Simple bodily practices can enable people to imagine themselves as members of national community. Bodily actions in sporting practices can therefore be readas text that carries different meanings - also national ones. With the help of textual analysis the author deconstructs these meanings and shows that despite their apparent apolitical notion, the bodily sporting practices played an important role in Slovenian nation-building process. In the times of Sokol movement these practices supported nationalistic meanings. By disciplined bodily practice Sokol members tried to achieve national cohesion, which remained an important notion of bodily practices also in after-war Yugoslavia. Bodily actions of athletes played a binding role of Yugoslavian nations, however, this role changed into a role of national distinctiveness as Yugoslavia broke up.
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