Everyman, All at Once: Baptism and the Liberal Subject in BioShock Infinite

Abstract

The 2013 video game BioShock Infinite stages baptism as a way to place the player within a liminal space where he or she is ostensibly a free subject, able to choose from an array of political options, but who will inevitably choose liberalism. In order to get the player to the point where they make—or rather confirm—their choice, the game must also force the player to arrive there. This conundrum mirrors the paradox of liberalism, following theorists like Patrick J. Deneen: that we supposedly choose among a realm of infinite possibly and yet those possibilities are forced upon us. This paradox is also the mode within which BioShock Infinite operates. The game uses self-referential and metatextual techniques to call attention to its gameness, and yet, it still asks the player to accept its liberal ideology. Althusser argues that the role of “Ideological State Apparatuses” (or ISAs) is to convince us that we are subjects who freely choose the dominant ideology, as opposed to any other system. ISAs do this through confirming us as subjects through rituals of ideological recognition enacted through, among other things, theatre, film, and video games. BioShock Infinite places the player in a position where they confirm that they are, indeed, a

liberal subject, and then asks that liberal subject to choose the very order from which their

(mis)recognition occurs.