The Game of Distance and the Distances of the Games

Abstract

In this text we aim at developing an analytical and critical study of the book Distanza, a cura di Antonio dall’Igna, Ernesto C. Sferraza Papa e Alessandro Carrieri. Beginning from the inscription of the different essays, all on the concept of distance, that make for the diversity of fields present in this book, such as Practical and Theoretical Philosophy, Theatre and Cinema, Literature (in the genres of Poetry, Fiction and Journalistic Report), Oriental Thought, Politics, Informatics, Anthropology, Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, Theology, History, Sociology and Utopic Thought. From the relation of distance with time and space, we wish to show how all the chapters mobilise, explicitly or implicitly, the concept of game to think about distance. Secondly, we cross this articulation between game and distance, with the Donald Winnicott’s concept of transitional objects, which serves as an operative mediator to think about distance, within the game, as separation and as relation, applying this concept to several practical or conceptual devices present throughout the chapters. Finally, we consider it to be an Ontology of the Relation that demands an in‑ depth philosophical thinking of the varied modalities of distance and of the diverse modes of its overcoming.