'Incredulity Toward Metanarratives' and Normative Suicide: A Critique of Postmodernist Drift in Critical Sport Theory

Abstract

I argue here against the increasing preoccupation with postmodern motifs evident in contemporary critical treatments of sport. My main gripe with the incorporation of these postmodern themes into critical analyses of sport has to do with their signature attempt to displace normative evaluation and argumentation in favor of the partisan championing of the beliefs of select "marginalized" social groups. I argue that it is this hostility to reason- giving and rational accountability that gets postmodern theorists of sport into trouble, and that jeopardizes the social criticism of sport.