Through its treatment of sport, recreation, and leisure, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest depicts play as an activity fraught with anxiety, subject to the same disciplinary structures that restrict autonomy in any other individual endeavor. As such, the novel continues a tradition of postmodern sports literature in which playful rebellion is treated with skepticism. Only through a strategic and provisional use of what Donna Haraway has called "serious play" are Infinite Jest's central characters able to construct meaningful autonomy.
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