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Abstract

Olympic discourse presents a story of a global movement that places “sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind” (IOC, 2023a). Conversely, the instantiation of this mythology in the Olympic Games is riven with the contradictions of contemporary capitalism, from the displacement of residents to the exploitation of workers and the transfer of private risk to public host cities. One issue has become especially evident: the substantial environmental impact of the Games. In this theoretical intervention, I explore the Olympic Movement's response to this impact and the climate crisis through an analysis of its environmental discourse. Using the post-Lacanian concept of ideological fantasy, I argue that Olympic environmental discourse mobilizes its humanist mythology to construct an imagined sustainable future in which “climate positivity” is achievable through local changes that do not disrupt the commercial structure of the event. Conversely, I suggest that air transportation emissions—the largest source of emissions but barely present in Olympic sustainability strategies—are symptomatic of the structural unsustainability of the Olympic Movement. In order to make the absent presence of this symptom more palatable, I contend that a process of fetishistic disavowal occurs in which spectator travel is dismissed as “unavoidable.”

Keywords

sport Olympism sustainability Žižek aviation

Introduction

“The goal of Olympism,” the Olympic Charter states, “is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity” (IOC, 2023a). This humanistic moralism is a defining feature of Olympic discourse, which regularly makes appeals to global unity and a higher purpose. Conversely, despite this appeal to the greater good, an ever-increasing range of literature has highlighted the symptoms of the Olympic Movement, the Olympic Games and sporting mega-events in general.

Research has demonstrated the expropriation of land (Bin, 2017) and the expulsion of local residents directly and indirectly caused by the games (Boykoff, 2023, 2024; Ribeiro & Santos Junior, 2017; Rocha & Xiao, 2022; Watt, 2013). Literature has also highlighted the exploitation of workers and broader human rights abuses (Bowersox, 2022; Hamidi, 2022; Human Rights Watch, 2013; Noonan et al., 2023; Shantz, 2011; Wolf, 2022). In addition, the Games have also placed long-lasting burdens on public finance and displaced private risk onto public bodies (Short, 2018), as well as facilitated the securitization of public spaces (Coaffee, 2024; Pauschinger, 2024). Moreover, a body of critical literature has developed around the commercialization of the Games (Dyreson, 2013; Rahman & Lockwood, 2011; Real, 1996; Smart, 2018; Tomlinson & Whannel, 1984). Research has also demonstrated that not only does climate change pose a threat to the Games but the Games’ environmental impact is a particularly troubling symptom of Olympism (Boykoff & Mascarenhas, 2016; Glasson, 2024; Gold & Gold, 2013; Lenskyj, 1998; Millington et al., 2018; Müller et al., 2021; Paquette et al., 2011).

In this theoretical intervention, I explore the Olympic Movement's response to this impact by analyzing its environmental discourse through a Lacanian lens. In particular, I seek to understand the mechanisms through which the Olympic Movement is able to reproduce a narrative of itself as a proenvironmental force despite its evident environmental impact.

To enable this analysis, I use the post-Lacanian concept of ideological fantasy to argue that Olympic environmental discourse mobilizes its mythology as a force for the greater good in order to construct an imagined sustainable future in which climate positivity is achievable through local managerial changes that do not disrupt the commercial structure of the event. Through this analysis, I build on Ben Glasson's (2022, 2024) reading of Olympic environmental myth-work and the “double reality of climate crisis and capitalism” (2024, p. 1) embodied by Olympism wherein the climate crisis continues to worsen but claims of sustainability are ever more prominent (Gaffney, 2013).

Moreover, I highlight the symptomatic position of air transportation emissions in Olympic environmental discourse. Despite being the largest contributor to the Games’ carbon footprint, these emissions are all but excluded from event sustainability plans. In response, I argue that the absent presence of these emissions is what Slavoj Žižek calls a symptom, an unbearable or seemingly pathological imbalance that, rather than standing as an aberration, acts as the constitutive moment of a given discourse (1989, p. 20). That is, if these emissions are structurally necessary because the Games are only financially viable as a global tourist event that requires mass spectator travel, they are also what makes the event environmentally unsustainable. To negotiate the tension caused by the presence of this symptom, I suggest that the IOC engages in a process of fetishistic disavowal that has been previously identified in sportswashing research (Black et al., 2024). That is, while the IOC and Games organizers are overtly aware of the outsized impact of air transportation emissions—they are readily acknowledged in the organizations’ carbon accounting—they continue to act as if they do not by fetishizing these emissions as “unavoidable” and thus outside of the organization's control in their sustainability and legacy plans.

The paper begins with an overview of the emergence of Olympic environmental discourse before turning to the ideological fantasies that propel this discourse, along with the symptoms with which they are riven and the process of fetishistic disavowal that holds this process together.

Greening the Games

Following the environmentally destructive Albertville Winter Olympics (Konstantopoulos & Manoli, 2023) and rising global environmental consciousness, environmental concerns were formally integrated into the Olympic Movement in 1994 when “Environment” joined “Sport” and “Culture” as the third pillar of the Movement. From 2000, Olympic host bids have been required to address environmental concerns (Pentifallo & Van Wynsberghe, 2012, p. 438). Subsequent Games have sought to embrace environmental discourse, such as the 2000 Sydney “Green Games,” the 2008 Beijing “Green Olympics,” and the 2012 London “One Planet” Games (Gold & Gold, 2013). IOC event hosts are now required to create sustainability plans that the IOC believes will result in carbon-neutral and, from 2030, climate-positive events (IOC, 2020). Indeed, Paris 2024 organizers declared that the event “will become climate positive, a world's first for a sports event” (Paris 2024, 2021).

Despite this increasing environmental rhetoric, the environmental impact of the Games has been well-documented (Boykoff & Mascarenhas, 2016; Glasson, 2024; Gold & Gold, 2013; Lenskyj, 1998; Millington et al., 2018; Müller et al., 2021; Paquette et al., 2011). Few, if any Olympic events have hit their environmental targets and a number have caused “outright environmental harm” (Geeraert & Gauthier, 2017, p.16). Indeed, research suggests that the Games are becoming less sustainable, despite environmental discourse becoming more prominent (Essex & Latuf de Oliveira Sanchez, 2024; Gold & Gold, 2013; Müller et al., 2021). As a result, there is, as Boykoff and Mascarenhas (2016, p. 5) state regarding the substantial environmental impact of the Rio 2016 Games, “a monstrous abyss” between the Games organizer's promises and realities.

Yet, despite the evident environmental threat to the Games and through the Games, the IOC and the broader Olympic Movement present themselves as a proenvironmental force capable of not only producing ecologically sustainable events but also leading sport's changing relationship with the natural environment and inspiring wider societal transformation. They do so not by denying climate change or ignoring their environmental impact but by actively embracing these “challenges.” In the IOC's own sustainability strategy, for instance, they acknowledge “the need for a more sustainable world” and deem this to be “one of the greatest challenges of our time” (IOC, 2021b, p. 8). Equally, in a press release announcing that the Olympic and Winter Olympic Games would be climate-positive by 2030 (IOC, 2020), IOC President Thomas Bach is quoted as stating

Climate change is a challenge of unprecedented proportions, and it requires an unprecedented response. Looking ahead, we want to do more than reducing and compensating our own impact. We want to ensure that, in sport, we are at the forefront of the global efforts to address climate change and leave a tangible, positive legacy for the planet.

As seen in the case of the Olympic Movement, the capacity to present a compelling environmental story while keeping its own unsustainability at bay is the work of what Žižek calls ideological fantasy, to which we now turn.

The Fantasmatic Grip of Ideology

Žižek's concept of ideological fantasy interweaves the psychoanalytic and Marxist traditions in an attempt to understand why certain discursive framings grip the subject (Žižek, 1989). In particular, ideological fantasy is a part of the post-Marxist turn to language and subsequent debates about the status of ideology and false consciousness. Where Marx had suggested that ideology was a partial representation of a totality, in the Lacanian reading ideology is a socio-political narrative that attempts to totalize an inherently partial reality. In this sense, as Žižek (1989, p. 45) contends, the function of ideological fantasy is “not to offer us a point of escape from our reality but to offer us the social reality as an escape from some traumatic, real kernel.”

This traumatic kernel, otherwise known as the Lacanian Real, emerges because of “the radical contingency of social reality” (Glynos & Howarth, 2008, p. 145) caused by the inescapable incompleteness of language. That is, because meaning can only be established in relation to other signifiers rather than a transcendental point outside of language, it is differential and there are no positively existing signifiers. As a consequence, language and the realities we construct through language, are negatively charged and radically contingent. Here the Real indicates the ontological failure of symbolization—the point that shows language is radically contingent—and the ontic manifestation of that impossibility in discourse (Daly, 1999b), a traumatic impossibility that we are impelled to overcome.

Vitally, Lacan argued that the subject is constituted in the inherent failure of language; from the moment of their first cry, the human subject is forced to mediate bodily demands through language. Thus, the body is not only subject to the ontological negativity of the symbolic order but is separated from direct access to these demands by language (Fink, 1995, pp. 5–6). As a consequence of this dual failure, Lacan argued, the human condition is stained by a sense of “lack” or “missing” that we are fruitlessly propelled to overwrite.

It is in this desire to overcome the failure of symbolization that the role of fantasy in ideology becomes apparent. While reality may be contingent, ideologies are more often defined by their “stickiness” rather than fluidity (Glynos, 2001). Fantasy, in the clinical Lacanian reading, is the explanatory framework through which the subject makes sense of their inherent dislocation and their desire to overcome this embodied lack (Žižek, 1997). As such, the binding of fantasy to ideology allows us to understand why ideology becomes compelling for the subject (Kay, 2003, p. 135); we can identify a number of ideological positions within a given discursive field but these positions only grip the subject because of their (implicit) fantasmatic form.

Put differently, if the Real is what cannot be articulated within a particular ideology and, as such, threatens the stability of that ideological formation, ideological fantasies serve to mitigate the disruptive impact of the Real. Thus, a given ideological fantasy becomes compelling by providing a socio-political explanation that makes sense of its own failure by restaging it in a more palatable form, primarily by offering the possibility of overcoming this sense of lack while maintaining distance from its structural impossibility (Daly, 1999a). The political value of an ideological fantasy, therefore, is not in its rational content. Instead, these constructions of reality become compelling because they provide an explanation for the presence of the Real and a promise to overcome this point of tension, thus avoiding a direct confrontation with this disruptive point (Žižek, 1993, p. 205).

Žižek's reading of the fantasmatic dimension of ideology enables us to identify the moments of impossibility within Olympic environmental discourse and the attempts to restage and conceal these points of tension, as well as the promises to overcome this tension. This interplay between the Real and ideological fantasy is evident in three forms within Olympic environmental discourse: the greater good, sustainable futures, and managerial localism, each of which attempts to domesticate the Real impact of the environmental degradation caused by the Games.

Olympic (Ideological) Fantasies

Ideological fantasies operate within Olympic environmental discourse to attempt to restage or conceal the structural unsustainability of the Games, which acts as a moment of the Real, as well as providing a promise to overcome this point of tension. The most apparent ideological fantasy is the narrative that the Olympic Movement is inherently a force for the greater good, which Glasson (2022) calls the Olympic Halo effect. This idea of Olympism as a force for the greater good is at the core of the Olympic Movement, in which Olympism is described as

…a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example, social responsibility and respect for internationally recognised human rights and universal fundamental ethical principles within the remit of the Olympic Movement. (IOC, 2023a)

Vitally, this narrative of Olympism informs responses to local and global social issues, including the climate crisis. For example, in his Foreword to the IOC's (2017) Sustainability Strategy, the then IOC President Thomas Bach claimed that the institution's

overarching mission … is to put sport at the service of humanity. As an organisation dedicated to making the world a better place through sport, the IOC wholeheartedly believes that sport has an essential role to play in modern society. In our fragile world that has never been more interdependent and in need of common solutions, the IOC wants to do its part to make the sporting world an agent for positive change.

The Olympic Halo is an effective ideological fantasy because it evokes a useable image of the Olympic Movement as a sincere environmental actor that is inherently orientated toward confronting societal challenges (Van Wynsberghe et al., 2021). In doing so, the climate crisis is framed as an external force which is confronting Olympism, rather than a crisis to which the movement is contributing.

Conversely, there are very few references to the negative effects of climate change in Olympic discourse. Instead, environmental issues are framed through their apparent solutions and with the Olympic Movement as an inherently benevolent environmental actor (Petersen-Wagner & Lee Ludvigsen, 2025). As such, through this ideological fantasy, the unsustainability of the Games is domesticated by mobilizing the existing discursive architecture of Olympism as an implicit promise to work toward environmental goals.

Intertwined with this solution-framed fantasy is the promise of future sustainability. Here, as Glasson argues, Olympic discourse mediates against the Olympic Movement's unsustainability by promising a “future perfect sustainability” while “suspending from view the present we don’t [want to see]” (Glasson, 2024, p. 12). In doing so, it allows the Games to continue their massive carbon footprint by recasting “the sustainable as the becoming-sustainable” (Glasson, 2024, p. 14). For example, the 2032 Brisbane Games are contractually required to be “Climate Positive” (IOC, 2020) but there appears to be no meaningful way of achieving this target, given the distances required to travel to Australia and the need (or desire) to construct new venues (Foth et al., 2022). The fantasy of future sustainability effectively “off-sets” (Glasson & Hutchins, 2024) the current unsustainability of the Games and the trauma of the Real. By promising future sustainability the tension of the present can be passed on to a future that never arrives. As such, in both these fantasies, the climate crisis is framed through its inevitable future resolution (Bowen, 2014).

Finally, there exists a managerial localist fantasy in which the threat of climate change is acknowledged but the action required is restaged in more manageable and local forms that do not require a confrontation with the unsustainability of the event. This process, along with the greater good and future sustainability ideological fantasies noted above, is evident in Paris 2024 discourse. Here, “Faced with the societal challenges of the 21st century” organizers promised that the Games would place “the key issues of legacy and sustainability at the heart of its project since the bid phase to inspire new standards” and deliver “the Greenest Games in Olympic history” (IOC, 2021c). The goal, organizers stated, was to show that “another model is possible” (Cabot, 2023).

Conversely, rather than acknowledging the structural unsustainability of the Games, a number of local measures were put in place to ensure that the existing model was environmentally palatable. In this way, environmental action is being taken but the structural impossibility of the Games is avoided. For example, organizers stated that they were focused on avoiding, reducing, and controlling emissions in four specific areas: construction, furniture, energy, and catering (IOC, 2021c), thus restaging the environmental impact of the Games as a problem that is solvable within current parameters through managerial adjustments.

We can thus see three instantiations of ideological fantasy within Olympic environmental discourse, each of which is a variant of the process of offering an explanation for the tension of the Real qua the unsustainability of the Games while providing a promise of overcoming that tension. Here the idea of Olympism working for the greater good is mobilized to evoke a sustainable future that can be achieved by restaging environmental action in a way that creates a distance from its structural unsustainability. Nonetheless, the operation of a given ideological fantasy cannot entirely tame the impossibility within it; there is always something that escapes. For Žižek, that remainder is the symptom.

Symptomatic Transportation

As Žižek suggests, the symptom is the point at which we experience the Lacanian Real, or the moment of impossibility or failure within a given discourse. It is in this failure that the existence of an unbridgeable gap within a discourse is revealed. Put differently, for Žižek (1989, p. 20), the symptom is a “certain ‘pathological’ imbalance…. This imbalance, far from announcing the ‘imperfect realisation’ of these universal principles—that is, an insufficiency to be abolished by further development—functions as their constitutive moment: the ‘symptom’ is, strictly speaking, a particular element which subverts its own universal foundation, a species subverting its own genus.” That symptomatic particular element subverting the Olympic Games to carbon neutrality or climate positivity is air transportation.

Research has demonstrated the significant contribution of air transportation to emissions from sports events (Cooper & McCullough, 2021; Loewen & Wicker, 2021; Pereira et al., 2019; Triantafyllidis, 2018; Wynes, 2021) particularly mega-events (Wilby et al., 2023). For example, international travel made up around two-thirds of the Greenhouse Gas emissions from the 2010 FIFA World Cup (Republic of South Africa et al., 2009), which was particularly high because of European tourists and limited public transport infrastructure in the country (Death, 2011). Moreover, 83% of emissions from the 2014 World Cup in Brazil came from transportation, with 61% from international transportation (FIFA, 2013). Likewise, 74% of emissions came from spectators and participants traveling to and in Russia for the 2018 tournament, with 77% from international travel (FIFA, 2016).

Aviation emissions associated with the Olympic Games are typically lower, as the event is primarily based in a single city. Nonetheless, reports from the IOC consistently show that spectator air transportation is the biggest source of emissions. For example, in London 2012, spectator activity made up 30% of emissions. In Rio 2016, this figure was 28 and 25% in Paris, with a further 9% from athletes and officials, making air travel the largest source of game-related emissions (Bortoli, 2024). In Paris, travel made up 53% of emissions, driven by the 2.8 million “unique spectators” who visited the city (Paris 2024, 2024a, 2024b). Notably, the virtual absence of spectators from Tokyo 2020 and the fall in event-related personnel from 141,000 to 41,000, resulted in a 40% reduction in carbon emissions (Ito et al., 2022).

Curiously, however, while these emissions are reported in the carbon accounting reports produced by the IOC, they have a minimal presence in the organization's sustainability discourse. For example, the Interim Evaluation Report on the “Legacy & Sustainability Strategy” of Paris 2024 (IOC, 2024b) notes that

with regard to environmental issues, the compatibility of the model of major international events with planetary limits is sometimes questioned, whether due to the environmental impacts of the event itself (massive use of air transport to get to the event, consumption of resources, production of waste), or because of the type of products and services promoted on this occasion (use of single-use plastic in particular). Increasing the level of details shared on the actions carried out, the objectives sought, the results obtained and the methodologies for measuring the environmental impact, and more generally, creating spaces for open discussions on new event models, could reduce perceived contradictions.

Conversely, there is no further discussion of air transportation in the 312-page document. Moreover, there is no mention of air or international travel in the Paris 2024 Sustainability and Legacy Pre-games Report Summary (Paris 2024, 2024c) nor on its publicly facing climate commitments (IOC, 2024a).

We thus have a curious situation in which the IOC and organizers of Paris 2024 are making strong claims to not only the climate positivity of the event but Olympism as a proenvironmental force in line with its largest humanistic moral mission while excluding the largest source of emissions from their environmental strategies. This tension suggests that, in the Žižek sense, air transportation emissions are symptomatic; although they appear to be a pathological imbalance, this imbalance will not be resolved through greater knowledge or more effective management. Instead, air transportation is a necessary function of the Olympic Games as a hypercapitalist tourist spectacle that is reliant on mass spectator travel to be financially viable for host cities.

Vitally, it is not as if the IOC is unaware of the impact of air transportation. Not only is it clearly indicated in the Games’ carbon accounting (Paris 2024, 2024b), but is also present in the IOC's (2023b) calculation of its own carbon footprint. This report estimated that 72% of its footprint game from “Business Travel” and resolved to reduce air travel, which was also seen in the IOC's latest organization sustainability report (IOC, 2021b), which aimed to end flights for trips shorter than 4 hr and increase the use of remote meetings. In Lacanian terms, this process of knowing and not-knowing is called fetishistic disavowal, which is crucial to both sportswashing broadly and the management of the symptoms of Olympic environmental discourse.

Disavowal and the Double Fetish of Olympic Sustainability

The conceptual origins of fetishistic disavowal lie in Freud's psychoanalytic reading of the process in which the subject simultaneously acknowledges and disavows that knowledge (Black et al., 2024, p. 147). Thus, disavowal is an embodied response to discomforting phenomena in which the subject knows something but unconsciously acts as if they have not (Zupančič, 2022). In this sense, the subject can disown their own knowledge. Or, more importantly, they can openly avoid openly confronting the Real (McGowan, 2022). As Black et al. (2024) argue, the important point is that the subject of disavowal is not held together by their ignorance and the situation cannot be remedied through more knowledge; the problem is an excess of knowledge, rather than a lack (Kuldova, 2019).

This disavowal is materialized in a fetishistic point, generally an object, symbol, or behavior (Black et al., 2024, p. 154). In this regard, McGowan (2020, p. 236) argues that “the fetishist manages to find an object that promises complete satisfaction by facilitating the disavowal of lack.” Thus, the fetish allows the subject to simultaneously, if unconsciously, “know and not know” (McGowan, 2020, p. 6).

Black et al. (2024) have identified this process in operation in the case of sportswashing. Rather than thinking of sports fans as either unaware of the sins being washed or the willing dupes, they argue that fans are often well aware of what is going on (Kearns et al., 2024). Through the process of fetishistic disavowal, however, they are able to act as if they are unaware by displacing this knowledge onto a fetish, passion for sport, club, or a player. In doing so, as fragile as this process may seem, it remains compelling because it allows those invested to continue to believe and enjoy by being ignorant against our better knowledge (Black et al., 2024, p. 152).

There are two fetishistic points within Olympic environmental discourse: the unavoidability of air transportation and the power of offsetting. Most notably, air transportation is positioned as out of the event's control, despite being central to its organization as a mass tourism event. In the Paris Legacy and Sustainability Plan, for example, “spectator air travel” is identified as an “impact that cannot be avoided” (Paris 2024, 2024c, p. 19). Similar sentiments exist in the 2021 Sustainability and Legacy Report (IOC, 2021c). Indeed, in their postevent environmental report, Paris 2024 organizers note the size of transportation emissions and immediately add that “Paris 2024 had no levers or control over it” (Paris 2024, 2024b, p. 13).

It is patently untrue that air transportation emissions can be moderated by the IOC. Not only is it possible to organized Games that do not regular mass air travel—this was the case for most Olympic events—but the distance required for spectators to travel and the availability of alternatives to air transportation can be considered. For multicity events such as FIFA World Cups, there are further options available, including scheduling arrangements, the availability of internal public transportation, and the centralization of events (Triantafyllidis, 2018).

Off-setting is an equal partner in this fetish. If air transportation emissions are simply unavoidable, carbon neutrality, and climate positivity would be impossible. This is not a conclusion that is available within the aspirational Olympic environment discourse. Instead, a lack of control over air transportation is paired with an almost immediate commitment to off-set these emissions. For example, Paris’ commitment to a “Carbon Neutral Games” (IOC, 2024a) includes the statement “Alongside its ambition to reduce the carbon emissions of the Games, Paris 2024 has developed a funding programme for projects aimed at avoiding and capturing carbon emissions, which will aim to offset unavoidable Games-related emissions.” This focus on off-setting continues throughout Olympic environmental discourse and serves as an answer to the underlying unsustainability of sport mega-events; if emissions are “unavoidable,” they can always be off-set in a future that may not arrive. The point, as Glasson (2024) contends, is to make the currently unsustainable feel sustainable now, even if the ecological value of offsetting does not typically fully accrue for decades.

As with the claim about the lack of control of air transportation, the focus on off-setting is deeply problematic (Böhm et al., 2012; Bryant et al., 2015; McAfee, 2022). Specifically, commitments to tree planting and similar initiatives are often not followed through. Moreover, the value of offsetting is not realized until many years into the future and can be lost if trees die or are removed. Finally, offsetting is often used as an excuse for not reducing emissions; offsetting would be more effective if it was done at the same time as emissions, such as from air transportation, were reduced. As such, off-setting is a common fetish in environmental discourse (Watt, 2021).

The fetishistic framing of air transportation emissions is a form of disavowal that serves a specific function. Specifically, the denial of responsibility for travel emissions allows for the reproduction of the fantasy of environmental sustainability and the larger IOC narrative of the Olympic Movement as a force for good. Ultimately, fetishistic disavowal is compelling because we want it to be; the affective value of a fetish—in this case, that air transportation emissions are unavoidable but can still be offset—allows the audience to continue their investment, even unconsciously, in Olympism and the Olympic Games. The fetish puts a full stop to critical thought and allows those invested to put aside their concerns and continue to enjoy.

In this regard, Glasson (2022, p. 229) argues that IOC environmental discourse “promotes a false sense of security that assuages anxieties about the material contradiction between global capitalism and planetary ecology.” At a time of polycrisis, this reassurance is particularly welcome, framed as it is within the apparent global unity of Olympism.

Conclusion: Sustaining Capitalism

As Glasson (2024, p. 1) reminds us, we are living in a time of a “double reality of climate crisis and capitalism” in which ever greater promises of sustainability are being made, either by governments at international climate conferences or private entities like the IOC, but the climate crisis continues to get worse. The year 2023 was the hottest year on record and 2024 looks almost certain to be even hotter (Copernicus Climate Change Service, 2024; International Energy Agency, 2024). It is also the year when global coal demand hit a record high. As United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres (2023) stated, “humanity has opened the gates of hell. Horrendous heat is having horrendous effects. Distraught farmers watching crops carried away by floods. Sweltering temperatures spawning disease.”

We do not lack for climate change deniers. Indeed, as I write, one has been elected President of the United States. Nonetheless, the primary space of environmental action and discourse is held by actors who claim to be working to battle climate change, rather than ignore it. In this discourse, the precariousness of the natural environment is readily acknowledged. Climate change is, as IOC President Thomas Bach stated “arguably the biggest challenge humanity is facing” (IOC, 2021a).

Conversely, rather than change the systems driving these climatic changes, the hegemonic environmental discourse is articulated by actors who promise sustainability without change or sacrifice. Aramco, the world's biggest oil producer and largest carbon-oxide company, has a sustainability policy that promotes the integration of “sustainability principles and preserving resources” (Aramco, 2024). Walmart, the world's largest retailer, acknowledges that “Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time” and promises that “Walmart is deeply committed to addressing climate change” (Walmart, 2024). Likewise, the Olympic Games—the largest sporting event in the world—promises transformational change while continuing with business as usual.

In the Lacanian reading, the unsustainability of these entities is a moment of the Real: the point of impossibility within a given discourse. It is the tension caused by this point, I have argued, that drives a range of ideological fantasies. In the case of Olympism, this involves evoking the sense that the Olympic Movement works for the greater good of humanity and presenting a sustainable future that is achievable through local changes that do not disrupt the existing structure of the Games. As this theoretical intervention has suggested, however, something always escapes from this fantasy. In the case of the Olympic Movement, that symptomatic point is air transportation, which is both financially necessary and the primary cause of the unsustainability of the Games. Conversely, the fetishistic disavowal of this symptom as unavoidable and to be off-set, has effectively allowed fans to continue to invest in the Games.

Vitally, as Boykoff (2024, p. 70) suggested, this interrogation of a sporting mega-event is never only about that event, but instead speaks to the larger contradictions with which contemporary capitalism is riven. In the case of the Olympics, this paper argues that the concepts of ideological fantasy, the symptom, and fetishistic disavowal allow us to understand how the increasingly apparent unsustainability of capitalism is made to seem sustainable and why this discourse is so seductive for so many. Our job as critical academic scholars, as both Boykoff and Žižek would suggest, is to insist on the symptomatic points that escape and threaten this discourse.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Chris McMillan

Author Biography

Chris McMillan is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Auckland. His research focuses on the socio-cultural reproduction of the political economy of sport, as well as using sport as a means for understanding the cultural logics of late capitalism. He is particularly interested in the intersection of sport, capitalism and climate change, often in relation to cricket and sport in Aotearoa New Zealand. This work is animated by a Lacanian-Marxist theoretical orientation that asks, How do ideological formulations reproduce themselves despite their apparent contradictions? Chris has published three books¸ Žižek and Communist Strategy (Edinburgh University Press, 2012), The London Dream (Zero Books, 2020) and Cricket, Capitalism and Class (Routledge, 2023).

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Sustainable Symptoms: Olympism,Air Transportation,and Fetishistic Disavowal

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Greening the Games

The Fantasmatic Grip of Ideology

Olympic (Ideological) Fantasies

Symptomatic Transportation

Disavowal and the Double Fetish of Olympic Sustainability

Conclusion: Sustaining Capitalism

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Author Biography

References