Introduction: The Other Caillois: The Many Masks of Game Studies

Abstract

The legacy of the rich, stratified work of Roger Caillois, the multifaceted and complex French scholar and intellectual, seems to have almost solely impinged on game studies through his most popular work, Les Jeux et les Hommes. Translated in English as Man, Play and Games, this is the text which popularized Caillois' ideas among those who do study and research on games and game cultures today, and which most often appears in publications that attempt to historicize and introduce to the study of games-perhaps on a par with Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens. The purpose of this article is to introduce the papers and general purposes of a collected edition that aims to shift the attention of game scholars toward a more nuanced and comprehensive view of Roger Caillois, beyond the textbook interpretations usually received in game studies over the last decade or so.

The Principle of Division in Roger Caillois’s Man, Play and Games

“…Roger Caillois had a long and strange career as a scholar, artist, conspirator, essayist, and editor. His intellectual trajectory deeply shapes the importance he places on play, and Man, Play, and Games needs to be placed in the broader context of his life (Carbone, Ruffino, & Massonet, 2017). His early studies with Marcel Mauss and Georges Dumézil established a basic orientation for his future work.…”