'Worthy of a Certain Seriousness': Games, Ludic Attention, and Political Life.

Aristotle;Homer;Plato;Game Studies;Political Dispositions;Democratic Citizenship;Political Science;Humanities;Social Sciences;Political Science

Peterson, BenjaminWingrove, Elizabeth R ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Aristotle;    Homer;    Plato;    Game Studies;    Political Dispositions;    Democratic Citizenship;    Political Science;    Humanities;    Social Sciences;    Political Science;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/135837/petersob_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

In his ;;Manifesto for a Ludic Century,” Eric Zimmerman claims that the twenty-first century will have a ludic character.Zimmerman, like many game scholars, uses the Latin for ;;game,” ludus, to capture part of the complex human experience of playing games.He argues that games help to develop literacy for a world based on increasingly dynamic, flexible systems. This dissertation follows the implications of a similar claim about games with respect to political life and to the virtue of democratic citizenship identified in classical thought – pleasure found in ruling and being ruled in turn.I introduce the concept of ;;ludic attention” to describe the particular disposition that one brings to games.I establish a framework for understanding ludic attention through critical engagement with the Nicomachean Ethics, reassessing Aristotle’s elevation of seriousness in order to posit a virtuous mean that includes a measure of playfulness.Instead of treating seriousness and playfulness as binary conditions, Aristotle elucidates a continuum of potential dispositions between polar extremes of attention.Ludic attention describes the liminal experience of the possibilities between these poles, and games are structures that facilitate such a disposition.Subsequent chapters illustrate how this framework enhances our understanding of the relationship between games and political life.I consider three contexts in Homer’s Iliad – the assembly, battlefield, and funeral games for Patroclus – to show how games function as distinct sites of action.I then uncover how the dramatic qualities of Plato’s Laws demonstrate the persuasive importance of games and their attendant dispositions.Here I identify ludic attention as an important disposition in the development of a capacity for the types of attention required by democratic citizenship.I conclude by demonstrating the value of considering these classical texts alongside the emerging literature in game studies, by considering contemporary examples that reveal the enduring importance of game structures for the relationship between persuasion and attention.Irrespective of the ludic character of the twenty-first century, games have mattered to political beings for millennia.These cornerstones of political thought indicate how games, and those dispositions that they inspire, matter to democratic citizens.