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Abstract
Since the commencement of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, over 35,000 American military personnel have returned home with serious physical and psychological wounds, including amputations, traumatic brain injuries and paralysis. In 2004, amidst an increasingly militarized culture shaped by Bush-era wartime policies, the US Paralympics, a division of the US Olympic Committee, created the Paralympic Military Program (PMP) to introduce sport to these recently disabled soldiers. The PMP emphasizes the rehabilitative benefits of sport, but also pursues the implicit goal of discovering potential elite athletes capable of representing the USA in international competitions. The emergence of this new subjectivity of the elite soldier/athlete is a significant development in the continuing relationship between sport and the American military. This discussion illustrates how – as a symbol of both military and sporting constituencies – the body of the soldier/athlete is far from benign and apolitical. Rather, it is a malleable site upon which contemporary cultural meanings and political demands are inscribed and mobilized. Thus the PMP is worthy of critical examination as a site of production of ‘anatomies of national fantasy'and ‘corporeal flagging’ that deflect attention away from the devastating consequences of war and ultimately promote an advancing American imperialism.
Notes
1 Giroux, The University in Chains, 33–4.
2 CitationAtkinson and Young, ‘Terror Games’; CitationButterworth, ‘Ritual in the “Church of Baseball”’; , ‘Offensive Lines’, ‘Virtually Normal’; CitationSaltman, ‘The Strong Arm of the Law’; CitationSilk and Falcous, ‘One Day In September’.
3 CitationKim and Mravic, ‘San Diego Padres’, 30.
4 CitationGincel, ‘The Good News’, 35.
5 Gincel, CitationGincel, ‘The Good News’, 1.
6 CitationGiroux, The Terror of Neoliberalism, 34.
7 CitationTurse, The Complex.
8 CitationGiroux, The University in Chains, 32.
9 CitationGiroux, The University in Chains, 41.
10 CitationGolden, Sport and Society in Ancient Greece.
11 CitationKyle, Sport and Spectacle.
12 CitationSemenza, ‘Sport, War and Contest’, 1251.
13 CitationBowman, ‘Soldiers at Play’.
14 CitationPope, Patriotic Games, 124.
15 CitationWakefield, Playing to Win, 136.
16 Quoted in CitationZirin, A People's History of Sports, 3.
17 US and Coalition Casualties, Citation2010.
18 USOC Paralympic Military Program, Citation2009.
19 CitationHargreaves and Vertinsky, ‘Introduction’, 7.
20 Pat Tillman died in 2004 while serving in Afghanistan as a member of the Army Rangers. A former professional football player with the Arizona Cardinals, Tillman turned down a multimillion dollar contract to join the armed forces in the aftermath of 9/11. Initially, the US Army Special Operations Command reported that Tillman was killed by Taliban insurgents, but later revealed that his death was due to friendly fire from his own men (King, ‘Offensive Lines’). After his death, the American media was quick to valorize him as the embodiment of heroism and sacrifice, and his funeral was broadcast on national cable television despite the Bush administration's ban on media images of dead American soldiers coming home in coffins (CitationKusz, ‘From NASCAR Nation to Pat Tillman’). The dominant discourses surrounding his life and death linked his sporting and military identities, suggesting that he represented the ultimate sacrifice because he gave up his professional sports career to serve his country. With media attention focused on his death instead of how and why he died, Tillman's sacrifice became a trope used by the Bush administration to justify the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and encourage young people to enlist in the armed forces.
21 Kusz, ‘From NASCAR Nation to Pat Tillman’; King, ‘Offensive Lines’.
22 CitationBerlant, The Anatomy of National Fantasy, 5.
23 CitationBerlant, The Anatomy of National Fantasy 21.
24 CitationBerlant, The Anatomy of National Fantasy
25 CitationBerlant, The Anatomy of National Fantasy, 149.
26 CitationBerlant, The Anatomy of National Fantasy, 24.
27 CitationGrabham, ‘“Flagging” the Skin’.
28 It is worth noting that Glasser's use of the word ‘cripples’ is largely a political choice to emphasize the destructive nature of warfare and its deleterious effects on the human body. Whereas the term ‘cripple’ is rooted in ableist ideology and discriminatory discourse, it is being reclaimed by scholars and activists who find emancipatory potential in taking ownership of previously derogatory descriptors and using them as terms of empowerment. For example, CitationSandahl (‘Queering the Crip’) offers the notion of cripdom as the intersection of queer theory and disability studies, a space where the cultural meanings of queerness and disability can be contested. CitationMcRuer (Crip Theory) sets out a vision of crip theory that critically examines the dominant systems of compulsory able-bodiness and heterosexuality reproduced through social institutions. He calls for the disruption of the able-bodied/disabled binary through the formation of resistant politicized disability rights movement to realize a world of multiple corporealities existing and interacting along the continuum of ability.
29 CitationGlasser, Wounded, 43–4.
30 US and Coalition Casualties, 2010.
31 CitationGajewski, ‘Worth Noting’, 48.
32 CitationKuehn, ‘Soldier Suicide Rates’.
33 CitationKuehn, ‘Soldier Suicide Rates’
34 CitationBurnham et al., ‘Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq’.
35 CitationPine, ‘The Elusive “Seamless Transition”’.
36 CitationBourke, Dismembering the Male, 31, emphasis in original.
37 CitationBourke, Dismembering the Male 59.
38 CitationCarden-Coyne, ‘Ungrateful Bodies’, 544.
39 CitationCarden-Coyne, ‘Ungrateful Bodies’, 546.
40 CitationPaterson and Hughes, ‘Disabled Bodies’, 33.
41 CitationHughes, ‘Disability and the Body’, p 62–3.
42 CitationHowe, The Cultural Politics of the Paralympic Movbement; , ‘Pushing Forward’, ‘Disability and the Dedicated Wheelchair Athelete’.
43 CitationSwartz and Watermeyer, ‘Cyborg Anxieties’, 190.
44 Berger ‘Disability and the Dedicated Wheelchair Athelete’.
45 CitationTitchkosky, Reading and Writing Disability Differently, 179.
46 CitationSparkes and Smith, ‘Disrupted Selves’, 89.
47 Grabham, ‘“Flagging” the Skin’, 63.
48 Grabham, ‘“Flagging” the Skin’
49 Grabham, ‘“Flagging” the Skin’, 66.
50 Grabham, ‘“Flagging” the Skin’, 72.
51 Grabham, ‘“Flagging” the Skin’, 73.
52 CitationStempel, ‘Televised Sports’, 82.
53 House Committee of Veterans' Affairs, ‘CitationTestimony by Charles Huebner’, paragraph 11.
54 USOC Paralympic Military Program, 2009.
55 CitationOlberding, ‘Competition Begins’; CitationCopeland, ‘Wounded Vet Gets Back on Feet’; CitationAbrahamson, ‘Wounded Veterens Find New Challenges’.
56 Paralympic Military High Performance, Citation2009.
57 CitationMichaelis, ‘Military Veterens’.
58 United States Department of Health and Human Services, Citation2008.
59 CitationHuss, ‘Disabled Vets Redeploy’.
60 United States Olympic Committee Paralympic Program Act of Citation2008, 2008, 2.
61 CitationChu, Memorandum for Secretaries of the Military Departments, 2, emphasis added.
62 Quoted in CitationZinser, ‘Competition Offers its Healing Powers’, D1.
63 CitationBoggs, Imperial Delusions.
64 CitationBoggs, Imperial Delusions 130, emphasis in original.
65 CitationBacevich, The New American Militarism, 2.
66 CitationZinn, A People's History, 15.
67 CitationAbdel-Shehid, ‘Muhammad Ali’, 317.
68 CitationAbdel-Shehid, ‘Muhammad Ali’
69 King, ‘Offensive Lines’, 538.
70 King, ‘Offensive Lines’, 539.
71 CitationArmitage, ‘Militarized Bodies’, 1.
72 CitationArmitage, ‘Militarized Bodies’, 2.
73 CitationGray, ‘Posthuman Soldiers’, 218.
74 CitationMuckenfuss, ‘US Paralympics Coaches’.
75 Abrahamson, ‘Wounded Veterens’; CitationBledsoe, ‘Wounded Warriors Aim High’.
76 CitationBaker, ‘With Pledges to Troops and Iraqis’, A6.
77 Giroux, The University in Chains, 50.
78 CitationSalemme, ‘Training Vets for the 2008 Paralympics’.
79 Glasser, Wounded, 139.