Politics by other means : postdigital gameplay in Hong Kong

This article considers play in relation to the governance of creativity as well as emerging modes of dissent in Hong Kong. Drawing from post-digital game studies and radical contextualism, the article considers play in three everyday settings, each of which articulates different relations between the material affordances of software, embodied capabilities and the rationalities of institutional macropolitics. In doing so, I aim to explore play as dissent in a context where play is instrumentalised for the biopolitics of the “creative” economy, yet where it is neither connected to “free” expression and performance nor guaranteed of liberal protections. I argue that creativity in Hong Kong is not constitutive—be it of economic assets or a “free” society—but constituted. That is to say, creativity is normalised, trained, excluded, repressed and potentially criminalised. This requires rethinking prevailing universalisms regarding politics as play and creative public performance.