Homo Ludens

[de/en]

Spiel und Arbeit gelten oft als Gegensätze: Das Spiel als freie Betätigung menschlicher Vermögen, die Arbeit als deren Subordination unter einen äußeren Zweck. Die Festlegung des Spiels auf konsequenzlose Wiederholbarkeit hat ihm den Ruf des Unernsten eingetragen, während das Abzwecken der Arbeit auf die Nützlichkeit ihres Resultats im Bund mit der Sorge ums Dasein steht.
Auf einen zweiten Blick scheint dieser Gegensatz jedoch, gerade in den hochentwickeltsten Ausprägungen beider Tätigkeitsformen, zu verschwinden. So kann eine hochgradige Rationalisierung von Spielpraktiken in Arbeit umschlagen, wie etwa im Leistungssport, oder ein komplexer Arbeitsvorgang selbstzweckhafte Momente und Eigendynamiken gewinnen, die ihm Spielcharakter verleihen.
Auch andere technologische Entwicklungen geben Anlass dazu, das Verhältnis von Spiel und Arbeit noch einmal grundsätzlich zu bedenken, etwa im Hinblick auf: adaptive Systeme in der Robotik, serious games, Kreativitätstechniken in Unternehmenskulturen, wissenschaftliche Experimentalanordnungen, Online-Rollenspiele oder die Kommodifizierung nicht-zweckrationaler Lebensvollzüge, die traditionell vom Begriff produktiver Arbeit ausgeschlossen waren – einschließlich der Spielräume, die durch neue Umwelt- und Biotechniken erschlossen werden. Die Beschaffenheit der jeweils zum Einsatz kommenden Mittel und Verfahren sowie die Setzung, Variation oder Preisgabe von Zwecken können den Charakter von Spiel und Arbeit sowie ihr Verhältnis zueinander bestimmen oder verändern.

Work and play are often regarded as opposites: play as people’s freedom and ability to spend their time as they choose, and work as being subordinate to it as a means to an end. As play can be repeated without any serious repercussions, this has earned it the reputation of lacking seriousness, whereas the purpose of work, which focuses on the usefulness of its outcome, is linked to people’s concerns about their livelihood.
However, on closer inspection this apparent gulf in the nature of work and play disappears, particularly in their most highly developed forms, with the result that intense streamlining of play can turn into work, as can occur in high performance sports, or a complex work process can produce autotelic moments and a momentum which lend it a play-like character.
Other technological developments are also a reason for us to fundamentally rethink the relationship between work and play, particularly with regard to adaptive systems in robotics, serious games, forms of creativity used in corporate culture, scientific experiments and their settings, online role playing or commodifying irrational and non-goal-oriented aspects of daily life which have traditionally been excluded from the notion of productive work, including those that have been created by new environmental and biotechnologies. The nature of each means deployed as well as the setting, varying or abandoning of goals can determine or change both the character of work and play and their relationship to each other.

Mit Beiträgen von:
Francesco Amigoni, Andreas Brenneis, Petra Gehring, Armin Grunwald, Florian Heßdörfer, Wolfram Ette, Christoph Hubig, Andreas Kaminski, Nicole C. Karafyllis, Christian Klager, Alexander Kluge, Uwe Küster, Oliver Laas, Hildrun Lampe, Pieter Lemmens, Stefan Meißner, Alfred Nordmann, Felix Raczkowski, Markus Rautzenberg, Michael Resch, Nicole J. Saam, Viola Schiaffonati, Alexander Schmidl, Jan C. Schmidt und G. Günter Voß.

ABSTRACT The theologian Hugo Rahner argued that the homo ludens is a man of ‘Ernstheiterkeit’ (seriouscheerfulness), a person who can smile under tears but also recognizes the gravity in all earthly cheerfulness. The primary aim of this study was to test the validity of this notion: Do homines ludentes exist? Two hundred sixty-three adult subjects were measured for (1) seriousness and cheerfulness and (2) playfulness. Results provided unequivocal support for Rahner’s thesis. Numerous subjects scored high in both seriousness and cheerfulness thus confirming the existence of homines ludentes. It was further found that these subjects were among those scoring highest in playfulness. Subjects scoring high in cheerfulness but low in seriousness were, however, even more closely associated with playfulness. The scores for homines ludentes did not differ from the rest of the subjects in the creative and dynamic facets of playfulness. The importance of developing empirical research to investigate hypotheses derived from non-scientific concepts is discussed.

for a presentation to be given at the TRASH Symposium, University of Vienna, January 28-29, 2016. Trash femininities in celebrity culture are performed as ludic identities, exhibiting the mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics of a game. As with games, audiences can be divided into two fractions: those who do not (wish to) get the rules of the game and those who get the rules of the games and play along. Accordingly, the responses triggered by these ludic performances of trash femininities can be twofold: rejection of the game, typically expressed as abjection, or affirmation of the game, which can affectively range from ironic yet playful acceptance to immersive identification. Two examples of trash femininities from contemporary celebrity culture allow to demonstrate how these ludic identities are played out across different platforms with varying degrees of audience interactivity: musician and actress Miley Cyrus, who has been raising eyebrows with her image change from Disney darling to twerking, strap-on sporting performer, and photographer and social media celebrity Arvida Byström, who has garnered a large Instagram following with her pink and glitter images that constitute subversive (self-)portrayals of gender. The paper will examine how the ludic performativity of these trash femininities not only accounts for their heterogeneous audience responses, but also opens up new (play)grounds for alternative, and sometimes even subversive, models of femininities. Eugenie Maria Theuer is a Cultural Studies and Film Studies scholar. She is currently working on her doctoral thesis, which is co-supervised by the University of Barcelona and the University of Vienna and deals with the metareferential turn in contemporary cinema. She is also a fellow of the research group Art, Architecture and Digital Society in Barcelona and the Vienna Doctoral Academy Theory and Methodology in the Humanities. Her research interests cover various aspects from popular culture and visual culture, with a particular focus on film studies and film history, celebrity studies, gender studies, and the phenomena of self-reflexivity across media.