| Frederich Schiller determined that an individual was not "fully a human being" without play; this dissertation is a treatise on the role of play in the quest for completeness or wholeness. Play becomes the tool for not only healing the fractured psyches of the postmodern age but also the fractured cultural stories or myths.; Play is as polysemous as the gods that populate the archetypal realm. The Notion of play sifted and shaped within these pages is frivolous and wise, childlike and earnest, free and restrained. It is, indeed, the tensional movement between these opposites, the play of paradox as distilled by Schiller and explicated by Drew Hyland's responsive openness, and found within the give and take of Hans Georg Gadamer's leeway. Play as movement, resonance, tolerance, the dance between the opposites, an embodiment of wholeness, an inherent aspect of being---that is the lens developed here through which I explore the mythos of capitalism within American culture. Play, or rather the Notion of play developed within this dissertation, becomes the hermeneutic for discovering soul within money and work, business and markets.; To uncover the archetypal forces within the dynamics of play and capitalism I call upon members of the ancient Greek pantheon but most importantly upon the stories: the ancient stories, certainly, but also the modern stories. A number of cultural and historic forces that influence the pursuit of capital within postmodern America such as the maximization of profits, productivity, and consumerism are examined. By allowing the interplay of certain elements of these driving principles with "other," I create a playground that challenges the "truth" of contemporary cultural myths. It is on this playground, embedded in aspects of ritual, nature, the liminal, and the feminine, that capitalism can be re-visioned and made whole, inclusive of social and natural values, and can participate within a new story that augments the one-sided myths of constant progress and profit maximization with the play of relational being. It is on this playground that capitalism is ensouled. |
