‘Where do we go when we play?’ Realities, renewal, release

In the current ludic century, both academic and popular discussions have examined the politics, pitfalls and possibilities of games. Yet play, the force that drives games and many activities besides, has received scant attention. This elision is in part explained by the assumption that play is singularly unserious – it is assumed to be the preserve of animals, children and down-time. Often considered the opposite of work and reason, a ‘malediction of play’ is in evidence across both Western philosophy and culture. Yet play is everywhere at work across both institutional and everyday global politics. And it is serious business. Play provides relief and respite from the exhaustion of working life. It features across leisure activities far beyond games, in theatre, literature, sex, food and clubbing/rave cultures. Play is seriously at work in resistance movements from Emma Goldman’s dancing revolution to the absurdism of the Situationists. Play is central to processes of subjectification, identity and community formation, from childhood to old age. As such, play is a vital force, the opposite of depression: play is what makes life ‘lifey’. At the same time, play is central to reactionary politics and culture, integral to the formation and maintenance of exclusionary and supremacist political communities. Play is thus implicated in forms of hierarchy and exclusion as much as our search for new realities, renewal and release. This special section of Interventions reflects on experiences of play within and beyond academic life. Contributions explore topics including the self at/in play, the politics of childish play, play and the stage, play and friendship, play and resistance/revolution, play on/at borders and play in the flux of identity. The authors draw from a number of critical and reflexive IR traditions and interrogate the politics of play, but also situate play as an embodied, affective and lived experience across these including gender, sexuality, migration, performance and interpellation. We hope this issue sparks further debate about, and engagement with, the hitherto underexplored theme of play in IR and related fields.