Play as Moral Ilinx

Play as Moral Ilinx Andrew Edgar Cardiff University edgar@cf.ac.uk Abstract This presentation offers a critical exposition of Roger Caillois' typology of play. Caillois, in Les Jeux et les Hommes (1958), offers a fourfold typology of games (as agonistic, aleatory, mimetic, and as inducing vertigo – or ilinx). This reading of Caillois will explicate an otherwise overlooked element of this typology, that of 'moral ilinx', a form of vertigo experienced when the everyday capacity for moral judgement is challenged or subverted within a game. The recognition of this sub-category allows Caillois' somewhat conservative philosophy to be read, fruitfully, in tension with the more radical philosophy of his one time collaborator George Bataille, and thus the explication of games as part of Bataille's 'accursed share'. It will be argued that participation in games potentially throws into question presuppositions about the player's moral values and indeed sense of identity. The everyday, non-gaming, world is partially suspended. It follows that games, contrary to a dominant strand of thinking in the philosophy of sport, do not inculcate moral virtues, but rather open a space for violence and immorality. Competitive gaming is grounded in the possibility of doing violence to others and 'joyfully' accepting defeat oneself. The very violence of competitive gaming is argued not to be a moral problem, but rather to be fruitfully transgressive, in Bataille's sense, focussing player and spectator alike on the intrinsic value of play – however threatening that play might be – and thereby throwing into question the instrumental and potentially repressive values that are dominant in the everyday world. Key words: Caillois; Bataille; mimesis; death; moral transgression  Introduction The purpose of this paper is to explore the moral content of play and games. Through a critical reflection on Caillois' classification of play, it will be argued that games and sport expose players to experiences that disrupt or transcend the moral expectations that dominate everyday life. Sport opens up a space within which the transgression of certain moral rules is permitted. Players are allowed, in effect, do bad things, including the inflicting of physical pain and psychological hurt on their opponents, but also themselves have to face and accept such pain being inflicted upon them. From this it will be suggested that play does not then, as is sometimes assumed, provide a context for the inculcation of virtue (or as Caillois himself suggests, acting as safety-valve for anti-social behaviours), but rather leads to the constitution of a transgressive self, potentially posing a danger to the existing moral order. The argument will proceed by first considering Caillois' assessment of play as unproductive, comparing to this Bataille's notion of the accured share. Caillois' classification of play will then be rehearsed, highlighting its Nietzschean underpinning, and giving particular attention to the mimetic aspects of play, and play as a source of vertigo (ilinx) – both of which highlight the Dionysian disruption of the autonomous Apollonian self. The reading will draw attention to the phenomenon of 'moral ilinx', a category that has otherwise been neglected in commentaries on Caillois. Moral ilinx is a form of vertigo experienced in the suspension and questioning of our everyday capacity for moral judgement. It will be argued that violence and the mimicry of and death within games constitute a moment of moral ilinx that is fundamental to the playful experience, and to the formation of reflective communities around players. By reading Caillois in the light of George Bataille's more radical philosophy, Caillois' morally conservative evaluation of ilinx as a threat to the moral order will be questioned. Violence in sport will be argued to be transgressive, offering a moment of critical reflection upon the constricting instrumental values of everyday life. The Unproductive Nature of Play Caillios asserts that all play is unproductive: 'Nothing has been harvested or manufactured, no masterpiece has been created, no capital has accrued. Play is an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often of money' (Caillois 1961, pp. 5-6). This lack of productivity itself suggests an influence from George Bataille's monograph on economics (1988a), and the essay 'The Notion of Expenditure' (of 1933). Caillois and Bataille were colleagues in the 1930s (Hollier 1988), and the younger Caillois may be seen to share something of Bataille's radicalism. Man, Play and Games (first published in 1958) itself is conservative in tone, largely concerned with affirming a liberal moral order and articulating the threat to it that certain forms of play might pose, or lamenting the perversion of modern forms of play (in both capitalist and totalitarian societies), whereby play loses its innocence, or even is sacred quality, in order to orchestrate and entertain mass audiences (see Caillois 1961, pp. 129ff). Yet the very presence of the notion of the unproductive at the heart of the initial characterisation of play opens up an alternative reading of play, one that celebrates play's transgressive potential. Indeed, Man, Play and Games is characterised by ambiguities and tensions, not least as to the importance that it ascribes to play within human culture, and the balance perceived between the threat play poses to modern society and the threat that society poses to play. The present interpretation strives to draw out the more radical, Bataillean, implications of Caillois' arguments. Bataille's 'general' economics centres about the assumption that the core economic problem is that of surplus production (luxury or the 'accursed share' (Bataille 1988a)), not scarcity or the satisfaction of basic needs. The inappropriate expenditure of surplus energy poses a threat to society (in its most extreme form in the waging of war). Surplus energy can be expended peacefully, in art, play and festival, and even sexual licence, but contemporary society marginalises such forms of expenditure as lacking in utility, and thus as unproductive. Amongst the forms of unproductive expenditure that Bataille identifies are competitive games (Bataille 1985, p. 119). But here the tone is somewhat different to that of Caillios. Bataille seems to glory in the risks that gamblers take (in 'the loss of insane sums'), expenditure on the means and facilities of sport, such as race horses, stables and the luxury of Jockey Clubs, as well as the risks taken by athletic competitors (such that the 'danger of death is not avoided; on the contrary, it is the object of a strong unconscious attraction'), let alone the value of 'sexual licence' (p. 119). Play's importance, for Bataille, lies in its very defiance of any rational and utilitarian work ethic. Play is enjoyed purely for its own sake, and as such jars against the instrumental justification of the dominant activities of a capitalist society. Caillois pits his analysis of the unproductive nature of play against, on the one hand, Huizinga's claim that play is the (productive) source of culture, and indeed the inculcation of virtues within the player. 'To the degree that he is influenced by play, man… learns to construct order, conceive economy, and establish equity' (Caillois 1961, p. 58; see Huizinga 1949). On the other hand are arguments that hold play to be nothing more than the innocently unproductive pastime of children (Caillois 1961, p. 57). Caillois reconciles these two contradictory theses by arguing that Huizinga is correct as to the original influence of a play impulse on the formation of human culture. Contemporary forms of play, however, are merely the residues of past cultures (so that the child's game of tag was once 'the terrifying choice of a propitiatory victim' (p. 59), and their catapults effective weapons of war (p. 61)). No longer a source of cultural creativity, as Huizinga argues, play then contains little more than, at best, the now meaningless remnants of previously significant cultural activities and tools, and at worst, as in the extreme pursuit of excitement or in gambling, it poses a threat to a just social order. The ambiguous status of play may be understood in terms of Caillois' assertion that 'play and ordinary life are constantly and universally antagonistic to each other' (p. 63). This antagonism is not a mere opposition. While the realm of play is prescribed, typically both in terms of the place and time within which play occurs (pp. 6-7), and indeed in terms of the rules that serve to constitute the game, it is not the pure other of everyday life. Rather play draws in elements from the mundane, be these the rituals and weapons that have become games and toys or, more broadly, human nature, moral and cultural values, and even it may be suggested materials and technologies. Caillios implies that play is, ultimately, a radically simplified version of the everyday world. In the latter, the agent faces frequently incompatible and irresolvable values and tasks, and their actions have unpredictable, uncontrollable and at times dangerous consequences (p. 65 – and see 2001, pp. 158-9). In contrast, in play particular issues, objectives, or values are thematised, but contained. The gambler plays with fate and destiny; the bullfighter puts their very life at risk; the surfer engages with the force of the wave. Even the humble soccer player tests their co-ordination and skill; the marathon runner tests their stamina and endurance; the boxer confronts their capacity to suffer. The rules of the game ideally keep the consequences of an action in check, and the player may, ultimately, have the option of leaving the game. Crucially the values that play brings to the fore need not be values condoned in everyday life (p. 66). Games of chance, and games that entail the pursuit of extreme physical risks, in particular, promote values that are not merely unproductive, but are transgressive of the dominant values of contemporary society. They seemingly defy our inalienable rights to property and even life itself. Play might then, as Caillois acknowledges, act as a safety-value, and thus constitute a safe space within which otherwise disruptive values and desires can be exercised and dissipated (p. 66). On Punch and Judy shows, Caillois comments that it 'would surely be a mistake to view this systematic caricature as an ideal reflection of the British audience that applauds these exploits. It does not approve them at all, but its boisterous pleasure provides a catharsis… cheap compensation for the thousands of moral constraints and taboos imposed upon the audience in real life' (1961, p. 85). But, as his documentation of the potentially corrupting influence of play on everyday life demonstrates (pp. 43ff), he is clearly worried about the seepage of what Bataille might see as the expenditure of surplus energy out of the illusory world of play. Play might not dissipate transgressive values and behaviours. It might exacerbate and cultivate them. The Classification of Play At the core of Caillois' analysis lies a typology composed of four categories of play (alea and agon, mimicry and ilinx) and two ways of playing (paidia and ludus). It is through reflection upon this typology that the tensions within Caillois' own thought, as well as its relationship to Bataille's, may be explicated. Paidia is the spontaneous expression of the play instinct (Caillois 1961, p. 28), 'a primary power of improvisation and joy' (p. 27). It is manifest most purely in a simple enjoyment of bodily movement (somersaults, shouts) or in the texture and sensuous experience of materials. But for Caillois it is something that can be taken to destructive extremes. In gambling, for example, paidia may lead to destitution or suicide, he claims (pp. 73 & 148). Paidia may invite the player's pain, as when one 'plays' with an aching tooth (p. 28). This emphasis upon the potential threat that play poses to the individual and to wider society is characteristic of much of Caillois' approach to play. Ludus lies at the opposite extreme to paidia. Paidia's 'frolicsome and impulsive exuberance' is disciplined through rules and conventions – albeit conventions that are 'completely impractical' (p. 13). Caillios’ account of ludus anticipates Suits' analysis of the game as the pursuit of a pre-defined objective, such as the depositing of a small ball in a hole in the ground. The objective is only pursued through the use of inefficient means, so by hitting the ball with the long and awkward stick that is a golf club, rather than by simply picking up the ball and dropping it in the hole (2005, 37-9). Paidically, a child may enjoy simply dropping a ball in a hole. For Caillois the ludic, however, entails a 'taste for gratuitous difficulty' (1961, p. 27, and see p. 13), and hence Suits' inefficient means. The openness of paidic play is thereby restrained by the identification of an objective to the play (albeit an objective that is valued for its own sake, rather than instrumentally) and a set of rules that confine the primal freedom of paidia. Caillois offers the examples of leapfrog, hide and seek, kite-flying, and play with dolls as examples of the most basic forms of ludus (p. 29). More sophisticated forms of ludic play will include puzzles (solitaire or word and mathematical puzzles), detective stories (in that the reader strives to identify 'who done it') and chess and bridge problems. Caillois' account of paidia and ludus can be framed in the light of Nietzsche's distinction between the Dionysian and the Apollonian. Dionysus, the god of drunkenness and the bacchanal, represents the fundamental nature of reality, irrational and chaotic, throwing into question the coherence of the autonomous human self. Paidia is Dionysian. Apollo stands, in contrast, for reason and order. Great art (and for Nietzsche, paradigmatically the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles) offers a glimpse of the Dionysian, a glimpse that will not precipitate the spectator into a madness that undermines their sense of individual selfhood, through a veil of Apollonian order and meaning (Nietzsche 1993). It is through ludus that the discipline of Apollonian rules is introduced and imposed upon play. Rules and objectives confine the spontaneity of paidia within the structure of a game, seemingly allowing the player an un-threatening glimpse of their true paidic nature. Ludus is the world of games, and it is to the classification of games that Caillois next turns. The classification, however, continues to suggest the tension between the Dionysian paidia and the Apollonian discipline of ludus. It is noticeable that, in introducing the ludic, Caillois initially distinguished the purely ludic experience of the chess problem from the game of chess itself. There is something intuitively problematic here, given that a puzzle that is derived from a game is yet, in terms of Caillois’ typology, logically more basic than the game itself. The distinction is grounded in Caillois' suggestion that the typology is only realised in the transition from paidia to ludus. The game of chess, unlike the chess puzzle, is an example of an overtly agonistic game. In a puzzle, one is in conflict only with the puzzle (or 'obstacle') itself (p. 29). The typology is fourfold: games may be agonistic, aleatory, mimetic or may induce vertigo. Agon entails competition, but competition that is structured in such a way as to entail a reasonable degree of equality between the competitors (and hence the role of handicaps in golf, or the convention in chess that a considerably more experienced player may sacrifice a knight or rook to a novice opponent) (p. 14). At its purest, in a game such as chess, winning and losing will depend purely upon the ability of the player and the autonomous choices they make during play. Requiring 'sustained attention, appropriate training, assiduous application' (p. 15) sophisticated forms of agonistic play mirror the disciplines of work (and indeed the competitive structures of a capitalist economy), and in the requirement for the player to follow rules (in contrast to the indulgence of paidia) ludus presupposes a degree of self-discipline and cultivation in the player (p. 27). In the pure agon, Apollonian justice and the Apollonian self dominate. Alea introduces the element of chance into play and games (pp. 17f), and thus, it may be suggested, something Dionysian, as has been noted above in Caillois' concern with the potentially destructive consequences of unregulated gambling. The aleatory is the paradigm of the unproductive game, merely reallocating existing resources, but producing nothing. Simple coin tossing or dice games (such as snakes and ladders), as well as roulette or card games that do not call upon the skill of the player, are pure alea. The aleatory player favours destiny over the exercise of their own will (and Caillois explores the link between aleatory play and superstition, not least in terms of players' attempts to predict, through the interpretation of symbols and portents, what the result of an aleatory game might be (pp. 147f)). Pure types of agon and alea are relatively rare. As Caillois notes (p. 15), even in chess one might have an advantage in moving first. If so, the ritual of deciding who plays white, for example by choosing, at random, a proffered fist that conceals either a black or white piece, introduces luck into the game. Backgammon and poker require both skill and luck, and the oval shape of the rugby ball introduces chance (and the 'lucky bounce') into the sport. Mimicry Caillois' approach to mimicry begins in a somewhat surprising place. In its simplest form, mimicry is found in the insect's merging into the leaf upon which it sits, and as such in the imitation of that which already exists (p. 20). So, in human culture, a child imitates adults, or even objects (such as trains and aeroplanes) (p. 21). In a more sophisticated form, it is the wearing of a mask or adoption of a theatrical character, leading to the player's identification with the person or entity that the mask represents. The mimic 'forgets, disguises, or temporarily sheds his personality in order to feign another' (p. 19). Caillois goes further, however, to see mimicry as fundamentally paidic, rather than ludic. This paidic moment lies in the acceptance of illusion (p. 19), and thus the precondition of all play in the separation of the realm of play from that of everyday life. Thus the acceptance of illusion – the sense of 'as if' or make-believe, and thus the capacity to pretend to be a pirate, a tree, or Hamlet – performs in paidia the function of defining the playful realm that rules perform in ludus (pp. 8 & 10). Caillois suggests that the difference between paidic and ludic mimesis lies in the incessant invention that is characteristic of paidia (p. 23). Players must continually work to sustain the playful illusion. The ludic illusion, and thus the moment of the mimetic, is more abstract. It rests upon the recognition of precisely defined and fixed rules – or at least rules that are agreed upon and fixed for the duration this particular game. The ludic player thus requires not the creativity to continually reinvent the paidic illusion, following and moving with its unpredictable flow, but rather the capacity to enter and take seriously the world that is constituted by the rules of a game, accepting and embracing all its artificial restrictions and objectives (p. 8). Mimicry again suggests a Dionysian grounding of all play, not least in the sense of flux and unpredictability, to which the player must adapt as the insect adapts to the leaf, that underpins even the most disciplined game. Yet Caillois' account of mimesis is potentially more subtle and strange. Coherently with the comments already made, as to games as the residues of previously meaningful actions, Caillois cites with approval Jean Giraudoux's description of games as 'the story in pantomime of primeval times' (p. 187, citing Giraudoux 1946). The runner pursues their quarry or flees an enemy, the fencer fights Guise or Cyrano. More profoundly, Caillois suggests that in hopscotch the stone represents the soul being pushed through a labyrinthine trial, with the playing space mimicking the plan of a basilica. Chess is not merely the mimicry of war, but even a detail such as the introduction of the Queen (in early medieval Europe) reflects the worship of the Virgin Mary (p. 82). Yet the modern player, despite Giraudoux's speculation, is largely unaware of such associations. The chess player does not mimic a general, and the footballer is nothing but a footballer. Mimicry thus seems to perform only the most minimal part in contemporary games. Yet, as Caillois notes, in the ludic engagement with a rule-governed game, one takes the play seriously. There is a duality here, between the unproductivity (and thus innocence or triviality) of play, and the seriousness within the player engages with it. In an early paper on mimicry Caillois offers tools for articulating this paradoxical experience. 'Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia' ((2003) first published in 1935) begins with examples familiar from Man, Play and Games: mimicry in the natural world. Caillois curiously and engagingly argues that this is not an evolved defence mechanism, but rather a luxury, and indeed a 'dangerous luxury' and a 'sort of collective masochism' (2003, p. 97). The details of Caillois' argument (where, for example, he suggests that in mimicking a leaf, the insect leaves itself more, not less, open to predation – albeit now by leaf eaters, including its own species) are less important here than recognising its association with Bataille's analysis of the expenditure of surplus energy. The suggestion is that, in being dangerous and masochistic, mimicry is transgressive. Caillois subsequently pursues mimicry as a phenomenon in culture (in the form of sympathetic magic) and in psychology. It is this psychological form of mimicry that is most significant for understanding the ludic player. Caillois identifies a form of perceptual disorder, 'legendary psychasthenia', that is characterised by the sufferer's inability to understand themselves as the centre or origin of the space they perceive. They cease to be an observer of a spatially articulated environment, and instead feel themselves to be absorbed into, or devoured by, space. As Caillois presents this, space 'ultimately takes their place. The body and mind thereupon become dissociated; the subject crosses the boundary of his own skin and stands outside of his senses' (2003, p 100). This is accompanied by a sense of depersonalisation, as the sufferer's capacity to distinguish between inner and outer becomes minimal (p. 101). In effect, the sufferer experiences a Dionysian loss of the autonomous self. Here it may be suggested that Caillois describes the experience of the games player, where mimesis is not the literal identification with some object or person (as it might be in the child's game of make-belief), but rather in the seriousness of their involvement in this supposedly trivial activity. In entering the game, the player is absorbed into the rule-constituted realm, and so, as Caillois describes it, crosses the boundary of their own skin. The ludic player may still, as mind, focus upon the rules and objectives of the game, but their body, paidically absorbed into the sensual fascination of playful space, becomes dominant and ambiguous. The autonomous, seemingly Cartesian, mind is marginalised in favour of the 'clever body' that understands and makes complex decisions within the game (Csepregi 2006), moving, as Caillois suggests of paidia, creatively with the flow of the game, in order to sustain the illusion of seriousness. Games may nonetheless still be considered to mimic non-playful events. As noted above, the residues of past social practices continue to bear mimetic weight within the game. In particular, game-playing may be seen to mimic and thus thematise death. Caillois does not consider the possibility of games as mimicry of death (or indeed, as does Bataille, reflect upon the prospect of the competitor's actual death in sports such as bull fighting For a fictionalised account of Bataille's witnessing of the death of a bullfighter, see his Story of the Eye (1987, p 64). or motor racing). Yet defeat in sport proper may nonetheless be so interpreted. To be defeated in any game is to lose the possibility of going on – to continue playing. The instantiation of the competitor in that particular contest has been destroyed (and this is most evident in knock-out competitions, where only the victor 'lives' to fight on). In certain sports one is given more than one life. Thus, in cricket and baseball, to be out is to 'die', to be unable to go on, but only in that innings. The next innings brings hope of resurrection, as in the typical video game. Sets in tennis may similarly be interpreted not merely as further opportunities to play (and win), but as representing the lives of the player. The game is not then innocent play, and it may be suggested that the very attraction of games lies in the metaphysical questions that they enact, mimetically (Edgar 2014, pp. 158-161). Here it is to suggest that the very appeal of games and sport may lie, at least in part, in this playful engagement with our awareness of our own mortality. (Caillois himself suggests that games of chance bring us close to reflection upon fate and our subjection to transcendent powers (see Caillois 1961, p 114).) Ilinx Caillois' final category is ilinx (the Greek term for a whirlpool (p. 24)). Ilinx is found in the pursuit of vertigo, which is to say the momentary destruction of 'the stability of perception' in order to 'inflict a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind' (p. 23). Forms of play that deliberately invoke dizziness or disorientation, an adrenalin rush, or even the revelling in noise and destruction, come under the category of ilinx. These may include children's games, but also tightrope walking, skiing, and in industrial society, such fair ground rides as the roller-coaster and the dodgems (see pp. 25 & 132f). It may be noted that contemporary X-sports are constituted so as to maximise the participants' experience of ilinx. This is also perhaps the most explicitly Dionysian form of play, precisely in the fact that its very attraction lies in the threat that it poses to the autonomous, Apollonian, self. Caillois argues that ilinx and agon are incompatible, and thus that ilinx should be irrelevant to agonistic game playing. Agon presupposes the existence of an autonomous agent, capable of following rules. The experience of ilinx is precisely that of a dissolution of any such agency. The player surrenders to the experience, in a moment of depersonalisation (see Caillois 1961, pp. 31 & 72f). As such, it may be argued that ilinx, of any form, is irrelevant to gaming. This may be challenged on two fronts. Firstly, the account of mimesis above suggests that, at least in sport, where play focuses upon the embodied skills of the player, already the Apollonian rule following and calculative self is marginalised. Secondly, Caillois own examples of ilinx are problematic. His primary example of the roller-coaster ride entails that ilinx is actually experienced within a structured environment, in the design of the ride itself. The fair ground ride depends upon the discipline of engineering. Caillois also refers to the 'orchestrated vertigo' of the Nuremberg rallies (p. 126). Here the suggestion seems to be that the structuring of a social gathered can also be conducive to ilinx. The vertiginous thrill of a ride and of the politicised mass depend upon the machinations of an engineer or choreographer. The one who actually experiences ilinx is nonetheless passive, unlike the games player. However, another of Caillois' key examples, that of the tightrope walker (p. 24), contradicts even this. The vertiginous experience here is only made possible by the very discipline of being able to walk the high wire. The tightrope walker may be understood in terms of the tension between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The tightrope walker teeters, as it were on, the brink of ilinx (p. 31). They experience the Dionysian threat of ilinx, but only through the Apollonian veil of their own discipline and training. The category of ilinx is relatively straight-forward if confined to the experience of physical disorientation. Yet Caillois suggests more, and to note this is to pick up on an otherwise largely neglected implication of his argument. In his initial presentation of ilinx he notes that there ‘exists a vertigo of a moral order' (p. 24). 'Il existe un vertige d'ordre moral' (Caillois 1958, p. 47). This is seemingly glossed by the comment that ilinx may be sometimes organic, sometimes psychological (p. 24). ‘tantôt organique, tantôt psychique’ (Caillois 1958, p. 47). Later, Caillois notes that ilinx is the desire to temporarily destroy bodily equilibrium and 'provoke the abdication of conscience' (p. 44). Finally, he offers the example of the freak show ('exhibiting giants, dwarfs, mermaids, creatures that are half-child and half-monkey or half-woman and half-octopus') as inducing ilinx (p. 134), and the travelling fair itself as ultimately pushing vertigo, through 'intoxication, terror, and mystery' (p. 135) to the 'insidious anguish and delight' of the pursuit of sexual liaison (p. 136). Moral ilinx, a category overlooked in commentaries on Caillois, suggests that the experience of ilinx may not simply be physically disorientating, or even disruptive of perception. Ilinx can disrupt our sense of ourselves as moral beings. It undermines our capacity to make moral judgements. As such it is transgressive, undermining the agent's willingness to comply with accepted standards of civilised behaviour and unleashing otherwise suppressed desires. The pursuit and experience of moral ilinx becomes potentially threatening to civilised society. In terms of the category of moral ilinx, the Dionysian lies in the possibility that the (Apollonian, rule-governed) structure of the game creates for the player to experience immoral acts. The analysis of mimicry has focused upon the player's experience of defeat. In agonistic games, the player is striving to defeat another. The game does not therefore simply mimic the player's own death, it also mimics the killing of one's opponent. It is here that the moment of ilinx, and crucially the sub-category of moral ilinx, is important. Caillois presents ilinx as momentarily destroying the stability of perception (1961, p. 23), as destroying bodily equilibrium and so escaping the 'tyranny' of ordinary perception (p. 44). Here again the mimetic and ilinx merge. Moral ilinx may, in parallel, be understood as the destruction of practical judgement – the momentary 'abdication of conscience' (reading the French 'conscience' in its moral sense, rather than as ‘consciousness’ (1961, p 44 & 1958, p. 75)). To be drawn into the closed circle of play, a realm that Caillois presents as existing in 'parallel' to everyday life (p. 63), is to enter a world in which mundane standards of moral behaviour need not apply. Caillois would argue that some sense of fairness is nonetheless inherit to games, at least in agonistic play (1961, p .14). Genuine competition requires a degree of equality between contestants, so that the result is not a forgone conclusion. However, the inflicting of some form of hurt upon the opponent is a prerequisite of agonistic play. Sports may require the inflicting of actual physical harm (boxing, wrestling) and allow violent contact (rugby, American Football). More subtly many sports facilitate the inflicting of psychological harm, either unofficially (through 'sledging' or 'trash talking') or officially. The physical threat of the tackle in rugby or fast bowling (including the short pitched 'bouncer') in cricket may be effective precisely as acts of intimidation. Few sports prevent a stronger player from humiliating their opponent through the ease of their victory, and many demand that play continues despite the certainty of defeat of one player or team. (Baseball is significant in the very fact that it has a 'mercy rule', allowing for the premature ending of a one-sided game). At root, in participating in an agon, one risks the (real) harm of being defeated (and losing does and ought to hurt, otherwise one is simply not taking the agon seriously enough). Caillois' emphasis on the association between the discipline of the agon and civilised behaviour (akin to Elias' civilising process (1994)) arguably serves to conceal or repress the Dionysian, thereby distorting an understanding of the true nature of sport. The mimetic violence of the video game challenges that distortion. It is therefore being argued that the rules of a game can, at least in principle, exclude everyday morality and fairplay, and that this inverts Caillois' own conception as to where the moral importance of play might lie. It was noted above that he sees play as simplifying the complexity of the everyday world and checking the potentially dangerous and unpredictable consequences of actions (Caillois 1961, p. 65). The consequences of violence are indeed (typically) contained by the rules of a game. There is a fundamental difference between a street brawl and even mixed martial arts bouts. Yet, as Caillois also notes, games can get out of hand. Alea may lead to ever higher gambling stakes, and in the pursuit of ilinx there 'is submission not only of the will but of the mind' (p. 78). The very simplification of the play world, so that the act of violence can be thematised, transforms that violence into something that is enjoyed for its own sake. Moral ilinx can entail the taking of a paidic pleasure in violence, taking the self beyond its skin, such that the autonomous, Apollonian, rule-following self is sundered from its moral conscience. It experiences the game, not morally, but in the immediacy of the experience of mimetically merging into the space of the game. Moral judgements that would hold sway in everyday life can be suspended, and the boundary between play and the everyday is breached. At the very least, the experience of moral ilinx within play allows the player, in this moment of pleasure, to savour desires that everyday morality suppresses. Identification and Joy in the Face of Death The above arguments have focuses on the experience of play. The spectatorship of sport is also significant, not least in what it suggests as to the formation of community about (the Dionysian persona of) the player. Caillois offers a framework for the analysis of the role of the spectator through a further consideration of mimicry. He argues that 'a degraded and diluted form' of mimicry is found in the identification of the spectator with players or a team (p. 120). Such is the 'dull, monotonous and tiresome' nature of everyday existence (p. 122) that people seek diversion through identification with the successful. Specifically, having been frustrated in their own lives, crucially in having failed in meritocratic competition for work, or not having had the luck to gain influence, they seek idols who have triumphed in 'an insidious, implacable, and confused competition', a competition that requires qualities that the poor themselves might possess (p. 121). The idol personifies success over 'the sordid inertia' of everyday life (p. 122). Caillois' model of the relationship between the athlete and the spectator can be expanded through reference to Bataille. In a set of notes entitled 'Joy in the Face of Death' ((1988) written in 1939) Bataille suggests that communities may be formed around individuals who place themselves upon 'the level of death' (Bataille 1939, p. 326). Military and religious communities are paradigmatic, in that the former acts under the threat of death and the latter possesses the language necessary to engage 'those on the threshold of the tomb' (p. 327). The presence of death gives, for Bataille, such communities a greatness or glory. His point is that the hero who faces death, and does so willingly and joyfully (experiencing 'vertigo and laughter with no bitterness' (p. 325)), exposes the triviality of everyday concerns (and here, reading these notes in the light of Bataille's economics, the triviality of all that is instrumentally valued within capitalism). Such 'little things' are revealed as having only 'childish significance' (p. 327). Few athletes literally face death (although it might be suggested that bullfighting, gladiatorial battles and, until relatively recent times, Formula One racing, shared much with Bataille's paradigm institutions of the Army and Church). The above argument has been that sport and games are, rather, a mimicry of death. More precisely, in that all sport is about the real suffering that comes in losing, in the experience of play, the athlete strives to be joyful in the face of the mimetic death of defeat. To recognise this is to challenge something of Caillois' characterisation of the spectator's identification. He suggests that fans identify only with successful athletes. Bataille's reflections on death suggest, rather, that the great or glorious community of fans embraces, not merely the success of the athlete, but also their defeat. The great athlete, the one who deserves and justifies a profound community, is the one who can experience joy – vertigo with no bitterness – in the face of the representation of death that is defeat. Caillois himself articulates something of this attitude. He characterises a great player as one 'who takes into account that he has no right to complain of bad luck nor to grieve about misfortune' (2001, p 159). In freely entering the game, the player accepts the possibility of defeat and the element of chance that might determine defeat. The great player does not complain of bad luck, for that would be to deny their free choice to participate in the game. The great player thus mimics Bataille's joy in the face of death. They savour the experience of play, accepting their finitude and fallibility, and thus their very mortality. Everything that lies outside that acceptance (and thus all that lies outside the game) is trivial. Caillois' characterisation of play as innocent undergoes, thereby, a Nietzschean revaluation. If sport is mimicry of death, then games offer a possibly for reflection upon mortality and human vulnerability. But this is merely a possibility, and it may be refused, not least by the spectator who only celebrates winners. If so, the game may become a more or less thoughtless celebration of the violence of the victor. At best, it would be Caillois' safety-valve. As such, it would be reabsorbed into the capitalist world of instrumentality, serving a social function by diffusing disruptive emotions and desires. This may indeed be the quality of a community that, as Caillois suggests, merely identifies with the successful player (so that the suffering of defeat can be repressed). Conversely, the mimicry of violence, and crucially the formation of a community that identifies, not with success, but with confronting defeat, may offer an Apollonian glimpse into the Dionysian experience of an alternative morality to that of capitalist society.. To take the experience of even mimetic violence seriously, whether it is violence one inflicts or that one suffers, is to begin to question the instrumental values of the purely Apollonian world that exists outside the realm of play, and as such it is transgressive. Conclusion Caillois' analysis, while given due homage in the philosophy of play and sport literature, is rarely the subject of a detailed and critical application. More significantly, his association with Bataille is neglected in the philosophy of sport. The above interpretation has sought to articulate an otherwise neglected sub-category of play, that of moral ilinx. Awareness of this category reveals the possibility that play is transgressive, and this brings Caillois into a fruitful dialogue with Bataille. By arguing that games entail an inherent mimicry of death it has been possible to argue that the violence inherent in many games and sports is morally important. Caillois would argue that such mimetic violence might be a threat to society, or at best as a safety-valve. From the perspective of Bataille, it has been suggested that violent play has the possibility of providing a moment of reflection, not least upon the constitution of a Dionysian player who is joyful in the face of death (as opposed to the Apollonian player, inculcated into socially conservative virtues). This moment is transgressive, precisely because, in its paidic delight in play and even defeat within play, it threatens to throw into question the instrumentality of the everyday world. In its violence, sport allows the Dionysian to penetrate the Apollonian discipline of the mundane world. Bibliography Bataille, G. (1985). 'The Notion of Expenditure'. In his Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp.116-129. Bataille, G. (1987). The Story of the Eye. San Francisco: City Lights Books. Bataille, G. (1988a). The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, Volume I: Consumption, New York: Zone Books. Bataille, G. (1988b). 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