Patients, Athletes, Freaks Paralympism and the Reproduction of Disability

par Danielle Peers,

Graduate Student, Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation, University of Alberta, E-488 Van Vliet Centre, Edmonton, AB T6G 2H9, Canada Email:peers@ualberta.ca

Abstract

In this article, the author analyzes the discursive shifts, continuities, and convergences from which Paralympic discourses, practices, subjects, and institutions have emerged. The author utilizes Foucauldian discourse analysis to interpret 14 texts about Paralympic history and to trace how dominant discourses of disability and physical activity have (in)formed Paralympism at four specific stages of its institutionalization. Contrary to popular assumptions about Paralympism’s progressive empowerment of those with disabilities, the author demonstrates how, in each of these historical stages, discourses from rehabilitation, mainstream sport, and the freak show have colluded in ways that serve to perpetuate, justify, and conceal the unequal relationships of power in and through which disability is enacted and experienced.