Barker Ned, Parker Harry
Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London, London, UK
Royal Drawing School, London, London, UK.
Med Humanit. 2025 Jan 2;50(4):657-669. doi: 10.1136/medhum-2024-013031.
Disabled bodies have been historically marginalised in sporting arenas and spectacles. Assistive technologies have been increasingly featuring in, and changing, sporting landscapes. In some ways recent shifts have made disability more present and visible across many (para) sporting cultures, and yet sport continues to operate on a tiered system that assumes a normative able body. This paper responds to this moment by offering imaginaries of future hybrid performances that critically engage with the politics and possibilities of novel technologies in sporting arenas and their wider impact on disability futures. These were generated from a collaborative ethnography that centred on becoming spectators of the Cybathlon Games. The Cybathlon Games began in 2016 as a global event where people with disabilities compete with technologies such as Brain-Computer Interfaces or robotic Prosthesis. Our imaginings are presented as three speculative fragments in the form of pages ripped from a comic book series, These fragments and critical reflections are grounded on themes generated through watching the Games together. The purpose of this paper is not to offer predictions or even visions of desirable futures. Rather we present future technologised sporting bodies and spectacles with a view to extend critical posthuman discussions to these arenas. Through this we highlight: (1) The of where to draw the between un/natural performances; (2) The of unrestricted and open use of performance technologies when hybrid forms and functions are judged through current sporting-humanist values; and (3) The need to stay to socioeconomic and political drivers of sporting and disability futures. We offer these three zones of friction to guide further research when navigating the complex and shifting relations between sport, technology and the (dis)abled body now and into the future.
从历史上看，残障人士的身体在体育赛事和表演中一直处于边缘地位。辅助技术在体育领域中越来越多地出现，并正在改变体育格局。在某些方面，最近的转变使残障在许多（残疾人）体育文化中更加凸显和可见，然而体育仍然在一个假定标准健全身体的分层体系中运作。本文通过呈现未来混合表演的想象来回应这一现状，这些想象批判性地探讨了体育赛事中新技术的政治意义和可能性，以及它们对残障未来的更广泛影响。这些想象源自一项合作民族志研究，该研究以成为“赛博athlon运动会”的观众为核心。“赛博athlon运动会”始于2016年，是一项全球性赛事，残障人士使用脑机接口或机器人假肢等技术进行竞赛。我们的想象以从一系列漫画书中撕下的页面形式呈现为三个推测性片段。这些片段和批判性反思基于通过共同观看比赛所产生的主题。本文的目的不是提供预测，甚至不是对理想未来的愿景。相反，我们呈现未来技术化的体育身体和表演，以期将批判性的后人类讨论扩展到这些领域。通过这样做，我们强调：（1）在区分非自然与自然表演时的界限问题；（2）当通过当前体育人文主义价值观来评判混合形式和功能时，表演技术不受限制和开放使用的问题；（3）需要关注体育和残障未来的社会经济和政治驱动因素。我们提供这三个摩擦领域，以指导在探索当下及未来体育、技术与（残障）身体之间复杂多变的关系时的进一步研究。
