Michel Foucault: Studies of Power and Sport

As a historian of the present, Michel Foucault sought to undermine modern vernaculars by disrupting the certainties that govern contemporary ways of thinking. Foucault’s interventions encourage us to detach from established knowledge, ask fresh questions, make new connections, and understand why it is important to do so. Given Foucault’s generative role in intellectual thought — evidenced most especially by extensive citation and frequent discussion of his work — serious scholars of sport cannot avoid Foucault’s formulations. Indeed, an increasing number of academics studying sport have turned to Foucault to “think through” sport’s relevance on the one hand, and for rethinking what is relevant to their work on the other. Correlatively, scholars who once imagined sport to be distinct and distant from their domain of study are, because of Foucauldian styles of thinking, now sensitive to sport’s significance to their own work. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.