MARGINAL BODY AND BOURGEOIS COSMOLOGY - THE BRITISH ACROBAT IN REFERENCE TO SPORT

Both modern sport and the traditional circus were crystallized in the context of the 19th century's new industrial order, its class structur e and its predicaments. This paper explores the significances of an ac robatic act performed in the late 1970s, in a British circus, by allud ing to sport and to 19th century dynamics. It suggests that while mode rn sport involves the body in play, the circus entails a textualizatio n of the body. While in sport, bourgeois order and cosmology are natur alized, in a circus they are illusionarily transcended through the spe ctators' experience of ''authentic'' selves. The paper also deals with 1970s circus as an encapsulation of the nostalgic attitude, and point s to the conditions of the traditional circus in the post-modern age.