Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens
[Nature and Significance of Play]

“Now this last-named element, the fun of playing, resists all analysis, all logical interpretation. As a concept, it cannot be reduced to any other mental category. No other modern language known to me has the exact equivalent of the English “fun”. The Dutch “aardikeit” perhaps comes nearest to it (derived from “aard” which means the same as “Art” and “Wesen” in German, and thus evidence, perhaps, that the matter cannot be reduced further.) We may note in passing that “fun” in its current usage is of rather recent origin. French, oddly enough, has no corresponding term at all; German half makes up for it by “Spass” and “Witz” together.”

“Animals play, so they must be more than merely mechanical things. We play and know that we play, so we must be more than merely rational beings, for play is irrational.”

The fact that play and culture are actually interwoven with one another was neither observed nor expressed, whereas for us the whole point is to show that genuine, pure play is one of the main bases of civilisation.”

“Play is superfluous. The need for it is only urgent to the extent that the enjoyment of it makes it a need.”

“… we have the first main characteristic of play: that it is free, is in fact freedom. A second characteristic is closely connected with this, namely, that play is not “ordinary” or “real” life. … The inferiority of play is continually being offset by the corresponding superiority of its seriousness. … It adorns life, amplifies it and is to that extent a neccessity both for the individual- as a life function- and for society by reason of the meaning it contains, its significance, its expressive value, its spiritual and social associations, in short, as a culture function.”

“This is the third main characteristic of play: its secludedness, its limitedness. It is “played out” within certain limits of time and place. It contains its own course and meaning.”

“Just as there is no formal difference btween play and ritual, so the “consecrated spot” cannot be formally distinguished from the play-ground. … All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart.”

“The exceptional and special position of play is most tellingly illustrated by the fact that it loves to surround itself with an air of secrecy.”

“The player can abandon himself body and soul to the game, and the consciousness of its being “merely” a game can be thrust into the background. … Frivolity and ecstacy are the twin poles between which play moves.”

Brian Sutton-Smith’s The Ambiguity of Play
[Play and Ambiguity]

“… a playful nip is not only not a bite, it is also not not a bite.”

[Rhetorics of Fate]

“Play could then be thought to be mainly a phenomenon to be experienced top down rather than actively manipulated bottom up. … The continuity between such impelling automata and the more behavioral matters of play might well account for the ever present and sudden surge of ready engagement in virtual play experience.”

“Theories of dreams often parallel those for play, as in the claim that dreams are forms of memory consolidation, stress adaptation, mood regulation, wish fulfillment, problem solving, and anticipation.”

“Fate, with its emphasis on luck rather than talent, is the anithesis to the rhetoric of progress.”

“This suggests that games of chance and gambling are so widespread because they are basically a kind of religious effort to deal with fate, a kind of existential optimism.”

“Rhetorics of chance, or gate, speak more broadly to our immortal apprehensions, just as the progress rhetorics speaks more narrowly to our mortal aspirations.”

[Rhetorics of Frivolity]

“Play as progress is an ideology for the conquest of children’s behavior through organizing their play. What is put to one side, forgotten, neglected, denied, trivialized, or suppressed are all the other ways in which children play by themselves or together with other children. Treating all of this play as frivolousness, as something to be put aside, illustrates and adds momentum to the idea that adults should organize the kind of play thourgh which children are believed to develop properly.”