Restoring or Enhancing Athletic Bodies: Oscar Pistorius and the Threat to Pure Performance
The interface between the body and technology presents a perilous moment where the integrity of the former and the validity of the latter might be compromised. A body that succumbs to the temptation of illicit enhancement or is tainted by the presence of
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Restoring or Enhancing Athletic Bodies: Oscar Pistorius and the Threat to Pure Performance Tara Magdalinski
13.1
Introduction
In early 2012, organisers of the London Olympics confirmed that the Games would be the ‘most tested’ ever, with at least 1,000 tests being performed to identify athletes who had surrendered to the temptations of illicit enhancement. Such pronouncements, some 6 months prior to the Opening Ceremony, were an early reminder that the ‘war’ on illegal enhancement is on-going and that the vigilance to identify transgressors is unwavering. Despite ever more sophisticated testing systems and propaganda campaigns aimed at ‘cleaning up sport’, there remains concern that elite performance sport is under constant threat of contamination from various synthetic technologies. At the heart of such fears is a romanticised belief that sport is a natural activity that expresses human mastery over the elements (Bale 1994), evoking images of physical activity located in green environments, from grassy fields to pristine waterways, where bodies run, jump, swim and move through nature, an image that is disrupted by technological intrusion. Despite the concern that technologies, particularly at the level of the body, confound popular conceptions of athletic endeavour, modern sport is predicated on technological intervention. From advances in equipment, clothing and facilities through to the regulation of diet and training interventions, the reality is far from the popular imagery of sport as ‘free’ and ‘liberating’. But whilst the incursion of technology into areas that facilitate sport may no longer conjure up the same level of fear, the interface between the body and technology continues to present a perilous moment where the integrity of the former and the validity of the latter might be compromised. A body that succumbs to the temptation of illicit enhancement or is
T. Magdalinski (*) UCD Centre for Sports Studies, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] J. Tolleneer et al. (eds.), Athletic Enhancement, Human Nature and Ethics, International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine 52, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5101-9_13, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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tainted by the presence of threatening technology typically has no place within sport where pure performance demands uncontaminated participants strive to establish the limits of the body’s physical capacity. This chapter examines the interface between nature and technology to determine whether technologically enhanced bodies disrupt mainstream conceptions of pure performance. The triadic relationship between sport, the body and performance is interrogated with reference to Oscar Pistorius, a liminal figure whose presence in mainstream sport represents a threat to the integrity of sports performance.
13.2
The Nature of Sport
Any examination of the notion of enhanced bodies within the context of performance sport needs to begin with a discussion of the nature of sport. Sport
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