What We Think About When We Think About Football

Resumen del libro

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.

Biografía del autor

Titular de la cátedra de Filosofía Hans Jonas en la New School for Social Research de Nueva York, enseña filosofía en la Universidad de Tilburg (Países Bajos) y es colaborador habitual de The New York Times. Tras sus primeros trabajos dedicados al horizonte ético-político de la deconstrucción, ha explorado las diversas caras de la muerte y el humor, para finalmente preguntarse por la actualidad de la tragedia en el mundo moderno. Prueba de esto último es Tragedia y Modernidad (2014), publicado en esta misma Editorial. Entre sus libros traducidos al castellano cabe mencionar también Muy poco casi nada (2007), El libro de los filósofos muertos (2008), La demanda infinita (2010), Sobre el humor (2010) y Apuntes sobre el suicidio (2016).