Utilising Sporting Autobiographies for Feminist Research
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Utilising Sporting Autobiographies for Feminist Research: The Case of Cyclist Nicole Cooke Carly Stewart Sparkes and Stewart (2015:2) note the ‘enthusiasm that has greeted the study of autobiographies’ in a variety of disciplines (e.g. literary theory, history, anthropology, sociology) and cross-disciplinary fields (e.g. cultural studies, women’s’ studies). Not so in sport. On the contrary, scholars have signalled their relative neglect despite potential to offer a rich source of data (Stewart, Sparkes & Smith 2011; Thing & Ronglan 2015). Offering an explanation for this current state of affairs, Sparkes and Stewart (2015) draw attention to negative views and misplaced assumptions that convey surmountable problems for the acceptance of sporting autobiographies as a serious resource for researchers in sport. For example, often lumped together under the heading of ‘celebrity autobiographies’, sports autobiographies are charged with being commercially driven for profit, formulaic or predictable in nature (often ‘ghost-written’), uninteresting and limited in expressive form, superficial in content, banal and cliché ridden. This said, concerning their use for research purposes there is a cultural suspicion around their ‘unmediated authenticity’ (Smith & Watson 2010) or truth which may position them as rather dubious source material (Taylor 2008). However, presenting a more positive view, autobiographies of athletes could be viewed, and are widely consumed as, a cultural phenomenon in their own right (Sparkes and Stewart 2015; Young 2001). Sparkes and Stewart (2015:7) propose that many are ‘well- written, include complex plotlines, and provide illuminating insights into the lives of athletes’ over time with the more memorable ones perhaps drawing our attention to the experiences of those which intervene in wider contemporary discussions. 1 There is however a small but growing body of work which does give analytical attention to sports autobiographies (Overman 2003, 2008; Palmer 2015; Sparkes, Pérez- Samaniego and Smith 2012; Pipkin 2008; Sparkes 2004; Stewart et al. 2011). Yet, this research comprises predominantly of autobiographies written by male athletes revealing an ‘inattention to women’s voices’ (Heinecken 2015:2). As a consequence there is a distinct lack of feminist analytical attention given to sports autobiographies. This is something of a peculiar situation where autobiography has long been a topic for feminist theorists and women’s life writing in general (e.g. see Smith and Watson 1998) and there has been significant feminist interest in the experiences and lives as told by sportswomen (e.g. see Markula 2005). It is against this backdrop that this chapter seeks to make two contributions. Firstly, it advocates the use of autobiographies as a valuable resource for the purposes of feminist scholarship in sport. Secondly, via an illustrative case study of cyclist Nicole Cooke’s 2014 autobiography, The Breakaway, it seeks to show one way in which autobiographies allow for a nuanced analysis of contemporary feminist positions, and can be used to bring discussions of feminist theory to the fore. Autobiographies as a resource for feminist scholarship Taylor (2008) takes the view that sports autobiographies ought to be viewed as cultural texts beyond facts and verifiable information, and instead read as an interpretation. Such a view is certainly harmonious with the scholarly use of autobiographies in the aforementioned disciplines and fields of study, where works illuminate the complexities of how identity is shaped when we write about who we think we are. Smith and Watson (2010:214) refer to ‘performativity’ to define autobiographical occasions as ‘dynamic sites for the performance of identities that become constitutive of subjectivity’. Similarly, for Eakin (2008:x) life stories are ‘not merely about us but in an inescapable and profound way are us’. However, from this viewpoint, identities are never final and are enacted through the 2 available cultural narratives (norms) and discourses in which they are expressed, that is, we cannot make up these on our own (Eakin 1999, 2008; Frank 2010; Smith & Watson 2010). Eakin’s (1999:4) approach is in the spirit of a cultural anthropologist, ‘asking what such texts can teach us about the way in which individuals in a particular culture experience their sense of being “I”—and in some instructive cases that prove the rule, their sense of not being an “I”’. Such an approach, he argues, requires we ‘accept the gambit of autobiography’s referential aesthetic’ (Eakin 1999:4), leaving open the possibility that they may not be telling the truth. Supporting this, Sparkes and Stewart (2015) state that once this ‘problem’ of unmediated authenticity and autobiographical ‘truth’ is rethought—objective truth is an ideal that no qualitative data can truly claim—sporting autobiographies shift from being a problem to a possible resource for scholarly analysis to good effect depending on their interests and purposes. Autobiographies lend themselves to feminist analysis at the outset because they deliberately offer the first person view, something that all feminist epistemologies take as a starting point (Griffiths 1994). Following this, Smith and Watson (2010:214) refer to subject position or ‘positionality’ to describe ‘how speaking subjects take up, inhabit, and speak through certain discourses of identity that are culturally salient and available to them at a particular historical moment.’ Therefore women’s autobiographies are important to examine because they draw from discourses and discursive regimes about what a woman is and should be; that is, women as subjects are produced by ideologies of gender (Gilmore 1994). Further, regulatory discourses of identity are related to material bodies in complex ways. Judith Butler’s assertion that gender is performative informs much contemporary discussion of life narrative (See Butler 1993) and for Smith (1993 cited in Smith & Watson 2010) autobiographical subjectivity is enacted in cultural spaces between the personal “I” and the body politic. Echoing this Smith and Watson’s (2010) toolkit for reading autobiography 3 poses some useful questions that bring the body and embodiment, experience and identity into focus, including when, where and how does the body become visible? How does the narrator negotiate fictions of identity and resistances to the constraints of a given identity in presenting her – or himself as a gendered or a racialized, or ethnic subject? As well as constructing their own identities and selves, sports autobiographers play an important role in providing a narrative map or blueprint for the life stories of others negotiating the sporting landscape (Pollner and Stein 1996; Stewart et al. 2011). This said for Frank (2010), stories teach people who they are, advocating that people not only think about stories, they think with stories. He advises that stories are powerful, interpellating listeners to recognize themselves in particular characters, and to act on particular identities as part of a reflexive awareness of who the type of narrative requires him or her to be, and to do. This is important because a coherent and meaningful narrative account of personal experience may become the sole authority to provide romantic but limited options for being (Frank 1995; Holstein and Gubrium 2000; Sparkes et al. 2012). Importantly, however, Frank (2010) notes that whilst powerful, people can and do refuse intrepellations into particular characters, often through stories in the form of memoirs. In the context of examining the autobiographies of female athletes we are able explore the nuanced ways they respond to, negotiate, challenge and refuse cultural constructions of female athletic identity while simultaneously instructing or providing a map for readers about the significance of sports for all women (Heinecken 2015). Sporting autobiographies of female athletes: A postfeminist context The most extensive examination of sports autobiographies by female athletes to date provides an important context for the case study to follow. Heinecken (2015) analyses 30 post 1992 ‘jockographies’ by U.S. female athletes exploring their construction of athletic 4 identity and sports practice. She notes that female ‘jockographies’ are notable ‘for the ways they seek to appeal to a wide audience by mediating feminist concerns around the social status of women as well as conservative fears around women’s intrusion into the male preserve of sport’ (Heinecken 2015:3), thus articulating a postfeminist sensibility. Postfeminism used herei is defined as a kind of ‘popular feminism’ that characterizes contemporary culture where aspects of second-wave feminism are taken for granted (Gill 2007). Importantly, as McDonald (2000) states, postfeminism is not merely antifeminist, rather than combating inequities instead women are reassured that feminism is no longer necessary as women can ‘have it all’. In essence women can be both sexy and powerful. In her influential work, Angela McRobbie (2004, 2009) echoes this, arguing that what is distinctive about postfeminist culture is a selectively defined feminism which facilitates a “double entanglement” of the doing and undoing of feminism, young women are offered particular freedoms and choice ‘in exchange for’ or ‘at the expense of’ feminist politics and transformation (McRobbie 2004:255). This said for McRobbie (2009) rather than a theoretical orientation, postfeminism is an object of critical analysis in itself. Heinecken’s