[DiGRA UK] CfP Extension: 'The Other Caillois: Game Studies Beyond Man, Play and Games (Games and Culture, Sage)

Fri Oct 2 11:05:48 UTC 2015

Dear List Members (apologies for cross-posting),

following some requests we are happy to provide an extension to the
following CfP.

Thank you, all best –

THE OTHER CAILLOIS – GAME STUDIES BEYOND 'MAN, PLAY AND GAMES'

Games and Culture (gac.sagepub.com/)

NEW EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS – 11 October 2016

Call for Papers:

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 influential contributions on game
practices, 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, video game scholars have focused mostly or
exclusively on Man, Play and Games (1958, trans. 1961), 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 exerted a decisive influence on authors like Jean
Baudrillard (see The Intelligence of Evil and the Lucidity Pact, 2004,
trans. 2005). Caillois notably envisioned a resort to “diagonal sciences”
that could decisively (and often controversially) cut through established
approaches to play, myth, the sacred, art, and politics. 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 beyond the shoehorn model of
text-book interpretation.By looking at game studies in light of Caillois’
strikingly manifold production, this issue encourages debates on his
appropriation by emerging approaches and novel analyses of his allegedly
essentialist or positivist view of games, through engagement with a broader
understanding of his complex intellectual trajectory. Authors are
encouraged to consider historicised analyses of the field of games studies,
aiming at disentangling how Caillois has been received and individuating
specific interests behind the uses of his theory. We also look forward to
receiving analyses highlighting aspects such as his reception in
disciplinary context, across different traditions, countries and languages
where his works have been made diversely available. Finally we encourage
original, focused analyses of games, in all their forms and with particular
attention to electronic and digital practices, inspired by the diverse
approaches to society, the individual, and their practice in the light of
Caillois’ perspectives. We will gladly welcome applications aiming to a
more comprehensive understanding of Caillois’ work in relation to games and
to hitherto unexplored critical vistas. An unashamedly cross-disciplinary
collection, this issue of Games and Culture will boast rigorous,
historicised, contextualized contributions to games through the lens of the
other Caillois.

Themes for this issue may include but are not limited to:

– Play and games in Caillois within and beyond Man, Play and Games.

- How the notion of mimicry, crucial in the early work of Caillois, could
let us re-imagine the relation gamer-game (see Mimicry and Legendary
Psychasthenia, 1936, trans. 1984).

- How Caillois’ work on the interrelationship between sacred and profane
could contribute to the on-going debates about and around the notion of the
magic circle (see Man and the Sacred, 1939, trans. 1959).

- The use of games for doing things (serious games, gamification etc.) and
the lives of things that Caillois describes in early contributions such as
The Writing of Stones (1970, trans. 1985).

– Transversal approaches to video games: philosophy, sociology,
anthropology, media studies.

- Magic beans and acephalous sciences: play, imaginative thought and
intellectual provocation in the texts of the Surrealist thinkers who worked
in close relationship with Caillois.

– Standing on the shoulders of giants: game studies and intellectual
legitimisation.

– Video games and gambling: games of chances, game addictions.

– Video games on and off the screen: embodiment, urges and rituals.

– Video games as vertigo: beyond the pedagogical paradigm.

– Video games, society, and the sacred: entertainment, representations,
beliefs.

– Caillois and the others: comparative game analyses through Caillois and
other thinkers that were inspired by his thought.

Please submit an initial proposal of 1,000 words (exc. references) by the
25th of September 2015. [ DEADLINE EXTENSION: 11 October 2016 ]

This should be sent as a word document or PDF to the contact emails
specified at the end of this call. The proposal should describe the topic
and outline the main aims or argument of the article. It should include an
indicative list of references.

Authors of submitted proposals will be notified by the 16th of October,
2015.

Authors of successful proposals will then be asked to submit a full article
(no more than 8,000 words) by the 4th of December, 2015. Articles should be
submitted to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/games.

The full articles will undergo a double-blind peer review process. For
details of how to submit to Games and Culture and of the peer review
process, see:
http://www.uk.sagepub.com/journalsProdDesc.nav?prodId=Journal201757&ct_p=manuscriptSubmission&crossRegion=antiPod
.

Accepted articles will be published in the Autumns 2016 issue of Games and
Culture.

This issue will be edited by Marco Benoît Carbone and Paolo Ruffino.

Contact emails:
marcobenoitcarbone at gmail.com
contact at paoloruffino.com
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