Here are some of my comments on the function of play.
Vygotsky stated that: "..imagination in adolescents and school children is
play without action." This is important because it gives imagination (not
merely play) one of the central places in development. Further, as you all
know very well, Vygotsky describes the inversion of the thing/meaning and
the action/meaning relationships - and that inversion, when the meaning
becomes dominant enables a child to free herself/himself from the immediate
here-and-now situation.
In that sense play is proleptic. It must be proleptic by definition,
because play is not about the here-and-now. In fact, the key word is ABOUT.
If you cross Bateson's theory with Vygotsky's it will immediately appear
that PLAY is the first means by which ABOUT can become a quality of
communication. A direct relationship, a direct communication of an attack
or dependency of an infant of a sexual attraction and mating needs or
anything else, does not need to have an explicit ABOUT quality because it
is a direct action of one being toward another being. But to communicate
ABOUT something else which is not present, and which is NOT here-and-now,
you have to have a mediating tool. That is play. I think that the process
of communicating ABOUT anything has to develop from an embryo of play. Play
is communication NOT of a direct relationship but ABOUT a possible
relationship. It is a comment, and as such it requires a perspective. It is
based on a construction of the fictive "reality" (as opposed to the
here-and-now "reality").
In that sense, intersubjective processes which take place in play enable
imagination ABOUT anything. It is not just that
"early
>forms of play provide opportunities to acquire abilities that
>will become important later, just as the seemingly aimless
>movements of the embryo are a vital part of the process of
>fetal development.",
but that through play children develop an ability to comment ABOUT
relationships, in fact, become aware of the relationships as such, their
patterns and systems, instead of just living them. In this sense, it is a
new quality in learning. It is a creation of another way of communication,
the only way which is based on true prolepsis because it is not just a
lived moment over which we don't have to have any awareness, rather it is
reaching out of the stream of the immediate here-and-now into the possible
and the alternative, all of which gives a totally different scope to the
communication and awareness.
I hope I don't sound too confused this late at night after just coming back
from dropping off my older son at a college in Florida.
Ana
________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Ana Marjanovic-Shane
151 W. Tulpehocken St. City of Philadelphia
Philadelphia, PA 19144 OMH/MR - Research & Information
(215) 843-2909 [voice] 1101 Market St. 7th Floor
(215) 843-2288 [fax] Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 685-4767 [v]
(215) 685-5581 [fax]
________________________________________________________________________