The Play of Postmodernity: Deconstructive Play (2024)

Politics of Play: Wargaming with the US Military

Aggie Hirst

Published:

2024

Online ISBN:

9780197629239

Print ISBN:

9780197629192

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Politics of Play: Wargaming with the US Military

Aggie Hirst

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Aggie Hirst

Aggie Hirst

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Pages

126–156

  • Published:

    May 2024

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Hirst, Aggie, 'The Play of Postmodernity: Deconstructive Play', Politics of Play: Wargaming with the US Military (2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 23 May 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197629192.003.0005, accessed 30 May 2024.

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Abstract

This chapter explores play in the era of poststructuralism and offers a new theory of play, “deconstructive play,” grounded in the thought of Jacques Derrida. It begins by tracing the role of play—understood not as directed play but rather as free play—in Derrida’s thought and his conceptualization of deconstruction. Having done so, it sets out deconstructive play as a third type that differs from both the Apollonian and Dionysian modes. This reconceptualization embraces the Dionysian tradition’s principles of festival, unreason, and groundlessness but challenges its tendency to reify and romanticize a warrior-hero play subject. The chapter finally shows how deconstructive play can help expose the politics of gaming by disentangling play from game, cultivating a deconstructive player-subject, and operationalizing deconstructive play in gameworlds.

Keywords: play, philosophy, postmodern play, player, Derrida, deconstruction, deconstructive play, Dionysian, play subject

Subject

International Relations

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Politics of Play. Aggie Hirst, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197629192.003.0005

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