| The Good Official…Interrupted is a Cultural Studies investigation into the production of ‘good’ sport officials. It is an analysis of the referee-specific discourse that governs the production and maintenance of ‘good’ officials. It is an analysis of the discourses of sport participants at large that continually dismiss, vilify, and subordinate officials. The third chapter is a critical examination of the interruption that women officials create in the discourse of the Good Official through their participation at elite levels of officiating. Central to this discussion are the two female officials hired to referee in the National Basketball Association in 1997, Violet Palmer and Dee Kantner. Ultimately, The Good Official…Interrupted is about identity politics in a discourse highly informed by hegemonic masculinity, and how individual subjects must negotiate its obstacles of sexism, racism, and homophobia. |
