Play, boundaries, and creative thinking: a ludic perspective

Abstract

The belief that play is "child stuff" is obsolete. The vast potentiality of play rests on the application of a ludic perspective to the social world. Play allows one to explore, mediate, and parse their constitutive individual and collective boundaries by engaging with the contingent, indeterminate, ephemeral "as if", subjunctive worlds by temporarily suspending a perspective of the world that treats such boundaries as absolute and impermeable. These subjunctive worlds allow one to creatively engage with non-conventional approaches to problems, behave in manners one may not usually behave, interact with others that they may not usually associate with etc. with the understanding that what is done in play may not have the same consequences as in reality. The subjunctive is where one can exercise their creative potential, apply unusual forms of ingenuity, and reconsider social boundaries perceived as intractable and impermeable. This proposition stems from participant observation conducted at the Sannat Stadium bocce courts though the 2012 Xpeditions Field School program and should be situates itself in the grander scheme of things rather than only being culturally specific to Gozo, Malta. The implication of this conception of play is a reconsiders social navigation as strictly linear, determinant and without contingency. Instead, a ludic perspective weighs the myriad of one’s ever-present reflexive and intermediate decisions, which do not always follow a predetermined social trajectory, as factors that also account for where one "is" in the world, and where one conceives as their place in the world.