Gender, technology and the ablenational Paralympic body politic

ABSTRACT

The Paralympic games is a pedagogic, pervasive, political, powerful, and ‘popular’ cultural site where the heightened visibility of disability bring into being specific forms of disability as they articulate within cultures, institutions and practices. Regarded as a ‘positive charge’ by Stuart Hall, the Paralympics intends to challenge the devalued disabled body politic of typical disability representation. This has been stimulated by the entry of Channel 4 as the UK Paralympic rights holders in 2012 which has seen greater media coverage of certain technologically enhanced cyborgian parasport bodies and an emerging celebrity / sexualized disability culture. This contemporary moment in disability representation provides a compelling space in which to (re-)address the gendered nature of hyper-visible Parasport hybrids, their potential to disrupt ‘normative’ relations of power, and, the wider impact on disability politics in a neoliberalised culture of widening and affective circuits of bodily inclusion and control. Drawing on an integrated content and textual analysis of 90 h of Paralympic programming from the Rio 2016 Games we highlight two emblematic segments so as to enhance our appreciation of contemporary disabled politics as it intersects with gender, technology and nation. We analyse these emblematic segments at the intersection of critical disability studies, cultural studies and sport, using concept of ablenationalism to highlight the extent certain technological capacitated parasport bodies perform gendered representational work as part of the seductive apparatus of neoliberal micro-governance suggestive of an emerging ecology of disability-gender relations. In doing so, we highlight the Paralympic contradictions and interrogate the assumed ‘positive charge’ of the contemporary (re-)presentation of disability.

KEYWORDS:

• Paralympics
• disability
• sport
• gender
• technology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Emma Pullen is a Lecturer at Loughborough University in the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences. Her research interests include sport media, disability, gender and culture.

Michael Silk is Director of the Sport & Physical Activity Research Centre at Bournemouth University, Professor in Sport & Social Sciences and Deputy Dean (Research & Professional Practice) in the Faculty of Management. His research and scholarship are interdisciplinary and focus on the relationships between sport & physical activity (physical culture), the governance of bodies, mediated (sporting) spectacles, identities and urban spaces.

ORCID

Emma Pullen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8862-6275

Notes

1 In Stuart Hall’s last interview (Jhally 2016), he described the commercialization of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympics as both shocking and horrendous. Hall’s point was that lauded commercial entities could oppositionally be read as ‘deep enemies’; in the case of the Paralympics for example, a key sponsor was one of the very organizations responsible for managing the means testing of disabled people that restricted access to the disability living allowance.

2 Political processes and strategies include (but are not limited to): the governance of the materiality of life and individual practices through an ‘affect economy’ (Clough 2008, p. 15); vast webs of population data-gathering mechanisms that aids the development and expansion of market capacities; and a reduction in the ‘state’ and collective spaces that helps cultivate conditions for increasing corporate exploitation and market expansion.

3 The wider project (AH/P003842/1) integrates elite production interviews with large scale audience interviews and focus groups, archival analysis, public pedagogic forms (including a series of performances / documentary film).

4 Richard Whitehead athlete feature, Rio Paralympic Games 2016. Channel 4. 11th September 1600h. Taken from Box of Broadcasts https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/0D6F428F?bcast=122477799.

5 See also, https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/other-sports/marlou-van-rhijn-embracing-blade-babe-nickname-ahead-of-world-para-athletics-championships-a3579661.html.

6 Mullins, Aimee. ‘Aimee Mullins: My 12 Pairs of Legs’. TED, 2009, https://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Arts and Humanities Research Council: [Grant Number AH/P003842/1].