WADA and Sporting Empire:Prospects and Shadows

Sean SmithEuropean Graduate Schoolegs.edu

Introduction: High Performance Sport

a humanist conception of a bounded unitary athletic body

a purportedly universal conception of competition that values sport as a vehicle of individual achievement in body and mind

a corresponding ethic of “fair play” that suggests normative models of athletic behaviour in and out of competition

The Empire Thesis

a polycentric, fluid mesh of power featuring nation-state actors in shifting alliances with supranational organizations, transnational corporations, and certain humanitarian non-governmental organizations (Hardt and Negri)

immaterial labour and informatized production

“crisis of enclosure” (Deleuze)

WADA and Sporting Empire

International Olympic Committee and other sport governing bodies, the professional sports leagues, the media conglomerates, the corporate sponsors, the sporting good and athletic footwear businesses, the medico-scientific apparatuses, and the World Anti-Doping Agency

WADA formed so as to preserve “fair play”

WADA and Sporting Empire

“state of exception” (Agamben) fundamental characteristic of Empire is

ability to broaden the parameters of exceptionalism

1. broaden the spatiotemporal boundaries of just cause such that testing encroaches upon the entire social domain

2. enlarge the scope of substances and methods considered to compromise organic purity

3. increase degree to which authorities may penetrate the sovereign athletic body

Techniques of Imperial Doping Control

1. vectors of signification2. limitless postponement3. right to registration

Techniques of Imperial Doping Control- Vectors of Signification urine blood DNA

out of competition testing

Techniques of Imperial Doping Control- Limitless Postponement nomad science of doping ahead of

State eight-year statute of limitations deferral of “truth” of sporting

outcomes

Techniques of Imperial Doping Control- Right to Registration whereabouts information 24/7/365 ADAMS system biological passport

Prospects and Shadows

topological model is now required to understand the space of sporting competition

1. Permeability 2. Enclosure

3. Partitioning 4. Surveillance

(Bale, 1993)

Prospects and Shadows

topological model is now required to understand the space of sporting competition

normalization of control through the ludic trickle down effect to different levels of

sport? modulation of information/individuals

between and across disciplinary spaces?