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Mobilizing Affect in Spanish Film and Screen Media from the Great Recession to the Present
  • ISSN: 2050-4837
  • E-ISSN: 2050-4845

Abstract

Video games that tackle the political discontent that sprang from the 2008 crisis in Spain pose a particular representation of Spanish politics. It is representation that is mainly at stake both in the dynamics of the political field and in the engagement of video games with politics. From mobile games to bigger productions like designed for quick consumption, video games deploy visuals but also user interaction to articulate political positions that renegotiate social interpellation, mobilizing the affective (feelings of playful enjoyment) to re-conceptualize the political. Referencing concepts from Louis Althusser and Ian Bogost, I claim that video games’ cultural specificity is a particular rationale of interpellation and an ambivalent agency that, in the case of political games, plays against – but also within – Ideological State Apparatuses.

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2023-11-21
2026-04-12

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/content/journals/10.1386/slac_00094_1
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Gaming the system: Post-crisis video games as ideological state apparatus
Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas 19, 317 (2022); https://doi.org/10.1386/slac_00094_1
/content/journals/10.1386/slac_00094_1
/content/journals/10.1386/slac_00094_1
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): 15-M; cultural identity; digital culture; interpellation; procedural rhetoric; representation; Riot: Civil Unrest; Spanish crisis

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