No 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.

Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly (APAQ) currently mandates that authors use person-first language in their publications. In this viewpoint article, we argue that although this policy is well intentioned, it betrays a very particular cultural and disciplinary approach to disability: one that is inappropriate given the international and multidisciplinary mandate of the journal. Further, we contend that APAQ's current language policy may serve to delimit the range of high-quality articles submitted and to encourage both theoretical inconsistency and the erasure of the ways in which research participants self-identify. The article begins with narrative accounts of each of our negotiations with disability terminology in adapted physical activity research and practice. We then provide historical and theoretical contexts for person-first language, as well as various other widely circulated alternative English-language disability terminology. We close with four suggested revisions to APAQ's language policy.

This Foucauldian discourse analysis engages DePauw’s theory of disability and visibility to examine the construction of para-athletes within the websites of Canada’s “fully integrated” athletics sport system. The authors found that para-athletes remain largely unimaginable within most athletics websites. When present, para-athletes are often only imagined as marginal participants, or marginalized through medical and charitable discourses. The authors offer examples of para-athletes being reimagined primarily as athletes, and some examples where (para-)athletics was reimagined by identifying and removing barriers to full participation. The authors close with some learning points that may enable sport practitioners to change how they discursively construct para-athletes and thus contribute to a less marginalizing and exclusionary sport system.

The inclusion of able-bodied athletes within disability sport, a phenomenon known as reverse integration, has sparked significant debate within adapted physical activity. Although researchers and practitioners have taken up positions for or against reverse integration, there is a lack of supporting research on the experiences of athletes who already play in such settings. In this study, we explore how competitive female athletes who have a disability experience reverse integration in Canadian wheelchair basketball. Athletic identity was used as the initial conceptual framework to guide semistructured interviews with nine participants. The results suggest that participation in this context contributed to positive athletic identities. Interviews also pointed to the unexpected theme of “what’s the difference?” that this sporting context provided a space for the questioning and creative negotiation of the categories of disability and able-bodiedness. Methodologically, this paper also explores the possibilities and challenges of inter- worldview and insider-outsider research collaboration.