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  • © 2017

Performativity in Art, Literature, and Videogames

Palgrave Macmillan
  • Providing a coherent vocabulary for describing the chronotypologies of videogame performances, this book orients itself to opening new interdisciplinary possibilities in games studies

  • Addresses key problems which remain unresolved in academic discussions of games, including issues related to nonlinearity and narrative and the problem of tactile, embodied experience

  • Introduces ideas from critical theory and art history to the study of games that have heretofore been under-examined in the field

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
  2. Introduction: Videogames as Performances

    • Darshana Jayemanne
    Pages 1-27
  3. Framing Devices: Performative Loops in Literature and Art History

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 29-29
    2. How to Do Things with Images

      • Darshana Jayemanne
      Pages 31-53
  4. Anterior Motives: Performance in Videogames

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 101-101
    2. Performative Multiplicities

      • Darshana Jayemanne
      Pages 127-157
  5. The Body Eclectic: Distortion, Distraction and Tactile Experience

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 159-159
  6. Performative Multiplicities: A Method For Analysing Videogame Performances

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 225-225
  7. Back Matter

    Pages 299-331

About this book

This book modifies the concept of performativity with media theory in order to build a rigorous method for analyzing videogame performances. Beginning with an interdisciplinary exploration of performative motifs in Western art and literary history, the book shows the importance of framing devices in orienting audiences’ experience of art. The frame, as a site of paradox, links the book’s discussion of theory with close readings of texts, which include artworks, books and videogames. The resulting method is interdisciplinary in scope and will be of use to researchers interested in the performative aspects of gaming, art, digital storytelling and nonlinear narrative.

Reviews

“As the novelty of the academic study of videogames fades into institutional respectability and disciplinary convention there is a need more than ever for an ambitious theory of games and gameplay that insists on their strangeness, instability and messiness. Jayemanne’s central concept of performative multiplicity draws critical attention to the aesthetics, cybernetics and lived experience of digital games as media in play, and articulates them with expressive and creative culture at large. Matching astute analysis of popular games with philosophical and anthropological insight, the book is challenging and thought-provoking throughout. Performativity in Art, Literature and Videogames promises to be both a key text for an ambitious game studies, and a provocative invitation to rethink and re-view the philosophies, histories, and futures of art and media from a ludic perspective.” (Seth Giddings, Associate Professor of Digital Culture and Design, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, UK)

“As soon as we begin from the problematic of resolving how videogames are performatively framed, Jayemanne lines up a history which immediately falls into view. By reversing and inverting cherished and long-held models of reading videogames, Jayemanne has built the case for considering literary, art and game framing devices all together. While game studies is beset on all sides by the recumbent social sciences, human-computer interaction models, the remnants of a dissipated and digitized humanities, scholars are still returning to the big and critical questions of how things make meaning. In cataloguing his “new eclectic bodies, forms of physical wit, anterior motives and intention spans”, Jayemanne captures the energy of this intellectual moment, and announces a historical question unlike any other, while looking forward to how we’ll study ourselves tomorrow.” (Christian McCrea, Lecturer in Media and Communication, RMIT University, Australia)

Authors and Affiliations

  • School of Arts, Media and Computer Games, Abertay University, Dundee, United Kingdom

    Darshana Jayemanne

About the author

Darshana Jayemanne is Lecturer in Art, Media and Games at Abertay University, UK. Previously he was a researcher at The University of Melbourne, Australia. His current work investigates art, media and games and has appeared in venues such as Fibreculture, ToDiGRA Journal and The Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media.

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access