Dystopian Games
Diagnosing Modernity as the Scene of Tests, Trials and Transformations
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2952043 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tom Boland (0000-0003-4947-9430, University College Cork, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 72-90 |
| Publication date | 2024-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cultural Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1749-9755 • E-ISSN: 1749-9763 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/17499755221143835 |
| OpenAlex | W4319791637 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 32 |
Emergent genres can serve as diagnoses of society, particularly dystopias which exaggerate yet articulate problematic elements within modernity. Herein the focus is on 'dystopian games', particularly The Hunger Games and Squid Game, part of a wider genre emerging in contemporary culture wherein dystopia is not just totalitarian, oppressive or ideological, but also requires its protagonists to participate in contests and trials which transform them. Arguably, the global success of these texts reflects the cultural resonance of their diagnosis of the contemporary world as itself the 'scene of a trial' in Boltanski's phrase. Following Stark on the sociology of tests, dystopian games can be related to the proliferation of intense competition in education and the labour market, relentless trials and evaluations at work and the contests for attention and popularity on social media. Building a dialogue between social theory and dystopian literature inspired by Foucault's work on 'truth-telling' and 'transformations', what emerges is a vision of ubiquitous transformations created by compulsory participation in trials and tests, less emancipatory or self-actualizing than a nightmare
Aesthetics · Art · Dystopia · Epistemology · Ideology · Literature · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Popularity · Sociology · Digital Games and Media · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction
Philosophical Reflections on Black Mirror
The Limits of Critique
Taylorism 2.0
The Practice of Conceptual History
Playing Dystopia
Metamorphoses of Science Fiction
Squid Game(s)
"Testing - One, Two, Three … Testing!"
Care and Capitalism
Labor after Neoliberalism
The last man takes LSD
Homo ludens
Put to the test
Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities
Dystopian literature and the sociological imagination
Gamification
The Contemporary Postfeminist Dystopia
On Critique
Theorizing the Social Through Literary Fiction
Dystopian Games
The Hermeneutics of the Subject
The Psychic Life of Power
The Theatricalisation of the Social
The `New Sociology of Art
The Ghost is Back, Again
What's in a game? A dialectic of competition and cooperation in Squid Game
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2025 (2) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |