This dossier collects four reflections on The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies (2019) with responses by its author Tiffany Lethabo King. This dossier is based on an American Studies Association 2021 roundtable organized by Beenash Jafri.
Keyword: erotics
Review of Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global Rise of Video Games by Christopher B. Patterson (New York University Press)
In Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global Rise of Video Games, Christopher B. Patterson critically analyzes video games through the methodological framework of erotics. In doing so, he provides astute insights into the ways in which video games can work to challenge essentialized narratives and constructions of race while also fostering greater awareness and understanding of one’s own place within the larger geopolitical systems of capitalism and empire. Through understanding video gamers as not simply passive receptors of ideology, but rather as active participants in the gameplay experience, he contends that video games create pleasure and other forms of affective engagement through erotic play. Through this erotic play, Patterson argues that “games enact playful protests against the power, identity, and order of information technology” (7).