Review
'We are the champions!' This is the kind of phrase which exasperates Marc Perelman. Here he takes on the advent of competitive sport as a mass phenomenon, as a flagship institution for globalization. --Psychologies Magazine
Barbaric Sport is not only an attempt to demystify the sporting spectacle, that 'new true religion of the twenty-first century' and of 'decadent modernity', but above all to unveil the 'economy of drives' that shores it up. --Le Magazine litteraire
Marc Perelman's lucid and somber assessment has ignited a fire in my mind. --La Tribune de Geneve
Barbaric Sport is not only an attempt to demystify the sporting spectacle, that 'new true religion of the twenty-first century' and of 'decadent modernity', but above all to unveil the 'economy of drives' that shores it up. --Le Magazine litteraire
Marc Perelman's lucid and somber assessment has ignited a fire in my mind. --La Tribune de Geneve
Product Description
Marc Perelman pulls no punches in this succinct and searing essay against the global phenomenon of sport, which he describes as both a 'recent form of savagery' and 'the opium of the people.' The charges leveled against sport are damning and numerous: sport is an instrument for racism and the bolstering of repression, with global events such as the Olympics used to legitimize major political crackdowns; doping must be understood as an imperative rather than an aberration of sport. Most ominously, with its location at the very center of the society of the spectacle, globalization, and the liberal-capitalist system, the phenomenon of sport has become a new world power and an immense destructive force, a steamroller of decadent modernity.
About the Author
MARC PERELMAN is an architect and Professor of Aesthetics atthe Universite Paris Ouest-Nanterre La Defense. He is the author of numerous books, including L'Ere des stades: Genese et structure d'un espace historique, Urbs ex machina, Le Corbusier and (with Jean-Marie Brohm) Le Football, une peste emotionnelle.
