2023
Mukherjee, Souvik
Ludonarrative Postcolonialism: Re-Playing the Colonial Discourse Book Section
In: Ghosal, Torsa (Ed.): Global Perspectives on Digital Literature: A Critical Introduction for the Twenty-First Century, Routledge, 2023, ISBN: 9781003214915.
Abstract | Links | Tags: Case studies, Literary framework, Ludonarrative, Postcolonialism, Video games
@incollection{Mukherjee2023d,
title = {Ludonarrative Postcolonialism: Re-Playing the Colonial Discourse},
author = {Souvik Mukherjee },
editor = {Torsa Ghosal},
url = {https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003214915-5/ludonarrative-postcolonialism-souvik-mukherjee
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003214915},
doi = {10.4324/9781003214915},
isbn = {9781003214915},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-06-22},
urldate = {2023-06-22},
booktitle = {Global Perspectives on Digital Literature: A Critical Introduction for the Twenty-First Century},
publisher = {Routledge},
abstract = {The relationship between stories and games has become seemingly more complicated in recent times with the emergence of digital games and other narrative forms that have a ludic (gamelike) character. Critical theoretical framework from Game Studies has thus been used to analyse earlier narrative media and theoretical framework from literary studies has been used to study games. What is remarkable, however, is that certain theoretical frameworks from literary studies have not made it into the discussions of games: one prominent omission is that of postcolonialism. As a literary framework, postcolonialism opens texts up to questions of inequality and facilitates reading against the grain from a subaltern position. Advancing emergent work on videogames and postcolonialism, this chapter shows how any reading of the ludonarrative digital text benefits from postcolonial reading strategies. Two case studies are considered. Both span multiple narrative media, and in both narratives, the postcolonial angle is a persistent presence which, as this chapter argues, continually disrupts and diversifies the reading(s) that are conventionally made available to us.},
keywords = {Case studies, Literary framework, Ludonarrative, Postcolonialism, Video games},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {incollection}
}
The relationship between stories and games has become seemingly more complicated in recent times with the emergence of digital games and other narrative forms that have a ludic (gamelike) character. Critical theoretical framework from Game Studies has thus been used to analyse earlier narrative media and theoretical framework from literary studies has been used to study games. What is remarkable, however, is that certain theoretical frameworks from literary studies have not made it into the discussions of games: one prominent omission is that of postcolonialism. As a literary framework, postcolonialism opens texts up to questions of inequality and facilitates reading against the grain from a subaltern position. Advancing emergent work on videogames and postcolonialism, this chapter shows how any reading of the ludonarrative digital text benefits from postcolonial reading strategies. Two case studies are considered. Both span multiple narrative media, and in both narratives, the postcolonial angle is a persistent presence which, as this chapter argues, continually disrupts and diversifies the reading(s) that are conventionally made available to us.