ABSTRACT
Robert Pfaller’s theory of play combines several classic accounts of play (such as those of Huizinga and Caillois) with Žižek’s work on ideology to argue that play’s power of enchantment is based on a specific type of illusion that people knowingly participate in. Pfaller terms these shared fictions “illusions without owners”, which require that the illusion be maintained for some imagined person/entity outside of the game. According to Pfaller, this accounts for play’s ability to generate pleasurable emotions: it facilitates a brief escape from the strictures and control of our everyday selves. For Pfaller the pleasure of play thus lies in the acknowledgement of a threshold between game and reality, “in differentiating between play and knowledge, fiction and nonfiction”. Contemporary cultural adherence to the values of authenticity, veracity and individuality entails a gradual loss of the ability to recognize such ownerless illusions, such pleasure-producing deceptions that ultimately deceive no one. All cultural products are increasingly judged on moral grounds, so that the pleasure of play, its enchanting magic, is increasingly marginalized. Exploring Pfaller’s theory of play through its relevance for contemporary discourses on art and culture, the article delineates society’s trend towards negating play’s collective, transindividual character, along with the unique pleasure that the latter can provide.
