Hybrid bodies in cyborg sports? The case of Oscar Pistorius

The capabilities of postmodern biotechnology inevitably lead to questioning if it is morally acceptable to use all possibilities offered by technology. In sport, this very complex issue is dealt with by drawing clear boundaries between naturalness and artificiality. Currently, new biotechnology is constantly being produced and with this, boundaries between naturalness and artificiality, between normal and abnormal, human and hybrid are constantly shifting . “Human enhancement” is a fascinating prism that reflects contemporary questions of participation, justice, equality and the autonomy of the subject in all social fields. The area of elite sports is particularly affected by “human enhancement”, according to the principle of exceeding what has come before, of aiming higher, faster and further. This paper analyses the postulated “naturalness” in the regulative and normalising function in the area of elite sports, in connection with Foucault’s theory of governmentality. The example of the South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius appears to be particularly suited to illustrate current definition difficulties in the area of disabled and non-disabled people in differentiated competitive sports. His is a vivid example of a multifaceted body-sociological analysis of current sport culture and the construction of reality or naturalness in the framework of the discourse of drafting and negotiating the accreditation for sprint competitions of non-disabled athletes, most recently in the London Olympics 2012. Using the case study of Oscar Pistorius, the negotiating processes in relation to the argumentation logic, dynamics and resistance in shifting distinctions are presented in detail using the fundamental documents of the IOC, IPC, CAS and IAAF. Represented through the inclusion and exclusion processes are hierarchies of the body that are (re)consolidated and transformed. The central question emerges as to how the worth of equal opportunity and fairness in regard to “naturalness” can be reconsolidated or transformed.

Shakespeare, the Middle Ages and the Luck of the British: Medievalism and National Identity in The Hollow Crown (2012)

Images of the medieval past have long been fertile soil for the identity politics of subsequent periods. Rather than “authentically” reproducing the Middle Ages, medievalism therefore usually tells us more about the concerns and ideological climate of its own time and place of origin. To dramatise the nascent nation, Shakespeare resorts to medievalism in his history plays. Centuries later, the BBC-produced television mini-serial The Hollow Crown – adapting Shakespeare’s second histories tetralogy – revamps this negotiation of national identity for the “Cultural Olympiad” in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics. In this context of celebratory introspection, The Hollow Crown weaves a genealogical narrative consisting of the increasingly “glorious” medieval history depicted and “national” Shakespearean heritage in order to valorise 21st-century “Britishness”. Encouraging a reading of the histories as medieval history, the films construct an ostensibly inclusive, liberal-minded national identity grounded in this history. Moreover, medieval kingship is represented in distinctly sentimentalising and humanising terms, fostering emotional identification especially with the no longer ambivalent Hal/Henry V and making him an apt model for present-day British grandeur. However, the fact that the films in return marginalise female, Scottish, Irish and Welsh characters gives rise to doubts as to whether this vision of Shakespeare’s Middle Ages really is, as the producers claimed, “for everybody”.