‘Bladerunner or boundary runner’?: Oscar Pistorius, cyborg transgressions and strategies of containment

Abstract

This article uses disability studies and cyborg theory as lenses to explore the disabled body in contemporary sporting contexts and situates the reader by critically reviewing social theory. Using the case of Oscar Pistorius, a South African Paralympian, we explore how the intense scrutiny on his prostheses forecloses examining how scientific discourses are called upon as arbiters to discern the ‘truth’ of his body. Moreover, while Pistorius invariably transgresses the boundaries of the modern sporting project and liberal humanist subject, he is subjected to powerful strategies of containment and domination. Threatening to undo secure notions of humanness, we illustrate how Pistorius is both fascinating and anxiety-provoking, and renders moral angst in the public consciousness. In order to rethink the stranglehold of ability and disability in the collective psyche and ‘do’ disability sport differently, this article calls for a radical cyborg politics.