Puppets’ Uprising: Passive-Active Ethics Within the Trap of Play

Annabelle Dufourcq, in her article, “Puppets’ Uprising: Passive Active Ethics Within the Trap of Play,” argues that, given the all-pervading structure of play, it is impossible to break away from play, and yet, trying to put a halt to play is actually key to morals. This is also a major political issue at a time when play has become a patent and constraining social structure: adaptability, malleability, and distance are encouraged in the covertly highly oppressive society of “coolness” (Baudrillard). How can we make room for ethics in the framework of an ontology of play? Dufourcq discusses Sartre’s idea that love for (or resignation to) play is the scantiest and most ineffective response of the oppressed to oppression. In contrast, Merleau-Ponty presents irony, distance, and vulnerability as virtues and, under certain conditions, the only possible source of genuinely effective and meaningful actions.