in host (Czech Republic), Afghan-Czech journalist Fatima Rahimi talks about women’s soccer, Iran, and embracing feminism. She accuses FIFA of hypocrisy. FIFA ignored Iran’s request to move the team’s matches scheduled to be held in California, where the Iranian diaspora is vocal, to Mexico, and ignored the plight of Iranian female soccer players seeking refugee status in Australia. “If the World Cup were to be held as an empty gesture, FIFA would be one of the favorites to win it,” Rahimi wrote.
Pointing out that women’s football is now tolerated in Iran and that its participation has been hailed as a groundbreaking and liberating project, Rahimi warns of the risk of football being exploited.
“Feminist demands have been co-opted and used to strengthen existing power structures. Women’s football becomes a testament to equality, modernity and values, and female players are cast as its visible face, but not its authorship. The question is therefore not whether football is part of politics. We already know that to be the case. The question is: are politics the winners, and whose institutions are paying the price?”
Soccer, money, and metaphysics
Author and publisher Martin Reiner recalls how he came up with an innovative idea for sponsorship during the halcyon days of Czech football in the early 2000s. In his “Feed Your Writer” campaign, he hoped to persuade 11 rich and famous footballers to contribute to the salaries of 11 prestigious but harmless writers.
He managed to obtain the phone number of Liverpool’s legendary midfielder Vladimir Šmichel. He agreed to support the writer of his choice, but when he realized that it meant parting with his money, rather than just a kind word or a sign, he backed out.
Reiner said: “We regret that we were not able to carry out the second part of the project, in which the authors we chose wrote songs celebrating historically important moments in Czech football history.” What a triumph of spirit over the ball! ”
Soccer is a “cosmic event,” argues philosopher Miroslav Petrzycek. Creative players understand this, he writes. They see the game as a process rather than a structure, and are “interested in future states of play rather than immediate play.” Petrzycek proposes a “metaphysical interpretation of soccer” in which the only way to assess a player’s genius is whether he disrupts the inherent teleology of the ball with a spectacular demonstration of skill.
The same issue’s soccer literature also includes a translation of Mario Vargas Llosa’s article on the 1982 World Cup in Spain, and excerpts from two books by German sociologist Hartmut Rosa that examine the sport.
Havel of Davos
The host interviews historian Timothy Snyder, a guest of Bookworld Prague. The conversation turns to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in January. speech at davos and a reading by Vaclav Havel. According to Carney, as Havel put it in his essay “The Power of the Powerless,” the “middle powers” are “living in a lie” by pretending to believe in the myth of a rules-based international order.
Despite the Czechs’ skepticism, Mr. Snyder said Mr. Havel was right when Mr. Carney, like Mr. Havel’s greengrocer, called on companies and countries to finally take down their signs and reveal their illusions. “I think what Prime Minister Carney is talking about is possible in the world,” Snyder said. “But I think it will need to involve a coalition of countries that actually exist. The way I see it, the organizations that have a chance in the future, and have a very good chance in terms of surviving and also providing a decent life for their people, are going to be like what we have now with the EU and Ukraine and the UK and Canada.”
poetry and sign language
Jan Zigmund speaks with Paul Hostovsky, one of the featured poets. Dino Sauj Vrisch (“Dinosaurs in the Streets”), an anthology of contemporary American poetry translated into Czech.
Growing up in America, Hostovsky knew that his father, Egon, was a famous writer, but he knew little about his home country, let alone its language. His father, who died when Paul was 14, often called him by his shortened name, Paulicek, although they were otherwise quite estranged, especially in the later years of his life. “It’s a small thing, but that little suffix, or that memory, that echo, is all the love I have for my father. In a way, for me, it encompasses an entire language, an entire country, an entire continent of refugees.”
Hostovsky, who works as a sign language interpreter, rejects the term “disability” as an “offensive euphemism from a medical establishment that views deaf people as a medical problem, something broken, something in need of repair and healing, rather than a linguistic and cultural minority with its own complex, visually beautiful, gestural, musical, aerial language and accompanying culture.” Rather than being linear like in spoken language, each individual word follows the next. Rather, it is simultaneous, with all sections of the body’s orchestra producing meaning at the same time. ”
Review by Julia Sherwood
Source: Eurozine – www.eurozine.com
