Metamorphosis from exalted person to cultural symbol: A case study of the GOAT in tennis

In this article, we suggest that our semiotic understanding of embodiment could be expanded to include a socially exalted individual, who embodies a symbol. To illustrate this argument, we draw on an ongoing research project that examines fandom rhetoric and debates around the ‘Greatest of all time’ or the GOAT symbol in Tennis. Grounding Bakhtin’s tri-distinctions of identity, I-for-myself, I-for-other and other-for-me, in a Kantian hermeneutic tradition, we perform a theoretically informed analysis of the GOAT debate. None of the three tri-components exists in isolation; rather, they interact in a reflexive dialogue which continually shapes and re-shapes individual consciousness and experiences of embodiment. We apply a ‘romanticism aesthetic activity’ analytical framework to the tri-distinctions of identity, that consists of ‘creative’ and ‘critical’ rhetoric, within which we found genres of ‘myth’, ‘art’ and ‘science’. Each genre functions through disparate means to exalt or metamorphise an individual (our focus is on Roger Federer) into a cultural symbol, and that the symbolic form of GOAT reflexively organises the emotional field and identities for those fans deeply invested in it. This article contributes to the current cultural psychological literature on understanding the mediation of people to symbols in a new digital age.