Brainiac's bedside table, week of 4/1/07

Should Democrats look to the new breed of video games (in which a player can explore and discover to her heart's content) for inspiration? Yes, insists NYU media professor and political activist Stephen Duncombe. After all, he writes, in his provocative, smart new book "Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy" (New Press):

If a game offers power, excitement, and the room to explore, people will play evening after evening after evening, almost regardless of the results. Perhaps the problem is not that people don't want to get involved in politics, but rather that they don't want to take part in a professionalized politics so interested in efficiency that there is no space for them, or they don't want to spend time in a political world so cramped that there's no freedom to explore and discover, to know or master.

There's much more to Duncombe's book than video games, though.

Like Nancy Bauer, the feminist Tufts philosopher who argues that critics of pornography must come to grips with pornography's powers to arouse, Duncombe urges Democrats to come to grips with populist pleasures (Las Vegas, "Grand Theft Auto," advertising, celebrity gossip) and then co-opt and transform those dangerous pleasures in the name of progressive politics.

"Grand Theft Politics," a short essay I wrote about Duncombe's "Dream," appears today in Slate.