Faster, higher, stronger? : disability sport, the paralympic games and the politics of disability

This thesis argues that disabled people experience marginalisation (beyond any disadvantage stemming from physical, mental or sensory impairment) due to material and discursive structures within contemporary capitalist society that define disability as an ‘individual phenomenon’, treatable by medical intervention and strategies of ‘normalisation’ into mainstream economic, social and cultural values and institutions. Drawing on the work of the critical ‘social model of disability’ and broader cultural studies’ concepts (including ‘cultural politics’, ‘identify’ and ‘difference’) the structural nature of ‘disability oppression’ is identified and analysed to place disability alongside gender, sexuality and race ad important sites of political contest. Disability sport, the Paralympic Games and disability’s representation in media culture provide a practical context for these theoretical debates. Against the background of the 2000 Paralympics’ material success and disabled athletes’ increasing public recognition, it is suggested that disability sport thoroughly naturalises dominant perceptions of disability and reproduces the conservative material and discursive structures of the ‘individual model of disability’. Moreover, as an form of ‘cultural projection’ (Merelman, 1995), disability sport affords, at the best, mixed images of disabled people, providing little scope for the articulation of self-affirming disabled identities and an autonomous ‘disability culture’. The significance of this thesis, therefore, lies in its capacity to provide ‘new understandings’ of disability sport and the politics of disability. In particular, it foregrounds the role of interlocking material and discursive cultural politics in naturalising individual perceptions of disability and demonstrates that disability sport and the Paralympic Games, whilst exhibiting some potential to resist these forces, largely reinforce and reproduce these inherently marginalising dynamics.