Redefining Creativity in Gaming Culture: Reviving the Situationist Concept of Détournement

This paper aims to present the French concept of “détournement” and its application in the field of pop culture and, more specifically, of game studies. Although it originated in the art world and it is closely connected to the history of the twentieth century avant-gardes, the notion of détournement is now used to describe a growing number of popular practices related to the “participatory culture” phenomenon. The advent of digital technology has, indeed, multiplied the opportunities for audience participation in the creation, to the point of deeply changing our consumption habits: practices such as remix, sampling, mashup, film editing, fanfiction, fanart, etc. are today visible and widespread on the internet.
This democratization of the reappropriation of pre-existing works participates in questioning the traditional opposition between creation and consumption and is, according to Azuma, an essential characteristic of postmodern culture, where we “consume the original and the parody with equal vigor. […] In other words, irrespective of their having been created by an author (in the modern sense), the products of otaku culture are born into a chain of infinite imitations and piracy” (Azuma, 2009: 26). To apprehend contemporary cultural practices, it seems thus essential to sharpen the vocabulary allowing us to designate these forms of reappropriation: this is why I will try, in this presentation, to define the notion of détournement and to deconstruct some assumptions frequently associated with it – mainly regarding its political dimension.