CAPAS RESEARCH PROJECT - LARS DE WILDT The Bio- and Necropolitics of Post-Apocalyptic Videogames
Videogames are uniquely capable of modelling the biopolitics and necropolitics of post-apocalyptic worlds, in ways that other cultural forms cannot.
They do so as (1) ideological machines that present new governmentalities for post-apocalyptic political-economies; as (2) immersive worlds that present new forms of (post)human life; and as (3) interactive interpellations that subject players to the hypothetical biopolitics of the end of the world. Videogames ask: how will 'you' survive, how will you foster, exclude or erase post-apocalyptic life? In this process, familiar considerations of class, gender, sexuality, race, (dis)ability and speciesism are reframed.
The theoretical contribution of researching videogames as such is a core understanding of how millions have already rehearsed the everyday rules, worlds, and subject positions of post-apocalyptic life and death.