From the ‘gameed war’ to the ‘experienced war’

What is very interesting with the notion of staging or of simulation is that it works in two different ways. Either it is inspired by the real ‘the experienced war’ to result in a game or it is the game that serves as the first step in staging a war or conflict.

Valérie Leyh(10) illustrates this idea in her contribution to the short-story by Arrigo Boito, l’Alfier Nero (The black madman). In this work, the staged situation becomes real and brings death with it. The end of the chess game is not the victory of Tom, the black gameer, against the white chess champion Anderssen, but the death of the black man killed by the white man. The game is blurred because while death may be a defeat, it is not certain here that the killing of the black man represents check mate in terms of the much greater dimension of his death. From the beginning of the story, Valérie Leyh shows how the narrator, a spectator of the game, represents the game of chess as “the fight between the white race of America and the black race of African origin”. Anderssen seems to be at an advantage from the outset: he is a chess champion and he is white which confers a double advantage on him in the environment and context in which he finds himself. Things could not be more different for Tom, the former slave. The tragic unravelling of the plot occurs only after Tom had succeeded in winning in the regulated space provided by the chess game and otherwise abandoning all the traditional strategies in order to impose his own game, the reflection of “forces of confusion and inspiration”. The game ends at this point, with the victory of Tom; the madness begins at this point with the murder of Tom by the disgruntled Anderssen. The empire of reason could not be maintained because the sphere of the game ended up becoming confused with reality, notably with the personification of the pieces of a chess game. The black madman therefore became Tom.  

Event-staging can also be the precursor to the outbreak of a conflict. So game becomes war power. The famous Kriegsspiele imagined by Von Schlieffen was mentioned above. We can also come back to the war game of Guy Debord. In fact, Frédéric Prot explains that “Debord’s game is above all a didactic tool in the service of tactical and strategic activism. It involves training in the tactical and strategic military lessons of Clausewitz through game. Here the gameer exerts himself which, for Clausewitz is the same as virtually starting a war through powerful confrontation”.  However, it will be universally admitted that the context is different to that which surrounds the didactic games practiced by the German army. Nobody is surprised by the sight of soldiers preparing for combat, and officers of the Chiefs of staff reflecting on the strategies to implement. Training activists is more particular on the other hand. Guy Debord’s war game has seen a resurgence of interest recently which may be due to the economic systemic and political crisis raging in Europe. Guy Debord speaks of his game as “an exercise preceding all useful purposes”. We learn from Frédéric Prot that ‘Class-war games’ are organised in England and Russia; that there are websites(11) devoted to these games where it is possible to read “insurrectional anti-bourgeoisie propaganda texts”. It involves training the militants involved in the game for the next revolution against the neo-liberal world: “you will need this military knowledge to thwart the deadly plans of bankers and bureaucrats […]. A militant who is not trained can only be a source of embarrassment to the vanguard”.

Another example where event-staging ‘precedes all useful purposes’ would be the interest that the American army holds for video-games. These games constitute an efficient way of training soldiers. What could be considered as far-fetched is in fact the result of a study carried out by the Defense Department of the United States(12) which shows that soldiers who have gameed video games video “have cognitive abilities that are 10% to 20% higher than other military personnel”. Since 2002, the American army has also made available on the market the free download of a game called ‘America’s army’(13) the objective of which is to improve the image of the army and the American soldier and, consequently, to encourage members of the public to enlist. The game in this case is presented as a preparatory phase for war, like a power war. The difference between this and the didactic games of the German army is evident and points to a certain (irreversible?) evolution of war and game “Which tend to become more and more abstract”, as Achim Küpper points out.

(10) Valérie Leyh, “L’Alfier nero by Arrigo Boito. An anthropological and poetical lecture on a chess game” in War& game. Valérie Leyh is specialized in Germanic languages and literature and she is a researcher at the FNRS at the University of Liege.
(11) http://www.classwargames.net/
(12) See the press release published on this subject of the American defense website: “Researchers examine video gaming’s benefits”.
(13) See website : http://www.americasarmy.com/