Comments on Huizinga (#3)

Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society . . .

This opening quote from Huizinga is, to my mind, not so self-evident as its author implies. Huizinga asserts that even animals naturally engage in play without the accouterments of civilization. Thus even lone human individuals who live outside any society would still play. Culture may presuppose human society, but play has no such presupposition. "In culture we find play as a given magnitude existing before culture itself existed" (p. 4), contends Huizinga, so that "culture [is] sub specie ludi" (p. 5). Play simply exists, somewhere out there in the interstices between "instinct" and "will," possessing of itself "a meaning [that] implies a non-materialistic quality in the nature of the thing itself" (p. 1). But is this argument (which is grounded in the modernist project of striving to "know" an independently existing phenomenon by "re-presenting" it through language) sustainable? I am not so sure.

To my way of thinking, culture precedes play and not the reverse. First, a lone individual living outside of any society would not cognize play in the same way as persons-in-society. Huizinga contends that play is a stepping-out from "ordinary" life, an interlude. But there is no "ordinary" life to step away from, except within the context of society. The putative lone individual would experience "play" as a part of the natural continuum of ordinary life, for he/she would have no other standard by which to judge an activity as "ordinary" or otherwise. Without society there are no "interludes." How could a lone individual have any conception of "play" as being a "free activity standing quite consciously outside 'ordinary' life" (p. 13)?

Thus, secondly, play can only have meaning within the contexts of society and culture. Even in the smallest human grouping, already there are necessary interrelations of kinship and power. If we consider culture to be a shared organization of knowledge, then this social grouping already has a culture. Its members must, in order to function within the group, share a common way of organizing their knowledge regarding kinship and power relations. Thus they have an "ordinary" life, the precondition for any concept of "play" to have meaning.

Third, I would submit that society precedes play because a precondition for play is economic organization. Individuals preoccupied with survival cannot engage in "regular contests and beautiful performances before an admiring public" (p. 1) when their imaginative lives are oriented toward the next meal. Only as economic organization affords respite from such preoccupation can play emerge as a significant feature of individual and social life.

Do these musings have any bearing on our study this semester of serious games? I believe they do. If you agree with Huizinga that play is innate then you will look at the psychology of gaming with a kind of "natural law" orientation. But if you agree with me that play is social then you will regard gaming as an expression, not primarily of innate urges, but of socially constructed and coordinated meanings.