ABSTRACT
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht has demonstrated the extent to which the ‘elementary gesture’ of a ‘production of presence’ that ‘seems to have taken away a lot of space from the forms, genres and rituals of representation’ 1 is responsible for our fascination with sport (as a real event). According to this argument it is a matter of ‘moving things within reach so that they can be touched’. 2 This is a rewording of Benjamin’s thesis that the indomitable desire of the masses to move things closer was the basis for the de-auratization of the arts. For the hermeneutics of the production of presence, Gumbrecht draws on nothing short of the Eucharist, in which bread and wine are not the signifiers for Christ’s body and blood but real presence in the act of communion, not something designated but substance: the model of a ‘presence’ that refers to itself and joins the gathered congregation in a ritual ceremony. In this sense, Gumbrecht compares the sports event to the medieval stage: here as there, it is not a hermeneutic attitude that is demanded. Unlike in modern theatre (according to Gumbrecht), the players on stage do not pretend that they do not notice the audience but instead interact with it.
