A Failed and Unintelligible Analogy: The Phenomenology of Virtual Space in Kitty Horrorshows ANATOMY
I have a new article being published today over at First Person Scholar about the video game ANATOMY by Kitty Horrorshow. Below is a kind of abstract:
The virtual space of ANATOMY withdraws from players behind a barrier of static and screen glare where it becomes, in a Lacanian psychoanalytic sense, inaccessible to the process of narcissistic incorporation. In a subversive twist of convention, players are marginalized in order to hold space for the expression of digital-material agency, affecting a critical blow to the psychological processes, as digital media scholar Laurie Taylor theorizes, by which “the connection between the player and the player’s position in game space implies a type of identification.” Overtures of analog noise and VHS scan lines that scroll across the player’s first-person perspective articulate an aesthetic commitment to the affirmation of otherness.