Exorcizing the Ghost: Donovan Bailey, Ben Johnson and the Politics of Canadian Identity

Abstract

This article explores how sporting ‘Others’, such as Ben Johnson and Donovan Bailey, are constituted by, and constitutive of, the politics of racial and national identity in Canada. Tracing the emerging media discourses surrounding these two ‘Jamaican-born’ Canadian sprinters, this study specifically examines: (a) the context within which Ben Johnson and the contemporary crisis of racial and national identity in Canada emerged; (b) previous research regarding the discourses which defined and redefined Ben Johnson’s racial and national identities before and after the 1988 steroid scandal; and (c) evidence of the nature and extent to which the symbolic spectre of Ben Johnson haunts Donovan Bailey and other Canadian black people of Caribbean descent, as well as Canada itself.