Caillois: Man, Play and Games

Relation of Huizinga

Man, Play and Games can be read as a response to the work of another influential play theorist, the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga, whose seminal study Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture appeared in 1938. Caillois praises Homo Ludens for its bold claim that culture derives from playing: Huizinga suggests that studying historic changes in play provides important insight into the evolution of human societies. He indicates that modern cultural values and institutions, such as law, science, and art, stem historically from playful challenge, exhibition and improvisation. Specific forms of culture developed as archaic play became more formal and elaborate: riddle contests and word play evolved into written poetry and philosophic argumentation, verbal battles in reserved spaces evolved into juridical processes, and tribal dances evolved into theatre performances.

Caillois also embraces most of the basic characteristics of play that Huizinga argues are common to different cultures and epochs. Huizinga sees playing as a voluntary activity, carried out for its own sake and therefore lacking any worldly motivation, such as monetary interests. Play takes place outside ordinary life and obeys specified rules and limits in time and space, whether these are marked by the chessboard, the tennis court or the playground. Further, play creates bonds between players, giving rise to collectives of like-minded persons who tend to exclude the uninitiated. As researcher of urban culture Ian Borden indicates in his inspiring study Skateboarding, Space and the City, skateboarders often demarcate their group identity through a certain use of clothing, space, and body language, thus maintaining their own enclosed “play-community,” whose [Page 108]activities and aesthetics an outsider may initially find difficult to comprehend.

Unsurprisingly, Huizinga and Caillois suggest a relationship between play and religious rituals. After all, religion is often practiced in temples, churches, and other self-contained spaces, where ideal rules and codified movements bracket the activities off from ordinary life. Much like sacred rituals, play absorbs its practitioners, captivating them through a shared sense of beauty and exaltation. In his earlier study Man and the Sacred, Caillois argued against Huizinga's tendency to fully assimilate playing and rituals, though both clearly regard play as a special cultural realm that it is important to protect from the monotony and imperfections of the outside world.

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