Overview
Marc Perelman pulls no punches in this succinct and searing broadside, assailing the 'recent form of barbarism' that is the global sporting event. Forget the Olympics and consider, under Perelman's guidance, the ledger of inequities maintained by such supposedly harmless games. They have provided a smokescreen for the forcible removal of 'undesirables'; aided governments in the pursuit of racist agendas; affirmed the hypocrisy of drug-testing in an industry where doping is more an imperative than an aberration; and developed the pornographic hybrid that Perelman dubs 'sporn', a further twist in our corrupt obsession with the body. Drawing examples from the modern history of the international sporting event, Perelman argues that today's colosseums, upheld as examples of 'health', have become the steamroller for a decadent age fixated on competition, fame and elitism.
Full Product Details
Author: Marc Perelman ,
John Howe ,
David Macey
Publisher: Verso Books
Imprint: Verso Books
Dimensions:
Width: 13.00cm
, Height: 1.20cm
, Length: 19.80cm
Weight: 0.164kg
ISBN: 9781844678594
ISBN 10: 1844678598
Pages: 144
Publication Date: 19 June 2012
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
Marc Perelman has written a magnificent manifesto for all of us dedicated anti-Olympiads, revealing in compelling detail how sport, which has long been the opium of the people, is now the political and financial dirty business of the rulers as well. - Terry Eagleton This is the work of stirring polemic that all of us who were picked last for teams at school have been waiting for. Nick Lezard, Guardian Bracingly bilious counterblast against the new 'planetary religion'. - Independent Excited about the Olympics? If not, this bolus of weaponised French spleen will be the perfect literary antidote. - Steven Poole, Guardian
'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.
Author Information
Marc Perelman is an architect and Professor of Aesthetics at the Université Paris Ouest-Nanterre Le Défense. He is the author of numerous books, including L'Ère des stades: Genèse et structure d'unespace historique, Urbs ex machina, Le Corbusier and (with Jean-Marie Brohm) Le Football, une peste émotionnelle.
