I Am Jack's Essay... I Will Civilize You

Johan Huizinga offers a historical approach to the concept of play in his book Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. In his chapter regarding his theory of Play and Contest as Civilizing Functions, he suggests ways in which culture develops from forms of play: “Culture arises in the form of play, that it is played from the very beginning” (Huizinga, 46). Through this, he tells us that play is older than culture. He says that culture is not sufficient enough to tell us how play came about, by saying animals have not waited around for humans to teach them how to play. Play is something that is learned and that brings about a culture within a certain group. This notion of play brings groups together in civilizing ways in which they carry themselves through everyday life. In the foreword, Huizinga states, “It was not my objective to define the place of play among all the other manifestations of culture but rather to ascertain how far culture itself bears the character of play”. There are many forms of play to engage in and many ways to analyze the context of that play, as demonstrated in the differences between Huizinga’s theories and Chuck Palahniuk’s view of play in this novel Fight Club.

Palahniuk’s novel displays his particular forms of play more as originating for more internal reasons rather than external ones, which I found intriguing. We see a chronic insomniac man fighting to find his inner passion through life as well as to seek a new society that does not place the same structural restrictions. Fight Club has the participants initially engaging in a form of play aimed at the deconstruction of the self and civilization for the sake of progress of the individual, questioning traditional assumptions about certainty, identity and truth seeking, to expose contradictions in society. Palahniuk builds the story to demonstrate that the deconstruction of the self must take place before changes in civilization can occur; the same way in Huizinga puts the formation of play prior to the creation of civilization.

In relation to Fight Club and Huizinga’s theories, we begin to find tension through the different ways in which they utilize play. Huizinga’s idea of play analyzes a more external view of how society uses things such as sports and socialization as play, considers only the outward appearance of the product of the game, not necessarily the impact on individual players. Huizinga shows ‘play’ as games that many like to participate in. He states that, “ ‘play together’ has an essentially antithetical character. As a rule it is played between two parties or teams” (Huizinga, 47). This is the type of play we see through sports, business and many other types of competitive socialization. “The picture changes as soon as play demands application, knowledge, skill, courage and strength. The more ‘difficult’ the game the greater the tension in the beholders” (Huizinga, 48.). These are ways in which Huizinga tells us the way in which play and contests serve our society as civilizing functions.

But is this the only way in which play can provide civilizing functions to society? Huizinga’s model of play parallels the changes that occur in Fight Club as the skill levels and people change. The “game” of “Fight Club” becomes the “club” of Project Mayhem. This then becomes the political action of a small society. In Fight Club, I noticed it’s not the outward appearance of the product of the game but the internal changes occurring to individual members of the group, and the direct result of those changes on the group as a whole. Huizinga and Fight Club portray play differently, noticeably in the transition from “play” to “club” in Fight Club. Huizinga sees the act of play itself as producing cultural changes while Fight Club has the significant societal impacts occurring only when the “play” turns to “club”. Fight Club demonstrates the struggles between one another within the club and society. Internal conflict is shown through the group’s unhappiness within themselves as individuals and where they are in society. Fight Club shows the basic competition and tension is actually between the two perspectives of ‘internal change’ and ‘outward appearance’.
“Nothing was solved when the fight was over, but nothing mattered. The first night we fought was a Sunday night, and Tyler hadn’t shaved all weekend so my knuckles burned raw from his weekend beard. Lying on our backs in the parking lot, staring up at the one star that came through the streetlights, I asked Tyler what he’d been fighting. Tyler said, his father.”(Fight Club 53.)

This “Who were you fighting?” quote shows us how tension through play in Fight Club is different than that of Huizinga’s tension. This has the fight representing internal individual struggle manifested with outward interaction.
Competition seems to come out when a person or group is faced with tension. The way competitive play is exhibited in Fight Club and through Huizinga differs greatly. In Fight Club, the creation of group culture is manifested through individual members personal growth. The primary importance of the individual and his place in the developing of society is apparent through this quote.

“You aren’t alive anywhere like you’re alive at fight club. When it’s you and one other guy under that one light in the middle of all those watching. Fight club isn’t about winning or losing fights. Fight club isn’t about words. You see a guy come to fight club for the first time, and his ass is a loaf of white bread. You see this same guy here six months later, and he looks carved out of wood. This guy trusts himself to handle anything. There’s grunting and noise at fight club like at the gym, but fight club isn’t about looking good. There’s hysterical shouting in tongues like at church, and when you wake up Sunday afternoon you feel saved” (Fight Club, 51).

This shows me that Fight Club teaches everyone to be competitive internally in order to find themselves and their place in the external world. In Homo Ludens, Huizinga expresses that “Competition is not only ‘for’ something but also ‘in’ and ‘with’ something. People compete to be the first ‘in’…” (Huizinga, 51-52). The ideas he brings up are externally evident that competing is not for just ones inner fulfillment but for winning a certain prize or applause in the end. Either way you see it, these are both ways of creating civilized functions through community and forms of winning. The products of either perspective are evident through behavioral norms, cultural structures, political structure, and systems of reward.

In order to be able to compete, all types of play must have rules and this is clear through both writings. Both these authors realize the importance of rules through play and contest in order to create civilizing environments. A writing that has analyzed Huizinga in these terms has shown how his view on rules originates from the civilizing influence of play in warfare and how it gave rise to chivalry. Through chivalry there was a form of international law that served as a regulating tool to the character of play community, and if the law were violated there would be no more play spirit or real civilization at all (Anchor, 81). So we see how rules let play carry out which then creates our culture in some way. Throughout Fight Club, the whole point is that there really are no rules. The point being that in order to attain a state of personal well-being and enlightenment which allows for participation in enacting social change, you need competition and in order to attain competitiveness and drive you need rules to follow. We see the entire group go through their moments of praxis. In Fight Club the rules to follow in order to find inner accomplishment were:

“1. You don’t talk about fight club.
2. You don’t talk about fight club.
3. When someone says stop, or goes limp, even if he’s just faking it, the fight is over.
4. Only two guys to a fight.
5. Only one fight at a time.
6. They fight without shirts or shoes.
7. The fights go on as long as they have to.
8. If this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight”
(Fight Club 48-50)

These two different forms of viewing competition still show a parallel in that they are each generate rules to reach different levels of achievement or “civilization”, whether external or internal.

So where does competition itself fit in here? In the article “Sports Chatter” by Umberto Eco, he emphasizes that competition through spectator sport is unhealthy and that it is a voyeuristic act: “The illness that undermines this exercised health (like someone who watches not two human beings but two bees making love, while waiting to witness the death of the drone)…” (Sports Chatter, 161). Fight Club doesn’t see voyeurism as a side effect of competition. “After you’ve been to fight club, watching football on television is watching pornography when you could be having great sex” (Fight Club, 50). Fight Club stresses engagement in all those things that are influencing your life.

After tension, the establishment of rules and competition comes the winning aspect of play. Fight Club and Huizinga’s views on winning do not agree. Huizinga sets up winning as the act that leads to constructing society and creating civilized communities.
“Closely connected with play is the idea of winning. Winning, however, presupposes a partner or opponent; solitary play knows no winning, and the attainment of the desired objective here cannot be called by that name… Winning means showing oneself superior in the outcome of a game” (Huizinga, 50).

Fight Club is focusing on the deconstruction of the community and its replacement with a new structure of their own design. The group itself feels that this would be the external validation of their internal victories, and all this began with play.
“Everything’s going according to plan.”
Whispers:
“We’re going to break up civilization so we can make something better out of the world.”
Whispers:
“We look forward to getting you back” (Fight Club, 208).















Works Cited
Anchor, Robert. “History and Play: Johan Huizinga and His Critics”. History and Theory, Vol. 17, No. 1. (Feb., 1978), pp.63-93. http://links.jstor.org

Eco, Umberto. “Sports Chatter.” Travels in Hypereality. Trans. William Weaver. New York: Harcourt, 1986: 159-65.

Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. London: Beacon Press, 1950: 1-27, 46-75, 89-104, 119-135, 195-213.

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. 1996.

"deconstruction." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 07 Apr. 2008. .

"external." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 07 Apr. 2008. .

"knowledge." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 07 Apr. 2008. .
"praxis." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 07 Apr. 2008. .

Identifying Huizinga’s Characteristics of Play in Fight Club

Throughout the narrative in Fight Club the first person narrator actively participates in the story; however, he is never identified as the narration proceeds rapidly between different areas of his life. The constantly changing plot and setting enforce tension by stressing that the action being described is happening in the present. At that moment “you wake up at Love Field” then Tyler is in the projection booth, then Tyler is a banquet waiter, and “you wake up at Sea Tac” (26). The tension this narrative structure creates mirrors that of play because it holds the reader in the moment as the suspense of play focuses the player. As the story continues, it becomes harder to distinguish which area of the narrator’s life is real or ordinary life to the extent that the narrator’s real life is absent from the text. Instead three distinct areas containing various levels of Huizinga’s definition of play emerge in the narrative: work and traveling, group therapy, and Project Mayhem and fight club. These distinct areas of the narrator’s life are emphasized in the movie by three distinct uniforms the narrator wears. At work he is in a shirt and tie, at fight club he wears no shoes and no shirt, and at therapy he has a coat and no tie.

The essential play characteristics which can be applied to three areas of the narrator’s life are that play lies “quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life,” play absorbs the player completely by creating tension, nothing material is gained through play, it has a specific time and place, it promotes secret social groupings, there are rules, and events occur in an orderly matter (13). It can be assumed that when I refer to the narrator I am referring to the novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, when I refer to Edward Norton I am referring to the movie adaptation of the book, and otherwise I will specifically mention or cite Huizinga.

Huizinga’s model applies most readily to group therapy because the narrator merely plays at dying, realizing that “If [he] didn’t say anything, people in a group assumed the worst” (22). Guided meditation provides a perfect example of how the tension created by play holds the participant in the moment. Also, nothing material is gained from these meetings. There are rules and the meetings tend to be orderly. Because the group follows the narrator to stop him from killing himself, the group demonstrates that therapy generates a strong community. Throughout this study of the varying levels of play within the different areas of the narrator’s life, group therapy remains the closest to true play. Because the other areas of the narrator’s life vary in their level of play, what allows therapy to remain consistent? With what respect does therapy differ from the other areas of the characters life and can this be used to define play more precisely.

“The first rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club” (48). This rule does several things to qualify fight club as play. It is a rule and it professes the need for the secrecy the social grouping. At first the text makes it clear fight club exists outside of real life with the juxtaposition of three paragraphs beginning with “Who guys are in fight club is not who they are in the real world…Who I am in fight club is not someone my boss knows…In the real world, I’m a recall campaign coordinator” (49). The level of tension within fight club compels the narrator to proclaim, “You aren’t alive anywhere like you’re alive at fight club” (51). Nothing material is gained from fight club. Finally, the boundaries of space and time are the ring under the single light bulb; “fight club exists only in the hours between when fight club starts and when fight club ends” (49). Like therapy, fight club matches Huizinga’s description of play.

The third area of the narrator’s life which emerges as play, his participation in civilization in the form of his job and interactions outside of fight club, is not as easily described as pure play because Huizinga directly describes civilization as false play for it “is impossible to say where it begins and where it ends” (206); however, it is clear that civilization does have rules, nothing material is gained from it, and it promotes social groupings. Another problematic aspect of civilization as true play is that it is hard to say it stands outside of real life. At this point it is necessary to consider the different areas of the narrator’s life as containing different levels of play and not as either serious or true play. Tyler Durden tells the narrator, Edward Norton, “You are not your job.” If the narrator’s participation in civilization is deifined asas his actions at his job and traveling for his job, then Tyler’s proclamation distinguishes this part his life as play because suddenly the narrator’s identity as a recall coordinator, in the real world, is stripped from him; the loss of identity also provides civilization with a boundary for the time and space. When the narrator is at work he is playing a role, but when he returns home to the Paper Street Soap Company he withdraws from this play world. When the narrator describes how “everything in the real world gets the volume turned down” it demonstrates that he is conscious of his withdrawal from civilization. This also shows he is conscious that he is playing. Also, because his “word is law” the narrator is able to impose a higher order upon the play world (49).

While Tyler’s dogma allows the narrator to withdraw from what he once considered the real world, it also augments some aspects fight club such that of fight club becomes false play. The first rule of fight club forces the participant to break down the boundaries of time and space. By not talking about fight club in the real world the characters are still absorbed in the game and playing by the rules. This creates a community and an alternate civilization existing as part of ordinary civilization. This community bond is demonstrated in the movie through knowing glances cast towards the narrator by the man in the copy room and the waiter at lunch towards. Because this community perpetuates itself beyond its boundaries it becomes a false play like civilization. What was his real or ordinary life ends at fight club and then Project Mayhem takes over from there. When the community evolves into Project Mayhem it ceases to be even false play. While the all-black uniforms to disguise and distinguish members, rules are followed religiously, and everything in the Paper Street Soap Company is defined by perfect order, Project Mayhem does not have boundaries of time and space. The Space Monkeys and the narrator live at the house and carry out assignments during the day all over the community. This shows their actions as a community are no longer restricted to Saturday nights. The Space Monkeys deface skyscrapers and destroy corporate art to begin their war to return the world to a time before Ikea. Their assignments begin and end however their involvement in Project Mayhem does not. In this way Project Mayhem becomes real life. However, besides becoming real life for the narrator and the space monkeys, the anti-corporate, anti-civilization sentiment embodied in the terrorist acts the Space Monkeys carry out attach a moral value to Project Mayhem. This changes the community from a play community to one of true seriousness because “it is the moral content of an action that makes it serious” (Huizinga 210). The war of terror conducted by the Space Monkeys bears striking similarities to a holy war because it is conducted in order to achieve some “higher goal than the gratification of the self” (Huizinga 211). Their purposes are of high moral value because their assignments are not ends in and of themselves; they do not just want to destroy corporate art, they want to destroy it to demonstrate a point. A holy war is fought in order to protect a rite to practice or a holy land. It is the added purpose which transforms Project Mayhem and Holy War into seriousness, outside the sphere of play.

While Tyler’s influence over the narrator changes what was the real world into a play at civilization and what was play into a serious new reality ceasing to be play group therapy remains unchanged. Although the narrator stops going because “there’s a new group, but the first rule about this group is you aren’t supposed to talk about it”, he still reaches out to it in the middle of the text when he again is suffering from insomnia (Palahniuk 100). Fight club and Project Mayhem are “support groups. Sort of”; however, support groups do not vary in their play attributes in the narrative (119).

It is the conscious mental play aspect of the support groups which separate them from the others. In therapy the characters, although transported from their bodies are not sucked into a temporary reality that gradually replaces ordinary life as fight club replaced civilization. Therapy is a religious ritual or right in terms of the mental experience it invokes. The narrator follows Chloe into caves where “ice covered the floor of the cave, and the penguin said, slide” (20). The narrator is transported outside his body and similarly imagines his “pain as a ball of white healing light floating around [his] feet” (20). For the rest of the group, therapy works to assuage their fears associated with their illnesses. Through guided meditation Chloe is able to claim, “she no longer has any fear of death” (35). Therapy acts as to provide a “higher order than that in which they customarily live…A sacred space, a temporarily real world of its own…it continues to shed its radiance on the ordinary world outside” and thus matches Huizinga’s definition of a religious ritual, falling under the sphere of play (Huizinga 14).

The mental aspect of play present in group therapy is also present in the other areas of the narrator’s life. At fight club the narrator describes “There’s hysterical shouting in tongues like at church, and when you wake up Sunday afternoon you feel saved” (51). This direct comparison to Sunday Church shows perfectly how fight club can fit the definition of play as a religious ritual. However, because this exceeds the barrier between imagination and realty, unlike therapy, the narrator loses the ability to distinguish between his play and ordinary life. After planting explosives in his boss’s computer, he is unsure “if reality slipped into [his] dream or if [his] dream is slopping over into reality” (137). It is also shortly after at this point that Tyler Durden disappears from the narrative and temporarily play reality completely replaces reality. The narrator becomes fully conscious that he is merely playing a role at his job. With this knowledge he becomes a false player cheating the system, blackmailing his boss, and no longer going to work.

Similarly, Tyler Durden who is “funny and charming and forceful and independent, and men look up to him” is revealed as a actualization of impossible character traits (174). Huizinga describes a child at play who is convinced that he is the tiger he is imitating; he is “transported beyond himself” (14). Tyler is a “sham-reality as a realization in appearance: ‘imagination’ in the original sense of the word” (Huizinga 14). Therefore, anytime Tyler is present in the narrative, the narrator is engaged in a form of play. Tyler’s appearance for a split second in the film when Edward Norton is attempting to get sleeping pills, when he is at group sessions, and when the narrator is in the hotel room on a business trip reflects the play nature of these different areas which, at the time, may not appear to be play. Tyler’s boundaries of time and space are those of the imagination. Tyler cannot coexist with reality; not only that, but Tyler directly opposes what the narrator considers the ordinary life by seducing the narrator into blowing up the narrator’s apartment and office.

As a result of Tyler becoming a realization the narrator creates a new higher order that dominates the order to which the narrator is accustomed. Within the narrator’s imagination, “a sacred space, a temporarily real world of its own,” is created (14). The temporarily real world, however, takes over permanently until the narrator attempts to escape it. Tyler like group therapy, civilization, and fight club and Project Mayhem is reducible to play under Huizinga’s definition of the word. What becomes most important about play then is that it is a conscious mental state. Tyler as an imagination is present until the play community that is Project Mayhem ceases to be distinguishable as play. Also the narrator’s work only becomes play when he becomes conscious that he is merely playing a role as a beatification a productive and law abiding version of himself.

The conclusion that all these parts of the narrator’s life are various levels of play only holds under Huizinga’s definition if, and only if, they exist “quite [consciously] outside ‘ordinary’ life” (13). This conditional makes it necessary to pose the question what remains in the narrative that could be considered real or ordinary life? Where do all these different play elements fall apart? Marla is not able to coexist with the narrator’s most powerful form of play, the actualization that is Tyler Durden, she destroys the play aspect of narrator’s group therapy sessions by appearing in Edward Norton’s cave in the movie, and calls him away from work to give her a breast inspection. This last act physically pulls the narrator back into reality; however, it is interesting that throughout the text she has sex with Tyler, which must be considered play. What is the difference between these forms of physical contact? Why is there this distinction between sex as play and the desexualized naked female body as seriousness? And to further the focus of this essay how does the mental aspect of these scenarios differ and how does this distinguish one as play and the other as serious? It is beyond the scope of this paper to prove that Marla is what is real in the narrator’s life; however, it is merely a tool necessary to prove that the other parts of the narrator’s life are in fact forms of play in varying levels and a topic for further investigation.

Works Cited

Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element In Culture. Boston: The Beacon Press.

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996.

Fight Club, an insight into contemporary potlatch

When Johan Huizinga explains the relationship between the play and humanity in his book, Homo Ludens, he uses ritualistic potlatch as a particularly interesting cultural example of play affecting humanity (Huizinga 58). The concept of potlatch, along with the agon associated with potlatch, intrigues me, and it is an idea that I wish to extend and explore. Given the dated publication year of Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, potlatch begs for a contemporary second look, a modern reworking of the ritual, adapting its practice to something anyone in the now can easily relate to. I find that Chuck Palahniuk illustrates the modern potlatch extremely well in his 1996 novel, Fight Club, as the book’s protagonist basically progresses through the storyline sacrificing a piece of himself at every plot turn. Since I am turning to Palahniuk’s Fight Club as a lens to look at modern potlatch, I must limit my definition of a modern contemporary society accordingly. The setting of the book limits my location and culture to that of urban American culture before the turn of the century. The contents of the book, on the other hand, limit my discussion to men of a less privileged class. Thus my modern, contemporary society shall be the collection of men ranging from the lower social classes to the middle class, living in pre-turn-of-the-century urban cities of the United States.

Potlatch, a Native American custom most commonly found in the Kwakiutl tribe, is held whenever a significant event occurs, to “prove one’s superiority” (Huizinga 58). The custom takes the form of a feast attended by two different clans. The hosts of the feast gives away and destroys the clan’s material wealth during the feast, daring the clan on the receiving end to give an even grander and more extreme potlatch feast. Huizinga highlights that the following is “always” the case in a potlatch: the action “takes the form of a contest”, “there are two groups standing in opposition but bound by a spirit of hostility and friendship combined”, and the groups contend for “the pleasure of parading their superiority—in a word, for glory” (59). Thus the potlatch can be described as a contest, an agon, between two opposing groups, where there is mutual self-destruction and redistribution of material wealth for the prize of glory.

With these four elements of potlatch, one can easily connect at least one potlatch element with Fight Club points, the most apparent being the self-sacrificial element. The narrator of Fight Club, who I will now refer to as Joe, undergoes multiple stages of self-destruction. Joe blows up his apartment full of possessions, things he spent his “whole life to buy”, with a homemade explosive effectively destroying his “worldly possessions”, “car”, and home (Palahniuk 44, 64). The founding of the Fight Club institution began with Joe beating himself up in a parking lot, a destruction of his bodily health through self-mutilation. The Fight Club institution itself also enables Joe to continually mutilate his own body weekly, by participating in fights with no clear purpose or reward other than to avoid dying “without a few scars”, a mark of self-destruction (48). The story progresses from the self-destruction of possessions, to the self-destruction of the body, and even to the self-destruction of morality with the formation of Project Mayhem. Members of Project Mayhem have weekly homework assignments that order the members to assault, destroy, and vandalize the public and its properties. Since participation in Project Mayhem is voluntary, and actually discouraged by the selection process, the violation of laws both of the government and the conscience are self-motivated. Interestingly enough, during the Project Mayhem members’ assignments of moral self-destruction, if a member is “arrested” or they “laugh” during an assignment, they’re “off the committee” (120). This parallels Huizinga’s description of invalidated potlatch ceremonies where “the slightest blunder invalidates the whole action. Coughing and laughing are threatened with severe penalties” (Huizinga 60).

The next three elements of potlatch, however, take a longer line of reasoning to come to, and are also somewhat modified to better fit the modern times. The Fight Club to potlatch connection is lacking a key foundation that would allow the rest of the points to settle properly, Fight Club’s potlatch lacks a clear opposing side. The book initially attempts to set Marla as the opposition, having her burn “the inside of her arm with a clove cigarette” and “calling herself human butt wipe” in a manner similar to the self-destruction of body and mind that is along the same lines as Joe’s sacrifices (Palahniuk 65). But as the narrative unfolds, Joe is revealed to have been the person to start the self-mutilation trend on his own, only later recruiting others like Marla into the same mentality through the Fight Club institution and his philsophies. Marla, as well as the other members of the Fight Club institution, are also not directly opposed to Joe, in fact, they follow him. In fact, the only real opposition Joe ever meets is from his alter ego Tyler. In the beginning and end of the book, it is Tyler holding a gun in Joe’s mouth, threatening death. It is Tyler who Joe constantly asks, “did we hit bottom, tonight?” (94). An obvious point must be emphasized though; Tyler and Joe are the same person. The two opposing sides in this modern potlatch are contained in the same person, they are two opposing personalities trying to each inflict as much self-sacrifice as possible; Joe’s potlatch opponent is himself.

It is a contest of sorts between the two personalities, and Joe is testing two different personas and trying to determine which one is superior. Which ego would succeed better in life, what would make Joe’s life more fulfilled? Of course, given Joe’s starting position in life, wandering from support group to support group, makes any change, a change for the better. Change is what Joe truly craved, to break out of the system that held him in the role of a space monkey, plugging and chugging the recall formula (30). To break out of the system, is to go in the opposite direction, running away from “being perfect and complete” (46). Since it is Tyler who starts Joe on the path towards self-destruction, Tyler is initially the superior persona. When Tyler goes too far, and Tyler attempts to go to extremes that are undesirable, Joe becomes the superior persona, the one opposed to suicide and martyrdom. In the end, Joe is the winner of this contest regardless of which persona wins, because Joe and Tyler are the same person.

Consequently, in this modern potlatch, there seems to be a lack of real tangible opponents. Whether this be from a general avoidance of confrontation, how “A man on the street will do anything not to fight”, or a matter of personal choice, this is a change that must be looked into (119). Could this be a result of what Huizinga regards as the decline of agonistic play in contemporary society? The potlatch ceremony has been adapted by the modern American culture that Fight Club appeals to.

The modern American man living in the urban city, however, has no use for the prize Huizinga terms glory (Huizinga 59). The pleasure of parading superiority over a man in modern times can more easily be achieved through the attainment of more possessions, rather than the destruction of those possessions. This is simply what the capitalistic culture of America has ingrained into popular belief. First appearances are what a person judges another with, and these appearances are supplied by the clothes a person wears, the car a person drives, and even the level of education that can be determined from mannerisms and speech patterns. Thus there is no practical reason to destroy your own possessions to prove how much better you are than another person, merely possessing would result in envy and jealousy. Instead the type of glory that the modern wishes to achieve runs more along the lines of recognition and fame. Joe, in participating in a potlatch with himself, gains not only an idea of which alter ego is more successful, but also a large amount of this new modern glory. A walk into a diner, and Joe is treated with free food, the title of “sir”, and nods from multiple men (171). All participants of the Fight Club institution recognize Joe as Tyler Durden, a legend. In fact all members also recognize each other as participants in the potlatch that is the Fight Club institution. When a Fight Club member sees the wounds and scars on another member’s face, there is instant recognition, they “nod to each other” (54). And there is satisfaction in that recognition, a feeling of belonging to something bigger than them. This feeling is what most modern men in America want. Man wishes to form associations, to connect to the rest of the world, be it electronically via the internet or psychically through common interests and thoughts. The Fight Club potlatch can obtain that type of connection, the type of recognition from the fellow man, the glory.

Fight Club is a narrative that tells of Joe’s potlatch. Through Joe’s eyes, it is a potlatch that consists of a contest between two sides of his mind, to determine which side is the superior one. Looking at the Fight Club institution within the narrative, Fight Club is a potlatch against one’s self with the prize of glory being a prize of recognition amongst fellow men. These two versions of modern potlatch differ slightly but significantly from Huizinga’s original description of the ceremony. The potlatch remains a contest of self-sacrifice, though Fight Club extends the sacrifice beyond worldly possessions into bodily health and conscience morality. But the opposing sides are no longer as well defined, and glory has been reshaped into a different form. Opposing sides no longer have to be two tangible groups in opposition; they can be two opposing parts of a person’s mind. The modern man has no use for a path to false superiority through self-destruction, instead self-destruction aims to achieve a different kind of glory, recognition. If all undergo a similar mode of destruction, in this case potlatch, they will have formed associations with bonds that are downright hard to obtain otherwise.

Works Cited

“Agon, n.” OED Online. June 2002. Oxford University Press. 18 Mar. 2008

Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens. Boston: The Beacon Press, 1938

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York. W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 1996