Description
This presentation investigates the role of sport metaphors in the theorisation of warfare and its role in International Relations. The analogy of war to bloody versions of sports and games has a long history, an oft-cited example being Clausewitz’s conception of war as two wrestlers seeking to “overthrow” each other. In recent years, metaphors of war as sporting events have been marshalled among others to argue for a strictly reciprocal conception of war, to the exclusion of targeted killing and radically asymmetrical violence. Yet, the metaphorical sportiveness of war relies on a multiplicity of metaphors, which are often contradictory and call forth opposing systems of norms and values. One major division among such metaphors lies between metaphors of sport as a reciprocal, fair game (such as wrestling), and of sport as a game of skill (such as hunting). This presentation will provide a summary of these two approaches to metaphors of sport and war, with an emphasis on their parallel developments and historical legacies. In the second part, I will analyse the impact of each approach on contemporary conceptions of warfare, and how metaphors of sporting war serve to impose a narrow definition of war which normatively constrains strategic thinking.
