Fotbollen, vetenskapen och mötet med den Andre

Abstract

The starting point for this article is the questio of whether I, as a rationally thinking scientist, can understand my emotional involvement as a football spectator. My suggestion is that the question at issue is problematic, as modern science cannot handle that which is emotional, "unreasonable" or "irrational". This inability is connected to modern man's relationship to his body, his feelings and to the so called Other. It is a relationship distinguished by splits and contradictions, by discrimination and hierarchical principles of order. By differentiating, e.g. between thought and feeling, body and soul, rational and irrational, one can be made superior to the other: thought is made superior to feeling, the body superior to the soul, and the rational superior to the irrational. In the same manner the masculine can be made superior to the feminine and the modern superior to the primitive, as the feminine and the primitive are associated with the emotional and irrational.

There is, however, always an element of contradiction, since it's really about two sides of the same coin. The rational, like the unreasonable and emotional, requires its opposite to exist. The football spectator always has a rational and sensible side, as the scientict always has an emotional and unreasonable side to him. Therefore, the question of whether the scientist can understand the football spectator is really a question of the scientist's relationship to the Other; about the Other within himself, and the distinction and ranking which follow. In order to "understand" the football spectator, the scientist must see both sides and acknowledge the irrational and emotional as part of himself, science, and the modern.