[Commlist] CFP - Playing the posts: post-Anthropocene, posthuman, postapocalypse

*CFP - Playing the posts: post-Anthropocene, posthuman, postapocalypse*
*Special issue editors:*
Lawrence May (University of Auckland)
Poppy Wilde (Birmingham City University)

The/Journal of Games Criticism/invites submissions for a special issue 
exploring*the relationships between the post-Anthropocene, posthumanism 
and the postapocalypse in videogames and their attendant play cultures*. 
Today we create and play videogames in the ruins of our own planet, as 
our contemporary era comes to be defined by inexorable ecological crises 
and collapse. Our conditions of Earthly disaster see climate in 
disarray, industrial pollution sinking deeper into our life-sustaining 
environments, ecosystems fracturing, and species (including our own) 
moving ever-closer to extinction. Attention is increasingly turning from 
discussions centred on lives lived during the ‘Anthropocene’ – a widely 
adopted (but not uncontested) critical term describing a current 
geological epoch defined by the ruinous impact of humankind on the 
planet – to what must follow, or the post-Anthropocene (see, for various 
discussions, the/Critical Climate Change/book series edited by Cohen and 
Colebrook, 2011–present).

Building upon the Anthropocene’s urgent warnings about the fate of 
ecosystems, cultures and societies, the post-Anthropocene asks us to 
transcend the human-centric paradigms that have led to our environmental 
crises and instead envision new, often bold, futures (which may be 
framed in hopeful, pessimistic, idealised or simply pragmatic terms). 
Critical to exploring the post-Anthropocene, and embracing its 
imperative to undertake “speculative practices aimed at imagining a 
future beyond catastrophe and extinction” (Adsit-Morris and Gough 2020), 
is the recognition that nonhuman entities are deeply embedded within 
human systems, and permeate biology, sociality and meaning. In 
recognising the entanglement and interdependency of humans and nonhuman 
entities in shaping the world, scholars are often drawn to another 
‘post’: posthumanism, and the challenges this concept makes to the 
traditional boundaries and exceptionalism of human identity. Critical 
posthumanism views humans as intrinsically intertwined with other 
elements such as technologies, environments, and materialities. This 
perspective challenges anthropocentrism and emphasises a complex 
understanding of humans’ place in the world.  A third ‘post’ is also 
evoked by the post-Anthropocene: the post-apocalypse. Post-apocalyptic 
depictions of worlds or societies in the aftermath of catastrophic 
events substantiate the notional consequences of environmental, 
technological, or societal collapses. Such accounts of cataclysm offer 
critical reflections on contemporary Earthly ailments and often provide 
imaginative, affectively rich spaces for exploring the consequences and 
potential futures (whether marked by renewal or grinding terror) 
resulting from environmental crises.

This collection will illustrate the entanglement of posthumanist 
perspectives, visions of the post-apocalypse, and the post-Anthropocene 
within videogames, and their combined capacity to provoke us to 
reimagine our social, economic, ecological and political conditions.

In the field of game studies, there has been growing interest in 
understanding how videogames and their players engage with and respond 
to our era’s urgent ecological and ethical concerns, and Ruffino (2018) 
states that “[p]osthuman games are companions for earthly survival”. We 
seek in this collection to look beyond the present catastrophe to the 
futures offered through play. As Fordyce (2021) argues, the “problem 
with the present moment is that not only suffuses material politics but 
has also infected our imagination of the future”, but that games offer 
powerful opportunities for experimentation that critique and think 
beyond our contemporary conditions. This special issue invites scholars 
to explore the complexities and implications of the post-Anthropocene in 
order to expand our understanding of how digital games can engage with 
and respond to the challenges of the present moment, and the anxieties 
and opportunities presented by our uncertain futures. We encourage 
submissions that engage with a range of topics related to videogames, 
player experiences, play cultures and game design, including but not 
limited to:

● speculative, fantastic, dystopian and/or utopian responses to climate 
crisis
● ecocriticism, ecological awareness, deep ecology and/or ecosophy
● the non- and posthuman other (animals, plants, monsters, aliens, 
artificial intelligence) in games
● interrogations of humanity’s relationship with other lifeforms and 
entities
● post- and transhumanist frameworks, posthumanist ethics
● post-anthropocentric explorations of indigenous worldviews
● post-anthropocentric spaces and temporalities
● the role of players in negotiating and co-creating 
post-anthropocentric experiences or gameworlds
● the aesthetics, storytelling and sensibilities of post-apocalyptic worlds
● conceptualising the ‘end’ of ‘worlds’ and/or the renewal/creation of 
new ‘worlds’
● the relationship between post-Anthropocene/apocalypse/humanism and 
player agency
● the materiality of videogames and their entanglement with/impact upon 
Earthly geologies, ecosystems and biospheric conditions

*Abstracts of 300 words (excluding references) plus short bio (no more 
than 100 words) are due 25 September 2023 and should be sent to 
(playingtheposts /at/ gmail.com)*

All submitted abstracts will be initially reviewed by the special issue 
editors to ensure relevance to the theme. Authors of selected abstracts 
will be invited to submit full papers, which will then undergo a 
peer-review process in accordance with the journal’s standard review 
procedures.

*The deadline for full paper submissions (6-8,000 words) is Monday 29 
January 2024.*

Please note: by submitting an abstract for this Special Issue you may 
also be asked to conduct peer review for an article within it (even if 
you are also accepted). If you would not like to be asked to conduct 
peer review, please indicate this in your email.

*Expected publication is October 2024.*

The/Journal of Games Criticism/is a non-profit, peer-reviewed, 
open-access journal. Full paper submissions will be expected to conform 
to thesubmission guidelines <http://gamescriticism.org/submissions#Article>.
*
*
*References*

Adsit-Morris, C., & Gough, N. (2020). Post-Anthropocene imaginings: 
Speculative thought, diffractive play and Women on the Edge of Time. In 
M. K. E. T. Thomas & R. Bellingham (eds.), Post-Qualitative Research and 
Innovative Methodologies (pp. 172–186). Bloomsbury Academic.

Cohen, T. and Colebrook, C. (eds.) (2011-) Critical Climate Change book 
series. Open Humanities Press. 
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/series/critical-climate-change

Fordyce, R. (2021). Play, History and Politics: Conceiving Futures 
Beyond Empire. Games and Culture, 16(3), 294–304. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412020962430

Ruffino, P. (2018) ‘Posthuman Gaming: Video Games for the 
Post-Anthropocene’. In Post Start-Up Cultures, 20–21 December 2018, 
University of Naples, Italy (online), 
 https://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/id/eprint/34618/


Please circulate this call amongst your colleagues and networks. The CFP 
can also be found on the Journal of Games Criticism website, here: 
https://gamescriticism.org/cfp-playing-the-posts-post-anthropocene-posthuman-postapocalypse/ 
<https://gamescriticism.org/cfp-playing-the-posts-post-anthropocene-posthuman-postapocalypse/>


If you have any queries please feel free to email (playingtheposts /at/ gmail.com)

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