ABSTRACT
In his groundbreaking study HomoLudens (1938), the famous Dutch historian Johan Huizinga gives a ‘notoriously elusive’ (Rodriguez) reflection on the play element of culture. On the one hand, he asserts that in play, we move below the level of the serious. There are (primitive) forms of play, like children pretending to be someone else, a game of cards or a sporting contest, which are ‘largely devoid of purpose’ (49). Despite the fact that children or grown-ups can play ‘in the most perfect seriousness’ (18), such (primitive) play, ‘senseless and irrational’ (17) as it is, has ‘that irreducible quality of pure playfulness’ (7). Huizinga uses the Dutch term ‘aardigheid’ to describe this quality, but admits that no word better sums up the essence of this kind of play than the English word ‘fun,’ adding to this that the ‘fun of playing, resists all analysis, all logical interpretation’ (3). Hence, play has a strictly ludic function that goes beyond full comprehension.
