Neoliberalism and Sports Mega-Events

Abstract

The rapid rise of the legacy concept toward cross-functional and cross-textual hegemony within sports mega-event discourse is quite a magical accomplishment with far-reaching real-world consequences. In my understanding, legacy discourse is a way of making the world by the art of naming, by making use of magical words of power that have symbolic efficacy without an objective corollary. My analysis of the discourse on the legacy of the Beijing 2008 Games reveals that legacy discourse is characterized by techniques that corroborate taken-for-granted structures of representation and causality. Legacy advocates are using distinctions and oppositions to break down the world into bits and pieces and to pull them back together in ritual processes into an experience of reality as continuous as it is seamless.