Metaphors and Theory

I’m reading Gaming the Iron Curtain and I wish I could write like Jaroslav Švelch once. Such clarity! I was especially taken by his use of metaphors and key terms to narrate his research but also hook into quite a diverse range of theories.

• the alltagsgeschichte (everyday life histories) movement in German historiography
• De Certeau’s tactics and strategies
• Alexei Yurchak’s concept of vnye, “a condition of being simultaneously inside and outside of some context—such as, being within a context while remaining oblivious of it, imagining yourself elsewhere, or being inside your own mind.”
• Claude Lévi-Strauss’ bricoleur and bricolage
• Coding acts, analogue to a speech act, “acts of writing and releasing computer code to attain a goal in a given communication context”
• hunting in the shortage economy, in relation to Roger Silverstone’s concepts of domestication and the wild