Murderball & Cyborgs

I tread very carefully when discussing the use of technology by people with disabilities. I am skeptical of progressive transhumanist arguments associated with reparative technologies. However, this documentary seems to demand that very progressive argument. I am not sure that it lends itself to a cyborgian or posthuman discourse, unless we deal with those terms as simply the broadening of what it means to be human or, indeed, disabled.

I have only seen a trailer for the movie, but the director and actor/athletes talk about transforming the way in which athletes/people with a disability are perceived. In this sense, they are entering into a process of re-definition. I wonder whether they would see themselves as constitutiely technological as athletes. The chairs they use are quite different vehicles/ prosthetics to any that I have seen in other sports and their attitudes come across as deliberately and unapologetically aggresssive.

There is surely a paper waiting to be written about this both within sport studies and cultural studies of technology.