When did we forget we were playing? Failure, play, and possibility in sport & clinical life

Through pathways of queer theory, Black feminist theory, psychoanalytic theory, and clinical vignette, this paper invites the reader to recognize the ways in which racial capitalism, patriarchy, White supremacy, and other systems of dominance and carceral logics replicate themselves through our play and our clinical life. Considering play and intrapsychic development through the vignette of Alex, the paper offers sociogenic considerations of how social systems are entangled in our object relations, play, and family dynamics. The paper highlights an ethical stance that queers our use of rules, centers Black feminisms of "living otherwise," and invites us to consider what Halberstam calls the "queer art of failure" when thinking about and living out sports and clinical life. The paper offers an inquiry by way of vignette into how we may consider and grapple with oppressive systems that live out interpersonally through unconscious processes, exposing the bonds we have come to believe are necessary to life but that ultimately restrict us from living play, and invites the reader to play with meaning-making between psychoanalysis and social theory.