Australian Rules Football and Michel Foucault

It seems the monster of post-modernity is still alive and well and kicking footballs in Australia.

What does the intellectually deranged relativism and post-Nietzche malaise of Foucault have to do with sports backwater chimera child of soccer hooliganism, rugby and head injuries, you might ask?

It seems Foucault's identity politics (how power shapes identity - in this case, how media portrayals and charcterizations reverse form a players personality) are being used to address 'character issues' in recruiting players.

In other words, frankly speaking, not a damn thing at all.

That all said this is the capper;

"Then, player salaries were lower and footy clubs were almost carefree in their risk-management practices. Nowadays, the write-off cost of a defective or disruptive footy player is bigger, and thus so are the worries of prudent footy executives. Foucault helps them to tackle those worries.

Elsewhere, the business community has been, on the whole, slow to adopt Foucault's contributions to the philosophy of accounting. But the Australian Football League has built itself a platypus of a game by incorporating odd elements from the most unexpected places. It is unafraid to throw something different - even a dead French intellectual icon - into its business plans."

So at least the owners seem 'reassured' by these Foucaultian influences, which perhaps is the best PM joke of all.