The promise of glitching bodies in sport: a posthumanist exploration of an intersex phenomenon

Abstract

This paper is about glitching bodies – bodies that break, crash and confuse the conventions of pre-programmed and binary gender patterns. Exploring the promise of an intersex phenomenon; hyperandrogenism in women’s sport, I discuss how glitching bodies and a feminist posthumanist understanding of gender can contribute to the field of gender and queer sport studies. Responding to calls for research enacting how non-binary bodies challenge the dualistic gendered ontologies that have structured the performative practices of sport in highly exclusive ways this paper is a travelogue into a messy nature-cultural phenomenon. It is partly a theoretical and methodological exploration and partly an analytic endeavour. The phenomenon of hyperandrogenism is explored and untangled by engaging in a diffractive analysis where I ‘plug in’ the concepts of intra-activity and glitch. I argue that a feminist posthumanist understanding of gender and diffraction as a methodological practice helps us move away from habitual and normative readings that zero in on either male or female, either nature or culture and either material or discursive. This implosion of binaries in turn opens up for alternative ways of thinking and being bodies in sport (studies).