Grant Farred examines the careers of international soccer stars Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, along with his own experience playing for an amateur township team in apartheid South Africa, to theorize the relationship between sports and the intertwined experiences of relation, separation, and belonging.
Grant Farred's journey through South Africa, England, and the United States is intertwined with his lifelong passion for football, particularly Liverpool. His narrative explores the complexities of race and class politics in the sport, revealing how football shapes and reflects his identity as a colonial subject. Through personal anecdotes, he examines the dual nature of players as both idols and villains, highlighting the sport's role in his personal growth and understanding of societal contradictions.
Grant Farred takes up the event as a philosophical problem from a novel perspective, examining infamous events in sport and arguing that theorizing the event through sport makes possible an entirely original way of thinking about it. He shows how what was inherent in the event is opened to new possibilities for understanding ontological being by thinking about sport philosophically.
"An intensely personal, and philosophical, account of why white America's racial unconscious is not so unconscious"
Could there be a bigger paradox than the black man using Martin Heidegger to repel the white woman's racism?
Grant Farred, a Professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University, explores themes of identity and culture through his works. His notable titles include "Long Distance Love: A Passion for Football," which examines the intersection of sports and personal connection, and "Martin Heidegger Saved My Life," reflecting on philosophy's impact on existence. Additionally, "In Motion, At Rest: The Event of the Athletic Body" delves into the physicality of sports and its significance in understanding the human experience.
This book probes the cultural forces and legacies at play in three events in sports history, exploring how racial, national, sporting, and personal identities overlap and conflict. The author taps into a deep well of Western philosophy and literature to read the resonances in these three moments--
"While recollecting his educational experiences in apartheid South Africa, the author grapples with the oppressive intent of the governing regime alongside its unintended benefits for his intellectual and individual development"--