what counts as political? (games & activism #000)
The issues that divide or unite people in society are settled not only in the institutions and practices of politics proper, but also, and less obviously, in the tangible arrangements of steel and concrete, wires and transistors, nuts and bolts. (Winner 128)1
When I was first told I would be teaching an undergraduate course about games and activism, I felt confused and concerned. It feels very privileged and neoliberal to view political struggles as sites of play or arenas for games. Politics often describes life-or-death situations for the most vulnerable members of our society, and the commodification of “politics,” “activism,” and “protest” as aesthetics is frustrating and demeaning. This is not to say that games do not belong in activism or that activism has no place in games; I strongly believe that games can serve as powerful and important sources of hope, community, education, and vectors for radicalization. But games (and forms of play in general) are often seen as non-serious, as trivial. We cannot afford to view activism or politics in this way.
The land we live on, the goods we make and use and consume, the air we breathe, the beliefs and values we hold, all of it is tangled up in the messy knot that is politics and power.
To define politics, I use Langdon Winner’s definition as a starting point: “[...] arrangements of power and authority in human associations as well as the activities that take place within those arrangements.” (Winner 123)2 In other words, politics refers to both the systems and structures of power that we find ourselves operating within and/or under and the ways in which power is wielded/acted upon. From here, I turn to Stefano Harney and Fred Moten who define politics as “an ongoing attack on the common—the general and generative antagonism—from within the surround.” (Harney & Moten 17)3 This view of politics frames it as a tactic used by those in power (or those who support the current regime) to subjugate us. Queer theorist Lee Edelman describes politics as fundamentally conservative, as “[working] to affirm a structure, to authenticate social order, which it then intends to transmit to the future in the form of its inner Child.” (Edelman 3)4 To Edelman, politics is the name we give to the exercise of power to enforce the status quo (and the Child names the future generation we intend to pass our power and resources on to).
So politics describes power—how it is distributed and how it is used as well as philosophies and ideologies about how power should be arranged and wielded. Political questions ask: Who should have access to power? Who should not have access to power? How can we enforce these restrictions? How should we enforce them? Are there ways that we can enforce restrictions that we should not use?