Imagining Being Disabled Through Playing Sport: The Body and Alterity as Limits to Imagining Others' Lives

Abstract

Qualitative research methods in sport often advocate that to understand others, obtain significant knowledge and do ethically admirable research we should empathise with our participants by imagining being them. In philosophy, it is likewise often assumed that we can overcome differences between people through moral imagination: putting ourselves in the place of others, we can share their points of view, merge with them, and enter into their embodied worlds. Drawing partly on the view that imagination is embodied and the philosophy of Bakhtin and Levinas, along with research on people's experiences of becoming disabled through playing sport, this paper problematises the assumption that we can imagine ourselves differently situated or being another person. It argues that our imagination and ability to put ourselves in the place of others is constrained partly by embodied experience and otherness. Some reflections on what this might mean for disability and sport research are then offered.

Resumen

Los métodos de investigación qualitativa en el deporte a menudo defienden que para comprender a los demás, conseguir un conocimiento significativo, y llevar a cabo una investigación ética admirable deberíamos empatizar con nuestros participantes imaginándonos que somos ellos. En filosofía a menudo se asume similarmente que podemos superar las diferencias entre las personas a través de la imaginación moral. Metiéndonos en la piel de otros podemos compartir sus puntos de vista, combinarlos y entrar en sus mundos corporales. Basándonos parcialmente en la posición de que la imaginación es corporal y la filosofía de Bakhtin y Levinas, además de en la investigación sobre las experiencias de gente que se vuelve discapacitada al hacer deporte, este artículo problematiza la presunción de que podemos imaginarnos a nosotros mismos situados de otra manera diferente o siendo otra persona. Argumenta que nuestra imaginación y la habilidad de ponerrnos en lugar de otras personas se encuentran limitadas en parte por la experiencia corporal y la alteridad. Se ofrecen algunas reflexiones sobre lo que esto puede significar para la investigación sobre la discapacidad y el deporte.

Zusammenfassung

Qualitative Forschungsmethoden im Sport erfordern oftmals sich in die Teilnehmer hineinzuversetzen, um andere verstehen zu können, signifikante Erkenntnisse zu erhalten und um ethisch korrekte Forschung zu betreiben. In der Philosophie wird in gleicher Weise oftmals angenommen, die Unterschiede zwischen Menschen durch moralische Vorstellungskraft überwinden zu können, das heißt, uns an die Stelle der anderen zu versetzen, ihre Perspektive teilen, mit ihnen verschmelzen und in ihre körperliche Welt eintreten. Dieser Artikel problematisiert die Annahme, dass wir uns in die Lage anderer denken oder gar eine andere Person sein können. Dies geschieht zum Teil unter Rückgriff auf die Sichtweise, dass unsere Vorstellungskraft körpergebunden ist, auf die Philosophie von Bakhtin und Levinas sowie auf die Forschungsergebnisse zu den Erfahrungen von Menschen, die durch Sport zu einer Behinderung kamen. Es wird behauptet, dass unsere Vorstellungskraft und die Fähigkeit, uns in andere hineinzuversetzen, begrenzt ist, zum Teil durch körpergebundene Erfahrungen und dadurch, anders geartet zu sein. Einige Überlegungen zur potenziellen Bedeutung dieser Aspekte für die Forschung im Bereich Behinderung und Sport werden anschließend präsentiert.

Keywords:

• disability
• imagination
• qualitative research
• body
• alterity

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the following for the contribution they have made to this article: Doug and Max, and the other participants who became disabled through playing rugby union football, for graciously sharing their stories with me; Andrew Sparkes for our continuing dialogue; and a huge thanks also to Mike McNamee for his encouragement and erudite comments on a draft of this article. The confusions that remain are entirely my own.

Notes

1. There are different kinds of imaginative research activities and these should be kept in mind throughout this article. These include imagining oneself otherwise, imagining oneself in another's shoes, and imagining being another (see Goldie 2000; Mackenzie 2006). In imagining oneself differently situated we are just imagining ourselves and we simply draw on our own experience. In imagining oneself ‘in the other's shoes’ we try to enter into the other person's perspective, imagining ourselves from the inside as that person. In imagining being another, that is empathetic imagining, we leave our own perspectives behind altogether and imagine from the inside the thoughts, feelings and emotions of another person.

2. The term self-sufficiency may be considered unhelpful as it is loaded with economic connotations. It should not be confused with this, however. The point here is that, as for symbolic interactionists like Mead, it attempts to signal that as humans we exist and make ourselves intelligible in relation to other lives. As relational beings we are socially interdependent and our selves are social in their construction and performance (see Smith and Sparkes 2008b).