{"id":1467,"date":"2019-01-27T13:54:47","date_gmt":"2019-01-27T13:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/?p=1467"},"modified":"2019-05-17T06:34:32","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T06:34:32","slug":"this-is-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/?p=1467","title":{"rendered":"This is Play"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This is the title of an article (Stephen Nachmanovitch, <em>New Literary History<\/em>, Vol. 40, No. 1, Winter, 2009), pp. 1-24.)&nbsp;about play in general, but specifically about Gregory Bateson\u2019s theoretical approach to it \u2013 involving studies with dolphins and monkeys and dogs and people, as well as logical types.&nbsp; A dog who nips someone in \u201cfun,\u201d with no intention of actually harming the person, is delivering a fairly complex message. Within the message \u201cI am biting you\u201d is another message that changes, without deleting, the first one: \u201cThis is play.\u201d&nbsp;It <em>is&nbsp;<\/em>biting, but not exactly.&nbsp;&nbsp;It says something&nbsp;<em>about&nbsp;<\/em>biting.&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>Not<\/em> biting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nachmanovitch follows the idea through many aspects of Bateson\u2019s work \u2013 information theory, evolutionary theory, language theory among them.&nbsp;&nbsp;I was particularly drawn to his challenge to all the efforts to define play by what it is not, e.g., it is not serious, or not work.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They tend to collapse under pressure.&nbsp;&nbsp;But suppose, he asks, that play is the opposite of stasis, of rigidity?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the title of an article (Stephen Nachmanovitch, New Literary History, Vol. 40, No. 1, Winter, 2009), pp. 1-24.)&nbsp;about play in general, but specifically about Gregory Bateson\u2019s theoretical approach to it \u2013 involving&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1468,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[259,261],"tags":[279,280,278,188],"class_list":["post-1467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-language","category-play","tag-bateson","tag-logical-types","tag-nachmanovitch","tag-play"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}