ABSTRACT
As indicated in the introduction to this book, one of the epistemological undercurrents that runs through the sporting popular in the post-9/11 period rhetoric is the ‘curriculum’ of humanity: a binary logic that pronounced an ‘us’ and a ‘them.’ For if, through the reassertion of heroes, neoliberal ‘normalcy,’ exceptional superiority, and a militarized masculinity, ‘we’ are able to paint ourselves as human, moral, and civilized, the binary opposite (ignored or de-animated in Miracle and explained in relation to the exceptional US at the Little League World Series) is the process of ‘otherization,’ a distinctly non-Western depiction of ‘they’: mad, deranged, lunatic terrorists of whom ‘we’ are ‘rightly’ fearful. Within this chapter I center on this binarism, addressing how, within the sporting popular, a moral and absolute authoritarian righteousness (us) was juxtaposed with an obsessive and fear-(re)defi ned enemy (them).
