Description
The far-right holds a vision of how its chosen identity and its associations appeared in the past - and, by extension, how they should look in the present and future. Indeed, understanding and interacting with the past, its people, its boundaries and its (in)justices are necessary features of far-right identity narratives and constructions. Drawing on the literatures on psychoanalysis, affect, emotion, and the everyday in International Relations, this paper argues that videogames are an underappreciated epistemological site for the study of how global politics are experienced, negotiated, and contested in everyday life. We look at ‘grand strategy games’ to explore how they constitute an opportunity for players to relive and undo the traumas and (re)imagine the glories of their nations, as well as (re)construct and enjoy identity phantasies and alternative histories. Players can play a game to produce their own geopolitical and identity phantasies, but they can also change the rules and the very design of the game – from enabling genocide game mechanics to rewriting the culture and ethnicity of populations. Thus, we look to the modification of videogames, which already provide freedom to rewrite histories, to understand how far-right phantasies are embedded, communicated, lived, and enjoyed in everyday life.
