"Perhaps no other period in history has seen so many losers and so few winners as our own. And time, because it advances through the exacerbated competitions and mimeticism (in science and elsewhere), produces and multiplies exponentially the great crowd of losers – of which everyone risks becoming a member, overnight – and shrinks the more and more rarified and exclusive club (I almost said “pantheon”) of winners.
- Michel Serres to Bruno Latour (1995). Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time, p. 185.
6/2/10
The mass-production of losers
Victorious
Victorious
We could be victorious
Once again victorious
One last time victorious
Never again victorious
- Victorious, The Perishers
According to the Norwegian sport sociologist Jan-Ove Tangen, the symbolically generalized medium, i.e. the core rationale of a social system (according to Niklas Luhmann), in sport, is (the inauguration of) the victor. Everything in a sports event boils down to this. The not yet known, although anticipated, winner in an athletic contest is the pivot around which the sport event unfolds.
dark side of the moon losers regroup in ever increasing numbers. The loser isn’t even correctly named: how could one lose what one never had? Sport as a social system might be mediated through the victor, but the lion’s share of what is produced in it is that vast amount of losers. Sport is nothing other than a mass-production of losers.
A worthy mission, for sure, would be to aestheticize losing, to press away the poison and to extract the honey. One of the first things that appears as urgent is ruling out the element of shame that's connected to loss.
A worthy mission, for sure, would be to aestheticize losing, to press away the poison and to extract the honey. One of the first things that appears as urgent is ruling out the element of shame that's connected to loss.
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