Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11851/9796
Title: Black Egyptians and White Greeks?: Historical Speculation and Racecraft in the Video Game Assassin’s Creed: Origins †
Authors: Banker, B.
Keywords: Antiquity
Assassin’S Creed
Race
Racecraft
Racism
Science Fiction
Video Games
Publisher: MDPI
Abstract: Recent portrayals of ancient Egypt in popular culture have renewed attention concerning the historical accuracy of how race and racism appear in representations of antiquity. Historians of the antiquity have robustly dismissed racist claims of whitewashing or blackwashing historical and cultural material in both scholarship and in popular culture. The 2017 video game Assassin’s Creed: Origins is a noteworthy site to examine this debate, as the game was designed with the assistance of historians and cultural experts, presenting players with an “historically accurate” ancient Egypt. Yet, if race is a fantasy, as Karen Fields and Barbara Fields’ “racecraft” articulates, then what historians have speculated in their study of race and racism are presentations of a proto-racecraft, borrowing from historian Benjamin Isaac. This essay argues that Assassin’s Creed: Origins racecrafts through the paradigm of historical speculation. As historians have speculated on meanings and operations of “race” and racism in ancient Egypt, Origins has made those speculations visible through its depiction of a racially diverse Ptolemaic Egypt. Yet, this racecraft is paradoxically good, as the game does so to push back against the hegemony of whiteness and whitewashing in contemporary popular culture. © 2020 by the author.
URI: https://doi.org/10.3390/h9040145
ISSN: 2076-0787
Appears in Collections:Scopus İndeksli Yayınlar Koleksiyonu / Scopus Indexed Publications Collection
WoS İndeksli Yayınlar Koleksiyonu / WoS Indexed Publications Collection

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