The World Politics of Disco Elysium by Castro, Vic; Kiersey, Nicholas;

Short description:

The World Politics of Disco Elysium analyses the distinctive political claims and original arguments on a wide range of international political issues of the highly-acclaimed Marxist video game Disco Elysium (2019), which takes place in a speculative fictional world anchored in a post-Soviet Estonian perspective.

Long description:

The World Politics of Disco Elysium analyzes the distinctive political claims and original arguments on a wide range of international political issues of the highly-acclaimed Marxist video game Disco Elysium (2019), which takes place in a speculative fictional world anchored in a post-Soviet Estonian perspective.

Disco Elysium (2019) has been repeatedly acclaimed as one of the best video games of all time. This detective role-playing game unfolds in a city ruined by a failed communist revolution and occupied by a foreign coalition. Furthering recent work in International Relations and popular culture, this book claims that the "cognitive estrangement" of speculative fiction can produce theoretical and political novelty, beyond merely reflecting existing political dynamics. By placing a metaphor for the Estonian capital Tallinn at the centre of a world, Disco Elysium produces an estranged Estonian perspective on world politics that challenges dominant Anglo-American views of International Relations, while also undermining the opposition between a coherent West and a colonized Rest. The contributors, from International Relations and Cultural Studies, discuss the game’s claims on topics such as capitalism, (neo)liberalism, foreign intervention, law enforcement, fascism, colonialism, gender, disability, violence, memory, revolutionary politics, the European Union, political realism and international security.

The World Politics of Disco Elysium will be of great interest to students and scholars researching the politics of popular culture, post-Soviet politics, non-Western International Relations, as well as game studies and cultural studies.

“The book successfully fulfills its aims: furthering non-Western perspectives in the field; presenting how alternatives to capitalism can be reimagined; and innovatively exploring how not only narrative and visual aspects of the game but also procedural elements challenge the operative logics of our society. The plethora of approaches makes the arguments even more robust and reflects the game’s own uniqueness: aesthetic IR requires the employment of diverse subjectivities, which makes the edited-volume format a sound choice. One could argue that the multiple playthroughs undertaken in each chapter cannot be exactly replicated due to the game’s role-playing nature, thereby posing a methodological limitation. However, I sustain that this is one of the greatest strengths of the book, for it enables the player/researcher to experience and theoretically interpret Disco Elysium using mixed “colour choices, brushstrokes, angles, [and] framing”, borrowing Bleiker’s (2001, 513) metaphor of the social scientist as an artist. The volume maintains a coherent diversity that ultimately reinforces rather than fragments its central arguments. “The World Politics of Disco Elysium” is a provocative and inspiring contribution to the field of Popular Culture and World Politics.”

- Mariana Alves, Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany in Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 2026, Vol. 0(0) 1–3

Table of Contents:

Part 1: An Introduction to Disco Elysium  1. Introduction to The World Politics of Disco Elysium  2. What Kind of Cop Are We, Detective? Community Engagement on r/DiscoElysium Bart  Part 2: Disco Elysium and Late Capitalism  3. “I have holes in my brain” – The Traumatic Memory of the Commune of Revachol  4. “Thought Cabinet”: Imagining Ludic Alternatives to Capitalist Realism  5. The Detective Dandy and the Marxist Hypothesis: Disco Elysium as Critique of the Millennial Left  Part 3: World Order, Liberalism, and Security in Disco Elysium  6. A Real Kerfuffle: Sovereignty and Intervention Beyond the Pale in Disco Elysium  7. The EU and Disco Elysium – Second-order Representations as Vessels of Criticism  8. Who Bears ‘La Responsabilité?’: The Objective Violence of Liberal Order in Disco Elysium  9. Imaginaries of Ontological (In)Security in Disco Elysium  Part 4: Oppression and Liberation in Disco Elysium  10. “I don’t want to be this kind of animal anymore!”: Unthinking Policing in Disco Elysium  11. Vows of Blööd and Flesh: The Aggrieved Entitlements of Fascist Ideology in Disco Elysium  12. Decomposing the Body Politic: Sick and Disabled Resistance in Disco Elysium  13. The Ecstasy of Ruin: Sartre, Euphoria, and the Pleasure of Undoing  Part 5: Conclusions  14. Playing like: Disco Elysium and the making of IR subjects  Afterword. Calling IR to the disco floor