The forgotten body: history of sport and physical education for people with physical disabilities in Taiwan, 1945–1971

Abstract

The history of sport and physical education (PE) for people with physical disabilities is dominated by an ideological discourse that, through the process of omission, argues that the developments in the field are Western in origin. In this article, we examine how Taiwan independently developed a new medium of sport and PE for individuals disabled by the epidemics of poliomyelitis during the mid-twentieth century. We first studied the period of Taiwanese history from the end of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan in 1945 until 1971. To explore this transformation, we engaged with Foucauldian genealogy to study the epidemics between the 1940s and the 1960s in Taiwan, when the number of children having physical paralysis increased dramatically. The high number of people infected with poliomyelitis turned it into a significant social problem that warranted being addressed by the government. Some of the children with physical disabilities were placed in institutions, and sport and PE were a part of their daily routine. Physical rehabilitation was extensively conducted through sport and PE and was administered on people with physical disabilities in institutions. By encouraging sport and PE for the disabled, the rehabilitative movement’s ultimate goal was to restore the functions of impaired bodies and efface the disabled in the society.