E-sports

Body, digital technology and subjectivity

Abstract

In this essay some ideas are presented to analyze the incipient sportsmanship of video games and their entry into the sports arena, in relation to digital technology, to the body and to the production of a subjectivity in late modern society. Electronic sports or e-sports can be thought both as entertainment and body training, differently from other traditional sports. The organic body seems to have found its’ great limitations, becoming more and more obsolete and outdated in the age of digital technology. Electronic sports, as practices and products of the cultural industry, are bound to social acceleration and must bet on the principles of faith in progress, updating, technologization, massiveness and spectacularization typical of the sports phenomenon. In this way, they seem to find their success and legitimacy in the new production of sensitivities that serve those of seduction and excitement of the senses, and that are determined to fight against boredom, upholding the individual's constant obligation to enjoyment. This short essay aims to establish some minimum theoretical coordinates, as well as possible empirical ways to explain how electronic sports work, which new elements they provide, and which are still mere reproduction of logics and senses previously investigated.