Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Toscano, Aaron, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of English

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Conference Presentations
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • January 11th: More Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Audience & Purpose
    • January 23rd: Résumés and Cover Letters
      • Duty Format for Résumés
      • Peter Profit’s Cover Letter
    • January 25th: More on Résumés and Cover Letters
    • January 9th: Introduction to the Class
    • Major Assignments
  • ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing
    • August 21st: Introduction to the Course
      • Rhetorical Principles of Information Design
    • August 28th: Introduction to Information Design
      • Prejudice and Rhetoric
      • Robin Williams’s Principles of Design
    • Classmates Webpages (Fall 2017)
    • December 4th: Presentations
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4182/5182 (Fall 2017)
    • November 13th: More on Color
      • Designing with Color
      • Important Images
    • November 20th: Extra-Textual Elements
    • November 27th: Presentation/Portfolio Workshop
    • November 6th: In Living Color
    • October 16th: Type Fever
      • Typography
    • October 23rd: More on Type
    • October 2nd: MIDTERM FUN!!!
    • October 30th: Working with Graphics
      • Beerknurd Calendar 2018
    • September 11th: Talking about Design without Using “Thingy”
      • Theory, theory, practice
    • September 18th: The Whole Document
    • September 25th: Page Design
  • ENGL 4183/5183: Editing with Digital Technologies
    • August 24th: Introduction to the Class
    • August 31st: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Fall 2022)
      • Rhetoric of Fear
    • November 16th: Voice and Other Nebulous Writing Terms
      • Finding Dominant Rhetorical Appeals
    • November 2nd: Rhetorical Effects of Punctuation
    • November 30th: Words and Word Classes
    • November 9th: Cohesive Rhythm
    • October 12th: Choosing Adjectivals
    • October 19th: Choosing Nominals
    • October 26th: Stylistic Variations
    • October 5th: Midterm Exam
    • September 14th: Verb is the Word!
    • September 21st: Coordination and Subordination
    • September 28th: Form and Function
    • September 7th: Sentence Patterns
  • ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology
    • April 13th: Authorities in Science and Technology
    • April 15th: Articles on Violence in Video Games
    • April 20th: Presentations
    • April 6th: Technology in the home
    • April 8th: Writing Discussion
    • Assignments for ENGL 4275
    • February 10th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 12th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 17th: Technology and Gender
    • February 19th: Technology and Expediency
    • February 24th: Semester Review
    • February 3rd: Religion of Technology Part 1 of 3
    • February 5th: Religion of Technology Part 2 of 3
    • January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 15th: Technology and Democracy
    • January 22nd: The Politics of Technology
    • January 27th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • January 29th: Technology and Postmodernism
    • January 8th: Introduction to the Course
    • March 11th: Writing and Other Fun
    • March 16th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 2
    • March 18th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 2
    • March 23rd: Inception (2010)
    • March 25th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero
    • March 9th: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 12th: Knoblauch. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
    • April 19th: Jacques Derrida’s Positions
    • April 26th:  Feminisms and Rhetorics
    • April 5th: Knoblauch. Ch. 3 and More Constitutive Rhetoric
    • February 15th: Isocrates (Part 2)
    • February 1st: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Books 2 & 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • February 22nd: St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
    • February 8th: Isocrates (Part 1)-2nd Half of Class
    • January 11th: Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Plato’s Phaedrus
    • January 25th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Book 1
    • March 15th: Descartes, Rene, Discourse on Method
    • March 1st: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2
    • March 22nd: Mary Wollstonecraft
    • March 29th: Second Wave Feminist Rhetoric
    • May 3rd: Knoblauch. Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword”
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • ENGL/COMM/WRDS: The Rhetoric of Fear
    • January 10th: Introduction to the Class
    • January 17th: Scapegoats & Conspiracies
    • January 24th: The Rhetoric of Fear and Fallacies Part 1
    • Major Assignments
  • LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127
    • August 21st: Introduction to Class
    • August 23rd: Humanistic Approach to Science Fiction
    • August 26th: Robots and Zombies
    • August 28th: Futurism, an Introduction
    • August 30th: R. A. Lafferty “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965)
    • December 2nd: Technological Augmentation
    • December 4th: Posthumanism
    • November 11th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2)
    • November 13th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2 con’t)
    • November 18th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 1)
      • More Questions than Answers
    • November 1st: Games Reality Plays (part II)
    • November 20th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 2)
    • November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)
    • October 14th: More Autonomous Fun
    • October 16th: Autonomous Conclusion
    • October 21st: Sci Fi in the Domestic Sphere
    • October 23rd: Social Aphasia
    • October 25th: Dust in the Wind
    • October 28th: Gender Liminality and Roles
    • October 2nd: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • October 30th: Games Reality Plays (part I)
    • October 9th: Approaching Autonomous
      • Analyzing Prose in Autonomous
    • September 11th: The Time Machine
    • September 16th: The Alien Other
    • September 18th: Post-apocalyptic Worlds
    • September 20th: Dystopian Visions
    • September 23rd: World’s Beyond
    • September 25th: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • September 30th: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • September 4th: Science Fiction and Social Breakdown
      • More on Ellison
      • More on Forster
    • September 9th: The Time Machine
  • LBST 2213-110: Science, Technology, and Society
    • August 22nd: Science and Technology from a Humanistic Perspective
    • August 24th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach
    • August 29th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 2
    • August 31st: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 3 and 4
    • December 5th: Video Games and Violence, a more nuanced view
    • November 14th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 27-end
    • November 16th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Preface-Ch. 8
    • November 21st: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Ch. 9-Ch. 16
    • November 28th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ch. 17-Ch. 24
    • November 30th: Violence in Video Games
    • November 7th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes Ch. 1-17
    • November 9th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes, Ch. 18-26
    • October 12th: Lies Economics Tells
    • October 17th: Brief Histories of Medicine, Salerno, and Galen
    • October 19th: Politicizing Science and Medicine
    • October 24th: COVID-19 Facial Covering Rhetoric
    • October 26th: Wells, H. G. Time Machine. Ch. 1-5
    • October 31st: Wells, H. G. The Time Machine Ch. 6-The End
    • October 3rd: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 12th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 19th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Prefaces and Ch. 1
    • September 26th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 2
    • September 28th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 5 and 6
    • September 7th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 5 and 6
  • New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021)
    • April 13th: Virtually ‘Real’ Environments
    • April 20th: Rhetoric/Composition Defines New Media
    • April 27th: Sub/Cultural Politics, Hegemony, and Agency
    • April 6th: Capitalist Realism
    • February 16: Misunderstanding the Internet
    • February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media
    • February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies
    • January 26th: Introduction to New Media
    • Major Assignments for New Media (Spring 2021)
    • March 16th: Identity Politics
    • March 23rd: Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality
    • March 2nd: Foundational Thinkers in Cultural Studies
    • March 30th: Hyperreality
    • March 9th: Globalization & Postmodernism
    • May 4th: Wrapping Up The Semester
      • Jodi Dean “The The Illusion of Democracy” & “Communicative Capitalism”
      • Social Construction of Sexuality
  • Science Fiction in American Culture (Summer I–2020)
    • Assignments for Science Fiction in American Culture
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • June 10th: Interstellar and Exploration themes
    • June 11th: Bicentennial Man
    • June 15th: I’m Only Human…Or am I?
    • June 16th: Wall-E and Environment
    • June 17th: Wall-E (2008) and Technology
    • June 18th: Interactivity in Video Games
    • June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth
    • June 2nd: “Johnny Mnemonic”
    • June 3rd: “New Rose Hotel”
    • June 4th: “Burning Chrome”
    • June 8th: Conformity and Monotony
    • June 9th: Cultural Constructions of Beauty
    • May 18th: Introduction to Class
    • May 19th: American Culture, an Introduction
    • May 20th: The Matrix
    • May 21st: Gender and Science Fiction
    • May 25th: Goals for I, Robot
    • May 26th: Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot
    • May 27th: Hackers and Slackers
    • May 30th: Inception
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • A Practical Editing Situation
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Fordism/Taylorism
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • Isaac Asimov’s “A Cult of Ignorance”
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)
    • Oral Presentations
    • Oratory and Argument Analysis
    • Our Public Sphere
    • Postmodernism Introduction
    • Protesting Confederate Place
    • Punctuation Refresher
    • QT, the Existential Robot
    • Religion of Technology Discussion
    • Rhetoric, an Introduction
      • Analyzing the Culture of Technical Writer Ads
      • Rhetoric of Technology
      • Visual Culture
      • Visual Perception
      • Visual Perception, Culture, and Rhetoric
      • Visual Rhetoric
      • Visuals for Technical Communication
      • World War I Propaganda
    • The Great I, Robot Discussion
      • I, Robot Short Essay Topics
    • The Rhetoric of Video Games: A Cultural Perspective
      • Civilization, an Analysis
    • The Sopranos
    • Why Science Fiction?
    • Zombies and Consumption Satire
  • Video Games & American Culture
    • April 14th: Phallocentrism
    • April 21st: Video Games and Neoliberalism
    • April 7th: Video Games and Conquest
    • Assignments for Video Games & American Culture
    • February 10th: Aesthetics and Culture
    • February 17th: Narrative and Catharsis
    • February 24th: Serious Games
    • February 3rd: More History of Video Games
    • January 13th: Introduction to the course
    • January 20th: Introduction to Video Game Studies
    • January 27th: Games & Culture
      • Marxism for Video Game Analysis
      • Postmodernism for Video Game Analysis
    • March 24th: Realism, Interpretation(s), and Meaning Making
    • March 31st: Feminist Perspectives and Politics
    • March 3rd: Risky Business?

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 255F
Email: atoscano@uncc.edu
Video Games & American Culture » January 27th: Games & Culture » Marxism for Video Game Analysis

Marxism for Video Game Analysis

Disclaimer

This page in no way attempts to provide an exhaustive overview of Marxism. You won’t be an expert on Marxism after this discussion or the next 20. We’re simply scratching the surface of this complex theory.

Before we get too far along. What’s an obvious discussion we could have about video games and capitalism?


Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)

As I said before, the theories we’ll examine this week are not going to be exhaustive explorations. There are volumes upon volumes of analysis devoted to Marxism and Marxist Theory. Entire semesters could be devoted to its study. We will concern ourselves with a few broad factors or tenets of Marxism.

Charles E. Bressler offers the following as “core principles of Marxist thought” (p. 192):

  • Reality itself can be defined and understood
  • Society shapes our consciousness
  • Social and economic conditions directly influence how and what we believe and value.
  • Marxism details a plan for changing the world from a place of bigotry, hatred, and conflict because of class struggle to a classless society in which wealth, opportunity, and education are accessible for everyone.

…Of course, the above are the theories of marxism (just as capitalism has theories of salvation and prosperity). An ongoing philosophical question is “can we ever have a pure capitalist or marxist society, economy, government?”

The last point is important to focus on because American cultural bias against Marxism stems from issues about Marxism’s utopian perception. The following are often the immediate associations/responses to Marxism:

  • Soviet Union (the Evil Empire): The Cold War enemy of America and the American way.
    • Communism was a Devil Term during the Cold War. Labeling something or (worse) someone a communist was similar to the contemporary labeling of terrorist.
    • The Soviets under Stalin were seen as oppressive and anti-freedom. While Stalin’s atrocities are no secret and he was a communist, neither Stalin nor the Soviet Union (or other communist states for that matter) stand as the sole examples of the theoretical framework or cultural critique of Marxist Theory.
  • Utopian economic system that cannot exist. People will not work harder unless they have incentives to do so.
  • Massive government control and no private property/ownership…definitely a hard “sell” for capitalists and capitalist states.

Marxist Theory — Texts and Contexts are Social Constructions

As a literary theory, Marxism is a 20th-Century development influenced by the writings of the 19th-Century philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. At a basic level (again, we could go into more detail), Marxist analysis “focus[es] on the study of the relationship between a text and the society that reads it” (Bressler, p. 193). Another core Marxist principle is the idea of reality or consciousness: cultural analysis, our focus in this course, is intertwined with the idea that “[a] person’s consciousness is not shaped by any spiritual entity; through daily living and interacting with each other, humans define themselves” (Bressler, p. 193). Marx and Engels, products of newly industrialized/ing cultures, critique industrial society and theorize the following two tenets of industrial society: base and superstructure.

  • Base: “the economic means of production within a society” (Bressler, p. 193); think capital, land, wealth, etc.
  • Superstructure: the institutions and ideologies of a society that “develop as a direct result of the economic means of production, not the other way around” (Bressler, p. 193).

It’s important to understand the difficulty of critiquing a culture that one belongs to because there’s little chance for critical distance. We (humans in general) like to believe culture is absolute and not relative to the social conditions in which we interact or, in Marxist terms, the economic system in which we exist. For example, capitalism is pervasive in American culture and the “free” market is seen as the only appropriate way to organize or distribute resources. Therefore, the means of production and who owns those means influence the ways in which institutions form.

Questions for Class Conflict Discussion

Of course, Marxism points to the idea that the base of capitalism (or other structures) divides citizens into classes, and these classes, well, they clash. Marx and Engels show the following divisions: the bourgeoisie (capitalists) and the proletariat (workers). What gets confusing in this system is the concept of the middle class…didn’t Habermas portray the bourgeoisie as the middle class? Where does the middle class fit into Marxist theory?

The ruling class sets the culture’s ideology, and the working class stays in line because they assume that the system under which they live is the only appropriate system in which to live. What are some American ideologies?

Other Marxist Theories (After Marx and Engels)

  • Georg Lukacs, a prominent genre theorist, advocates “that a text directly reflects a society’s consciousness” (Bressler, p. 197).
  • Antonio Gramsci theorizes that the bourgeoisie, the ruling class, “establish and maintain what he calls hegemony, which is the assumptions, values, and meanings that shape meaning and define reality for the majority of people in a given culture” (Bressler, p. 198). This hegemonic relationship between the rulers and the ruled is “a kind of deception whereby the majority of people forget about or abandon their own interests and desires and accept the dominant values and beliefs as their own” (Bressler, p. 198).
    • For a contemporary analysis of Gramsci’s theory that the ruled allow themselves to be duped by the rulers, check out What’s the Matter with Kansas by Thomas Frank, who discusses why Kansans vote against their self interests. Frank does not invoke Gramsci in any way, but the analysis has a Gramsci-leaning aura.
  • Pierre Macherey argues “what authors mean to say [in their writings] and what they actually write and say are different. The various meanings of their texts continuously escape writers because they themselves do not recognize the multiple ideologies at work in them and their text” (Bressler, p. 200).
  • Joseph Schumpeter predicted a slow decline of capitalism as corporate interests (special interests) influenced government and intellectuals (or elites) attempted to hold advocate for a working class from which they were disassociated. {The previous is a simplified paraphrasing of Schumpeter’s rich analysis of economics in the Western world.}
    • Curran, Fenton, and Freedman refer to his “Cycles and Long Wave Theory” in Ch. 1 of Misunderstanding the Internet (p. 3).
  • Raymond Williams is credited as a major contributor to what we today regard as cultural studies criticism, which is concerned with “the relationship between ideology and culture” (Bressler, p. 200).
  • Terry Eagleton, more closely connected to the cultural studies lens through which we’re examining new media, “[b]eliv[es] that literature is neither a product of pure inspiration nor the product of the author’s feelings…literature is a product of an ideology that is itself a product of history” (Bressler, p. 201).

What’s missing from the summaries above is the fact that those adhering to Marxism advocate revolution or changing the status quo structure that they claim has the capitalists rule and the workers oppressed. While using a Marxist lens does not necessarily mean one has to adhere to such an idea, it’s important to note that Marxist thought stems from the desire to make visible the conditions people find themselves in, and those conditions are not favorable to workers. The new media texts we examine are different from literature, but they are still cultural products and reify the ideologies of the cultures from which they come.

Of course, technologies can be read just like texts.

“Texts, like all elements of social life, cannot be analyzed in isolation because they do not exist as isolated entities; rather, they are part of a complex web of social forces and structures” (Bressler, p. 205).


Terms for Discussion

Ideology: prevailing cultural/institutional attitudes, beliefs, norms, attributes, practices, and myths that are said to drive a society.

Hegemony: the ways or results of a dominant group’s (the hegemon) influence over other groups in a society or region. The dominant group dictates, consciously or unconsciously, how society must be structured and how other groups must “buy into” the structure. For example, the former Soviet Union was the hegemonic power influencing the communist countries of Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

Systemic: (adjective) pertaining to an entire system, institution, or object; something ‘systemic’ cannot be removed from the system.

Genre: literary or other textual products “with certain conventions and patterns that, through repetition, have become so familiar that [audiences] expect similar elements in the works of the same type” (Dick, p. 112).


Works Cited

Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. (4th ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2007.

Dick, Bernard F. Anatomy of Film. (5th ed.). Boston: Bedford, 2005.

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