I'll Climb that Hill in My Own Way: (Dis)locating the Naturalized Body in Professional Cycling's Banned Erythropoietin Use between 1990-2010

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I'll Climb that Hill in My Own Way: (Dis)locating the Naturalized Body in Professional Cycling's Banned Erythropoietin Use between 1990-2010

Dalton, Harold - Thesis

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title: I'll Climb that Hill in My Own Way: (Dis)locating the Naturalized Body in Professional Cycling's Banned Erythropoietin Use between 1990-2010

creator: Dalton, Harold

subject: Academic theses.

description: Sports are often overlooked as a serious field of study by cultural studies and gender studies scholars despite two factors that should be of interest to both disciplines. The first factor is that the popularity of sports makes them a hugely effective vessel through which social norms are disseminated. Whether through military training, adolescent bonding, or coming-of-age rituals, there is a historic precedent of sports occupying a vital position in the reproduction of masculinity (Whitson 1990, pp. 19-20). The second factor is that sports act on and through the body as a locus of meaning. Perhaps most importantly, sports create a social arena in which segregation based on physical sex is rigidly enforced, and this segregation carries enormous cultural significance. With this tremendous discursive power in mind, this paper addresses the role of sports in reproducing the concept of a dimorphic naturalized body through which the necessity of gender-based segregation is justified. The act of using banned performance enhancing techniques is positioned as an artificial corrupting force on the ability of humans to perform their natural state, and this is true of sophisticated modern illicit performance enhancing techniques which serve to reify the idea of a “natural” body. We will frame these key points with an illustrative example of the Tour de France’s “EPO era” spanning 1990-2010. This period saw a rapid transformation in narratives surrounding performance enhancement in professional cycling, centered specifically around the use of the banned drug erythropoietin (Mignon 2003, p. 232). The shifting meanings of banned performance enhancement in cycling make for an intriguing lens through which to examine how sporting narratives can redefine conceptions of the natural body and its acceptable uses in response to external societal pressure.

publisher: Simmons College (Boston, Mass.)

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date: 2017

type: Text

format: 1 PDF (36 Pages)

identifier: td_gcs_2017_hd

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language: English

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rights: Material from the Simmons University Archives collections are made available for study purposes only. For more information, or to request rights to reproduce or reuse any material, contact the University Archives at archives@simmons.edu.

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