Re-Configuring Petrified Politics:
Folk Games as Tools for Progressive Utopian Populism

Holger Pötzsch, UiT The Arctic University of Norway (Tromsø)

Our current condition is characterized by a palpable absence of utopian perspectives on the future. Concepts such as capitalist realism (Fisher 2009) or petrified politics (Pötzsch 2023) are meant to address the fact articulated by Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Zizek that “today, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism” (cited in Fisher 2009). An increasing socio-economic precarity of growing numbers of people worldwide combined with technological systems the business models of which systematically create and amplify polarizing negative affects and emotions have created a perfect storm for civil societies already brought to the brink of break down by 3 decades of relentless neo-liberalization (Dean 2009, Brown 2015, 2019, Fraser 2022, Chamayou 2019). Without utopian visions of popular political alternatives, we are left with what Habermas (2019 [1985]) has termed “a desert of banalities and cluelessness”. Within such frames, populism regularly pops up as the go-to buzzword for neo-liberal elites intending to undermine any genuinely popular political movement vying for a real alternative to the current mess (Ali 2015). In this contribution, I argue that to be able to challenge the negative double-bind of growing precarity and increasing polarization under conditions of global finacialized tech-capitalism, we need a genuinely progressive populism that takes seriously the very real fears, anxieties, anger, and problems of a majority of the world’s populations faced with increasingly pathologic levels of hypocrisy and double-standards among globally dominating elites. To make this argument, I follow the framework of Ruth Levitas’ (2013) and combine it with key tenets of critical future studies (Goode and Godhe 2017). Levitas proposes a threefold application of the term utopia as components or steps in a method to facilitate an imaginary reconstitution of societies through progressive future-bound change: 1) archaeology of utopia, 2) utopian ontologies, and 3) architectures of utopia. The archaeological mode asks what utopian visions are out there and which are lacking. Levitas looks into political programmes and social policies. I argue also the cultural sphere – in in particular videogames – has decisive influence on what is, and what is not perceived as possible and preferable futures. The ontological mode directs attention to the types of people and identities that are implicitly or explicitly produced and naturalized in given hegemonic orders, while the architectural mode searches for, highlights, and attempts to actively realize concrete alternatives underneath the surface of the apparently given.

As empirical focus, I will offer some thoughts on how games can contribute to the sedimentation of a static status quo or serve the political mobilization for progressive alternatives. In this endeavor the twin concepts of folk worlds and folk mechanics become crucial (Ensslin 2024). To me, the term folk worlds covers the representational side of videogames while folk mechanics is focused on rule systems predisposing the reconfigurative practice of play. Folk here indicates a specific subgenre of games that serves the articulation of genuinely progressive popular alternatives by means of narrative and/or game mechanics as opposed to hegemonic titles reproducing a hegemonic status quo. By way of Levitas’s (2013) concepts I will outline how developers of folk games can draw upon findings regarding hegemonic game genres to identify possible areas of intervention (archaeological mode). The resulting game design should enable the articulation of alternative ways of seeing, doing, and thinking from below offering exploratory spaces for new identities and collective political practices aimed an imaginary reconstitution of society (ontological mode). Lastly, the architectural mode both highlights necessary conditions for the success of game developers interested in producing folk games and looks into the capacity of folk games to serve as tools for political mobilization and resistance aiming at the formation of genuinely popular counter-hegemonic movements by facilitating the realization of concrete utopian goals and livable alternatives.

References

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Brown, Wendy. 2019. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Levitas, Ruth. 2013. Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Pötzsch, Holger. 2022. Towards a Diagnostics of the Present: Popular Culture, Post-Apocalyptic Macro-Dystopia, and the Petrification of Politics. In: Lene Johannessen and Asbjørn Grønstad (eds.) Micro-Dystopia: Aesthetics and Ideologies in a Broken Moment. London: Lexington Books, 17-40.

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Holger Pötzsch, PhD, is professor in Media Studies at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway. His main research interests are media and war (in particular the war film and war games), educational potentials and pitfalls of digital technologies, and the politics of popular culture. He coordinates the research network ENCODE at UiT and serves as editor-in-chief of the academic journal Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture.

URL: https://en.uit.no/ansatte/person?p_document_id=43820&p_dimension_id=210121