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The City, the Player
Walter Benjamin and the Origin of Figurative Sociology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Extract
If we attempt to unify the theoretical efforts that appreciate a specific social activity in play, we can sketch the perspective of an entire anthropology of play into cohesive parts deriving from the knowledge of collective experience. This preoccupation is, in fact, two-fold. On the one hand is the comprehensive description of the relationship between life styles and their stylizations in everyday practices and customs as well as in cultural works, and on the other are social sensitivities and representations that are relatively shared by individuals grouped in human communities. This very general framework encourages situating the presence of play as one of the concrete manifestations of an emotional core, converting primitively negative impulses into attractive forces which, because of this, becomes the seat of all human interaction and agitation, the energetic heart of social power.
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- Copyright © 1986 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 This thesis is the origin of the first intellectual developments of the College of Sociology (1937-1939), in particular Georges Bataille, "Attraction et repulsion" (January 22, 1938 and February 5, 1938). In Le Collège de sociologie, Denis Hollier, Paris, Gallimard, coll. "Idées", Nr. 413, 1979, p. 188-231.
2 Cf. Jean Wahl, "Au Collège de sociologie", op. cit., p. 187.
3 Roger Callois, Les Jeux et les Hommes, chap. 5, for a sociology developed from play, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Idées, Nr. 125, 1958.
4 J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, Paris, Gallimard, 1951, p. 34-35.
5 This trend is today borne in the U.S.A. by romantic sociology, the theses of which are known in France from an article by Richard H. Brown, "Métaphore et méthode: de la logique et de la découverte en sociologie", published in Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, vol. LXII, Paris, 1977. With reference to the legitimacy of the use of metaphors in the human sciences, it is stated, "… all knowledge is a matter of viewpoint. We know something only as a certain thing, developed in one manner or another. And just as making a metaphor, in the broad sense, means seeing one thing from the viewpoint of another, it follows from what we have just said that all knowledge is metaphorical", p. 62. In France Michel Maffesoli illustrates this disposition in his work, La Connaissance ordincaire, Paris, Librairie des Méridiens, 1985.
6 Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire, un poète lyrique à l'apogée du capitalisme, trans. by Jean Lacoste, Paris, Petite Bibliothèque Payot, coll. Critique de la politique, 399, 1982.
7 Alain, Les idées et les âges, Paris, "Le jeu", 1927, p. 183.
8 Cf. A. Chenu, Les Conspirateurs, les sociétés secrètes, les corps-francs, Paris, 1850. L. de la Hodde, La naissance de la république en février 1848, Paris, 1848. On this, Alexandrian, Le Socialisme romantique, Paris, Seuil, 1979.
9 Walter Benjamin, op. cit., p. 185.
10 Walter Benjamin, "Zentralpark", op. cit., p. 214.
11 Cf. Patrick Tacussel, L'attraction sociale, le dynamisme de l'imaginaire dans la société monocéphale, Paris, Librairie des Méridiens; coll. "Sociologies au quotidien", 1984.
12 Walter Benjamin, op. cit., p. 185.
13 Walter Benjamin, op. cit., p. 187.
14 Walter Benjamin, Mythe et violence, trans. by Maurice de Gandillac, Paris, Denoël Gonthier, "Le surréalisme", 1971, p. 304.
15 Cf. Ernst Bloch, Héritage de ce temps, trans. by J. Lacoste, Paris, Payot, coll. "Critique de la politique", 1978.
16 Walter Benjamin, Sens unique, preceded by Enfance berlinoise, translated and with preface by J. Lacoste, Paris, Les Lettres Nouvelles, 1972, p. 16.
17 Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire, p. 238.
18 Walter Benjamin, Enfance berlinoise, p. 64.
19 Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire, p. 225.
20 Cf. Walter Benjamin, "Je déballe ma bibliothèque" (a lecture on the activity of a collector), 1 and 2, translated by M. Raspati, Le Promeneur II, Paris, Nov. 1981; III, mid-December, 1981.
21 Konrad Weisbrod, "La mémoire des choses, notes sur l'Enfance berlinoise de Walter Benjamin", in Urbi, III, Paris, March MCMLXXX, p. XLIX.
22 Jürgen Habermas, "L'actualité de Walter Benjamin. La critique: prise de conscience ou préservation", Toulouse, Privat, Revue d'esthétique, nouvelle série Nr. 1, Walter, Benjamin, 1981, p. 122.