Dr Sandra Meeuwsen’s PhD dissertation in philosophy of sport excavated into the roots of the paradoxical face of modern sport. She shared the key philosophical ideas and findings in her work in the Meaningful Sport podcast.
Modern sport has an increasingly contradictory face. On the one hand, its contribution to health, well-being, character development, solidarity, and so forth, is so often perpetuated in sporting narratives. Yet, we increasingly hear also about the ‘dark side’ of sport: sexual harassment, abuse, doping, athlete exploitation and corruption. How can we make sense of this dual character? Can philosophical analysis help us to vision a more balanced, or more meaningful future for sport?
In the first part, Sandra tells about her personal journey of working in the institutions of sport for three decades and starts sharing on the methodology and key philosophical ideas informing her PhD work. For example, she tells us what philosophical archaeology is and what documents were included in her analysis.
Part 1 here:
In the second part, we start exploring psychoanalytical theories, before moving to Nietzsche’s concepts of the Apollonian and Dionysian. Has sport lost the Dionysian element? If so, how can it be restored and can we see signs of this already now in our movement cultures?
In the second part, we also discuss whether and how Sandra sees some hope for a brighter future for modern sport.
Part 2 here:
Dr Sandra Meeuwsen is a philosopher of sport who worked in various vital positions in sport since the early 1990s. She encountered these contradictions of sport in daily work which led her to embark on a PhD project to understand these issues. She completed her PhD in 2020 at the Faculty of Philosophy and Moral Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Brussels with the thesis “A Critique of Sportive Reason; a philosophical archaeology of modern sport”.
You can find out more about Sandra’s work at https://sandrameeuwsen.nl/ and follow her on Twitter @MeeuwsenPhd.
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