close up of a discarded filthy toy, a purple and grey monkey

Toy Theory

My book, Toy Theory, will be published by MIT Press in 2023. Here’s a section of the proposal:

Headline

Rethinking culture, media, technology and the human through play with objects and materials. Placing toys at the centre of the postdigital era through a philosophy and genealogy of play with objects, of toying and being toyed with.

close up of a discarded filthy toy, a purple and grey monkey

Key features

  • Sustained and original explication of the nature and ontology of toys
  • Rethinks the focus and objects of the philosophy of technology
  • Proposes ‘toying’ as a key concept for reimagining technocultural relationships
  • Genealogy of toys as intersections between imagination and ideas, and material and technical possibilities
  • Draws on current thinking on new materialism, critical posthumanism and game studies to account for the agency and affects of nonhuman dimensions of play and imagination
  • Original theoretical work on imagination and animation as distributed across the human and nonhuman in the everyday
  • Insights and critical frameworks for the study of postdigital toys and game systems