University of British Columbia Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies PHYSICAL CULTURE, POWER, AND THE BODY

<Return to Main Page>

THE POLITICS OF THE BODY AND THE DIALECTICS OF GLOBALISATION: A CASE STUDY OF KALIPPAYATTU

Ian Macdonald (with Geetha Jayaraman)

Abstract: Fascism and the Sporting Body There is plenty of evidence to show that fascism took sport very seriously. Orthodox approaches to the study of fascism and the sporting body tend to focus on the regimes in Europe during the inter-war years. - see Hitler's attempt to stage-manage the Olympic Games, Hitler's support for boxing. Also well known is Mussolini's own self-conscious physicality and his political exploitation of the national football team's World Cup success, and his regimes promotion of physical and militarist exercise to mould a population to a ready state of war preparedness. Less well documented but no less significant is Franco's use of Spain's premier football club to promote a chauvinistic cultural nationalism to bolster support for his regime. However, underpinning this enthusiastic embracing of sport is a highly ambivalent cult of the masculine body revealing a complex aesthetic and philosophy of embodiment that developed out of 19th century German romanticism and early 20th century Italian syndicalism. An examination of the philosophical antecedents of fascist policies for sport will draw our attention to that other authoritarian and totalitarian society to emerge in the 1930's - USSR. Maoist China is another example. This study will examine the similarities and differences in respective body cultures of fascist, nazi, authoritarian, and communist regimes for what they reveal about the specificities of the fascist body.