0 0
Download high-resolution image Look inside

Repairing Play

A Black Phenomenology

Part of Playful Thinking

Author Aaron Trammell
Look inside
$20.00 US
The MIT Press
74 per carton
On sale Feb 07, 2023 | 9780262545273
Sales rights: World
Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies

See Additional Formats
A provocative study that reconsiders our notion of play—and how its deceptively wholesome image has harmed and erased people of color.

Contemporary theorists present play as something wholly constructive and positive. But this broken definition is drawn from a White European philosophical tradition that ignores the fact that play can, and often does, hurt. In fact, this narrow understanding of play has been complicit in the systemic erasure of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) from the domain of leisure. In this book, Aaron Trammell proposes a corrective: a radical reconsideration of play that expands its definition to include BIPOC suffering, subjugation, and taboo topics such as torture. As he challenges and decolonizes White European thought, Trammell maps possible ways to reconcile existing theories with the fact that play is often hurtful and toxic.

Trammell upends current notions by exploring play’s function as a tool in the subjugation of BIPOC. As he shows, the phenomenology of play is a power relationship. Even in innocent play, human beings subtly discipline each other to remain within unspoken rules. Going further, Trammell departs from mainstream theory to insist that torture can be play. Approaching it as such reveals play’s role in subjugating people in general and renders visible the long-ignored experiences of BIPOC. Such an inclusive definition of play becomes a form of intellectual reparation, correcting the notion that play must give pleasure while also recasting play in a form that focuses on the deep, painful, and sometimes traumatic depths of living.
On Thinking Playfully vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 Decolonizing Play 21
2 Play as Affect 41
3 Play as Capture 55
4 Torture and the Black American Experience 71
5 Recentering Blackness in Games and Play 85
Conclusion: Repairing Play 101
Notes 111
References 119
Index 127
“Repairing Play: A Black Phenomenology highlights the long-overdue need to explore how the American conceptualization of play becomes romanticized through a White racial lens. As the title suggests, author Aaron Trammell argues that our understanding of play is awed, incomplete, and even harmful.”
—American Journal of Play

“Repairing Play may inspire other scholars interested in research on sports to revisit conventional definitions that erase or further marginalize the experiences of Black people and others in America and in other contexts.”
—International Journal for Sport and Religion

About

A provocative study that reconsiders our notion of play—and how its deceptively wholesome image has harmed and erased people of color.

Contemporary theorists present play as something wholly constructive and positive. But this broken definition is drawn from a White European philosophical tradition that ignores the fact that play can, and often does, hurt. In fact, this narrow understanding of play has been complicit in the systemic erasure of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) from the domain of leisure. In this book, Aaron Trammell proposes a corrective: a radical reconsideration of play that expands its definition to include BIPOC suffering, subjugation, and taboo topics such as torture. As he challenges and decolonizes White European thought, Trammell maps possible ways to reconcile existing theories with the fact that play is often hurtful and toxic.

Trammell upends current notions by exploring play’s function as a tool in the subjugation of BIPOC. As he shows, the phenomenology of play is a power relationship. Even in innocent play, human beings subtly discipline each other to remain within unspoken rules. Going further, Trammell departs from mainstream theory to insist that torture can be play. Approaching it as such reveals play’s role in subjugating people in general and renders visible the long-ignored experiences of BIPOC. Such an inclusive definition of play becomes a form of intellectual reparation, correcting the notion that play must give pleasure while also recasting play in a form that focuses on the deep, painful, and sometimes traumatic depths of living.

Table of Contents

On Thinking Playfully vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 Decolonizing Play 21
2 Play as Affect 41
3 Play as Capture 55
4 Torture and the Black American Experience 71
5 Recentering Blackness in Games and Play 85
Conclusion: Repairing Play 101
Notes 111
References 119
Index 127

Praise

“Repairing Play: A Black Phenomenology highlights the long-overdue need to explore how the American conceptualization of play becomes romanticized through a White racial lens. As the title suggests, author Aaron Trammell argues that our understanding of play is awed, incomplete, and even harmful.”
—American Journal of Play

“Repairing Play may inspire other scholars interested in research on sports to revisit conventional definitions that erase or further marginalize the experiences of Black people and others in America and in other contexts.”
—International Journal for Sport and Religion

Additional formats

Other books in this series

Penguin Random House Backlist Vault

© 2025 Penguin Random House

Back to Top
0
    • 0
    Wish List (0)