Defiant Play and Cultural Resistance
Play, in the face of fascism, refuses death and asserts life
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Play has long been a fundamental part of human life, deeply embedded in the fabric of non-European and communal societies. It was not merely a pastime for children but served as a crucial means for fostering social bonds, teaching, and healing. Play transcended the boundaries between work, ritual, and recreation, and was a vital act of resilience against hardship and oppression. Yet, as Western hegemony—capitalist exploitation and colonial domination—spread, this deep connection between play and communal life was systematically severed.
The colonization of time and everyday life
Western hegemony looted not just land and resources—it looted time and human experience itself. Its colonization of everyday life recomposed the rhythms of existence, especially in the relationship between labor and leisure. What was once an organic and integrated part of communal life was fragmented into productive labor on the one hand, and commodified leisure on the other. Time, in the Western hegemonic worldview, became a scarce resource—something to be bought, sold, and measured.
In pre-industrial European societies, as well as in Indigenous cultures worldwide, play was interwoven into daily life. From seasonal festivals in Europe to the traditional games of Indigenous cultures, play was not an interruption from serious life but an essential component of its meaning. Yet, as capitalist relations of production took hold, particularly with the rise of industrialization and its spread through colonization and imperialism, play became increasingly marginalized and confined to childhood or brief moments of sanctioned leisure for adults. Human beings became reduced to colonized subjects and laboring bodies serving the needs of productivity, while time lost its cultural significance as a teacher and guide and became an asset controlled by the hegemon.
The colonization of play
Western colonizers sought to maximize the exploitation of land, people, and resources even before it was called "capitalism." In their way were stewards of the land and resistance. For the colonizers, their first, final, and only solutions were enslavement and genocide. This included the destruction of Indigenous cultures and their modes of existence. Indigenous forms of play and leisure were either eradicated or assimilated into colonial frameworks. These joyous and playful activities were no longer valued as integral to community-building or ritualistic healing but were redefined under colonial logic as "primitive" or "idle." The colonial project sought to erase Indigenous identities by breaking the cultural bonds that tied them to land, community, and cultural practices. Play lost its cultural and traditional significance.
Under settler-colonial regimes, leisure—including play—became something to be earned or purchased through toil. Instead of an actively co-created collective activity, entertainment was commodified and sold back to the colonized and oppressed as a pre-packaged consumer product to be passively and individually consumed. This commodification not only displaced play from its communal roots but also alienated people from their natural human impulses for creativity and joy.
Alienation from human experience
The transformation of play into a commodified product is part of a greater process of alienation inherent in capitalist and colonial systems. Capitalist labor estranges people from their humanity, reducing them to cogs in the machinery of production. This alienation extends beyond the labor process into all aspects of life, including leisure. Time, under capitalism, is divided into "productive" and "non-productive" segments, with non-productive time being dismissed as wasteful unless it serves the function of recovery for further labor.
In this context, play becomes framed as an interruption to the capitalist production process—unless it can be commodified or harnessed for profit. The struggle over time is a colonial and class struggle. Oppressed and marginalized people who sell their time, bodies, and labor for a wage are deprived of the very time necessary for spontaneous acts of joy, creativity, and community-building. As a result, their bodies and minds are too exhausted, traumatized, and injured to take up time and space outside of work.
Play amidst horror
Yet, despite the crushing weight of colonial and capitalist structures, marginalized communities continue to find ways to reclaim play as an act of resistance. In places like Palestine, children still seek moments of play amidst the constant threat of violence and genocide. In the face of unimaginable horror, adults use traditional dance to defy the very forces that seek to erase them. Genocide extinguishes life, but for those still alive, it also seeks to extinguish joy. Play, in the face of fascism, refuses death and asserts life.
Rights of the child
The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in the world, with one of its key provisions being the "right to play." It's no coincidence that the United States—the ruler of Western hegemony—remains the only U.N. Member State not party to the convention. The U.S. will never limit its own power to inflict harm, even on children, particularly those from non-European backgrounds. Yet, it will readily weaponize international law to attack its enemies. The impact of this colonial logic is painfully clear when we witness the ongoing genocide of Palestinian children.
Cultural resistance
Colonialism dehumanizes and fragments oppressed peoples. But culture, art, play, and other creative and collective engagements help them reclaim their humanity and reconstitute their fractured and shared identities. Revolutionary movements throughout history have incorporated art, music, and play into their organizing practices. These acts of creativity refuse to submit to the dehumanizing forces of Western hegemony and build the collective spirit necessary for its resistance.
Play as anti-colonial education
Play as a mode of learning stands in direct opposition to the rigid structures imposed by capitalist and colonial education systems. People learn through exploration, experimentation, and communal engagement rather than hyperindividualization, rote memorization, competition, and passive absorption of information. Learners create their own knowledge, drawing on lived experience. In turn, they own their experience and knowledge.
The right to play
Reclaiming play in capitalist and colonized spaces also reclaims time, space, and our bodies. The Occupy Wall Street movement, for example, transformed settler city spaces into sites of play, art, collective learning, and resistance. These reclaimed spaces defied the constraints of capitalist time, allowing people to engage with one another not as consumers, workers, or colonized subjects, but as fully realized human beings.
Reclaiming the future
Even under the boot of Western hegemony, play creates cracks in the system. It reweaves the threads of community, joy, and connection, offering glimpses of a different world. Play is radical. It halts the relentless march of capitalist time and carves out space where human beings can imagine new ways of being together. It reignites our collective capacity to imagine new futures. The denial of play—and control over our movements—was one of our earliest encounters with power and policing. Play shaped our understanding of freedom. Whether it's envisioning a new tomorrow or ensuring we have a tomorrow worth fighting for, there is no future without play.
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*There is a hole between the way that pre capitalist colonial societies already worshipped power and hierarchy, capitalism wasn't special in that way.
My only issue with this analysis is that I feel there is a hole between the way that puts capitalist colonial societies already worshipped power and hierarchy. You only have to look at the slogans of the 1905 revolution, that were largely begging the 'little father' tsar Nicholas to save them.
Russia was already an empire of course, but I'm still interested in teasing out the gaps between capitalist logics and domination under non capitalist colonial hierarchies from the perspective of the oppressed.
Play and festivals etc still existed in pre capitalist European cultures but they worshipped hierarchy and their masters. How did the brain worms go do deep?
Three are my questions what do you think