Technologies of Power, Governmentality and Discourses of Olympism in the Twenty-first Century

Abstract

In the foregoing chapters we have sought to accomplish three things. First we reviewed in the opening chapter a range of theoretical perspectives through which the nature and impact of Olympism might be evaluated, advocating a form of critical discourse analysis drawing on the work of Michel Foucault to frame our understanding of the development of Olympism as a moral project. Second we introduced the changing global context against which Olympism has developed (and which Olympism itself has to some extent shaped). Third we sought to analyse the discourse strands in, and engaging with, Olympism which are evident in the late nineteenth to the mid twentieth century (through the writings of Coubertin), from the early twentieth century to the second half of the twentieth century (as evidenced in the writings of Carl Diem), and for the later twentieth century (by reference to the speakers and lecturers at the International Olympic Academy). In doing so we have sought to establish the most important discourse themes in relation to these three sources, and to illustrate and analyse ways in which the discourses of Olympism have been enmeshed within, and themselves shaped in symbiotic fashion, the broader local, national and global discourses of the period.