Footballisticalism? No, not yet.

So much of experience is perception. Notionally, perception is in turn informed by experience, though it should be noted the interpretive community of Premier League football may not offer the most lucid examples. If, for the sake of analysis, we accept with Freud the notion that a given symbol (or set of symbols) is (or are) understood in opposition both as the desire to satisfy impulse and the desire to suppress it, then this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4u1QQLVWyw&fmt=18

- raises above other considerations the nature of the governing dialectic – or perhaps lack thereof – of (post)modern football.

Let us – petitio principii? – agree that coherence itself may only, as it is proposed elsewhere, be fully understood contradictorily, and accept that its acceptance in itself accepts the necessary existence of différance. A cheeky wave at Derrida, then, and we wonder: what are the features governing the production of meaning – footballistically speaking? (Wenger, 2007).

The most obvious conclusion and the easiest is – of course – that words and signs do not by definition express, embody or incarnate what they mean. Terry weeping, Henry shrugging, Heskey glowering at the imagined divot of life: they appeal fruitlessly to us. Their pitiful advances denied (naturally we reject 'meaning' as an instrinsic quality), they appeal to other words, words from which they differ. Meaning is eternally "deferred", a succession of linked signifiers as endless as Munich choreography or an Escher staircase. Ars est celare artem.

The Americans, by contrast, lack this subtlety. But as Jordan (unique in the basketball pantheon in that he is both signifier and signified) himself expressed it:

“I'm not out there sweating for three hours every day just to find out what it feels like to sweat”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoTDNJL0GLI

Coming soon from SHOT-G: Spot the Signifier competition. Keep it locked.

History, Distance And Darren Huckerby

The blithe hand of history: she leaves us with shadows in-apt to the profiles we once bore. Some bigger, some smaller - we cannot know which way she will cut it.

And distance, too: her effect much like absence's, enamouring the heart.

And Darren Huckerby - a legend (alleged).

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-B6ucoSoIy4

On the manifold postmodernities of the C.Ronaldo 'transfer'

Firstly, that nomenclature employed so liberally by the critics (cf The Sun, Daily Mirror et al.): 'the Ronaldo transfer'. A transference which never occurred, stasis seemingly restored but, in fact, never having gone away. A simulation of a change; a narrative about a metamorphosis, which became a narrative about a narrative about a metamorphosis, which became a narrative about an un-narrative - because the metamorphosis never morphosed.

The mutability of meaning and sheer inefficacy of words has been - ironically - made all too clear by this so-called saga. We have been treated to untold verbiage detailing Ronaldo's desire to go, as expressed by the man himself, his relations, his agent... We have been treated to countless denials from Sr.Calderon, naysaying a transfer which - somewhat perversely and in true pomo fashion - was itself only conjured by these negations.

And all of this, reported via several degrees of separation: the agent speaks to the Brazilian journal, the journal prints the story, the English critics pick up the story and thus it goes on. Mistranslations at every stage. Words divorced from their intended meaning almost at the moment they leave the mouth/pen/heart. What better way to depict the something rotten at the heart of language than this physical re-enactment of the degrees of separation which occur every single time we communicate?

And the biggest postmodernism of all this: the footballer's contract. What bolder expression of the inarticulacy of language, the weakness of our common grammar . So weak indeed that it crumbles under thin papers inked with the only symbol apt to hold firm to its true intention: £.

To come:

C.Ronaldo's hair: postmodern, or WTF.

The perils of reader response

In this text (K-League, Republic of Korea, 1997), educated reader Yoon Jung-hwan of Buchun, armed with the necessary aesthetic apparatus common to all professional footballers, unintentionally violates the norms of his interpretive community. Having had his ankle partially deconstructed, Ulsan bring the narrative to a temporary halt so Yoon can receive examination a capite ad calcem. The intermission over, in the act of returning the ball, Yoon temporarily moves outside his horizons of expectation, and those of his opponents, scoring an inadvertent goal from 40-odd yards. Ulsan necessarily underline the necessary subjectivity of the reading process, becoming incensed. Acknowledging the dialectical exchange between text and reader, Buchun attempt to allow Ulsan to score a compensatory goal. However Buchun’s foreign players are by this point entirely ex-narratory, isolated by an incompatible aesthetic of reception. Bound principally by historical determinants, they attempt to re-interpret the narrative to one in which the compensatory goal is not allowed – thus interpretational difficulties ensue in the act of bringing said goal a posse ad esse. Korean electro-pop soundtrack.

Click here:

http://flvs.daum.net/flvPlayer.swf?vid=2vIQAnuGhXU$

Welcome to the shape of the game

A red button, touched in anger.

A guinness, a simulacrum - a transaction - an audience -

A response.

You are no universal absolute.

That's the ticket.