19 February 2010: "Japanese Figure Skater wears keffiyeh at Olympics"

This post is about mimetic desire. In a pointed departure from his customary rhetorical approach, Carles deploys the second-person plural pronoun we with considerable and considered liberality in this post, a searing investigation of the relation between nativism (as exemplified by the Olympics and its fervor of barely sublimated nationalism and race pride), homophobia (intensified by the homosocial bonding among athletes and the alpha-male preening brought out through ritualized competition), and the legacy of postcolonialist struggle.

Who are "we"? This question haunts every population of any nation-state that is cajoled into becoming a "people" in the Hobbesean sense rather than a Spinozan multitude, and it haunts every attempt at solidarity that fractures along the lines of incompatible individual desires, often figured in terms of sexuality. From this quasi-Girardian viewpoint, sexual desire is selfish desire and imitative, a dangerous combination that sparks competition over mates and masks an irreducible fear of the Other with the compulsion to supplant/become the Other. "We" are those who have learned to want the same things,who have been rationalized by a hegemonic desire disseminated from the existing power structure.

In his careful analysis of the semiosis of sport, Carles draws a direct link between the costume of presumably gay figure skater Daisuke Takahashi and the disguises worn by the terrorists who struck at Israel during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.

Popular Japanese Figure Skater Daisuke Takahashi had a keffiyeh integrated into his cute little costume for his Olympic Contest. We cannot confirm if he is ‘alt’ or if this was actually an anti-Israeli message, showing support for the 1972 massacre of members of the Israeli Summer Olympic Team at the Munich Olympics. Based on his Japanese heritage, we find it safe to assume that he was

Carles suggests that the Olympics are merely perpetuating in coded fashion the ideological struggles of World War II, and in a sense the Games have never left Berlin, 1936. But rather than openly attempt to establish racial dominance through athletic achievement, the fascist tropes of domination have modulated. Homosexuality is no longer barred and demonized; instead it is used symbolically as an overdetermined flashpoint, a subtle warning about the fruits of individualism and the rejection of nationalism. Carles, by flirting with the contemptuous tone of a bigot who is nonetheless attracted to what he wishes repelled him ("If ur a homosexual, would u ‘hook up’ with this kute AZN flying twink?"), means to illustrate the ways in which such muddled animus is the logical outcome of a competition rooted in national identity, which has been blurred by the various diasporas and forced resettlements and ressentiments of the colonialist era and its aftermath. The Other appears to us as ourselves, and as a forbidden "homo" desire, which we look to our athlete-avatars to defeat in competition. But at the same time the symbolism remains ambiguous enough to be disavowed in the heat of the excitement of competition: "Do u think this was a real ‘hipster scarf’ or a politically motivated message? Is he ‘just a harmless queen on ice’?" asks Carles, knowing full well that the question cannot be answered. For in fact, what has been achieved is optimal undecidability. The political motivations both disappear and become hegemonic the minute we ask ourselves the explosive question about the skater's identity: a harmless queen, indeed -- as harmless as any monarch whose power has seemed to become divinely ordained.

The fusion of nationalism with sexualized competition simultaneously rights the wrongs of the colonial era, serving as a kind of moral vindication of the so-called white-man's burden: The burden of medals, the burden of setting the bar for global competition, the burden of reproducing teh given social order wiht al its hierarchies. As Carles puts it, "We can only assume that his Palestinian scarf gave him the warrior power that won him the bronze medal."

As usual Carles penultimate question is a rhetorical one: "Are the Olympics alt, or does it require too much dedication for an authentic alt to participate [via Hipster Olympics]?" The Olympics, in their current ideological formulation, present the status quo as an alternative, to make reactionary nationalistic responses register as progressive and enlightened. The sort of dedication required of an "authentic alt" is the maintenance of a negative dialectic, of critical perspicacity, of a refusal to drift into the daydreams of communal competition and instead recognize with steely vigilance the persisting presence of the cries for nativist unity over global peace and harmony. The homeland, Palestinian or otherwise, may not be realized on Canadian ice, but that is, Carles tells us, because the very idea of it has so thoroughly colonized our minds.