The prosthetics of video games

pp. 149-165

in: Jan Jagodzinski, Schizoanalytic ventures at the end of the world, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Abstract

This chapter explores the machinic working of synopticon (as opposed to the panopticon) in the digital age that captures libidinal desire through two major forms—(violent) war videos and edutainment, which are developed in the next chapter. I draw on Lacanian psychoanalysis given that desire as lack is most evident through what the philosopher Robert Pfaller has called "interpassivity." The demand to "enjoy" cannot be denied, which makes these two genres exemplary of a paranoid attitude that infiltrates most obviously in the USA through the never-ending toll of school shooting and gun violence in general. Pedagogical implications that emerge from this thesis are evoked throughout.