Ilinx

Abstract: An underlying metaphor for life in the United States is "LIFE IS PLAYING A GAME." Metaphors of games and play pervade our discourse in explaining phenomena in diverse realms of life for several reasons. Using Caillois's (1979) typology of games, games of agon (skill) with some alea (chance), this study shows that such metaphors are frequently used because they are consonant with our culture's prototypical person, as shown by linguistic concepts inherent in the phrase "game player" and with our culture's assignment of prototypicality to masculinity. Second, because of the wide repertoire of games from which we draw metaphors--even what Caillois considered nonprototypical cultural ideal games, such as games of ilinx (disequilibrium and destruction) and mimicry (acting and the theater)--games and play as metaphors are elastic in incorporating diverse ideas in many unconnected realms of life. Such metaphors thus simplify life's disparate experiences through one explanation, sometimes reflecting a reality that...

Abstract: As many cultural groups in Western societies have become disaffected with mainstream sports cultures and their logics of practice, sociologists of sport and physical culture have turned their attention to the existential benefits of play and games. There is growing interest in revisiting and exploring the classic theories of play in society, including those of Roger Caillois. The author considers the increasingly popular practice of fell running among a group of enthusiasts in the United Kingdom as an activity that playfully embraces and celebrates the voluptuous panic of ilinx activities. He argues that fell running is not a pure form of ilinx as defined by Caillois but that the sport’s willful—and highly pleasurable—disruption of the mind and body through vertigo and panic fits Caillois’s description of the benefits of play and games. Using ethnographic data about fell runners collected during two years in the United Kingdom, the author suggests that they make existential connections with time, space, and the elements through the voluptuous panic and animal mimicry described by Caillois and others. Key words : Roger Caillois; fell running; ilinx; physical-cultural studies; post-sport physical culture; voluptuous panic Getting [Theoretically] Stuck in the Fells To think, let alone write , about the connection between so-called high-performance athletics and existential pleasure is almost antithetical in academic work. I speak quite regularly with colleagues in sport and exercisescience programs who unabashedly admit that elite-level or “serious-leisure” (Stebbins 2006) sports bear little resemblance to the pursuit of physical health or to the experience of emotional pleasures (besides those, perhaps, stirred by the vanquishing of an opponent). High-performance sports and athletic cultures are typically characterized by a small range of human emotions and experiences (Kerr 2004). But many people engage in the willful abandonment of personal control through intense, sports-like physicality and by placing themselves in athletic contexts that stir doubt, uncertainty, thrills, and anxiety. The literature

Abstract: The legacy of the rich, stratified work of Roger Caillois, the multifaceted and complex French scholar and intellectual, seems to have almost solely impinged on game studies through his most popular work, Les Jeux et les Hommes. Translated in English as Man, Play and Games, this is the text which popularized Caillois’ ideas among those who do study and research on games and game cultures today, and which most often appears in publications that attempt to historicize and introduce to the study of games—perhaps on a par with Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens. The purpose of this article is to introduce the papers and general purposes of a collected edition that aims to shift the attention of game scholars toward a more nuanced and comprehensive view of Roger Caillois, beyond the textbook interpretations usually received in game studies over the last decade or so.