Abstract
This article proposes an analytical framework for sport that emerges from the interplay of elements of postmodern, gay, and queer theories. Embarking on a demythologizing trajectory, the article suggests that competitive sport fosters the emotional logic that is embedded in the will to power produced by the mythical union of an ever-expanding phallus and territorially enclosing anus—these work together in sport in the desire to conquer the space of the other and protectively enclose the space of the self. Drawing parallels, the violating phallus with the desire to win and the closed anus with the desire not to lose, the article deconstructs the emotional logic of sport as a celebration of patriarchal violation and homophobic resistance to penetration. As an immensely popular cultural spectacle and practice, therefore, competitive sport plays an important role in the reproduction of phallically aggressive and anally closed cultures of desire.
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