Performative Disciplinarity in Alternate Reality Games from Foucault to McKenzie and Beyond

For Foucault, discipline was a subtle form of power that coerced the body in order to control its movements, attitudes, and moods. For McKenzie, it is oppressive-excessive performance that takes the place of overt disciplinarity in the twenty-first century. By situating alternate reality games (games that transcend the spatio-temporal delimitation of the “magic circle”) within the discourse of positive and negative freedom, Lushetich queries the capacity of existential amplification (found in all forms of performance and play) to reaffirm corporeally the (neoliberal brand of) negative freedom through what may be termed “ludic servitude”.