‘The Alexandrian Condition’: Suits on Boredom, Death, and Utopian Games

Yorke, Christopher C. (2019). ‘The Alexandrian Condition’: Suits on Boredom, Death, and Utopian Games. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 13(3-4) pp. 363–371.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2019.1601128

Abstract

I argue that the apparently exclusive choice between Suits’ utopia of gameplay and death by suicide is a false dilemma, one which obscures a ‘third way’ of positive boredom. Further, I offer a deeper reading of the internal logic of Suits’ utopian vision, identifying two different temporal phases of his utopia. At time U₁, just after the founding of Suits’ techno-Cockaygne, the Alexandrian condition affects ‘freshmen’ utopians by producing a state of existential meaninglessness and thereby conceivably motivating utopian suicide. At time U₂, however, sufficient time will have passed for the surviving ‘sophomore’ utopians to adopt marvelous, meaning-generative utopian games as a tool for defeating the Alexandrian condition and thus realizing Suits ‘ideal of existence’ in a utopia of gameplay.

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