Neurogenesis of Football Fans: The Case of Osvaldo Soriano

Abstract

The theory formulated by Norbert Elias and Eric Dunnung that modern sports took shape in the nineteenth century as a form of controlling aggressive impulses and allowing nation-states to centralize major social functions has enjoyed great authority. In recent years, however, neuro-scientists and cognitivists have conducted many tests, obtaining undoubted evidence about the empathic and interconnected function exercised above all by football in fans: football would not constitute a form of censorship of violence, but a precious agon in which to learn behavioral styles and cognitive aspects of sharing. The work of the argentine writer Osvaldo Soriano had already shown, before the neuroscientists, how in the representation of football always prevail relations on the agents who promote them.