les nombreux conflits armés (Syrie, Lybie, Birmanie, entre autres) dans lesquels le viol est érigé en arme de guerre. Les deux phénomènes peuvent d'ailleurs se recouper puisque l'un des tout premiers féminicides à avoir été qualifié et documenté comme tel en Amérique est celui ayant été perpétré contre les femmes mayas durant la guerre civile guatémaltèque au début des années 1980. Cependant, les femmes ne sont pas seulement les victimes de la violence de masse, puisqu'elles sont aussi les premières à témoigner et dénoncer pour faire barrage à cette violence. Ce numéro hors-série regroupe des articles et des projets visuels qui décrivent et analysent la violence de masse liée au genre. Il s'agit de réfléchir sur la manière de représenter cette violence et d'en témoigner, d'autant plus qu'elle est bien souvent rendue invisible et inaudible par le patriarcat, le colonialisme, les intérêts politiques en présence ou l'impéritie de l'État."

Burn the Boards (Causa Creations, 2015) portrays the life of an Indian worker who recycles electronic waste in a precarious environment. Phone Story (Molleindustria, 2011) simulates the journey and process of production and consumption of mobile phones, from Congo and China to Pakistan. Whereas Phone Story is described as ‘an educational game’ that addresses the player directly as a consumer, Burn the Boards is a resource management puzzle that creates compassion through role playing. These games bring to the fore a hidden reality of the everyday that is ingrained in historical relationships and power dynamics, drawing attention to what Michael Rothberg has recognized as ‘exploitation in an age of globalized neo-liberal capitalism’ (2014: iv).  This article explores how these games denounce the smartphone industry by using that same technology. For this purpose, we refer to Game Studies theory on procedural rhetoric; values and ethics; and the role of the player, combined with questions of (neo)colonization, globalization, and neoliberalism drawn from Postcolonial Studies. Our analysis shows the complicity of users and their confrontation with the extreme vulnerability of others, emphasizing how the coloniality of power works in our global consumer society. Thus we study the power relationships described and established by these games, the affective reactions which they seek to trigger, and their potential to transform players from passive observers into ethical players and consumers.

This article offers a qualitative and quantitive analysis of the critical reception of two exhibitions, Sakahàn:International Indigenous Art (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa 2013) and Beat Nation: Art, Hip-Hop and Aboriginial Culture (organised and circulated by the Vancouver Art Gallery, 2013-2014). The study treats articles which appeared between 2012 and 2015 in English and French visual-arts publications. The comparative analysis intends to highlight general trends, in order to identify challenges that contemporary Indigenous arts pose for art criticism. A review of the texts shows that all commentators, whether francophone or anglophone, indigenous or non-Indigenous, have welcomed these two exhibitions warmly. The discrepancy between the number of essays in French and those in English reflects the demographic weight of these two linguistic communities and the geographic distribution of First Nations in Canada. This will qualify, without denying, the hypothesis of Quebec's tardiness on the indigenous question. The authors largely recognize the necessity of initiating indigenization of the museum and emphasize the movement to internationalize contemporary indigenous art. Yet many commentators, particulary Indigenous people, dispute the efficacity of the concept of "strategic essentialism" put forward by the commissioners of the Sakahàn catalog. Despite both a real interest in these two major exhibitions and the quality of the commentary, in the end, for events of such a scale few texts have been published on the subject. The criteria for appreciation rooted in the institutional sociology of art endeavour to fully take into account the challenges posed by certain central aspects of the approach of several Indigenous creators, such as the intangible dimensions of their civic engagement, the dissolution of particular outside venues and the sisterhood of certain projects.

À la suite d’une série d’évènements historiques de grande relevance sociopolitique, les années 1990 ont connu une montée d'initiatives menées par les artistes autochtones nord-américains visant à une récupération et une divulgation de leur l’héritage culturel, et, de ce fait, à une revendication de leur visibilité dans le panorama international. De cette résurgence, l’artiste multimédial autochtone canadien, Kent Monkman, constitue l’une des voix plus actives et plus emblématiques. En créant un dialogue épistémologique entre les études postcoloniales et l’art autochtone, cet article interrogera l’œuvre de Kent Monkman au prisme d’une notion dont sera proposée une définition, à savoir le « Painting Back ».