for stability at the cost of anybody else’s game. Even the most democratic societies restrict the participation of other systems, by requiring them to conform to democracy, so that other games are assimilated. For instance, immigrants from other parts of the world (especially after the second generation) are likely to renounce participation in their old political system, and will vote for an American president along with the other subjects of democracy.
The social game appeals to its players by proving its superiority when compared to any other game. Players do have a choice, but when they assimilate the rule/law of the game, they become its senders. They legitimize that particular game that still leaves them in the realm of possibility (of retrieving its territory). According to Lyotard, the player enters the game by also accepting the hierarchy of other game possibilities, and then the player creates a hierarchy by which one game dominates the others. Such hierarchies legitimize oppression because “it is supposed that the so-called ontological language game can translate all others.”22 In other words, to retrieve a territory, others’ territories need to be subordinated, to such an extent that the others become part of the territory. The American dream, for instance, is a network of institutions by which, going through a set of tests, attending qualifying schools, and taking all the right steps, one can achieve one’s dream, a dream defined a priori or inscribed into the territory of the American dream.
The completion of the game would mean that there is no need any longer for new players to subscribe to it, since it has fulfilled its potential. However, since it only presents as a stake the possible, this is the only realm in which the players are validated as possible players. By rehearsing their role in the ideal game, the players validate in their turn the possibility for the game to actually be completed. The only circumstance in which a player would actually fulfill the possibility of the role in the game would be for the player to be the Other, not the subject defined from the perspective of the Other. But since the game itself, or language, will never stop sliding along the signifying chain, and never reach the real, the Other will never not be a signifier, and will never arrive: “l’invention n’invente rien, lonrsque’en elle l’autre ne viens pas …. Car l’autre n’est pas le possible. Il faudrait donc dire que la seule invention possible serait l’invention de l’impossible.”23
When the game thinks itself unstable, the players are not convinced anymore that the game guarantees them a “real” role. When such distrust occurs, the game needs to define its limits even more rigidly. It needs to reassert the possibility of superiority (something to win) that will be conferred on the players, a possibility which the players take more and more literally. They will defend the game if the fulfillment of the game appears to be tangible. The violence of the players is proportionate to the violence of the system. It is not an accident, for instance, that in Europe and other parts of the world where national identity is more disputed, a game such as soccer stirs (or at least used to stir) much more violence among the audience than games played in the United States. The soccer stadium becomes a representation of the national territory to be defended, and the game reflects the social game of national identity that defines the stakes in the interaction between soccer fans.
The limits that the system (re)defines are stabilized through repetition, which is the only way for the game to reinforce itself. There is a center that coordinates the ritual preserving the game and, in relation to this center, obligation reinforces the game. The reality of a center does not directly translate into the position of unfallenness, even though it would seem that this should be the case. For instance, missionary work, even though regulated by an institution, does not achieve its purpose of recruiting fallen beings in the name of the institution, but in the name of what the institution is not, but “represents.” The institution manipulates the notion of possibility. This manipulation is always “in the name of,” “toward,” or offers a way of reaching what that institutional center has not in itself reached. The institutions that define the territory are not absolute, but utilize the absolute signified as method or justification for their functioning.
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