Option #1 Huizinga, due Wednesday, Feb. 14
Johan Huizinga's classic theories of play are historical and philosophical. His approach is not particularly disciplinary, however; he is interested in connections between the nature of what makes us human and how we engage in play and related cultural activities. The breakthrough in Huizinga's approach was to study play as not only adult behavior, but also as critical to the nature of what is human and cultural. He outlines the conditions that obtain when we consider something as play and sees play not a list of particular activities, but as activities that get framed in particular ways, marked off and bound by particular rules regarding space, time, meaning, consequentiality.
Discuss how his theories about play relate play to other kinds of cultural events and expressions, and yet what makes each distinct. What is his largest goal in trying to figure out what happens during play, and what are the conditions we create when we play? What are his largest theories about the nature of play, ritual, time, and rules? How do these relate to the idea of Homo Ludens, (Man the Playing Animal, the title of his book, which is play on the notion of Homo Sapiens, Man the Wise or Thinking Animal).
Discuss a scene or part of a scene using some of Huizinga's theories, analysis, or concepts.
Option #2 Gregory Bateson, due Wednesday, Feb. 14
Gregory Bateson approach play as a matter of metacommunication; he sees play in terms of how we communicate about "meaning." Play exists within an interpretative frame, rather than, in Huizinga's analysis, as within bounds of space, time, rules, relationships between players, and the like. The interpretative frame conditions how we "take" an event, a sign, or a communication. Play frames tell us how to "take" a sign, or sign system. Our
take on it, when we take it as play, is to take as existing within a special framework of meaning (so the point is not what a play event means, but how we take its meanings).
Discuss how Bateson helps us, or fails to help us, understand what he means by an interpretative frame. Give some examples from The Taming of the Shrew of some action that is framed as play, such that we take it to mean something different than if it were not so framed.
For example, Katharina briefly addresses Vincentio, in Act IV, v. 37-48, as if he were a young, fresh maid instead of a wrinkled elderly man. Vincentio does not get angry with her, or Petruchio, who creates the terms of her play with gender and age. Vincentio does not take Katharina's words as if they had the meaning they would if she were not playing. He does not take her as insulting him as someone out of touch with reality. Her address to him plays with forms of address, plays with gender and age, plays with greeting, and while he may not play along or with her, he does not take offense and waits for an explanation to appear.
That small mini-scene can be analyzed the way Bateson discusses a play nip. He says the "nip," a form of play, does not mean what a hostile nip would mean. The "nip" but represents A Nip (no one nip in particular). The play nip makes a metacommunicative comment on what nips mean, as it subtly communicates that it is to be taken as representing a nip, but not as being a nip. Play nips, like playful speech and roles, not only are about the phenomena they represent, but are also are about how we communicate and make meaning.
Bateson's approach is therefore part of the discipline of semiotics and communication.
Discuss your own understanding of some of Bateson's main ideas, concepts, and his goals, and discuss some scene using some of his theories, concepts, methods, or forms of analysis.
Option #3, Friday, Feb. 15
Judith Butler
A more contemporary thinker, Judith Butler is not a play theorist, but a theorist about performative acts. She is a professor of rhetoric, and is concerned with how language and other forms of communication help make the world. Her concern is with the world as made, in a poetics of making, through conventional human actions that follow culturally constraining rules and fall within systems that prescribe, regulate, and control our identities. Butler likens performative actions with constitutive acts and distinguishes them from expressive actions, especially.
Discuss what she means by constitutive and expressive acts, and discuss what a performative approach to behavior might have to say about "play" events. When someone "plays" with gender roles, how is that different than engaging in the performative act of constituting gender through following the conventional rules for "doing" gender? Discuss the central ideas and thrust of Butler's theoretical article on performative actions and gender as a performative (rather than expressive) act. See if you understand how Butler views performative acts in terms of culture, ritual, prescription and how they are distinguished from "natural," expressive, actions.
Discuss how Butler's theories of performative action might be used to analyze or explain some incident, character's actions, or other aspect of The Taming of the Shrew. For example, one might consider Katharina's role as "shrew," Petruchio's role of male shrew or wife tamer, Bianca's role as compliant daughter, or the like, as instances of performative behavior rather than expressive behavior. What are the implications and consequences of talking about performative behavior rather than talking about acting, role-playing, or playing?
You might also compare Butler's theories with the other theorists as a different way of understanding her powerfully suggestive theories.