Following my last post, Canadian sport sociologist Sean Smith commented on whether the English language is even equipped to deal with the ongoing attempts by the sport culture to distinguish between the "real" and "fake," or any other false binaries for that matter. Does the "in-betweeness elude language and its fixity?" is what he wrote. I thought about this last night as I watched Pumping Iron for the 3rd time. Yes, the California economic system has a major hernia so I felt like watching Governor Arnold's campy portrayal of himself. Tonight I watched footage of the 2008 Mr. Olympia, and I again struggled with Sean's question. What do we make of a sport (some might debate this label, but I do not) that is predicated on the "unnatural"? Again, the language cannot help us...if all elite sport is by definition outside the norm, and the athletes themselves lie on the outer reaches of the standard deviations of performance, physical abilities, and perhaps substance intake, then bodybuilding is what...SUPERunnatural? HYPERunnatural? Of course there are "natural" bodybuilding competitions, but they are not what they claim to be either. The term "natural" seems to fail in any use within the sporting domain, because virtually all sporting competitions require some sort of effort above and beyond what one would be doing otherwise. To engage in a training regimen is, in this sense, unnatural. Check out the IOC's definition of doping and let me know what you think...it is very interesting how they phrase it. I think their language fails, too. If we dump the natural-artificial distinction, then how do we discuss the infinite possibilities of cyborg boundary transgressions? Why not step into a post-lexicon landscape where we outright refuse to use anachronistic language to talk about anachronistic ways of thinking about bodies and identities? What are we so afraid of?2008 Mr. Olympia (Jackson & Cutler)
The thing is, as I think about it more, language only possesses a fixity when we look at it on very short time horizons. As we stretch out the time horizon of analysis, language is as fluid as a running river. So what is required to keep the river flowing, so to speak, is the agency of the speaker to continually redefine those elements that constitute language. In our case, the first word that needs to be liquified (and which you are already doing) is "sport". If the concept itself is predicated on binaries, then there is no possibility for in-betweeness.
ReplyDeleteOf course language is limited in fully expressing thoughts and experiences. That's why we have poetry. But we can still be more precise. If we're talking about effort above and beyond the normal, then I'd say it's above and beyond the normal (supernormal if you want to use academicspeak), not unnatural. Bodybuilding is predicated on the extra-normal, based as it is in carnivals and burlesque. "Natural" implies lacking artificiality and self-consciousness and having a spontaneousness suggesting the natural rather than the man-made world, according to Merriam-Webster's.
ReplyDeleteHumans secrete HGH from their pituitary glands, which is natural according to the definition of the word. If someone draws growth hormone from a human cadaver and injects it into someone else, that's unnatural. Seems to me like the word works in this sporting domain. Maybe not a fixity, but certainly fruitful.
I'm not radical positivist but I do prefer to have a dictionary which provides a guide for the precise use of words so I'm not ready to abandon the lexicon. If you want new words, then you need to have new thoughts.