Video Game Chronotopes and Social Justice examines how the chronotope, which literally means “timespace,” is an effective interpretive lens through which to understand the cultural and ideological significance of video games. Using ‘slow readings’ attuned to deconstruction along the lines of post-structuralist theory, gender studies, queer studies, continental philosophy, and critical theory, Mike Piero exposes the often-overlooked misogyny, heteronormativity, racism, and patriarchal structures present in many Triple-A video games through their arrangement of timespace itself. Beyond understanding time and space as separate mechanics and dimensions, Piero reunites time and space through the analysis of six chronotopes—of the bonfire, the abject, the archipelago, the fart as pharmakon, madness, and coupled love—toward a poetic meaning making that is at the heart of play itself, all in affirmation of life, equity, and justice.

Mike Piero is a Professor of English at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio. In addition to winning national awards for innovative teaching, his work has recently appeared in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Transnational Literature, MediaCommons, MediaTropes, and Teaching English in the Two-Year College. He is co-editor of Being Dragonborn: Critical Essays on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2021). He teaches courses in game studies, British literature, college composition, and the humanities.