Young Writers Society

Okay guys, see anything neat (or interesting) worth exploring and mentioning in this seminar proposal to the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA)?


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In postcolonial culture, video games have become a kind of literature: a distinctly American literature, no less, that has garnered a massive following, and through which it is possible to reveal truths about our society. Video games like Fable and Black & White claim to let your character "become" what you make them. They present a dimensional space similar to that of the standard, textual dreamscape (Antigone comes to mind). What occurs in these games is what Jacques Lacan already articulated in his formulation of fantasy as the informer of desire. In these video games, the character is supposedly allowed to play out our innermost desires, which are then informed or, in this case, enhanced by the video game itself. These video games operate under the same conditions of our own "free" democracy: yes, you can become whoever you want…[as long as you are within the bounds of the system]. In this way, we can see that the fantasmic character of video games is essentially that of hysteria: it informs us what the big Other may want of us.

Video games, then, are the best tool for comparison of pre-Freudian and post-Freudian literatures. Both the video game and the pre-Freudian text are always encapsulated in the dialectic of the desire of the Other. The marked difference in pre- and post-Freudian societies is thus: in our current civilization, we are the Other; however, in a video game, we lose this
elevated position, and pre-Freudian societies, like a video game, are not offered spatial "freedom": they are confined within the Symbolic Law. On the one hand, this paper will analyze Fable, et al., to the end of articulating our postcolonial fantasies and revealing their relationship to the laws (and Law) that makes us who, and what, we are. On the other, it is an attempt to reveal that the asymptotic arrival of Freud was the apocalypse for the modern world: in his explosion of dreams, desires and the unconscious, he literally became an error in the domain of thought.

Ooo... nice introduction.

Topics I want to see expanded?

"In these video games, the character is supposedly allowed to play out our innermost desires, which are then informed or, in this case, enhanced by the video game itself. These video games operate under the same conditions of our own "free" democracy: yes, you can become whoever you want…[as long as you are within the bounds of the system]."

"On the other, it is an attempt to reveal that the asymptotic arrival of Freud was the apocalypse for the modern world: in his explosion of dreams, desires and the unconscious, he literally became an error in the domain of thought."

Do continue...