World Politics of Disco Elysium

Vic Castro is an independent scholar with a PhD in political science (2024) from the University of Copenhagen. Their work has been published in journals including Security Dialogue and European Journal of International Security. They are a former Communications Officer for the STAIR section of ISA.Nicholas Kiersey is Professor of Political Science at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. His research addresses austerity, biopolitics and the crises of the neoliberal capitalist state. He is currently working on a book about socialist governmentality and the cultural political economy of the end of capitalism.

“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

• 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