Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 21:46:58 -0600
From: Mary Murphy&Salstrand <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: Ludens is the Father of All Things


What do you think about th opportunity to apply the fractal geometry ,
powered by deleuzian philosophy, to Huisinga`s concept of "Homo ludens",
and linked to  curent topic of discussion, i mean "notion of any kind of
the presupposed game  within any given scientific paradigm", as such as
Kuhn undersood it.

One of the things that links Huizinga to Lyotard is the concept of
Agon.  As Huizinga writes; "the agon in Greeklife, or the contest
anywhere else in the world, bears all the formal characteristics of
play, and as to its function belongs almost wholly to the sphere of the
festival, which is the play sphere. It is quite impossible to separate
the contest as a cultural function from the complex play-festival-rite."
(p31) Huizinga links war to play (chapter V) for similar reasons.

Compare this to Nietzsche. "Every talent must unfold itself in fighting:
that is the command of Hellenic popular pedagogy....How wonderful. 
Whereas modern man fears nothing in an artist more than the emotion of
any personal fight, the Greek knows the artist only as engaged in a
personal fight."  (Homer's Contest - p37 of The Portable Nietzche)

There is a suggestion here that the archaic contest, ruled by Eris, the
goddess of discord, is related to what Lyotard calls the paralogical.
The bastard artist legitimizes herself through divine envy; the spur to
make new moves/new games. As Eliot said: "There will be time to murder
and create."  This is the nomadic war machine of Deleuze, forever
opposed to the state.  

Can you link fractal geometry to this for me (Do you mean the agon of
the crooked lines?)