摘要
This essay presents two models of sports research, one characterized by a didactic and normative relation to its object, while wedded to a view of language characterized by a transparent and non-mediated relation between signifier and signified, and another result of the linguistic turn and an interest in reception studies and audiences. The latter has failed to deliver on its promise to democratize sports studies, as it has become centrally engaged in mapping audiences as consumers. Through a narrative analysis of three stories by Kafka, the essay shows how these models can be seen as employing specific narrative forms, and how Kafka＇s last installment in The Hunger Artist sequel offered a different perspective of the relation between art and society. This latter form of narrative may take sports studies beyond the hold of what psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan referred to as the specular phase of subject formation and into an imaginary servitude characteristic of the social ＇T＇, formed in the closing phase of the Mirror Stage.
