“Reclaiming Play is about allowing the ridiculous and the understated within ourselves to come alive. Play is an act of resistance in a world that tries to make us serious, hardened, isolated, compliant, productive and exhausted. Play allows us multiple glimpses of the light, as individually and collectively, we navigate the complexities of our realities.”
I have always had an ambivalent relationship with play. Most of us consider play a domain reserved for our childhood and children. Imaginative play is often considered fundamentally apolitical. However, as I look back at my childhood, I realise that play is political, a matter of political struggle in and of itself, and one that players may neither desire nor achieve. Understanding the connections between play and political expression is important, particularly as we strive to find new ways of being in the world.
Play as political
As a child, playing was relatively uncomplicated. Any object I could find was a potential toy. Later, playing was a group activity with all the neighbourhood kids hanging out, playing ball, hide and seek, or whatever activities we created. However, increasingly, I noticed that our relationship with play shifted from my early teens. On the one hand, the increasing lack of safety or spaces to play in our working-class neighbourhood meant that more and more of us were kept indoors by our parents. On the other hand, with more responsibilities in the home (with both parents working), I began to deny myself opportunities to play. When I did give in to the temptations to play, I struggled to be entirely present for the experience, often feeling like an observer of others playing. My reality was no different from many others coming from similar working-class neighbourhoods in apartheid South Africa. Ironically, this reality is no different today; playing remains a privilege even in a ‘free’ South Africa. Although there is extensive research highlighting the importance of play for children’s wellbeing and how it supports a sense of self and builds communities, the reality is that children are less likely to play in public spaces due to the lack of safety.
The fact that childhood is considered ‘private’ means that experiences of play in childhood are sequestered away from ‘the political’. Yet play is, not just ‘fun and games’ but very ‘real’ in experience and effect and intricately bound up with questions of the political or, indeed, the political economy. Play is also one way we orient and position ourselves. In an era of technology-linked play, all of us (regardless of age) may unconsciously spread hegemonic discourses and inequitable social relations, such as gendered exclusions. Therefore, we should treat play as a political space. It is also one in which all participants have the potential for political agency, understood here as “participation and engagement with discourses and taking action designed to change life situations (political, economic, social and cultural practices)”.
In my case, adolescence spilt over into early adulthood and I continued to regard play as an indulgence that got in the way of more important things. Instead, I focused on things considered more ‘important,’ ‘useful,’ ‘productive’ and ‘responsible’. In many ways, these were contextually motivated and informed by the prevailing neoliberal paradigm.
Play as a political tactic
As noted by Rachel Rosen, re-imagining play for all of us (not only children) starts with understanding how play can deepen our political participation and is a necessary exercise for our “collective agency to appropriate available times/space for our visions and desires”. Play thus offers moments of hope for adults and children. In playing we seek out the goodness and brightness in life. Play connects us to ourselves and others. Play unburdens us from the mounting pressures of life. Play changes the way we see possibility and opportunity. Play is valuable as a social justice pursuit because everyone deserves the chance to relax, have fun and enjoy life.
Play – and its affective, interactive and related characteristics – can counter the cynicism in a world where actions may seem futile or are co opted before being realised. There is always an alternative in play. As a slightly more liminal and less existentially fraught space, play allows for experimentation, creation, imagining and enacting new ways of being and living. Building a common cause is a critical challenge in activist movements. It is essential because it works against the short-termism of “new capitalism”, which erodes the possibilities of sustained commitment to others, and as a political strategy in the face of fragmentation and intensifying global inequities.
Play, however, should be drawn on as a tactic rather than a grounded political strategy because one cannot merely collapse individual “acts of defiance or imaginative play into activism” – regardless of intent or actual enactment – or into efforts to understand and work towards social, political and economic transformation. Conflating play and activism also limits our ability to evaluate the political impact (both intended and unintended) and efficacy (in terms of practical changes and formation of new alliances or solidarities) of various forms of action.
Play as resistance
What constitutes resistance in everyday life are daily actions that are subtle responses to power. Everyday resistance is a tactic people use to survive and undermine repressive domination, especially when rebellion is too risky. Under other circumstances, activist behaviour can be interpreted as deviance, and deviance can be interpreted as resistance. And play is, in many ways, a form of resistance. It is often seen as a resistance to authority.
Play can also be a form of resistance in a world that tries to make us serious, hardened, isolated, compliant, productive and exhausted if we can only remember how to enjoy ourselves and each other. Incorporating play into my everyday life always feels uncomfortable at first. Society has come to view enjoyment, pleasure and play as a novelty. We either pick up our phones to record someone dancing in their car or ask people questions like “why” or “what for” if someone tells us they like to sit upside down on the chair in their living room. It’s easy to ignore or disregard the “that would be fun” thought because there is no purpose or reason for such an action. And that is what play as a form of resistance is all about, not needing a reason. Playing just for fun is radical in a society that demands explanations for our every move.
At the same time, recognising social justice activism’s emotional and ideological foundations is an important, often overlooked, motivator and sustainer of participation. Connected to the Freirean concept of armed love, activism creates a community that merges sustainable healing and justice. Activism can exist in many forms that reflect acts of resistance to social injustice and oppression and acts of social change targeting policies and systemic transformation. The actions and roles of activism include protests, providing care to protestors, political action (e.g., countering voter suppression), promoting policy changes and written and artistic expression. However, we are increasingly becoming aware of how our psychological wellness is compromised by oppression while it develops optimally in the context and pursuit of justice.
The psychology of resistance to oppression suggests that participation in activism is a path to positive psychological outcomes. Hence, play offers a way to support our psycho-cultural resources and enhance our power.
Reclaiming play
I’m not sure what flipped the script for me. It may have been the weariness of my spirit, feeling burnt out, burdened and exhausted from the bottomless well of things, causes and responsibilities that seemed to call my name. Or it was waking up and truly seeing my reality. I was highly functional and responsive to the mounting pressures of my life, work and activism. However, I had somehow lost touch with lightness, spontaneity and hope. This imbalance impacted my connection to others and to my vitality and efficacy.
Whatever it was, my wake-up call led me to reframe and reclaim play. In truly seeing, I could look beyond my individual experience and connect to a more politicised role of play.
This meant intentionally pushing back against the neoliberal framing of toxic productivity that frowns upon play if there is no “good” reason to do it. Playing just for fun is a radical act In a society that demands explanations for our every move. Reclaiming play for me became an opportunity to learn from children how to enjoy myself and others in a world that tries to make us serious, hardened, isolated, compliant, productive and exhausted.
Beyond the personal, I also considered ways to bring play into workspaces to make the politics of play more visible and identify ways to integrate it as part of our tactics. It takes a while to warm up to playing as part of our practice. We have some way to go, but we should continue strengthening these muscles and claiming the benefits of playing.
This is my call to include play in our personal and activist practice.
Here are some tips to help you reclaim play as a core pillar of your life and activism.
# 1 Connect to memories of play.
When thinking back to playing in childhood, what pictures, feelings, sounds, smells and tastes come to mind? Where are you, what are you doing, who are you with and how aware are you of time? When we play, our brains light up with movement and we feel in touch with our bodies as we anticipate, act and react to each moment. We also build social competencies and ways of interacting with the world that are flexible and open. Children often learn complex skill sets through play that are lacking in other learning places within our cultures.
# 2 Integrate play into work.
Bring childlike types of activities into work or activism. Learning and play do not have to be mutually exclusive. Diverse experiences blur, collide and interweave, evolving in uncertain and complex directions during moments of play. Children’s play invites inquiries and interests that embody a plurality of knowledge. For example, we can learn from children, who know the best way to go down the slide is on a blanket because it is the fastest. Such moments are full of messiness, possibilities and tensions which have the potential to transform existing hierarchies, relationships and interactions. In process work, we can create personas and role-plays that allow us to play whilst weaving through complex dynamics.
# 3 Make time to play just for the heck of it.
We know how to invite our friends for a games night with structured activities and rules, with winners and losers. But we’ve forgotten how to hula hoop, build bridges for ants, squelch through mud (because it makes such cool sounds) and see what happens when we drop a balloon full of water from the top floor. I remember organising an activist conference for over 900 women. We planned a big celebratory event and invited some dignitaries and artists to perform. The event was to be held in a majestic outside venue, and from all accounts we were ready for an unforgettable event. However, we had not planned for the unexpected rainfall that messed up all our well-laid plans. As the 900 women from across the world stood under some covering, waiting for the rain to stop, a few of them started dancing in the rain, and then eventually all of the women were dancing and laughing. To this day, of the five days of deep, robust engagements, the memory that endured was of us dancing in the rain. It was a moment of such spontaneous play and joy; a beautiful connector that illustrates the freedom, joy and pleasure from unexpected play.
