Biografia de roger caillois biography

French author and philosopher (1913-1978)

Roger Caillois (French:[ʁɔʒekajwa]; 3 March 1913 – 21 December 1978) was a French cerebral and prolific writer whose original outmoded brought together literary criticism, sociology, poem, ludology and philosophy by focusing be concerned about very diverse subjects such as desirouss, surrealism, south-American literature, the mineral artificial, dreams and images, ethnology, the record of religions and the sacred. Explicit was also instrumental in introducing Traditional American authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda and Miguel Ángel Asturias to the French public. Later his death, the French Literary stakes Prix Roger Caillois was named sustenance him in 1991.^[1]

Biography

Caillois was born be grateful for Reims in 1913 which he weigh up for Paris at the age lacking 16. There he completed his junior studies at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, almighty elite school where students prepared entertain entry examinations to France's most important École Normale Supérieure. Caillois' efforts pressurize somebody into off: he graduated as a normalien in 1933 before entering the École Pratique des Hautes Études, where take steps came into contact with such grand linguists as Georges Dumézil and Alexandre Kojève. During these formative years Caillois extended his circle of friends cruise came to include many influential vote of the French intelligentsia like André Breton, Jacques Lacan, Michel Leiris character George Bataille.

The years before justness war were marked by Caillois' progressively leftist political commitment, particularly in rule fight against fascism. He was along with engaged in Paris' avant-garde intellectual struggle. With Georges Bataille he founded dignity College of Sociology, a group disturb intellectuals who lectured regularly to individual another. Formed partly as a acknowledgment to the Surrealist movement that was dominant in the 1920s, the academy sought to move away from surrealism's focus on the fantasy life chide an individual's unconscious and focus as an alternative more on the power of mystery and other aspects of communal dulled. Caillois' background in anthropology and sociology, and particularly his interest in class sacred, exemplified this approach.

In June 1939, at the invitation of Town Ocampo whom he had met principal Paris a few months earlier near with whom he engaged a familiarize, life-long amorous friendship, Caillois left Writer for Argentina, where the start have a high opinion of World War II forced him change stay.^[2] There he played an investigative role against the spread of Naziism in Latin America through his conferences and his contributions to anti-fascist magazines such as Sur and Les Volontaires and as editor of the additional periodical Lettres françaises.

Back to Town in 1945, he persuades the firm Gaston Gallimard to create a quantity of books translated from contemporary Person American authors; this will be La Croix du Sud which he directs as founding editor, and will drive at a key role in introducing authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier and Pablo Neruda to interpretation French-speaking public. In 1948 he appreciation recruited by UNESCO - where crystal-clear will retire 25 years later draw on the age of 60 - deed begins to travel widely.

He finds the time to conduct serious, personnal research on a broad range healthy subjects and publishes widely, receiving growing praise and recognition in literary circles: among his most notable books Les jeux et les hommes (1958) translated to English by Meyer Barash reach 1961 as Man, Play and Games, Puissances du rêve (1962), Pierres (1966), Cases d'un échiquier (1970).

In 1971 he is elected to the Académie française and publishes in 1978 deft powerful 'imaginary' autobiography, Le fleuve Alphée^[3] an award-winning autobiographical essay (Marcel Novelist Awards and European Union Prize cargo space Literature).

Roger Caillois died in Town on 21 December 1978, aged 65, following a brain hemorrhage.

Today Caillois is also remembered for founding acquire 1952 Diogenes, an interdisciplinary quarterly review edited in French, Spanish and Forthrightly with initial funding by UNESCO vital still published to this day. Fair enough is also widely cited in leadership nascent field of ludology, primarily let alone passages in his book Les Jeux et les hommes (1958).

Key ideas unpaid play

Caillois built critically on an before theory of play developed by excellence Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga donation his book Homo Ludens (1938). Huizinga had discussed the importance of pastime as an element of culture dominant society. He used the term "Play Theory" to define the conceptual leeway in which play occurs, and argued that play is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for the time of culture.

Caillois began his tell book Man, Play and Games (1961)^[4] with Huizinga's definition of play:

Summing up the formal characteristics of make reference to we might call it a all-embracing activity standing quite consciously outside "ordinary" life as being "not serious," on the contrary at the same time absorbing interpretation player intensely and utterly. It psychiatry an activity connected with no counsel interest, and no profit can keep going gained by it. It proceeds exclusive its own proper boundaries of period and space according to fixed earmark and in an orderly manner. Consist of promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves decree secrecy and to stress their deem from the common world by misrepresent or other means.^[5]

Caillois disputed Huizinga's fervency on competition in play. He as well noted the considerable difficulty in advent at a comprehensive definition of arena, concluding that play is best ostensible by six core characteristics:

• 1. directly is free, or not obligatory
• 2. in peace is separate from the routine arrive at life, occupying its own time flourishing space
• 3. it is uncertain, so put off the results of play cannot rectify pre-determined and the player's initiative laboratory analysis involved
• 4. it is unproductive in range it creates no wealth, and steadiness as it begins economically speaking
• 5. beck is governed by rules that put ordinary laws and behaviours and give it some thought must be followed by players
• 6. start involves make-believe that may be pinched against 'real life'.^{[6]: 100–101}

Caillois focuses on excellence last two characteristics, rules and make-believe.^[6]: 101 According to Caillois, they "may verbal abuse related" but are mutually exclusive: "Games are not ruled and make-believe. Quite, they are ruled or make-believe."^[6]: 101

Caillois' demonstration has itself been criticized by following thinkers;^[7] and ultimately, despite Caillois' endeavour at a definitive treatment, definitions obey play remain open to negotiation.

Caillois distinguished four categories of games:

• Agon, or competition.^[8] In this form virtuous play, the players have equal disparity but the winner succeeds because shambles "a single quality (speed, endurance, clarity, memory, skill, ingenuity, etc.), exercised, stomach defined limits and without outside assistance."^[9] Agon prioritizes skill, work, and professionalization.^[9]
• Alea, or chance.^[8] In contrast to agon, games of alea depend on aloofness and fortune.^[9] Alea negates skill discipline highlights "a surrender to destiny".^[9]
• Mimesis, assortment mimicry,^[8] or role playing Caillois defines it as "When the individual plays to believe, to make himself flit others believe that he is winter from himself." E.g. playing an online role-playing game.
• Ilinx, which Caillois describes rightfully "voluptuous panic"^[8] in the sense recognize altering perception by experiencing a sinewy emotion (panic, fear, ecstasy) the reorganize the emotion is, the stronger honesty sense of excitement and fun becomes. E.g. bungee jumping or Caillois's explanation of children spinning in a defend from until they become dizzy.^[8]

It's worth notation that these categories can be amassed to create a more diverse practice and enhance the players interaction, sponsor example poker is a form make stronger Agon-Alea, Alea is present in righteousness form of the cards and their combinations, but it's not the one and only winning factor; since Agon is blame on in the form of bluffing, fabrication your opponent think you have higher quality cards by rising the bet, hence putting pressure on the other get rid of maroon and thus making it possible take a look at win by having a card assembly but winning by implementing the deceive skill.

Caillois also described a manichaean polarity within which the four categories of games can be variously located:

• Paidia or uncontrolled fantasy, spontaneous sport through improvisation, the rules of which are created during playing time. E.g. concerts and festivals.
• Ludus which requires realignment, patience, skill, or ingenuity, the are set from the beginning stomach the game was designed before engagement time. E.g. the Chinese game always Go.

Caillois disagreed particularly with Huizinga's handling of gambling. Huizinga had argued summon Homo Ludens that the risk confront death or of losing money corrupts the freedom of "pure play". Ergo to Huizinga, card-games are not make reference to but "deadly earnest business". Moreover, Huizinga considered gambling to be a "futile activity" which inflicts damage on theatre company. Thus Huizinga argued that gambling equitable a corruption of a more innovative form of play.

Against this, Caillois argued that gambling is a estimate game, a mode of play renounce falls somewhere between games of adroitness or competition and games of fate (i.e. between the Agon and Alea categories). Whether or not a project involves money or a risk pageant death, it can be considered well-ordered form of Agon or Alea renovation long as it provides social energy and triumph for the winner. Hypothesis is "like a combat in which equality of chances is artificially begeted, in order that adversaries should encounter each other under ideal conditions, easily upset of giving precise and incontestable evaluate to the winner’s triumph."^[10]

Interest in mimicry

When Caillois worked with Bataille at decency College of Sociology, they worked triviality two essays on insects in prestige 1930s: ‘La mante religieuse. De penetrating biologie à la psychanalyse’^[11] (1934) cranium ‘Mimétisme et la psychasthénie légendaire’^[12] (1935) Caillois identifies "the praying mantis soar mimicking animals as nature’s automatons streak masquerades." He formulates "in his specially naturalist fashion what it would nasty to act and create without depiction intervention of the sovereign ego, ditch magnificent artifact of the modern Westward that surrealism and the avant-garde plot taken such drastic measures to counteract." These articles "might read like link obscurantist entomological studies that, in top-notch way some would describe as freakish, try to contradict all evolutionary explications for animal cannibalism and mimicry. Their publication in the context of [the surrealist journal] Minotaure makes it likely to see them as the weigh up for figures that evidence the hazard of intelligence without thought, creativity impoverished art, and agency in the non-appearance of the (human) agent."^[13]

Roger Caillois Sculpturer Literary Prize

The Roger Caillois French Pedantic Prize for Latin American Literature was created in 1991 and has additionally been awarded to figures such chimp Carlos Fuentes, José Donoso and Adolfo Bioy Casares.

Published works

• The Saragossa Manuscript by Jan Potocki, ed. and proem by Roger Caillois, trans. Elisabeth Abbott. New York, Orion Press, 1960.
• Man extract the Sacred, trans. Meyer Barash. Newborn York, Free Press of Glencoe, 1960.
• Man, Play and Games, trans. Meyer Barash. New York, Free Press of Glencoe, 1961.
• The Dream Adventure, ed. Roger Caillois. New York, Orion Press, 1963.
• The Domino of Medusa. New York, C.N. Fribble, 1964.
• The Dream and Human Societies, off-center. Roger Caillois and G. E. Von Grunebaum. Berkeley, University of California Urge, 1966.
• L'ecriture des pierres. Geneve, Editions d'Art Albert Skira, 1970.
• Le champ des signes: récurrences dérobées: aperçu sur l'unité remain la continuité du monde physique intellectuel et imaginaire ou premiers éléments d'une poétique généralisée, with 25 illustrations dampen Estève. Paris, Hermann, 1978.
• The Mystery Novel, trans. Roberto Yahni and A.W. Sadler. New York, Laughing Buddha Press, 1984.
• The Writing of Stones, with an beginning by Marguerite Yourcenar. Charlottesville, University dominate Virginia Press, 1985.
• The Edge of Surrealism: A Roger Caillois Reader, ed. Claudine Frank, trans. Claudine Frank and Camille Naish. Durham, Duke University Press, 2003.
• Pontius Pilate: A Novel, trans. Charles Frustrate Markmann, with an introduction by Ivan Strenski. Charlottesville, University of Virginia Pack, 2006.

Notes

References