How does match-fixing, or other unfair manipulation of matches, that involves under-performance by players, or refereeing and umpiring that prevents fair competition, be thought of in ethical terms? In this article, I outline the different forms that match-fixing can take and seek to comprehend these disparate scenarios within Kantian, Hegelian and contractualist ethical frameworks. I tentatively suggest that, by developing an ethical opposition to match-fixing in sport, we can give much greater substance to popular phrases such as ‘respect for the (...) game’, encompassing the value of sport itself and respect for other players, fans, sponsors and organisers. Arguing that match-fixing denies recognition to these ‘others’ demonstrates how fundamentally match-fixing ‘hollows out’ sport because a fixed match is of no worth: the whole value of the game has literally been evacuated. (shrink)

The article takes up diverse strands of psychoanalytic thinking to investigate how desire is manifested in male team sporting environments. In particular, it is posited that sporting desire shares a remarkable structural similarity to the joking relationship in that they both work through the overcoming of obstacles. In doing so unconscious desires are long-circuited and only emerge in radically altered form, upending traditional gender and sexual subjectivities in the process. The paper explores the concept of desire from perspectives that are (...) either straightforwardly psychoanalytic or heavily influenced by psychoanalytic thought. Initially, I examine desire from a Freudian viewpoint before looking at how Jacques Lacan extended Freudian analysis through a linguistic lens. I then explore desire in terms developed by Gilles Deleuze before turning, in the second part of the paper, to an examination of the work of George Bataille to consider the desire of sport through the mechanism of the joke to trace the complex routing that it often takes. (shrink)

Among the many themes in which the Irish modernist novelist, James Joyce, was intellectually and emotionally engaged, the issue of British imperialism and Irish nationalism was paramount. While Joyce despised the English colonial occupation of his country, he was equally dismissive of a mythical Irish nationalism, particularly in the way it was endorsed by the Gaelic Athletic Association. While Joyce is not renowned as a writer of sport; nevertheless, sporting pursuits can be found throughout his novels. Joyce’s nuanced understanding of (...) how English culture has permanently altered Irish social subjectivities (and vice versa) can be found in sharp relief in his novels, particularly Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. This article takes sport as a theme in Joyce’s work through which to explore fractured national identities through a framework inspired by the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Their post-Marxist work enables an examination of sport and nationality that goes beyond the existing orthodox Gramscian theory that has proven so productive in the understanding of sport in Cultural Studies. The article will commence with a brief review of existing studies of Joyce with respect to sport and national debates. After summarising the broad Gramscian approaches to understanding sport and nationalism, some of the key concepts in Laclau and Mouffe’s political philosophy are then outlined. The article will apply those concepts to the way Joyce depicts sport, especially cricket and hockey, to deconstruct the binaries in the debate between British colonialism and Irish nationalism. (shrink)