Soccer and the Return of Argentine Politics

ALABARCES, PABLO

LATIN AMERICA - NACLA

NACLA

Lugar: Washington; Año: 2004 vol. 37 p. 33 - 38

0095-5930

The conclusions of the book were focused in the discussion of the following hypotheses: the centrality of football as a narrative of a tribal identity in the Argentinean contemporaneity, but at the same time its weakness to assume an articulation role of a new narrative of national identity; the relief function taken by mass media, after the retirement of the State and the weakness of the civil society, as the most visible mechanism of the market; the impossibility of the mass media to unfold a successful narrative. And as a conclusion, I argued the need of reading again the political ways in which the civil society could articulate new narratives of identity, in spite of its weakness and of the peripheral condition of the Argentinean society, which implied its subordination in a globalised world. If that politicization is an impossible condition for the football culture and for the mass media culture, the politics of the popular should attend, again, the practices where that politicization was and could be possible. That are, I insist, outside the media… and on the outside, parallel and consequently, of football. These conclusions deserve, undoubtedly, an extended analysis.