Screen and Roll: Transmissions of Embodied Knowledge through Canadian Women’s Basketball History

Abstract

Analyzing the role of cockfights in Balinese culture, Clifford Geertz argues, “Attending cockfights and participating in them is, for the Balinese, a kind of sentimental education. What he learns there is what his culture’s ethos and his private sensibility (or anyway, certain aspects of them) look like when spelled out externally in a collective text” (449). Geertz’s thesis can be applied to Western sport: particularly in the twentieth century, sport was a place where men went to learn physical skills, values, and sentiments associated with masculinity. In this article, I examine the residue of sport’s male-dominated history through performative writing. I weave together historical quotations, performance theory, and a personal narrative about my experiences as a female basketball player and coach to consider the relationship between female bodies, the practice of sport, and the transmission of embodied knowledge. Ultimately, I argue that embodied repertoire is a significant site for the transmission of sport technique and the study of sport history.