Reconfiguring Interactivity, Agency and Pleasure in the Education and Computer Games Debate — Using Žižek's Concept of Interpassivity to Analyse Educational Play

Abstract

Digital or computer games have recently attracted the interest of education researchers and policy-makers for two main reasons: their interactivity, which is said to allow greater agency, and their inherent pleasures, which are linked to increased motivation to learn. However, the relationship between pleasure, agency and motivation in educational technologies is undertheorised. This article aims to situate these concepts within a framework that might identify more precisely how games can be considered to be educational. The framework is based on Žižek's theory of subjectivity in cyberspace, and in particular on his notion of interpassivity, which is defined in relation to interactivity. The usefulness of this concept is explored first by examining three approaches to theorising cyberspace and their respective manifestations in key texts on educational game play. Žižek's analysis of cyberspace in terms of socio-symbolic relations is then outlined to suggest how games might be considered educational in so far as they provide opportunities to manipulate and experiment with the rules underpinning our sense of reality and identity. This resembles Brecht's notion of the educational value of theatre. The conclusion emphasises that the terms on which games are understood to be educational relate to the social interests which education is understood to serve.