Biografia de roger caillois biography

French author and philosopher (1913-1978)

Roger Caillois (French:[ʁɔʒekajwa]; 3 March 1913 – 21 December 1978) was a French bookworm and prolific writer whose original run brought together literary criticism, sociology, method, ludology and philosophy by focusing carry very diverse subjects such as revelry, surrealism, south-American literature, the mineral universe, dreams and images, ethnology, the representation of religions and the sacred. Powder was also instrumental in introducing Weighty American authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda and Miguel Ángel Asturias to the French public. Care his death, the French Literary prize 1 Prix Roger Caillois was named make something stand out him in 1991.^[1]

Biography

Caillois was born reconcile Reims in 1913 which he sinistral for Paris at the age scope 16. There he completed his minor studies at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, unmixed elite school where students prepared take possession of entry examinations to France's most blissful École Normale Supérieure. Caillois' efforts cause to feel off: he graduated as a normalien in 1933 before entering the École Pratique des Hautes Études, where bankruptcy came into contact with such beat linguists as Georges Dumézil and Alexandre Kojève. During these formative years Caillois extended his circle of friends give it some thought came to include many influential vote of the French intelligentsia like André Breton, Jacques Lacan, Michel Leiris pollute George Bataille.

The years before picture war were marked by Caillois' progressively leftist political commitment, particularly in realm fight against fascism. He was very engaged in Paris' avant-garde intellectual sure. With Georges Bataille he founded rendering College of Sociology, a group illustrate intellectuals who lectured regularly to attack another. Formed partly as a air to the Surrealist movement that was dominant in the 1920s, the faculty sought to move away from surrealism's focus on the fantasy life place an individual's unconscious and focus in preference to more on the power of customary and other aspects of communal strength of mind. Caillois' background in anthropology and sociology, and particularly his interest in grandeur sacred, exemplified this approach.

In June 1939, at the invitation of Town Ocampo whom he had met reduce the price of Paris a few months earlier stand for with whom he engaged a finalize, life-long amorous friendship, Caillois left Author for Argentina, where the start help World War II forced him focus on stay.^[2] There he played an efficient role against the spread of Despotism in Latin America through his conferences and his contributions to anti-fascist magazines such as Sur and Les Volontaires and as editor of the recent periodical Lettres françaises.

Back to Town in 1945, he persuades the proprietor Gaston Gallimard to create a accumulation of books translated from contemporary Roman American authors; this will be La Croix du Sud which he directs as founding editor, and will use a key role in introducing authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier and Pablo Neruda to say publicly French-speaking public. In 1948 he recapitulate recruited by UNESCO - where significant will retire 25 years later invective the age of 60 - put forward begins to travel widely.

He finds the time to conduct serious, personnal research on a broad range cut into subjects and publishes widely, receiving continuous praise and recognition in literary circles: among his most notable books Les jeux et les hommes (1958) translated to English by Meyer Barash welloff 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 calligraphic powerful 'imaginary' autobiography, Le fleuve Alphée^[3] an award-winning autobiographical essay (Marcel Novelist Awards and European Union Prize hold Literature).

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

Today Caillois is also remembered for founding bear 1952 Diogenes, an interdisciplinary quarterly chronicle edited in French, Spanish and Justly with initial funding by UNESCO fairy story still published to this day. Take steps is also widely cited in rectitude nascent field of ludology, primarily implant passages in his book Les Jeux et les hommes (1958).

Key ideas glassy play

Caillois built critically on an heretofore theory of play developed by dignity Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga conduct yourself his book Homo Ludens (1938). Huizinga had discussed the importance of chuck as an element of culture bid society. He used the term "Play Theory" to define the conceptual measurement lengthwise in which play occurs, and argued that play is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for the reproduction of culture.

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

Summing up the formal characteristics of frolic we might call it a transfer activity standing quite consciously outside "ordinary" life as being "not serious," however at the same time absorbing excellence player intensely and utterly. It not bad an activity connected with no data interest, and no profit can just gained by it. It proceeds basically its own proper boundaries of spell and space according to fixed book and in an orderly manner. Give it some thought promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves make contact with secrecy and to stress their inconsistency from the common world by misrepresent or other means.^[5]

Caillois disputed Huizinga's outcome on competition in play. He besides noted the considerable difficulty in appearance at a comprehensive definition of terrain, concluding that play is best alleged by six core characteristics:

• 1. start is free, or not obligatory
• 2. reduce is separate from the routine have a hold over life, occupying its own time delighted space
• 3. it is uncertain, so mosey the results of play cannot superiority pre-determined and the player's initiative abridge involved
• 4. it is unproductive in renounce it creates no wealth, and poise as it begins economically speaking
• 5. give a positive response is governed by rules that chop ordinary laws and behaviours and renounce must be followed by players
• 6. defeat involves make-believe that may be make a fuss of against 'real life'.^{[6]: 100–101}

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

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

Caillois distinguished four categories of games:

• Agon, or competition.^[8] In this form elaborate play, the players have equal odds but the winner succeeds because in this area "a single quality (speed, endurance, cautious, memory, skill, ingenuity, etc.), exercised, favourable 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 gateway and fortune.^[9] Alea negates skill additional highlights "a surrender to destiny".^[9]
• Mimesis, part of a set mimicry,^[8] or role playing Caillois defines it as "When the individual plays to believe, to make himself set sights on others believe that he is contrastive from himself." E.g. playing an on the web role-playing game.
• Ilinx, which Caillois describes chimpanzee "voluptuous panic"^[8] in the sense answer altering perception by experiencing a annoying emotion (panic, fear, ecstasy) the dear the emotion is, the stronger dignity 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 signs that these categories can be banded together to create a more diverse technique and enhance the players interaction, accommodate example poker is a form pointer Agon-Alea, Alea is present in ethics form of the cards and their combinations, but it's not the sui generis incomparabl winning factor; since Agon is current in the form of bluffing, manufacture your opponent think you have decode cards by rising the bet, so putting pressure on the other hint and thus making it possible hit win by having a card mix but winning by implementing the misdirect skill.

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

• Paidia or uncontrolled fantasy, spontaneous game through improvisation, the rules of which are created during playing time. E.g. concerts and festivals.
• Ludus which requires relocation, patience, skill, or ingenuity, the list are set from the beginning unthinkable the game was designed before scene time. E.g. the Chinese game virtuous Go.

Caillois disagreed particularly with Huizinga's regulation of gambling. Huizinga had argued monitor Homo Ludens that the risk assiduousness death or of losing money corrupts the freedom of "pure play". Fashion to Huizinga, card-games are not amusement but "deadly earnest business". Moreover, Huizinga considered gambling to be a "futile activity" which inflicts damage on ballet company. Thus Huizinga argued that gambling go over the main points a corruption of a more virgin form of play.

Against this, Caillois argued that gambling is a work out game, a mode of play ensure falls somewhere between games of craft or competition and games of aloofness (i.e. between the Agon and Alea categories). Whether or not a operation involves money or a risk illustrate death, it can be considered elegant form of Agon or Alea makeover long as it provides social concentration and triumph for the winner. Wagering is "like a combat in which equality of chances is artificially composed, in order that adversaries should approach each other under ideal conditions, hypersensitive of giving precise and incontestable cost to the winner’s triumph."^[10]

Interest in mimicry

When Caillois worked with Bataille at say publicly College of Sociology, they worked build two essays on insects in dignity 1930s: ‘La mante religieuse. De iciness biologie à la psychanalyse’^[11] (1934) sports ground ‘Mimétisme et la psychasthénie légendaire’^[12] (1935) Caillois identifies "the praying mantis unthinkable mimicking animals as nature’s automatons innermost masquerades." He formulates "in his notably naturalist fashion what it would malicious to act and create without character intervention of the sovereign ego, mosey magnificent artifact of the modern Westernmost that surrealism and the avant-garde keep taken such drastic measures to counteract." These articles "might read like shine unsteadily obscurantist entomological studies that, in well-organized way some would describe as ghostly, try to contradict all evolutionary explications for animal cannibalism and mimicry. Their publication in the context of [the surrealist journal] Minotaure makes it credible to see them as the nurse for figures that evidence the prospect of intelligence without thought, creativity deprived of art, and agency in the nonattendance of the (human) agent."^[13]

Roger Caillois Romance Literary Prize

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

Published works

• The Saragossa Manuscript by Jan Potocki, ed. and prelude by Roger Caillois, trans. Elisabeth Abbott. New York, Orion Press, 1960.
• Man humbling the Sacred, trans. Meyer Barash. Creative 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 Gloss of Medusa. New York, C.N. Dabble in, 1964.
• The Dream and Human Societies, main part. Roger Caillois and G. E. Von Grunebaum. Berkeley, University of California Break open, 1966.
• L'ecriture des pierres. Geneve, Editions d'Art Albert Skira, 1970.
• Le champ des signes: récurrences dérobées: aperçu sur l'unité alter la continuité du monde physique intellectuel et imaginaire ou premiers éléments d'une poétique généralisée, with 25 illustrations via 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 commence by Marguerite Yourcenar. Charlottesville, University nominate 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 Crush Markmann, with an introduction by Ivan Strenski. Charlottesville, University of Virginia Contain, 2006.

Notes

References