radiantfracture (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
radiantfracture) wrote2019-12-19 09:57 am
radiantfracture) wrote2019-12-19 09:57 am
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Joshua Whitehead - Hazlitt Article
This year I taught Joshua Whitehead's Jonny Appleseed for the first time, and would definitely teach it again -- we ended up deciding that it was a book suffused with such vast love that it was almost overwhelming. It points, I think, to something like Whitehead's commitment to maintaining loving relations, even when that is incredibly difficult.
The first time through, my take on the book was pretty hazy, but -- informed by the class discussion -- I think I'll teach it next time explicitly using the lens of decolonial love and, you know, see what happens.
Here's a recent essay Whitehead wrote for Hazlitt: The Year in Video Gaming. There are a lot of ideas in here. One thing I liked was Whitehead's honouring of the media and virtual interactions a person might use to support their continuing existence in the world: "in my despondency of mental health and the rupturing of some of my relations, I felt it imperative to utilize the game as a medicinal tool." -- an expansion of queer reading into something even more profound and fertile.
He points out that, consequently, a stunt like a dramatic game update (Ex. Fortnite) can be experienced as real emotional violence, not just a marketing ploy.
Writing of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Whitehead says:
His inventiveness, playfulness, critical awareness, care of the self and others -- it all just slays me.
{rf}
*I love, too, how precise he is about dates, about locating his account in a specific context -- careful citation.
The first time through, my take on the book was pretty hazy, but -- informed by the class discussion -- I think I'll teach it next time explicitly using the lens of decolonial love and, you know, see what happens.
Here's a recent essay Whitehead wrote for Hazlitt: The Year in Video Gaming. There are a lot of ideas in here. One thing I liked was Whitehead's honouring of the media and virtual interactions a person might use to support their continuing existence in the world: "in my despondency of mental health and the rupturing of some of my relations, I felt it imperative to utilize the game as a medicinal tool." -- an expansion of queer reading into something even more profound and fertile.
He points out that, consequently, a stunt like a dramatic game update (Ex. Fortnite) can be experienced as real emotional violence, not just a marketing ploy.
Writing of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Whitehead says:
While the politics, mechanics, and animations of the game may sound mundane, this game became a fundamental practice in self-reflection, queer desire, embodiment (digital and physical), and mental health. I say this because, one, it allowed my body to rest while I played and refocused the energies of my whirling mind, one wracked with anxiety, depression, mourning, and loss, to channel its energies into something constructive and enriching: into narrative, plot, metaphor, and agency; and two, the game also asked me to reflect on my own desires, what it is I want and need from the world as a Two-Spirit Oji-nêhiyaw nâpew.
His inventiveness, playfulness, critical awareness, care of the self and others -- it all just slays me.
{rf}
*I love, too, how precise he is about dates, about locating his account in a specific context -- careful citation.
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We also read some of the poetry, which the class found tough but worth thinking about. I'd give them more time with it next time, since the Zoa backstory is such an interesting part of Whitehead's personal mythos.