Play as a concept has always animated the anarchist/underground milieu with an infectious spirit of playful experimentation and exuberance. Riding wild and playful energy, we created seeds of an insurrectionary alternative reality that could one day replace or overthrow the dominant system. Physical, political, ideological, and imaginal spaces seemed open to us.
Lately, however, we’ve been facing a considerable shrinking of the climate of possibility in North America due to a more conservative, defensive, and fearful cultural and political climate. We desperately need a renewed spirit of playful experimentation.
How do we make playful approaches more useful or essential when confronting the system or exploring alternatives to it? How does the ethic, attitude, or practice of play inform, invigorate, animate, or deepen our politics? What separates serious play from mere frivolity? How can, and how do, anti-authoritarians everywhere tap into and thrive on the creative vitality of play?
In a spirit of experimentation, creativity, performance, spontaneity, transformation, exuberance, conviviality, and giddiness, we seek articles, accounts and artwork, fiction and non-fiction, on the theory and practice of play in all its forms, as well as similar work on general themes.
Deadline: August 1
Publication date: October 1
Send proposals to fe (at) fifthestate (dot) org or
Box 6, Liberty TN 37095