Abstract
This chapter considers the role of place and space as significant for both cosplayers and for artists alike. Here, we consider the playful use and appropriation of space, and how cosplayers see and draw on urban spaces and objects. The chapter argues that a useful way of understanding cosplay is to consider the relationship between play and culture. In particular, here we set out a consideration of how cosplayers transform social spaces through the use of process of synecdoche and asyndeton, which link together and edit out parts of the built environment—or what we term ‘urban poaching’.
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Notes
- 1.
It is worth noting that how de Certeau defines place and space is at odds, and in many ways quite the reverse, to how most contemporary cultural geographers define these terms. For most writers, space refers to physical location, while place is a space that is given meaning; it is how a space is experienced and lived (Longhurst et al. 2017).
- 2.
Hetalia is an extremely popular webcomic that was later made into a manga and anime. First released online in 2009, it characterises each of the Axis and Allied nations during the First and Second World Wars, giving them a human persona. The comic is light-hearted and satirises well-known historical events.
- 3.
Attack on Titan is a Japanese manga published in 2009. It has since been made into a serialised anime, which was released in 2013. The plot revolves around a teenage boy, Eren, and his foster sister, Mikasa, who witness their mother being devoured by a Titan. Titans are huge beings that almost exterminated the human race, and the remaining population reside within a huge walled city.
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Crawford, G., Hancock, D. (2019). Playful Cultures and the Appropriation of Urban Space. In: Cosplay and the Art of Play. Leisure Studies in a Global Era. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15966-5_7
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