Infamous (in)visibilities

uses of anthropotechnical devices to build football players’ circulation

Abstract

This article proposes to analyze the process of some Brazilian football players' circulation. We argue that these circulations in a professional football system (Rial, 2008) are mediated by using multiple anthropotechnical devices, such as social media, image promotion in local and global media, biographies, its predecessor devices (DVDs), and others. We sustain the centrality of the notion of tele-spectacle through the concepts of visibility and minor football (in a Foucauldian sense) to understand the (dis)continuity of some careers in professional football. In turn, footballers seek professional circulation mediated by subjects (agents, managers, and other footballers) and anthropotechnical devices (social media, DVD distribution, and others) through bodily capital (Wacquant, 1995) and visibility (Heinich, 2012). Also, we demonstrated the circulation of infamous Brazilian football players who had been interlocutors from multi-sited ethnographic research conducted in Brazil, Portugal, and the Netherlands. The fieldwork used combined methods such as in-depth interviews, ethnographic experiences, and social media following. We sustain an infamous condition for those footballers' careers through fieldwork. They achieve precarious professional recognition and reflect on their relationship with fame and life trajectories.