Capoeira is a game, a fight, a dance and a memory: which of Caillois’s boxes does it go in?
In capoeira Angola we don't say we fight. We say we play: jogar capoeira. Two people enter the roda, the circle of players and musicians, and the berimbau sets the pace. Somebody once told me Huizinga thought play was older than culture, and that law, war, ritual and art all keep the marks of play. Reading him for the first time this year, I felt seen and also slightly robbed, because a Dutch historian was explaining my grandfather's game to me.
Then I read Roger Caillois, who sorts play into four kinds: agon (contest), alea (chance), mimicry (simulation, make-believe) and ilinx (vertigo, the pleasure of disorienting yourself). He also puts every game on a line from free improvisation (paidia) to rule-bound skill (ludus).
Capoeira refuses to stay in one box. It is agon: there is a real contest, and a real kick if you are careless. It is mimicry: the malícia, the trickery and feigning, is half the art. It has ilinx in the inverted movements. And it is ritual and memory too, a game that enslaved people kept alive partly by making it look like a game.
So my question to people here is whether these classifications help or flatten. Is the fact that capoeira mixes all four a problem for Caillois, or exactly what he would predict for a living practice? And does Huizinga's claim that play comes before culture fit a game that is so obviously shaped by a particular history?