Doping and anti-doping: the excesses of enterprise and the tyranny of transparency

Abstract

Building on Foucault’s theory of the ‘enterprise society’, this article situates the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in sport in the wider socio-economic context, where generalised competition has become a strategic game of innovation and enterprise. Professional and elite sport is shaped through innovation as athletes and teams look for ways to gain a competitive edge over rivals, while the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) resorts to intrusive controls in the name of ‘playing true’ and protecting the ‘spirit of sport’. The central argument is that the problem of drugs in sport is framed as though it amounts to exceptional and excessive – thus governable – behaviour, but this overlooks the extent to which the enterprise society is itself a game of excess. Moreover, examined as a contest between competition and control, the sporting arena provides evidence of how the game of excess intensifies, and also how this institutes a tyrannical mode of governance.