The Slippage of Play

The Slippage of Play

            Last week I wrote an essay about the lack of diversity and complexity in the conventional understanding of play, and just a week before that I applied the concept of “slippage” (Dalke) to the “Black at Bryn Mawr” tour. Despite the close proximity timewise between these two essays, I failed to realize my own slippages in my essay about play, further illustrating the pervasiveness of play. Just like how I analyzed the layers of slippage, or thoughts and words that emerge from our unconscious socialized past (“Paradox”), of the “Black at Bryn Mawr” tour, here I will explain slippages of the concept of play itself, my essay about play, and why I slipped even after writing an essay focused on slippage.

            When prompted with a question of how play can be problematic, I wrote a short post about the exclusion of introverted children in understandings of play. Molly Knefel’s examples of play are all social; they consist of school plays, accounts of what her students have said, and group games. Henig and Brown focus mostly on play fighting and rough and tumble play. All of these texts on play exclude introverted children and their play. Knefel, Henig, and Brown slipped because they assumed extroversion in children, which can  stem from a socialized past of equating play with being social. (Introverted play is also probably much harder to notice and analyze, which is another reason for it to be marginalized or unmentioned.) I slipped as well. Despite my posting on introversion, I read all of the texts on play and wrote my last essay without realizing the slippage of assumed extroversion. I was definitely an introvert for the majority of my play experiences as a child, though I classify myself as an ambivert, and I was socialized to believe that play with others was normal, and playing by myself was not. This is what influenced my slippage to not realize the exclusion of introverted children in essays about play.

            I slipped again when writing my essay analyzing Butterfly’s experience of play through the lens of Molly Knefel’s essay “Kid Stuff.” While applying the lack of representation of play as explained by Knefel to Butterfly’s experience I excluded her and all underprivileged children in the process. This is demonstrated when I said, “Butterfly’s depiction of childhood play falls out of line with our typical view of childhood” (“Innocent”). Through the use of “our,” I fail to include the views of play that are held by underprivileged children and those with underprivileged childhoods, often poor, of color, and living in more dangerous places. I slipped as I didn’t realize this until I read the essay “Is Your History My History?” by my classmate with the username “ladyinwhite”. She describes the language used in the “Black at Bryn Mawr” tour, “The slippage lies in the terming of us and them. This subconscious distinction between the two is exclusionary. The audience cannot be lumped into a single entity to which a spiel of singular perspective is emitted. This one sided telling takes away whatever sense of belonging is possible for everyone else.” The “Black at Bryn Mawr” tour attempted to bring the racial history of Bryn Mawr to modern day students, but left ladyinwhite and others feeling alienated, the opposite of the tour’s goals. Similarly, I wrote my essay on play with the intention of expanding conventional understandings and representations of play but by doing so neglected other views of play that are just as valid. This slippage also resulted from my socialization. I grew up and played in the suburbs, and despite not having the same experience of play as a white suburban child, the experiences of the white children around me became my standard of “normal” play and I unconsciously looked at Butterfly’s experiences with that idea, resulting in my slip.

            The outermost slip I will address is my experience of writing an essay on slippage, and how I slipped immediately afterward. My slips of ignoring introversion and the experiences of Butterfly and others were not due to a lack of understanding or information, as I wrote a post about introversion and my essay was focused on expanding representation in play, but a socialized past that pushed me to ignore what should be obvious. Similarly, I failed to see slippages in my essay about play simply because the essay topic for was not slippage. This further proved the point I made in my slippage essay about the pervasiveness and inevitability of slippages; it was easy to see slippages in the “Black at Bryn Mawr” tour, but I didn’t see slippages in my own essay about play until its exclusive language was pointed out to me. My essay on play attempted to expand inclusivity, but failed to do so from my single perspective. Since slippages are inevitable what is really needed in addition to addressing my own slippages is more perspectives, which may all contain some slips but contribute to the inclusivity of voices. Just like how the “Black at Bryn Mawr” tour couldn’t represent everyone involved, a fuller understanding of play and children represented requires more than just my own views on the subject. The multiple essays written on similar topics in the classroom is an example of this, as well as my application of ladyinwhite’s essay to my own. Slippage is not a one-time essay thing, and chances are I slipped in this essay as well.