Toward a (Kin)Aesthetic of Video Gaming

Abstract

Against the hegemony of ocularcentrism currently pervading video game theory, the author situates the practice of video gaming for further inquiry by performance studies to account for it as a wholly embodied phenomenon. Personal narratives of players engaging in performances of the game Dance Dance Revolution indicate the necessity of accounting for both the intersubjective and interobjective elements of video game play. The performativity of video gaming insists on a consideration of its material and discursive dimensions that not only refuses to metonymically reduce the gamer's body to a pair of eyes but also complicates popular dualistic understandings of the player—game relationship.