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Play and (Post)Modern Culture

An Essay on Changes in the Scientific Interest in the Phenomenon of Play

Free University, Amsterdam

This essay presupposes that the recent Western scientific interest in play as a phenomenon and as a metaphor is characteristic of the way in which contemporary (post)modern culture sees itself: as a game without an overall aim, as play without a transcendent destination but not without the practical necessity of rules agreed upon and of (inter)subjective imagination; as a complex of games each one having its own framework, its own rules, risks, chances, and charms. The essay tries to demonstrate from a socio-cultural point of view how this recent self-image of (post)modern culture can be interpreted as the outcome of a long development. It does so in order to reconstruct and clarify, against this background, the historically changing scientific interest in, and the gradual formation of, the concept of play as a phenomenon and as a metaphor.

Key Words: game • modernism • philosophy of culture • play • play theory • postmodernism • theory of culture

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