‘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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  • Item ORO ID
  • 60749
  • Item Type
  • Journal Item
  • ISSN
  • 1751-133X
  • Keywords
  • Bernard Suits; philosophy of games; utopia; leisure studies; existentialism
  • Academic Unit or School
  • Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS)
  • Copyright Holders
  • © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
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  • Jisc Publications-Router
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  • Jisc Publications-Router
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