[DiGRA Italia] The Other Caillois: Game Studies beyond Man, Play and Games - Games and Culture special issue

[Paolo Ruffino]

Cari *Digristi *italiani,
ho il piacere di condividere con voi l'annuncio di un nuovo numero di *Games
and Culture*, curato dal sottoscritto e da Marco Benoît Carbone. Se avete
già visto questo annuncio in altre liste e/o sui social network,
perdonatemi per il cross-posting.

In questo numero, pubblicato in lingua inglese, abbiamo raccolto e curato
quattro saggi dedicati al lavoro di Roger Caillois. Caillois è un autore
spesso citato nei game studies, ma raramente preso in considerazione nella
sua complessità. Con questo numero abbiamo invitato gli autori ad esplorare
la ricca produzione precedente 'I Giochi e gli Uomini: la Maschera e la
Vertigine', e a rileggere lo stesso testo in forma critica. Tra gli autori
figurano anche nomi noti alla comunità italiana di studiosi del
videogioco...

Speriamo che il risultato possa essere di vostro interesse e gradimento.

A presto,


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*The Other Caillois: Game Studies beyond Man, Play and Games*
Edited by Marco Benoît Carbone (University College London) and Paolo
Ruffino (University of Lincoln)

http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/gaca/12/4

Throughout the emergence of video games studies, the reception of French
intellectual and game theorist Roger Caillois has been contradictory. On
the one hand Caillois, along with other “classics”, provided a springboard
for discourses on video games that sought to frame them as dignified
cultural forms within the established philosophical domain of play. On the
other hand, while using Caillois as an unavoidable benchmark, game scholars
have focused mostly or exclusively on Man, Play and Games, increasingly
criticising it as a descriptive and positivist work. This seems to
contradict a parallel and possibly much stronger intellectual legacy (and
critique) of Caillois as a transversal, a-systematic and provocative
thinker. Aligned with a critique of positivism that can be traced to
Nietzsche, Caillois envisioned a resort to “diagonal sciences” that could
decisively (and often controversially) cut through established approaches
to play, myth, the sacred, art, and politics.

Game studies have approached Caillois as an entry point into the study of
games and culture, almost as a 'token' to drop in the introduction when
defining what games are (or are not). The field has rarely taken his early
production close to its full implications.

Challenging what could be argued to be a unilateral reception of this
author, this issue of Games and Culture provides an opportunity to envision
a more complex relation between Caillois and game studies.


Summary of content:

*Introduction: The Other Caillois: The Many Masks of Game Studies *
Marco Benoît Carbone (UCL), Paolo Ruffino (University of Lincoln),Stephane
Massonet (University of Brussels)

*Roger Caillois and E-Sports: On the Problems of Treating Play as Work*
Tom Brock (Manchester Metropolitan University)

*Mimicking Gamers: Understanding Gamification Through Roger Caillois*
Vincenzo Idone Cassone (Università‘ degli Studi di Torino)

*Beyond Diagonal Sciences: Applying Roger Caillois’s Concepts of Symmetry
and Dissimetry to Journey*
Enrico Gandolfi (Kent State University)

*Roger Caillois and Marxism: A Game Studies Perspective*
Lars Kristensen and Ulf Wilhelmson (University of Skövde)

--

-- 
Dr. Paolo Ruffino
http://paoloruffino.com
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