Paper short abstract:

In this methodological paper “movement” is used as an object of making an inquiry on the practical use of the senses (and especially of touch) by studying them as sociomaterial interactions between bodily and technological components in disabled sport athletes' practices.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last years, in competitive athletic sports the classificatory registers of the "human athlete" and the common measurements of his/her performance have become a controversy of its own kind. Also so-called "superhumans" join the competitions, who had only been allowed to participate in the stigmatised sports for the disabled a couple of years ago. In athletic sports, first and foremost these are the medal champions with high-technology leg prostheses undermining the standards of "human movement". While international committees try to prohibit these interferences through laws and regulations, legitimations of these athletes have already brought forward a public of its own kind.

In this methodological paper "movement" is used as an object of making an inquiry on the practical use of the senses (and especially of touch) in order to study them as interactions between bodily and technological components in the athletes' practical accomplishment of movement. The data is generated through ethnographic research in the training routines of German athletes preparing for the Paralympics 2016 in Rio. The idea of assemblage is used to unfold "movement" as an object of distributed components in the hands of a lot of actors, such as the sensory knowledge of the athletes, leg prosthetic technology, sensory expertise of engineers from the manufacturer, trainers, orthopaedists, and the affective forces generated through these entanglements. The paper concludes by discussing how this "movement" stands the registers of competitive sports and beckon the human body and its sensory capacities while at the same time having already entered a posthuman sphere of entanglement.