The Press Representations of the Paris-Madrid Race (1903) and the Social Debates on Automobile Speed
Abstract
In recent years, the social and human sciences have dedicated greater importance to motorsport and the concept of speed, arguing its relevance for the understanding of several current problematics. As part of this growing interest, motorsport practices have been the subject of various analyses of the social, geographical, legal and cultural transformations resulting from automobile speed. However, these studies tend to neglect the complex process by which the unprecedented speed of automobiles was inserted into societies at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. In order to visualize this question, the Paris-Madrid race of 1903, responsible for fundamental changes in the evolution of motorsport, is a pertinent case study, since this event was at the confluence of several debates that were generated around this vehicle in its early stages. To this end, the aim of this research is to examine the journalistic representations of this race in the sports and non-sports press in the cities of Paris and Madrid. The contradictory press interpretations, in addition to being symptomatic of the social discussions aroused by the automobile speed, highlight the historicity of this phenomenon.
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