2020
Mäyrä, Frans
Game Culture Studies and the Politics of Scholarship: The Opposites and the Dialectic Journal Article
In: GAME: The Italian Journal of Game Studies, vol. 9, iss. 1, pp. 11-31, 2020, ISSN: 2280-7705.
Abstract | Links | Tags: Formalism, History of game studies, Literary studies, Poststructuralism, Theory wars
@article{Mäyrä2020,
title = {Game Culture Studies and the Politics of Scholarship: The Opposites and the Dialectic},
author = {Frans Mäyrä},
url = {https://www.gamejournal.it/game-culture/},
issn = {2280-7705},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-01-01},
journal = {GAME: The Italian Journal of Game Studies},
volume = {9},
issue = {1},
pages = {11-31},
abstract = {This article explores the early history (and even some prehistory) of game studies from a perspective that is informed by an analysis of claimed opposition between “objective” and “politically committed” research. There is a well-documented and long intellectual history of fundamental disagreements that have set apart the various idealist, rationalist, positivist, empiricist, and constructivist orientations in academia, for example. However, the contemporary climate of “culture wars” has surrounded such disputes with a novel, often toxic framing that aggravates confrontations and erodes possibilities for reaching agreement. This article tracks the charged prehistory of contemporary game studies on one hand into the rise of poststructuralism and the “theory wars” of 1970s and 1980s, and then moves to discuss the heritage of literary studies for game studies. The special emphasis is put on formalism as a strategy of manufacturing authority and objectivity for arts and humanities-based disciplines. The key argument in the article is that this history of intellectual warfare hides from us an alternative history – a dialectical one, which has quietly grown to become arguably the mainstream of (cultural) game studies today. Rather than isolating the formal and cultural, or aesthetic and political dimensions of game cultural agency and meaning making, the examples discussed at the end of article point towards the strategic value produced by such a dialectic approach for game studies.},
keywords = {Formalism, History of game studies, Literary studies, Poststructuralism, Theory wars},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
This article explores the early history (and even some prehistory) of game studies from a perspective that is informed by an analysis of claimed opposition between “objective” and “politically committed” research. There is a well-documented and long intellectual history of fundamental disagreements that have set apart the various idealist, rationalist, positivist, empiricist, and constructivist orientations in academia, for example. However, the contemporary climate of “culture wars” has surrounded such disputes with a novel, often toxic framing that aggravates confrontations and erodes possibilities for reaching agreement. This article tracks the charged prehistory of contemporary game studies on one hand into the rise of poststructuralism and the “theory wars” of 1970s and 1980s, and then moves to discuss the heritage of literary studies for game studies. The special emphasis is put on formalism as a strategy of manufacturing authority and objectivity for arts and humanities-based disciplines. The key argument in the article is that this history of intellectual warfare hides from us an alternative history – a dialectical one, which has quietly grown to become arguably the mainstream of (cultural) game studies today. Rather than isolating the formal and cultural, or aesthetic and political dimensions of game cultural agency and meaning making, the examples discussed at the end of article point towards the strategic value produced by such a dialectic approach for game studies.