Archaeology of Play ― The Re-discovery of Platonic-aristotelian Tripartivism in Interdisciplinary Discourses

Archaeology of Play: The Re-Discovery of Platonic-Aristotelian Tripartivism in Interdisciplinary Discourses proposes that play’s antithesis is not seriousness but rather one-dimensionality. This book argues that the rediscovery of Platonic-Aristotelian tripartivism lends to a more expansive appreciation of play in terms of three rhetorical registers—namely, skholé, agon, and paidia. Scholastic play resides in leisure and contemplation. Agonistics is realmed in competition, contests, and power-play, while paidiatics is expressed in lowly ruses, trickeries, recreation, and amusement of the low-bred and the subaltern. By subjecting play to the tripartite lens, Archaeology of Play highlights vital surpluses and lacunae in the treatment of the subject matter and therefore yields a refreshing, re-politicized understanding of play dynamics in the different fields of human endeavor.

Furthermore, Bourdieu’s and Rancière’s lusory discourses redeem play from the pitfalls of triadic over-schematization by thinking beyond tripartivism. The lively interlocution with other play theorists—Pieper, Kant, Schiller, Marcuse, Gadamer, Veblen, Arendt, Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, Bakhtin, de Certeau, among others—adds substance to the mix where play becomes a critical resource for politics, aesthetics, and the democratic reordering of sociality.

Lope Lesigues earned his M.A., S.Th.D., and Ph.D. in theology at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). In 2012, he spent his sabbatical leave at Harvard University to write the foundational scaffoldings of Archaeology of Play. He has published a number of scholarly essays in various interdisciplinary discourses along the lines of aesthetics, politics, and digital catechesis. Lesigues is an adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Studies at Fordham University. He is also the founder-CEO of God’s Park, a gamified, interactive app with a backend learning management system for children in need of faith formation.