Un corps sportif et handicapé. Regard sur l’expérience du corps d’athlètes handicapés physiques tunisiens

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of the body experience of Tunisian athletes with physical disabilities invested in high level sport. In this singular experience, the body finds itself in an ambivalent position between the materiality of the impairment, emphasized by the gaze of others and the demands of sport performance. On the basis of a corpus of interviews, the study shows that athletes’ express physical impairment is expressed in terms of deviation from the norm. However, the involvement of the body in specific sports and the achievement of peak performance lead to the encounter with a different body and contributes to a revocation or even an oversight of disability. Indeed, the involvement of the athlete's body in a socially significant practice allows them to forge an exceptional identity in the sporting space. Moreover, the process of appropriation/ownership of this new identity and conciliation with the impaired body transforms the perception of their own body and leads to reconciliation with oneself, despite a continuing confrontation with the logic of the norm within the extrasporting space.