Knuffel in Dutch means soft toy, cuddly toy, stuffed animal or teddy bear.
It is also the translation for the word hug.
Introduction
1. Creating and being created (the infant)
2. Why we need toys (the child)
3. When make-believe fails (the adolescent)
4. Materiality (the object)
5. The importance of play (the adult)
6. Creating and being created (the artist)
Conclusion
List of images
Bibliography
As a child I formed a deep attachment towards my favourite knuffel, who is called Knuf. When I was about seven months old my mother gifted them to me after a visit to the paediatrician and very soon thereafter Knuf and I were inseparable. We slept together, laughed together, cried together, and told each other secrets we would never tell anyone else. Till this day, Knuf sleeps in my bed every night, and very often when I need to focus my mind, I will lay them in my neck or move their fabric body through my fingers, as I have been doing for the majority of writing this essay. Knuf is and will always be my most precious attachment: they are an extension of me.
In this metaphysical investigation I try to uncover what the nature of this symbiotic relationship between Knuf and me is. The design and materiality of Knuf, pedagogy and child analysis, intimacy, theories on play, object-relation theories, and identity, are addressed in a coming-of-age, chronological order. How does the knuffel help the child, and vice versa? Why do we need knuffels and other toys? Why, when we grow up and stop playing, is it common for the knuffel to be put away? How does the knuffel continue living on its own? Why is it important that we always keep playing? What are adult ways of play or make believe? What is the essence of the continuing relationship between the human and the knuffel? And finally, how does that feed into art?
Why, out of all the knuffels that I was given, did I choose Knuf to be my favourite knuffel? Maybe it was because they were so soft, easy to hold and thus easy to take with me everywhere, or maybe Knuf played on one of my senses, reminding me of the safeness and comfortability of my home. Or maybe it was because of their form? You see, Knuf is a very specific type of knuffel. They do not represent an animal like most, but instead are made in a very simple design: just a square of cloth with a ball for a head, and with a long hat. They have four little balls attached to all the corners of their cloth body, suggesting hands and feet. Without arms or legs, and without a face.
This simple and maybe for an adult’s eyes also slightly ambiguous design stems from the philosophies of Rudolf Steiner (1861 - 1925). Part of Steiner’s pedagogy was the Waldorf-doll: a doll made of natural materials with an intentionally simple appearance: just like Knuf. The idea behind this neutral expression is that of an invitation for the child to create the identity of the doll, to fill it with their imagination. (1)
In 1951, Donald Woods Winnicott (1896 - 1971), a British psychoanalyst and paediatrician, coined the term ‘transitional object’. (2) He noted that as a child grows up, and thus as the periods in-between breastfeeding grow bigger, "there comes a tendency on the part of the infant to weave other-than-me objects into the personal pattern". (3) The infant searches for an object that offers the same comfortability as the mother’s breast, and finds a blanket, a knuffel, or another object of such sorts, and they use it when falling asleep or in between breastfeeding. As this object facilitates the development from being in a symbiotic relationship with the mother towards becoming an individual, it also becomes a defence against the anxiety of being alone. (4) That is the transitional object.
The idea of an intermediate space is vital to a lot of Winnicott’s work. For example, in his paper Fear of Breakdown, he elaborates on the space within which he sees his patients often exist: in-between what has already happened and what the patient fears is going to happen. (5) Similarly, when speaking of transitional objects, he says that "[they] are not part of the infant’s body yet are not fully recognised as belonging to external reality", (6) implying that the place of the object is neither inside nor outside. However, the infant is able to recognise this chosen object as "not-me", and therefore Winnicott coins a synonym to the term ‘transitional object’ namely "the first not-me possession". (7) Another example of an intermediate space in Winnicott’s work is when he is talking about the transition from breast to knuffel: he recognises that there is a space that exists in-between the two when he says that the transitional object only substitutes for the breast to some extent, as it is not the breast, but stands for the breast. In his eyes, the infant can already fathom that the object that they have chosen is a symbol for the safety of the mother and thus "the child can already distinguish between fantasy and fact". (8)
Winnicott built on the work of Melanie Klein (1882 - 1960), who was also a psychoanalyst known for her work in analysis of the child. In 1921, Klein brought forth her theory of object relations, (9) where she proposed the existence of an external object and an internal object. An external object is for example the breast that exists in the external world, and the internal object would then be the child’s mental or emotional image of that breast. The child has taken the object inside themselves, making it an internal object, and then projects aspects of the self onto it, colouring it in with their loves, fears, and everything in-between. This does of course not only happen with the breast but with all objects in the external world: "A complex interaction continues throughout life between the world of internalised figures and objects and in the real world (which are also in the mind) via repeated cycles of projection and introjection." (10) Winnicott saw Klein’s complex, Platonic space of projected internal objects that interact with external objects, and named it the transitional space. The transitional object exists in this invisible yet emotionally tangible space.
In all three theories, Steiner’s, Winnicott’s and Klein’s, the idea that the young child is already capable of imagining is central. Steiner designed the Waldorf doll to invite the child to create the doll’s personality, and Winnicott investigated the infant’s capability to create substitutions, or rather symbols. Klein explains in her object relations that the infant is capable to reflect on the internal object, imagining it, making it evolve on its own within their imagination. When I take Klein’s object relations into consideration, I start to understand how Knuf has become an internal object, an object that is part-of-me. And, even though somewhat paradoxically, Winnicott sometimes called the transitional object the first other-than-me or not-me possession, he teaches me that there is a space in-between the external world and my inner world (the spaces where Klein’s external -and internal object exist). Maybe at first when I chose Knuf I understood that they were not-me, an external object, but as time passed, I internalised Knuf and started to reflect on them. In doing so, I animated them (coming from the Latin anima, meaning soul), and through them: myself. And so began our affectionate and complex relationship.
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(1) As seen and beautifully stated in Newson and Newson 1979, p. 15: "In general, toys which have a high degree of functional versatility also have a quality of being non-descript; and it is precisely because of this that they stand-in so successfully for whatever specific object the child has in mind. The very fact that a toy is ambiguous allows a child to use her imagination in filling out the details."
(2) Winnicott’s paper ‘Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena’ was originally delivered to the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1951, but the final version was published in his book Playing and Reality in 1971. All references in this dissertation are to the book in its 2005 edition.
(3) Winnicott 2005, p. 4.
(4) Winnicott 2005, p. 5.
(5) Winnicott 1974, pp. 87–95.
(6) Winnicott 2005, p. 3.
(7) Winnicott 2005, p. 3. Yet another terminology is ‘comfort object’.
(8) Winnicott 2005, p. 8.
(9) Klein 1997, p. 12.
(10) Bott Spillius and others 2011.
So where do we go from here? As I grew up, the process of animation did not remain limited to the transitional object. Knuf and I were still joined at the hip, but now other externalities had also become incredibly important: other toys and objects, family, friends, etc. My fondest memories will forever be my sister and I playing together, just with each other. We used to play a game called ‘sisters’, in which we played that we were sisters, running away from evil. We didn’t need anything, just our minds. As a child grows up their imagination often expands in this way: toys are still used, but not needed, as now their imagination provides them with all that they need. They make shadow animals with their hands, hear voices in the wind, or see things in the clouds: they attribute consciousness to things that (most) adults deem inanimate, and thus they are able to use anything as an imaginable thing, even something as simple as moving air. If the mission of the transitional object - to help shape the infant into an individual that realises they are separate from the external world with its objects - is completed, then why do I still need Knuf? If we already have all of that limitless imagination, why do we still need toys?
This urges the question: what is a toy? "Anything is a toy if I choose to describe what I am doing with it as play", said an unidentified, twentieth-century English toy designer. (11) Which subsequently asks for a broader understanding of what ‘play’ means.
When I think about playing, the image of my sister and I ‘pretending’ to be sisters in our fantasy world is the first image that springs to mind. I remember that we were crawling in front of the house and put shoes on our feet, but also on our hands. And because we were playing in a different world, one parallel to reality, those ten meters in front of the house felt like a much longer distance, in which we fought many battles. In this way, play stretches out time and place, which, just for a while, makes all of the impossible very possible, albeit in a fantasy world. In this image lie perhaps the two most basic aspects of play. Firstly, that it is fun, (12) and secondly that it is transformative. It is likely that the reason why this childhood memory is my happiest, is simply because it was such never-ceasing fun. We were entertaining ourselves, we were happy, we were free, the world was at our feet. Play has to be fun in order to commit yourself. If it is not fun it becomes something else completely: it becomes boring, or an obligation. But if it is, if you manage to devote yourself, play is truly transformative. For example: clearly my sister and I were sisters already, so then why did we need to play our game ‘sisters’? By pretending, we learned to be sisters in a different reality also, confirming our relationship with each other, reaching different levels of understanding. Or as John (1925 - 2010) and Elisabeth (1929 - 2014) Newson, two developmental psychologists, beautifully said: "Play is perhaps the most serious and significant of all human activities. (...) Fundamentally, play seems to be a partly random and infinitely flexible activity which affords an opportunity for the extension and reorientation of both mind and spirit."(13)
So, the transformative aspect of play enables the broadening and deepening of a person. If this is the definition of play, what are the implications? One of the effects of play is a means of profound personal expression. Because in the play-scape, contrary to the external world, there is no agreed- upon system executed through rules, but rather a structure that the child is able to discard at any moment, because it is designed solely by themselves: they are able to fill this space with their own imagination. The choices that they make are subsequently visible for the external world, within themselves and within the object of their play (think Klein). In this way they animate the world around them, giving motion to motionless things. The child becomes an individual more and more: because they form their distinguishing character or identity through this playful expression. They can test their imagination on the world, and then learn to adjust their choices according to the feedback that the external world sends back to them.
Another effect of the transformative aspect of play is more physical. Imagination expresses itself in thought, and thereby is classified as being something of the mind. Yet play is strangely bodily. The young child needs their body to express the products of their imagination, for example imitating a witch conjured up in the mind by using a broomstick to fly as one, thereby bodily enacting the process of imagination. (Heksje spelen, or ‘Playing witches’ was another game that my sister and I liked to play in the wake of reading the Harry Potter books). With this I imply that the body is not solely instrumental in order for the fantasy world to manifest itself, but also that the mind and body are a unified system, woven together. By playing, as in the case of heksje spelen, we, and children in general, exercise their muscles and, by accretion of such episodes of play, build their body and bodily awareness. The transformative part of play thus affects the spirit-mind-body-system as a whole, not just the mind and spirit. So, I would slightly alter the Newsons’ statement to say that play is an opportunity for the extension and reorientation of the whole spirit-mind-body system.
For a minute, think back to Winnicott’s felicitous choice of words when he said: "there comes a tendency on the part of the infant to weave other-than-me objects into the personal pattern", as quoted in the first chapter. To blur the (made up) borders even more: perhaps the child and the toy are woven together in the same way as the mind-spirit-body system is. Does the act of playing teach us that the concept of duality of mind and body, of reality and fantasy, is invalid? Perhaps instead there are no borders, just one large transitional space that we move through collectively.
It is because of the relation of the spirit-mind-body system to the external world, however, that relationship may be, that we need toys. The playing child lives in this space in-between the external and internal world. That is what play is: an in-between space, where the child comes to be themselves, where they are free and ever-changing. The toy becomes the anchor for the child to come back to after long travels in their fantastical reality, and it is because of this anchor, this mirror, this safe haven, that play can be continuously developed. Through play, raw materials can become instruments: experimentation with them can become entertainment, pleasure, ritual. Or, as the Newsons put it: "Perhaps because the human imagination is so extensive and complex, however, children seem to look for solid and tangible reference points, as it were, from which to range more freely." And then, using a beautiful example to illustrate this: "Just as language makes subtle and complicated thought possible, perhaps toys do the same for play." (14) This is what Knuf did for me: they helped me to translate myself to the external world.
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(11) As quoted in Newson and Newson 1979, p. 13.
(12) See also Rosen 2020, pp. 15–16.
(13) Newson and Newson 1979, p. 11.
(14 )Newson and Newson 1979, p. 12.
As an infant it was one-way traffic: I took the external Knuf into my internal world, which helped me to understand my individuality. As I grew up a more entangled cycle was developed, where the idea of Knuf and my relationship with them continuously evolved as I played with them again and again, using them as a mirror and as an anchor in the external world to return to. Our interactions became more intricate through these "repeated cycles of projection and introjection" (according to Klein as quoted in chapter one). How did our relationship evolve during adolescence and what does it look like today, now that we are both adults?
What happens when we stop playing? I still remember the day that I realised I wasn’t a child anymore. It must have been when I was about eleven or twelve years old. It was preluded by that strange phase in which I was very aware of being a child amidst grown-ups. Mostly because the person that I had been playing with all my life had stopped playing already: my two-year older sister. She went to high school where she learned about adult life, she had adult homework and adolescent new friends. She slowly started to try out more adult things: learning to cook, picking out her own clothes, discovering new music, reading books that were informative rather than fictive. Piecing together her new identity meant, as for any young adolescent, that she started to look for examples outside of our family. It was because of her example of growing up that I knew where my life was headed. The seemingly infinite fantasy world of our play would, if I too stopped playing, be left behind, making room for new learning processes, learning how to live and cope with reality. On that fateful day, when I was about eleven or twelve, I picked up my dolls, played with them, and realised that it did not work anymore. That was the last time that I played as a child. And shortly thereafter the dolls and other toys were put in the corner of the room: they were now to be admired as objects.
Not just toys are stored when we become adults. Is it even usual for the favourite knuffel or the transitional object to be put away. Maybe it is because a sort of aversion is created for this object: now that visits to fantasy worlds are stopped, and the knuffel is not internalised in the same way anymore, the inanimateness and mortality of this thing suddenly become very real. The internal image of the knuffel is completed, and it is as if it breaks off from the fantasy world: now the adult can look at the knuffel from a distance as they have become an object on their own. The understanding that the soul in this toy is solely the adult’s causes an understanding of mortality, and make-believe fails: the part of their soul that has been separated and put into this knuffel, is almost stuck because it cannot be played with anymore, nor evolve, and therefore has somehow come to a dead end.
Perhaps because of a subconscious awareness of that finiteness of life, growing up gives rise to the idea that we need to move on to more serious things than knuffels. (15) There is something else that my sister and her other adolescent friends did as I watched them grow up, perhaps the most significant, the most meaningful, and an antidote to mortality: she fell in love for the first time. In adolescence, hormones become more active, and playing takes on new forms: romantically and sexually. The game that was once played with a knuffel now becomes reality, as partners in love form a bond of spirit- mind-body intimateness. They mirror themselves in each other, and the game of taking the external other inwards and forming an internal image of them is continued. In romantic relationships, just as in the relationship with the knuffel, the other is a reflection of yourself. Perhaps sex is playfulness, where the partners spirit-mind-body connection is confirmed, and where bodies come to be transformed as if they were materials.
Yet Knuf and I still cuddle every night: they have not been hidden away in an attic or closet. Quite the opposite: every morning when I make my bed, I make sure to tuck Knuf in, with their round head and long hat looking over the covers into the room. This is because even though I cannot travel into that fantasy world with them anymore and so I cannot access that young part of my soul which they embody, I still deeply feel that Knuf is an extension of myself, and taking care of them in this way feels therapeutic: by still caring for Knuf I learn to be empathetic towards a part-of-me. Taking care of Knuf is self-care.
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(15) Newson and Newson 1979, p. 234. I will come back to this in chapter 5.
With our coming of age, Knuf started to look older and scruffier. When my mother gifted Knuf to me as an infant, they were constructed of a soft, white towelling fabric, but because we cuddled so much the looped threads that are characteristic for towelling fabric are all gone and only the base fabric to which these threads were attached to is left. Even this is now brown-greyish and has many holes and loose bits. The balls that suggested hands and feet I have cuddled away as well. Another reason for their raggedness is because they were never properly washed, as my grandfather, who is a physician, always said that an unwashed knuffel is like a natural vaccination: you pick your nose, you play in the sandbox or run around outside, and all the while you are cuddling this knuffel. If you then don’t wash them, you are continuously exposed to a small number of bacteria and viruses, thus building resistance to them.
My mother, who is a very skilled knuffel-doctor, managed to manoeuvre a second layer of towelling fabric inside of Knuf, which she attached with very precise stitches. Through the now very fragile original layer of Knuf, you can see this second layer. She did this to make sure that Knuf would never be completely devoured by my love, and it also meant that I could continue playing with Knuf in whatever way I wanted to. Knuf to me was a symbol of protection, not just physical protection from bacteria and viruses, but also mentally: they comforted me and helped me to understand the world. When I look at Knuf now their material wear and tear remind me of this safeness still, but our bond is a very subjective one, and not everyone looks at Knuf and recognises their qualities as memories of love. How do others see Knuf today with their raggedness, in contrast to when they were new? What do these somatic traces add to Knuf’s value?
Knuf’s wear and tear evokes one of two reactions in people when I show Knuf to them. They either look at Knuf and recognise the nostalgia over past childhood, as they see their scruffiness and understand it as memories of touch and imagination, or (and this is the majority of those people) they think that they are a bit gross or weird, probably because Knuf’s weathering evokes thoughts of decay and uncleanliness. I know that I cannot look at Knuf objectively in this aspect anymore because I will always find Knuf sweet, but if I put myself in the shoes of one of those friends that find them weird (from now referred to as, the friend), I can understand that there is a difference in how a child sees Knuf and how the friend views them. So why can Knuf and my bond with them be perceived as gross or weird?
One idea that springs to mind is that of Steiner’s Waldorf doll design. As explained in the first chapter, the purpose of this design is that of an invitation for imagination. For a child, whose imagination is still sweet and innocent, the doll will be sweet and innocent. But when the child evolves into an adult, because of the patterns of expectations that come with the grown-up world, and perhaps because of a reduced sense of imagination due to having seen and having lived in so much of reality, their mind is more equipped to envision the worst. Then, Steiner’s design can become uncanny. The absence of eyes, for example, can conjure up the feeling that there is no invitation to connect, which leaves the doll unsympathetic and makes the viewer lose power over it. A stifling absence of a glance characterizes many horror films that never actually show the monsters that hunt the characters (for example in Bird Box, 2018): because what you don’t see can hurt you, your imagination can fill it in with the scariest details. Likewise, the adult familiarity with what a human figure should look like, can make the lack of eyes or arms or legs jarring with the adult’s expectation of a person, and can make them perceive a Knuf as either a monstrosity or an inanimate, abstracted doll.
If Knuf hadn’t been cuddled as much, or maybe if they had been washed occasionally, people would respond very differently. It is because they are raggedy, brown, used and dirty, that a very common response of the friend is that they think Knuf looks like a voodoo doll. Voodoo dolls are used in dark magic rituals, where pins are stuck in it whilst imagining the person that you want to curse. Magical rituals and the way that a child plays games have the use of symbols - this stands for that - and the establishment of game rules in common, and so taking into consideration that both Knuf and the common voodoo doll are raggedy, there is understandably a strange friction that happens when my friend sees me cuddle with what to them looks like an object that is used for curses. Moreover, imagining that the voodoo doll is someone that you want to hurt, shows the darker side of animating a doll: this is not something that is done lovingly. A contemporary version of the voodoo doll is perhaps the horcrux in the famous Harry Potter books: it plays on the possibility to store part of your soul in an object. Only here also, creating a horcrux is seen as the darkest magic there is. I have always thought that it is uncanny that something that so many children do with their toys can in adult life be translated to something so evil. Even though my process of internalising Knuf is over, they still hold that part of my soul from when I was a child, like a horcrux, only lovingly. So, animating an object is seen not just in child’s play but also in magical practice, arguably an adult, disquieting variant of play.
Whereas most adults lose the child’s way of playing, strangely, I still have an intimate relationship with my Knuf. Yet in adult life we still all split our personalities into objects, it is just that the relationship is much less intimate. An adult might, for example, particularly identify with a favourite piece of clothing. Maybe it is more about the fact that Knuf is an object from my childhood, and that because I am now grown up or because my transition into an individual is complete, me still using this object makes my friends wonder how much of a grown-up I actually am.
It is because it is apparent that so much love and energy and time have been devoted to them, because of the footprints of my animation of them, that the friend responded in the way that they did. The extensive history of cuddling has changed their texture, colour, shape, scent, etc. Just like a living being, Knuf has been through their own transformation, there is a certain energetic vitality (16) in them. This is why Knuf reminded the friend of a voodoo doll and why Knuf might be a little scary: because they are an inanimate object that has so clearly been animated. Moreover, Knuf can, like a living being, carry and transfer diseases. They even respond to intimacy, for example when their big, round face becomes softer and shinier due to the oils on my hands. Aren’t Knuf’s material and transformative capacities a form of animateness, of agency?
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(16) Bennett 2010, p. 5.
Throughout the previous chapters I have explained that play is often seen as an activity for children. The Newsons beautifully formulated that "[play] has the significance of having made a contribution to every adult growing up, yet it is undervalued by children and adults alike in that both have the sense of moving on to more important or real matters, epitomised by the repeated pairing of the words 'just playing' ". (17) I certainly feel that there is a sense among most adults that being playful would feel as if taking a step back, regressing or retreating. I then went on to explain that adults do still play, and I named the examples of ritual, magic and sex. Yet all three of these activities, too, are often seen as respectively unimportant, frivolous or taboo.
But play is still serious, and so it can and should be a valued activity for adults. In fact, it might just be one of the most life-defining activities. Play is universal and as old as mankind itself. Johan Huizinga (1872 – 1945), a Dutch historian and founder of modern cultural history, opened his book Homo Ludens, a study of the play element of culture, with a statement saying just this and more, as he points to a general cultural and even biological substratum: "Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them playing." (18).
Utilitarian objects that indicate rituals and play have been recovered all throughout history and finding out about their existence always gives me the thrill of feeling connected to something blatantly real and primitive. For example: palaeolithic flutes made of bone were found in the Swabian Alps in Germany, dating back an astonishing 43,000 years ago. (19) Similarly, in the Lascaux caves in France paintings that are estimated to be at least 18,000 years old were found, and, according to recent findings, were focal points that generated striking echoes which in turn determined the location of the paintings. This suggests that the combined visual and musical arts were part of a ritualistic Art-form of life already back then. (20) Another example is the skilfully crafted spinning top that was found in King Tutankhamun’s grave in Egypt, dating back to 1300 BC. We have always played, and everywhere.
Huizinga then goes on to say that just as playing children develop into adults, a culture unfolds and arises from play, but that they lose their playfulness as they grow older: "The play-element recedes into the background", and then, giving an explanation to the formation of ritual, "being absorbed for the most part in the sacred sphere. The remainder crystallises as knowledge: folklore, poetry, philosophy, or in the various forms of judicial and social life. The original play-element is then almost completely hidden behind cultural phenomena." (21)
In the foreword of Homo Ludens, Huizinga explains his objective with the book: to bring play back into the forefront of culture. And in stating this aim he admits that play as discussed in his book is "(...) approached historically, not scientifically". (22) Recently, in academic circles, the lack of a scientific underpinning seems to have become the biggest criticism on Homo Ludens. As Koen B. Tanghe explains in his article Homo Ludens (1938) and the Crisis in the Humanities, in which he dissects Huizinga’s ideas: "(...) human play is at least as deeply rooted in our biological nature and in the animal kingdom, as human cultures are in play". (23) Tijs Goldschimdt, an evolutionary-biologist (1953 - ) also criticises Huizinga for choosing to discuss only the cultural aspects of play and leaving the biological aspect aside: "[Huizinga] reaffirms my idea that humans are consistently seen as separate from nature". (24) Goldschmidt explains that play is not just a human activity, but something that belongs to the whole of the animal kingdom, and that trying to understand the nature of play without elaborating on this biological side, is what he calls "vague thinking". Although critical of Huizinga, he expresses admiration to the point of applying the cultural theory also to biology: "According to Huizinga our culture is permeated by play (...) That could yield a lot of fun in nature. Just because a bird sings to drive rivals out of his territory, or to attract a mate, does not mean that he cannot have fun while singing". (25)
So, Tanghe and Goldschmidt, among others, (26) have explained the main problem with Huizinga’s Homo Ludens: play is not just a cultural or social phenomenon, it is also deeply rooted in our biology, in something more primordial. Neglecting this is similar to for example rejecting the importance of the roots of a plant, and only being interested in its flowers and fruits. Huizinga does briefly mention the biological aspect of play in his foreword and at the start of the first chapter, but declares that answering scientific questions about play does not fit within the aim of Homo Ludens. Although Huizinga’s book is rightfully iconic and ground-breaking in describing the cultural phenomenon of play, I also find it lacking in another crucial aspect: personal identity. Especially because what influences the formation of identity stands somewhere in-between the biological aspect of play (nature), yet it is also heavily influenced by cultural phenomena (nurture), and thus as a subject it could have found a home in Homo Ludens.
In childhood play is credited for its facilitation of forming a self (as I explained in the first two chapters), which makes it a highly personal activity. I understand that the groundwork for the creation of a persona is done by the child, but our identities are never finished. They are fluid and always changing. So surely as adults we can still use play to learn about ourselves?
To illustrate this, I want to name an important and personal example. As you may have noticed by now, throughout this dissertation I have used the gender neutral they/them/their pronouns when referring to Knuf. Knuf has always been gender neutral, but not in a conscious way, they just were. Maybe Knuf’s form (Steiner’s Waldorf doll design), has been of influence here, seeing as Knuf is an abstract stand-in for a human body, but is not a direct representation of it. Knuf is not blatantly obvious of one sex or the other, as opposed to so many other toys, for example, a barbie doll. (27) Knuf has no sex, and thus they invited me to imagine and create their identity, free from the gender- expectations that are connected to sex, free from even considering Knuf within the realm of the gender-binary.
As I said, I was not conscious of this as a child, Knuf was just Knuf. It wasn’t until I wrote a children's story as part of an artwork, with Knuf as the main character, that I had to decide how I would refer to them. I re-read a lot of children’s stories from my childhood and noticed that very often if the sex of a character is unimportant or not relative to the story, the writers still use the pronouns he/him/his. It felt strange: Knuf isn’t a male, so why would I use these pronouns. This investigation into the gender-binary that followed, made me realise how completely unnatural it is to think that just because someone is of a certain sex, this would determine their identity.
Furthermore, play is not solely individual. Child’s play is not only educational for the child but also for the adult, and vice versa: the child imitates the adult, and the adult comprehends their own psychology by looking at child’s play. Marina Warner, an English writer of fiction, criticism and history, focusing on studies of art, myths, symbols and fairytales, explained this beautifully: "It is not so much that the child understand what he or she imitates, but that we can grasp who we are by looking into the glass that the child holds up to us. (...) It is we who, contemplating a child testing out identities, search analogous possibilities for ourselves, and then, in reciprocal play with our own projections, learn who we are." (28) Moreover, Jeffery H. Goldstein, professor in the Department of Socials and Organised Psychology at the University of Utrecht, explained that through looking at child’s play not only can we grasp the psychology of the adult, but also the psychology of the group: "Children enact the gender roles of parents, nurses, teachers and soldiers. If these did not matter to adults, they would not matter to children." (29)
Because of an adult me writing this story about Knuf, I realised that through play we can, no matter what age, externalise what is personal, investigate and express our thoughts, and learn to communicate these. I re-learned that identity is ever-changing, and that facilitating this evolution through play can help to deal with the transforming external world. As Winnicott said: "It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self." (30) The lessons that we learn through playing with the world around us, by questioning reality, by imagining another, we can take back with us to reality, to then imagine and create a better world collectively. The impossible does not trouble the playing child. And neither should it trouble adults.
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(17) Newson and Newson 1979, p. 234.
(18) Huizinga 2003, p. 1.
(19) Conard, Malina & Münzel 2009.
(20) Conard, Malina & Münzel 2009.
(21) Huizinga 2003, pp. 46-47.
(22) Huizinga 2003, foreword.
(23) Tanghe 2016.
(24) Roodnat 2007. My own translation of: "Dat bevestigt mijn idee dat de mens consequent van de natuur wordt gescheiden". For a further elaboration of his ideas see: Goldschmidt 2009.
(25) Again, my own translation of: "Dat een vogel zingt om rivalen uit zijn territorium te verdrijven of seksuele partners te lokken, betekent nog niet dat hij geen lol in dat zingen zou kunnen hebben."
(26) See also: Sutton-Smith 2001.
(27) Hodgins 2014, pp. 782–807.
(28) Warner 2005, pp. 14–15.
(29) Goldstein 1999, p. 2.
(30) Winnicott 2005, pp. 72–73.
Using my relationship with Knuf as an example, we have seen that playing, and playing with toys, is vital for shaping the spirit-mind-body system. As a child, I chose Knuf from the external world and internalised them. Through this process they facilitated my transformation into an individual being, and in return I animated them, by making them a part-of-me. So in children, toys function as instruments of expression. Now that I am an adult, what play-things serve as an invitation for me to use them with my imagination, to travel into a transitional space with them, into a fantasy world, and thereby achieve change in myself and give birth to an external animated object? In adulthood, what are the objects of play?
The process of the creation of the relationship between Knuf and me, is an equivalent to how an artist creates a work of art. The artist chooses materials to express their ideas. As in the case of Knuf, who is of the world, but changed by my internalisation of them, the materials come from the external world, but the artist transforms them and animates them with their own thoughts, feelings and ideas, infusing them with meaning. During this process of making, the artwork bounces from external -to internal world: the artist experiments, steps back to take the experiment in and assesses, deciding what works and what doesn’t, to then continue and return to the animated object, in the process changing it once more. Equally, Knuf also lives within the transitional space, in-between the external world and internal world. Similar to these ideas of Klein and Winnicott, John Dewey (1859 - 1952), an American philosopher, psychologist and pedagogue, said in his book Art as Experience (1934) that "a poem and picture present material passed through the alembic of personal experience", (31) and therefore are "the individual contribution which makes the object something new". (32)
In adolescence Knuf and I stopped traveling into our fantasy world, which created more distance between us: we were now two individuals, separate, but still deeply connected. There was a certain break: I realised that my influence on Knuf’s entity was ‘finished’, because Knuf was now separately living in the external world: they expressed meaning through themselves, and I could talk about them as an independent entity. Similarly, there comes a point where the artist stops working on the artwork and considers it as ‘finished’. The spell of the fantasy world is lifted.
At the same time, the artist draws the curtain for external gazes. The disconnect between artists and their creation implies that the artwork has its own existence and agency. So, by taking their distance from the animated material, the artist opens the artwork to the public, the audience. It now exists in a shared external world.
Then, when the artwork is shown in this shared space, the audience internalises it and finds associations and interpretations within themselves and projects those back onto the artwork in the external world. Dewey explains that art creates an experience that means something different to each of us, because of what he calls ‘continuity’: how we have been acted upon by the environment in the past, shapes who we are, and subsequently influences how we in turn act upon the environment. "(...) the process of living is continuous; it possesses continuity because it is an everlastingly renewed process of acting upon the environment and being acted upon (...) The world we have experienced becomes an integral part of the self that acts and is acted upon in further experience". (33)
Dewey does not stop there. He goes on to explain that "its [the experience’s] subjectmatter gains expressiveness because of cumulative continuity". (34) So, it is not just the receiver of the experience that changes through interactions with an object, the object itself also intensifies because of the interaction with the audience. Dewey called such an object an "expressive object". (35) The experience of the audience then adds to the meaning or expressiveness of the artwork. I even venture to say that the object actually changes by the projection of the audience, which might be energetic, but in some cases also tactile and resulting in material change, as in the case of me cuddling Knuf. So, adults can still play: it is in art that they find their transformative and transforming toys.
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(33) Dewey 2005, p. 108.
(34) Dewey 2005, p. 108.
(35) Dewey 2005, p. 85.
The theory of the expressive object is in line with my feeling of Knuf having expressiveness on their own. Similarly, the artist expresses themselves through the artwork, shares the work which then on its own acts upon the audience. Both Knuf and the artwork are expressive objects, speaking their truth separate from their makers. Dewey’s expressive object is an adult version of Winnicott’s transitional object, because the experience that it creates transforms its receiver, and they in turn project back into the object, adding to its meaning. If we allow them to, artworks can work for adults’ play just as toys work for children’s play.
The relationship between the maker, the object and the audience is, through play and interaction, important for all three. For the maker, or the child, or the artist, the object is an instrument of expression and communication, as they externalise their personal ideas and emotions. The maker creates the object, or Knuf, or the artwork, animating it, giving it expressiveness and a life of its own. And in turn, the audience, or the friend, can internalise the animated, expressive object and through communicating their personal associations can understand the psychology of the maker, of themselves, of the group, and of the object. When we all use play and toys to enter a shared transitional space, this can be a place of revolution. The bounds are those of your own imagination.
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