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Reviewed by:
  • Veneno remédio: O futebol e o Brasil
  • Roger Kittleson
Wisnik, José Miguel. Veneno remédio: O futebol e o Brasil. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2008. Notes. Index. 446 pp.

Early on in this ambitious book, José Miguel Wisnik notes that much of the scholarship on futebol suffers from a surprising flaw: it speaks little, if at all, of the game itself. Wisnik displays no such weakness; he writes of futebol from its humblest and most banal elements—the shape of the ball, the size of the playing field, the strategies and styles of individual players and teams—to its broadest implications for the construction of national identity during more than a century of Brazilian history. It is, in fact, by analyzing the game itself that Wisnik manages to construct his grand arguments on the place of futebol in Brazilian culture. By looking at the changing significance that aspects of the game have taken on, he builds a persuasive case that futebol has not only reflected tensions in brasilidade but also contributed to the production of a culture based on the simultaneous confrontation and denial of those tensions. In the process of developing his argument, Wisnik carves out a place for himself alongside Mário Filho and those few other observers of futebol whose writings are profoundly useful—nearly essential—texts for anyone studying the construction of Brazilian national identity. His penetrating, often provocative, positions on race, violence, gender, and modernity in modern Brazil make this a major study.

Veneno remédio is, however, an odd sort of study, one that does not fit into any formal academic discipline. Wisnik leans most heavily toward the literary field but ventures as well into anthropological, philosophical, and occasionally psychological realms. That said, scholars of a social scientific, a cultural studies, or any particular bent will perhaps find Wisnik energizing but also a bit frustrating at times, not least in his mixing of the concerns—and methodologies—of the many literatures he confronts in his ponderings. Ultimately, though, the author blends the many elements of his argument together into a powerful, if complex, critique.

Wisnik’s expansive essay consists of four unequal parts. The first and last of these are the most easily enjoyable, for it is in those sections that the author describes the story of his personal history with futebol and lays out his interpretive framework in the clearest terms. The second and third, which make up the vast body of the book, contain many delightful insights as well; their sheer length [End Page 233] may, however, challenge the less committed reader. In the first chapter, Wisnik tells of his good fortune in having been born in a place and time when he could become a fan of Santos Futebol Clube just as Pelé, the team’s greatest player— the greatest player, let us agree—rose to prominence on club and national sides. His brief biographical sketch is so lively, so free of self-indulgence but rich in observations of the dynamics of futebol as played by kids at the local, street- (and here, beach-) level, that I was left wanting more. More important for the work as a whole, though, Wisnik links these discreet autobiographical episodes to his major themes, which revolve around the ways in which futebol has been interpreted as part of Brazilian exceptionalism. Indeed, drawing on a vast range of references—from the Italian film director and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini to the Czech philosopher Vilém Flusser and on to recent academic scholars of soccer in Brazil and elsewhere—he argues that futebol has been one of the most visible realms in which “the nation brought itself into being” (p. 28).

The second chapter carries the reader through Wisnik’s analysis of the origins of football/soccer. He speeds through the “pre-history” of football, too often a cumbersome feature of general works on the game, before focusing on tensions running through the modern period. Here and throughout the book, he adopts clichés about futebol, transforming them into useful entry points into issues of power on and around the playing field. For instance, in his second chapter he takes the image...

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