Interrogating disability: the (de)composition of a recovering Paralympian

Abstract

In this autoethnography, I weave personal narrative with Foucauldian and critical disability theory in order to interrogate the role of parasport in the formation, disciplining and internalising of my own (in)coherent disabled, Paralympian identity. The paper begins with an interrogation scene: a composite of the many times that I have had my body and my disability questioned. I then move through ideas of truth, storytelling, disability, power and subjectivity, borrowing strongly from the theories of Michel Foucault and to a lesser extent, the works of literary authors, disability scholars and scholars of disability sport. The body of this paper continues weaving these earlier influences throughout autobiographical stories of diagnosis, classification, basketball games, media interviews, conversations, internal struggles and attempts at resistance: stories of how I have been composed, and have composed myself, as a disabled Paralympian. In particular, these two sections draw heavily from Foucault’s conceptualisation of the confessional, the examination and the Panopticon. The paper then moves towards ideas of de-composition. That is, it explores the critical and political possibilities of deconstructing and reimagining dominant narratives of disability, and of disability sport. Finally, I end with a return to the same interrogation scene with which I began this paper. In so doing, I attempt to de-naturalise and to de-compose the dominant stories and practices of disability; I attempt to open up new possibilities of imagining, narrating and doing disability otherwise.