Sabine Harrer (Uppsala University) -- Performing Whiteness through Play
Channel: Exceptional Norms
Date: 2021-03-05

Talk held on March 4th, 2021 as part of the Public Lecture Series 'Critical Perspectives on Technology' organised within the project 'Exceptional Norms: Marginalised Bodies in Interaction Design'. 

More information here: https://exceptional-norms.at/critical-perspectives/

Abstract: 
This talk investigates how games can be understood as a contemporary media form sustaining racist, colonial legacies through their mechanical design and supported player performances. This investigation is rooted in two case studies, the classical Finnish board game Star of Africa (1951) and the US American digital deck building game Ascension: Dawn of Champions (2015). Both games exemplify in different ways how whiteness as an ideological baseline gets to pervade play through mechanical rituals coded as white supremacist. In Star of Africa, players perform in the role of white perpetration, staging a historical revisionist version of the European ’Scramble for Africa’. In Ascension, the game’s deck building rituals encourage players to invest in stereotyping and ownership of ‘diverse’ bodies through identity tourism. By reflecting on these examples as emblematic of wider trends in game design, the talk aims to highlight persistent challenges for critical playful technology design arising from white structural biases. It also looks at how these foundations of whiteness might be challenged, following critiques from Black, Indigenous, and Postcolonial game studies.

Speaker bio: 
Sabine Harrer works as a faculty member at the Department of Game Design at Uppsala University, Sweden. In their artistic and teaching praxis, as well as in their writing, they use videogames as a thing to reframe, challenge, and queer norms around desire and intimacy. They have recently published the article “We Are the Champions? Performing whiteness in ASCENSION: DAWN OF CHAMPIONS” in the journal ’Simulation and Gaming’.