Re: play and power

Rolfe Windward (IBALWIN who-is-at mvs.oac.ucla.edu)
Fri, 01 Mar 96 18:06 PST

The ecosocial relationships between (potentially endless) discourses, power
and play strike me as a fertile ground for speculation. I can recall working
at the Berkeley People's Office back in the late sixties (initially to
assist incarcerated protestors and later as an organizer in the first
attempt to form a tenants' union) and one of the standing jokes among a few
of us "operatives" was that we could get a lot more done if only the talk
would stop for awhile (the political meetings had a certain interminable
quality since issues were rarely resolved and there was always a bit of
one-upmanship going on of the "more revolutionary than thou" variety).

However (to provide some "alternity" to Hannu and Jay's points) instead of
resorting to violence or direct power displays against confederates, some
cadres would simply decide on an action and initiate it on their own. Group
solidarity subsequently demanded that others, even those who had argued
against that specific action, must perforce join in the activity; thus was
social motion and engagement initiated by material example.

Some of these "spontaneous" actions were extremely playful in nature but
they all were also just as certainly rational, or perhaps more broadly,
logical -- either to break the deadlock or, in the Heyoka sense, to show
another path in the morass by the simple expedient of walking it.

Rolfe

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Rolfe Windward (UCLA GSE&IS, Curriculum & Teaching)
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"I respect belief, but doubt is what gets you an education." W. Mizener