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Joshua Whitehead - Hazlitt Article
Dec. 19th, 2019 09:57 amThis 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.
