Everything about Roger Caillois totally explained
Roger Caillois (
3 March 1913 -
21 December 1978), was a
French intellectual whose idiosyncratic work brought together
literary criticism,
sociology, and
philosophy by focusing on subjects as diverse as
gems,
play and the
sacred. He was also instrumental in introducing Latin American authors to the French public.
Caillois was born in
Reims but moved to
Paris as a child. There he studied at the
Lycée Louis-le-Grand, an elite school where students took courses after graduating from secondary school in order to prepare for entry examinations for France's most prestigious university, the
École Normale Supérieure. Caillois's efforts paid off and he graduated as a normalien in
1933. After this he studied at the
École Pratique des Hautes Études where he came into contact with thinkers such as
Georges Dumézil,
Alexandre Kojève, and
Marcel Mauss.
The years before the war were marked by Caillois's increasingly leftist political commitment, particularly in his fight against
fascism. He was also engaged in Paris's avant-garde intellectual life. With
Georges Bataille he founded the
College of Sociology, a group of intellectuals who lectured regularly to one another. Formed partly as a reaction to the
Surrealist movement that was dominant in the 1920s, the College sought to move away from surrealism's focus on the fantasy life of an individual's unconscious and focus instead more on the power of ritual and other aspects of communal life. Caillois's background in
anthropology and
sociology, and particularly his interest in the sacred, exemplified this approach. He participated in Bataille's review,
Acéphale (1936-39).
Caillois left France in
1939 for Argentina, where he stayed until the end of
WWII. During the war he was active in fighting the spread of Nazism in Latin America as an editor and author of anti-Nazi periodicals. In
1948, after the war, he worked with
UNESCO and traveled widely. In 1971 he was elected to the
Académie Française.
Today Caillois is remembered for founding and editing
Diogenes, an interdisciplinary journal funded by
UNESCO, and
La Croix du Sud (
Southern Cross), a collection of books translated from contemporary Latin American authors published by
Gallimard that's responsible for introducing authors such as
Jorge Luis Borges or
Alejo Carpentier to the French-speaking public. He is also considered to be a major contributor to the field of
ludology, to which he devoted his book
Les Jeux et les Hommes.
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