Abstract
I have been playing pickup soccer for the last decade with members of my local Midwestern US community. In practical terms, we all behave as if little is more important to us than our ongoing game. We suffer injuries, tolerate rehabilitation, and spend hours and days away from our closest friends and family members in order to play. But we also miss no opportunity to deny the importance of the game. We are quick to admonish one another for taking it too seriously, for not just having fun, for forgetting that it’s just a game. If we behave practically as if soccer carries genuine social import, then why won’t we admit to this belief when we talk about it? In this essay, I demonstrate that, in fact, the two sides of this seeming paradox are the necessary supports for one another. Although it is counterintuitive, the seriousness of our play depends upon our refusal to acknowledge in language the significant space that soccer occupies in our lives. We are free to invest our game with a surprising degree of profundity so long as we steadily and periodically remind one another that we are not doing so. To support this thesis, I draw on classic commentary on the sociology of play by Johan Huizinga, on Robert Pfaller’s concept of interpassivity, and on several ideas from Lacanian psychoanalysis as read by Slavoj Žižek. This triangulation of thinkers allows me to clarify the logic of an everyday experience. It will also help explain the apparent contradiction between how a large group of soccer players experience their excessive attachments to a game and the sport’s minor status within our shared social reality.