Archaeology of Play: The Re-Discovery of Platonic-Aristotelian Tripartivism in Interdisciplinary Discourses

Archaeology of Play: The Re-Discovery of Platonic-Aristotelian Tripartivism in Interdisciplinary Discourses proposes that play's antithesis is not seriousness but rather one-dimensionality.

This book argues that the rediscovery of Platonic-Aristotelian tripartivism lends to a more expansive appreciation of play in terms of three rhetorical registers - namely, skhol, agon, and paidia. Scholastic play resides in leisure and contemplation. Agonistics is realmed in competition, contests, and power-play, while paidiatics is expressed in lowly ruses, trickeries, recreation, and amusement of the low-bred and the subaltern.

By subjecting play to the tripartite lens, Archaeology of Play highlights vital surpluses and lacunae in the treatment of the subject matter and therefore yields a refreshing, re-politicized understanding of play dynamics in the different fields of human endeavor. Furthermore, Bourdieu's and Ranci're's lusory discourses redeem play from the pitfalls of triadic over-schematization by thinking beyond tripartivism.

The lively interlocution with other play theoristsPieper, Kant, Schiller, Marcuse, Gadamer, Veblen, Arendt, Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, Bakhtin, de Certeau, among others - adds substance to the mix where play becomes a critical resource for politics, aesthetics, and the democratic reordering of sociality.

Book Details

• Author: Lope Lesigues
• Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
• eBook ISBN: 9781433158421, 1433158426
• Print ISBN: 9781433158414, 1433158418
• Other ISBNs: 9781433158438, 9781433158445