ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a different type of virtual violence, that is, social violence or 'images that wound', the violence of mediated stereotypes of Blackness both reproduced and resisted within the contested field of video game culture with implications that spiral centuries back. This racialized imagery is situated within a larger complex of visuality and examine countervisual resistance to it as a mode of empowerment. Having explored the impact of race within broader culture earlier, the chapter examines how racialization is intricately tied to the visual within contemporary gaming culture, particularly because racial minorities contemporarily and historically have faced exploitation, isolation, and othering. Examination of racialized imagery such visual microaggressions, or 'images that wound', as well as the rebellious responses to these images for visual empowerment, or images that resist. To do this, the chapter examines how Blackness is experienced and consumed within gaming culture.
