Celeste Cruz/Vaquero Radio
The Political Science Association hosted Disco Elysium and the communards Tuesday in the Liberal Arts Building North, where Professor Nicholas Kiersey spoke about the political implications of the video game.
Kiersey, of the Political Science department, explained what drew his attention to the game.
“In 2015, in 2016, I was big into … thinking about the significance of [U.S. Sen.] Bernie Sanders,” he said. “Why was he important? An American guy, American politician, old Jewish New York politician calling himself a Democratic socialist. Like, what’s up with that?”
He explained what political themes stand out in the game.
“The game does have someone in a wheelchair and the game does have a lot of people with mental illnesses,” Kiersey said. “And it handles all these things in compassionate ways. It doesn’t belittle anyone, it deals with the question of access very well. Other people talk about how the game kind of functions, like, as a metaphor for international relations. … Other people talk about the game as embodying some of our kind of subconscious cultural expectations about what life is like in post-Soviet Europe.”
He explained why the setting and characters of the game are crucial for political ideologies.
“Settings and characters are crucial because the game is very dialogic,” Kiersey said. “You are gonna have this dialogic kind of interaction with all these characters in there. You’re a character. You can develop any politics you want as a player. All these people have complicated things to say, which will shape how you think about those things that you’re trying to become in critical ways.”
He said what political theme resonated with him the most.
“The left today can’t be what it used to be in Marxist time,” Kiersey said. “It can’t just be the working class versus capitalism. With the bourgeoisie, we have to have kinda of a broader sense of who the victims of capitalism are. It’s not just the working class anymore, it’s the ecology. It’s all these sorts of voiceless elements and dynamics of our world that are worth preserving and fighting for. And human beings can work for them in our universe, but in this universe, there’s magic.”
The Political Science Association will plan similar events in the future. Students can visit V Link for more information.
