Monthly Archives: July 2010

This Sporting Life

My colleague at Duke University, Wayne Norman, has written some great material reflecting on the place of soccer in the U.S., available here. Peter Alegi, meanwhile, offers up this nice ode to the recent World Cup, via the blog Football is Coming Home:

This Time for South Africa

Marcus Gilroy-Ware, who I went to several games with in South Africa, has produced this interesting short video about South African perspectives on the recent World Cup, featuring Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nutall (Visiting Professors at Duke this coming fall) among others. I also published a set of final reflections on the World Cup, with… Read More »

Finale

Two days after the World Cup final, the whole event seems slightly surreal. I’m returning from South Africa today, having survived on my last day here a gauntlet of baboons and a march up a gorgeous mountain, after arriving on the 26th of June just in time to see Ghana beat the U.S. I’ve had… Read More »

Univision, Latino (Dis)Unity, and the World Cup

In this past month of World Cup football, I have seen my facebook stream lit up by “friends” claiming that they are loving to watch coverage in Spanish. In many cases, these friends speak Spanish as a second language; I even have friends who don’t speak Spanish well at all, yet watch the Spanish coverage… Read More »

World Cup Waterloos

I’ve just returned from several days in Cape Town, where I saw the Uruguay-Netherlands game and once again learned the limited power of football to offer up moral clarity. After the Ghana match, I was sure I’d be able to take out all my rage and spleen at the Uruguayans in the next game, savoring… Read More »

Black Star Tragedy

Football, we learned last night during the Ghana-Uruguay game, is the most effective tool for mass torture every devised by the human race. A vast majority of the over eighty thousands fans in the stadium, and millions of viewers throughout the world, were left speechless and unwound by what we saw unfold. For me, it… Read More »

Why We Love the Vuvuzela

With apologies to my many vuvuzela-hating friends, here’s an essay (in French) written by Achille Mbembe and myself on experiencing the vuvuzela in South Africa. An English translation is available here.