This Special Issue has been an attempt to understand games and rituals. Instead of an introduction, we will try to unravel this mysterious journey as well as keep questioning and collaging.
We mapped the common characteristics and the differences between games and rituals in relation to ideology and counter-hegemony. We practiced, performed and annotated rituals that were connected (or not) with our cultural backgrounds while we questioned the magic circle. We dived into the worlds of text adventure games and clicking games while drinking coffee. We talked about class, base, superstructure, (counter)hegemony, ideology and materialism. We discussed how games and rituals can function as reproductive technologies of the culture industries. We annotated games, focusing on the role of ideology and social reproduction. We reinterpreted bits of the world and created stories from it (modding, fiction, narrative) with a focus on community, interaction, relationships, grief and healing.
We mapped the common characteristics and the differences between games and rituals in relation to ideology and counter-hegemony. We practiced, performed and annotated rituals, connected (or not) with our cultural backgrounds while we questioned the magic circle. We dived into the worlds of text adventure games and clicking games while drinking coffee. We talked about class, base, superstructure, (counter)hegemony, ideology and materialism. We discussed how games and rituals can function as reproductive technologies of the culture industries. We annotated games, focusing on the role of ideology and social reproduction. We reinterpreted bits of the world and created stories from it (modding, fiction, narrative) focusing on community, interaction, relationships, grief and healing.
The eventual outcome of this process is a console, a magical object, a wooden container, a promise of healing. How can the unpacking of games, rituals, ideology and superstructure in relation to witch hunting become the midwife of a healing box? How can practices of healing and care work as counter-hegemonic acts which cure and liberate our souls and bodies from patriarchical and capitalistic fetters?
The eventual outcome of this process is a console, a magical object, a wooden container, a promise of healing. How can the unpacking of games, rituals, ideology and superstructure in relation to witch hunting become the midwife of a healing box? How can practices of healing and care work as counter-hegemonic acts which cure and liberate our souls and bodies from patriarchal and capitalistic fetters?
We didn't manage to provide you with comprehensive answers or conclusive statements. The truth is that this wasn't our plan. Our intention was to create openings for debate or even conflict, to map a territory, to invite those who would like to join us.
@ -33,7 +33,7 @@ Our intention was to look into rituals and their overlap with video games as a w
> *"The act of the modder's appropriation of the pre-existing game is also similar to Michel de Certeau's cultural 'poaching'. De Certeau's everyday bricolors make do with remixing the privatized spaces and products of consumer society that they find themselves inhabiting and using. Rather than being passive consumers, ordinary people invent varied subversive tactics for stealing back the given of everyday life. De Certeau writes, 'Everyday life invents itself by poaching in countless ways on the property of others.'" (Schleiner, 2017)*
Meanwhile, we explored the figure of the witch as a magical practicioner, as a resisting body, a border figure. *"Federici presents the witch "as the embodiment of a world of female subjects that capitalism had to destroy: the heretic, the healer, the disobedient wife, the woman who dared to live alone, the obeha woman who poisoned the master's food and inspired the slaves to revolt." Behind the witch hunt, she uncovers a joint effort by the Church and the state to establish mechanisms of gendered control of bodies that immanently resisted newly instituted regimes of productive and reproductive work." (Timofeeva, 2019)*
Meanwhile, we explored the figure of the witch as a magical practitioner, as a resisting body, a border figure. *"Federici presents the witch "as the embodiment of a world of female subjects that capitalism had to destroy: the heretic, the healer, the disobedient wife, the woman who dared to live alone, the obeha woman who poisoned the master's food and inspired the slaves to revolt." Behind the witch hunt, she uncovers a joint effort by the Church and the state to establish mechanisms of gendered control of bodies that immanently resisted newly instituted regimes of productive and reproductive work." (Timofeeva, 2019)*
> *"Sorcerers have always held the anomalous position, at the edge of the fields or woods. They haunt the fringes. They are at the borderline of the village, or between villages. But sorcerers not only exist at the border: as anomalous beings, they are the border itself. In other words, the borderline passes through their bodies." (Deleuze, Guattari, 1980)*
