Board Games as Social Media

Toward an Enchanted Inquiry of Digital Capitalism

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4867043
AutoresM Haiven (0000-0002-2143-9472), A T Kingsmith (0000-0003-0727-8868), Adam Kingsmith, Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou (0000-0002-6714-3474)
Año2023
Volumen122
Número4
Páginas795-809
Fecha de publicación2023-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSouth Atlantic Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0038-2876 • E-ISSN: 1527-8026
EditorialDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00382876-10779388
OpenAlexW4388205967
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas30

Can board games be part of challenging the dangerous tide of reactionary cultural politics presently washing over the United States and many other countries? The authors frame this threat to progressive social movements and democracy as entangled with a cultural politics of reenchantment. Thanks in part to the rise of ubiquitous digital media, capitalism is gamified as never before, yet most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game. Here, a gamified reactionary cultural politics easily takes hold, and the authors turn to the example of the QAnon conspiracy fantasy as a "dangerous game" of creative collective fabulation. They explore how critical scholars and activists might develop forms of "enchanted inquiry" that seek to take seriously the power of games and enchantment. And they share their experience designing Clue-Anon, a board game for three to four players that aims to let players explore why conspiracy theories are so much fun . . . and so dangerous

Aesthetics · Art · Capitalism · Democracy · Fantasy · Late capitalism · Literature · Media studies · Multimedia · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Reactionary · Sociology · Video game · Digital Games and Media · Law · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Social Media and Politics