Each time I'm reminded of it, I feel as though I need therapy. Australian Football, Tragedies and the Question of Catharsis

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Klugman, Matthew (2008) Each time I'm reminded of it, I feel as though I need therapy. Australian Football, Tragedies and the Question of Catharsis. Traffic: An Interdisciplinary Graduate Journal, 10. pp. 97-121. ISSN 1447-2538

Abstract

Australian Football League fans often narrate particularly distressing final losses in tragic terms. Drawing from the field of tragedy studies, this paper examines the way such losses are experienced and told, and the suffering and possible pleasures these accounts reveal. How, I ask, do these losses engender so much pain? And why do fans continually return to their memories of these defeats, when each return reawakens the grief? These questions lead me to consider the relationship of tragedy to trauma, and the contentious nature and meaning of catharsis, a term common to the analysis of both tragedy and sport.

Item type Article
URI https://vuir.vu.edu.au/id/eprint/3766
Official URL http://www.gsa.unimelb.edu.au/Traffic10/T10_KLUGMA...
Subjects Historical > Faculty/School/Research Centre/Department > Centre for Ageing, Rehabilitation, Exercise & Sport Science (CARES)
Historical > FOR Classification > 2202 History and Philosophy of Specific Fields
Historical > SEO Classification > 970121 Expanding Knowledge in History and Archaeology
Keywords ResPubID16235, Australian Football League fans, distressing final losses, tragedy studies, experience of loss, memories of defeats, reawakening grief, catharsis
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