Avatar e-games, subjetividades dissidentes e educação informal

Abstract

This research was based on investigating the possibilities that the multiplicity of e-games and their respective available innovations offer to gender non-conforming gamers/players by enabling the creation of stylized imagery representations of them, based on folds of their original selves: the avatar. In this sense, it sought to understand the impact of avatar e-games and the fusion of online and offline post-digital experiences on the construction of online subjectivities, as well as their manifestations in the offline subjectivities – and vice versa – of adult gamers/players of non-conforming genders and their associations as potential expansions of educational fields for such individuals. Therefore, the locus was the São Cristóvão Campus of the Federal University of Sergipe (Universidade Federal de Sergipe – UFS). The study population included undergraduate and graduate students from diverse fields, over 18 years of age, non-cis-gender, and adept to electronic games. Regarding methodology, it followed the interpretative qualitative approach (Gil, 1999), with data collection carried out through semistructured interviews (Triviños, 1987; Manzini, 1990; 1991) and data interpretation through Analytical Interlacing (Boa Sorte et al, 2023). After analyzing and interpreting the data, it was possible to conclude that by interacting with e-games and avatars, participants develop knowledge about themselves and others by engaging in experimentation, expanding their identity repertoires and strengthening their subjective agency. These experimentations occur in spaces that, while offering opportunities for what deviates from the norm, are also traversed by what monitors and controls. However, such contradictions do not negate the power of these egames and avatars as operators of resistance to cishetnormativity, especially for dissident subjects who find in them symbolisms capable of promoting meaningful and non-traditional education and learning, concretely impacting their ways of being and living. Finally, it is important to mention that this research, from its second year onwards, began to be developed with support from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq).