JOURNAL ARTICLE

Theorizing the After-Human in Video Games: Flesh and Intersubjectivity against Residual Humanisms through Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology.

  • Published In: Afterimage, 2024, v. 51, n. 3. P. 28 1 of 3

  • Database: Academic Search Ultimate 2 of 3

  • Authored By: Keever, Justin; Rudenshiold, Alexander 3 of 3

Abstract

Game studies' engagement with the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty has until this point been used to produce an account of the experience of video game play. This article demonstrates a different orientation toward phenomenology, using it as a critical apparatus to articulate a speculative historical materialism and philosophy of interrelation that we call the after-human. Through comparative close readings of two video games that follow the end of the human species—Backbone (EggNut, 2021) and SOMA (Frictional Games, 2015)—we articulate this concept using the Merleau-Pontian concept of "flesh," or the simultaneous production of the subject and object, to levy a critique of (post)humanism and offer a futurist vision of solidarity through the intersubjective after-human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Additional Information

  • Source:Afterimage. 2024/09, Vol. 51, Issue 3, p28
  • Document Type:Article
  • Subject Area:Literature and Writing
  • Publication Date:2024
  • ISSN:0300-7472
  • DOI:10.1525/aft.2024.51.3.28
  • Accession Number:180138805
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