The Fall of Literary Theory. Liana Vrajitoru Andreasen
system is unstable because it needs to define a stake, appealing to all the participants’ sense of having lost wholeness. As I explained before, social systems (particularly Western social systems) are organized as games to which the players are born subscribed. The theory that unifies civilization with the notion of game is nothing new in itself. What is important is that the game that the social system represents is not actually played, since it is itself deferred and its players are not real players, because of their fallenness. The child born into language begins to act in the social space through game. This is the first interaction outside of (but reenacting or reinforcing) the family hierarchy. The child learns that there are rules to go by, and that if the rules are not followed, the child as individual player will fall outside of the game. The difference between the game world and the social world into which the child grows is that the game is always perfect, and reenacted with different players. This is what is embedded into the unconscious of the child, for use in later life: the social system can become perfect if the game is played correctly by all participants. Famously, in 1938, Johan Huizinga developed a theory (in Homo Ludens) claiming that play is a civilizing factor. To him, play is a ritual prior to and superior to culture, ingraining in people a consciousness of being embedded in a sacred order of things” where, through play, consciousness “finds its first, highest, and holiest expression.”18
Huizinga seems to suggest that game pre-exists the social space. Since he equates the make-belief of the game with religious belief, the pretense is not that there is a game, in his theory, but that the player is worthy of the game that is received as a sacred inheritance. He also emphasizes the agonistic and competitive nature of the game, which suggests that there is an opponent against whom the player needs to prove superiority. It is inside the game that the child first learns that hierarchies are the way to perfection, so power and subjecthood as identity are learned through an ideal model that the game represents. In the game, the “other” is another person, but underlying that is the Other against whom the player will always need to compete. No matter how many opponents are overcome, there will always be other opponents, so that superiority is never absolute.
Derrida defines language and pharmakon19 as the prior medium where differentiation is born, as well as the opposition between the eidos and its other.20 What is missing in Huizinga’s model is the absence of the opponent, in the sense that Huizinga does not recognize that concrete opponents are as imperfect as the self. The ideal, or “real” opponent would be the perfect opponent, who is both innocent (because it is the Other, whole), and evil because the player’s fallenness is projected upon this opponent. This is why the pharmakon is both the poison and the cure, evil both internalized and externalized. The dynamic of difference is to be understood as the relation between presence and non-presence, both being the sites of truth, or the game. Dialectics, as play, especially in relation to truth (all the way from Plato), is also a deferred play.21
But players will not be satisfied to know that the game is deferred and that they are not playing in actuality. As they learned in childhood games, identity through the game is possible and it is also the only way to achieve social identity. They need to know that their belonging to language is governed by causality, and a confrontation “to the death” affirms them in their retrievable innocence. That is why the rule of the game must appear as stable. For this to happen, in societies for whom their own stabilization is at stake, the laws governing them are a result of the solidification or, rather, legitimization, of a tentative rule.
Lyotard’s contribution to a discussion of the game is to suggest that these rules stabilize into laws when the game becomes an obligation. And if we think about it, knowing that the boundaries are always contaminated by what is outside of the game, the law will all the more push its players into the realm of possibility, so that for fear of losing that possibility (of unfallenness), the players will of their own accord protect the boundaries of the game out of a sense of self-serving duty. These boundaries will never be stable enough but will strive for stability at the cost of anybody else’s game. Even the most democratic societies restrict the participation of other systems, by requiring them to conform to democracy, so that other games are assimilated. For instance, immigrants from other parts of the world (especially after the second generation) are likely to renounce participation in their old political system, and will vote for an American president along with the other subjects of democracy.
The social game appeals to its players by proving its superiority when compared to any other game. Players do have a choice, but when they assimilate the rule/law of the game, they become its senders. They legitimize that particular game that still leaves them in the realm of possibility (of retrieving its territory). According to Lyotard, the player enters the game by also accepting the hierarchy of other game possibilities, and then the player creates a hierarchy by which one game dominates the others. Such hierarchies legitimize oppression because “it is supposed that the so-called ontological language game can translate all others.”22 In other words, to retrieve a territory, others’ territories need to be subordinated, to such an extent that the others become part of the territory. The American dream, for instance, is a network of institutions by which, going through a set of tests, attending qualifying schools, and taking all the right steps, one can achieve one’s dream, a dream defined a priori or inscribed into the territory of the American dream.
The completion of the game would mean that there is no need any longer for new players to subscribe to it, since it has fulfilled its potential. However, since it only presents as a stake the possible, this is the only realm in which the players are validated as possible players. By rehearsing their role in the ideal game, the players validate in their turn the possibility for the game to actually be completed. The only circumstance in which a player would actually fulfill the possibility of the role in the game would be for the player to be the Other, not the subject defined from the perspective of the Other. But since the game itself, or language, will never stop sliding along the signifying chain, and never reach the real, the Other will never not be a signifier, and will never arrive: “l’invention n’invente rien, lonrsque’en elle l’autre ne viens pas …. Car l’autre n’est pas le possible. Il faudrait donc dire que la seule invention possible serait l’invention de l’impossible.”23
When the game thinks itself unstable, the players are not convinced anymore that the game guarantees them a “real” role. When such distrust occurs, the game needs to define its limits even more rigidly. It needs to reassert the possibility of superiority (something to win) that will be conferred on the players, a possibility which the players take more and more literally. They will defend the game if the fulfillment of the game appears to be tangible. The violence of the players is proportionate to the violence of the system. It is not an accident, for instance, that in Europe and other parts of the world where national identity is more disputed, a game such as soccer stirs (or at least used to stir) much more violence among the audience than games played in the United States. The soccer stadium becomes a representation of the national territory to be defended, and the game reflects the social game of national identity that defines the stakes in the interaction between soccer fans.
The limits that the system (re)defines are stabilized through repetition, which is the only way for the game to reinforce itself. There is a center that coordinates the ritual preserving the game and, in relation to this center, obligation reinforces the game. The reality of a center does not directly translate into the position of unfallenness, even though it would seem that this should be the case. For instance, missionary work, even though regulated by an institution, does not achieve its purpose of recruiting fallen beings in the name of the institution, but in the name of what the institution is not, but “represents.” The institution manipulates the notion of possibility. This manipulation is always “in the name of,” “toward,” or offers a way of reaching what that institutional center has not in itself reached. The institutions that define the territory are not absolute, but utilize the absolute signified as method or justification for their functioning.
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