Haunted spaces and unsettling predicaments: An interrogation of (capitalist) sport via the work of Mark Fisher

Abstract

In utilising the work of Mark Fisher, this article critically interrogates contemporary manifestations of capitalist sport. Specifically, it examines how the notion of capitalist realism, as well as the related concepts of hauntology and the weird and the eerie, might serve to resist anthropocentricism and challenge political impotence in the face of multiple existential crises. Emphasising Fisher’s focus on temporality and temporal aberration, the article explores how certain aspects of sports culture, such as the media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, mountain bike trail building, GPS tracking and landscape photography – experiences that are both fascinating and terrifying in equal measure – might unsettle us in ways that provoke a reconfiguration of existing socio-political frames of reference. In doing so, the article urges scholars and practitioners of sport to accept that things are never what they seem (or feel), and to embrace the ghosts of our, as-yet, unrealised (sporting) futures.