What We Think About When We Think About Football

What We Think About When We Think About Football

by SimonCritchley (Author), Simon Critchley (Author)

Synopsis

What do we think about when we think about football? Football is about so many things: memory, history, place, social class, gender (especially masculinity, but increasingly femininity too), family identity, tribal identity, national identity, the nature of groups. It is essentially collaborative, even socialist, yet it exists in a sump of greed, corruption, capitalism and autocracy. Philosopher Simon Critchley attempts to make sense of it all, and to establish a system of aesthetics - even poetics - to show what is beautiful in the beautiful game. He explores, too, how the experience of watching football opens a particular dimension in time; how its magic wards off oblivion; how its dramas play out national identity and non-identity; how we spectators, watching football with tragic pensiveness, participate in the play. And of course, as a football fan, he writes about his heroes and villains: about Zidane and Cruyff, Clough and Revie, Shankly and Klopp.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
Edition: Main
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 03 May 2018

ISBN 10: 1781259224
ISBN 13: 9781781259221
Book Overview: A philosopher's take on what makes the beautiful game

Media Reviews
A quick and agile book: a kind of metaphysic of the football match, done by the Messi of modern philosophy -- Shahidha Bari * Times Higher Education *
Simon Critchley is a figure of quite startling brilliance, and I can never guess what he'll do next, only that it is sure to sustain and nourish my appetite for his voice. -- Jonathan Lethem
Simon Critchley beguiles as he illuminates. -- David Mitchell
A beautiful book about the beautiful game ... the World Cup is coming - fans should start reading. -- John Kaag, author of American Philosophy: A Love Story
Author Bio
Simon Critchley has published books on a wide expanse of ethical and philosophical subjects, including the bestselling The Book of Dead Philosophers, his cult novel Memory Theatre and his memoir-analysis of David Bowie - On Bowie (for Serpents Tail). He is Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, and series moderator of 'The Stone', a philosophy column in The New York Times. He comes from a Liverpool family and watches his team, devotedly, each weekend, 3306 miles away from Anfield.