Roger Caillois

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Roger Caillois 1962

Roger Caillois (born March 3, 1913 in Reims , † December 21, 1978 in Paris ) was a French sociologist , literary critic and philosopher .

life and work

At first he was close to surrealism . Caillois was among others with Georges Bataille 1935 co-founder of the anti-fascist group Contre-Attaque , 1937 co-founder of the Collège de Sociologie , whose task it should be to develop a “ sociology of the sacred ”. The meeting with the Argentinean Victoria Ocampo induced him to leave France in 1939. During the entire Second World War he stayed in Argentina , where he continued the resistance against the Nazi regime with the establishment of the magazine Lettres françaises (1941) and also the Institut français de Buenos Aires . From 1971 Caillois was a member of the Académie française .

Among other things, he dealt with the parallelism between mineralogical forms and the forms of expression of human ideas. In Le Mythe et l'home he also dealt with the phenomenon of "mimétisme", the concept of mimesis that was fundamental to the dialectic of the Enlightenment of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno . For Caillois it stands for the tendency inherent in living things to regression into the inorganic.

He also defined six fundamental properties of a game :

  1. Voluntary gathering of players
  2. Playing is unproductive
  3. Spatially and temporally limited "event"
  4. Procedure defined by rules
  5. You live in a fictional reality during the game
  6. Open process and uncertain end.

In 1958, in "Les jeux et les hommes", Caillois divided games into four basic components, several of which appear in many games:

These in turn consist in varying proportions of the components paidia , the original tendency towards joy and improvisation, as well as ludus , the artificially constructed difficulties and regulations of the game.

Works

  • Le Mythe et l'homme . Gallimard, Paris 1938
  • L'Homme et le Sacré . Leroux, Paris 1939 ( Mythes et religions 3)
  • "Natura pictrix" (1959). Translated by Peter Geble. In: Emmanuel Alloa (ed.): Image theories from France. An anthology . Fink, Paderborn 2011 ISBN 978-3-7705-5014-2 pp. 103-117
  • Pontius Pilate. A report . Translated from Gerhard Vorkamp. Langen-Müller, Munich 1963; again Gatza, Berlin 1993 ISBN 3-928262-13-0
  • Übers. Sigrid von Massenbach: The games and the people: mask and intoxication . Langen-Müller, Munich 1966 (TB: Ullstein, Frankfurt 1982)
  • Ars Poetica . Übers. Anneliese Botond . Kösel, Munich 1968
  • Le Fleuve Alphée . Gallimard, Paris 1978, ISBN 2-07-072544-8 (autobiography)
  • Hector Bianciotti, Jean-Paul Enthoven: Conversation with Roger Caillois 1978 . Sinn und Form 3, 2010, pp. 300–308
  • Stones . Translated by Gerd Henniger . Hanser, Munich 1983 ISBN 978-3-446-13647-2
  • The octopus. Attempt on the logic of the imaginative. Translated by Brigitte Weidmann. Hanser, Munich 1986 ISBN 978-3-446-14177-3
  • Man and the sacred. Edition expanded with 3 appendices on sex, play and war in their relations with the saint. Translated by Brigitte Weidmann. Nachw. Peter Geble. Hanser, Munich 1988 ISBN 3-446-14624-5
  • The writing of the stones. Übers., Nachw. Rainer G. Schmidt , Literaturverlag Droschl , Graz 2004 ISBN 978-3-85420-653-8
  • Meduse & Cie . Translated by Peter Geble, Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin 2007 ISBN 3-922660-89-4
  • Dissymmetry . Translated by Peter Geble. Nachw. Wolfgang Schäffner. Brinkmann & Bose , Berlin 2015 ISBN 978-3-940048-14-1
  • Patagonia and other forays . Translated by Rainer G. Schmidt. Literaturverlag Droschl, Graz 2016 ISBN 978-3-85420-974-4
  • The Alpheios river . Translated by Rainer G. Schmidt, ed. Anne von der Heiden, Sarah Kolb. Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin 2016 ISBN 978-3-940048-28-8

literature

  • Stephan Moebius : The sorcerer's apprentices. Sociological history of the Collège de Sociologie 1937–1939. UVK, Konstanz 2006, ISBN 3-89669-532-0 .
  • Arnd Krüger : The four faces of Homo invite , in: Gerd Steins (Hrsg.): Game movement - movement game. 100 years of Goßler's game of play . Forum for Sports History, Berlin 1982, pp. 9–12.
  • Anne von der Heiden, Sarah Kolb (ed.): Logic of the imaginary. Diagonal science according to Roger Caillois , Volume 1: Temptations through nature, culture and imagination . Berlin: August Verlag 2018, ISBN 978-3-941360-58-7 .

See also

Web links

notes

  1. Stefan Breuer : Critical Theory . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2016, p. 42 f.
  2. ^ Roger Caillois: The games and the people - mask and intoxication . Matthes & Seitz, Berlin.
  3. The conversation took place on November 28, 1978, a few weeks before Caillois' death, and appeared in the Nouvel Observateur on December 30, 1978