Governmentality and the Olympic Movement

In this chapter we seek to understand the process of construction of discourse on Olympism and its evolving nature from the end of the 19th to the mid-20th century. This is to be undertaken principally through an analysis of the writings of Pierre de Coubertin. In so doing we wish to move beyond the classic historical approach focusing on personalities, structures and context, to employ a Foucauldian approach which focuses on the constitution of knowledges, discourses, and thus de-centring the subject. (In this sense we are as interested in how the developing discourse of Olympism constructs Coubertin, as in how Coubertin constructed the discourse). Core to our discussion are the Foucauldian concepts of technologies of power and technologies of the self, and their interaction in what Foucault refers to as ‘governmentality’. It is the technologies of power / domination and self which together when internalised constitute the notion of governmentality, referring to socio-political contexts where power is decentred and where members of a society play an active role in their own self government. The interface between these technologies is thus our primary focus.