Possibilities of Feminist Technoscience Studies of Sport: Beyond Cyborg Bodies

Feminist studies of sport offer a rich, interdisciplinary literature on the gendered dimensions of physical culture. This literature illuminates distinct aspects of women’s sporting experiences as well as how gendered, sexed, and intersectional difference informs practices, cultures, and representations of sport and physical activity. Feminist analyses of the entanglements of science, technology, and sport, while increasing in number, are comparatively limited in scope. This chapter surveys approaches used to study technosocial relations, particularly feminist technoscience, considering their current and potential contributions to studies of sport. First, it reflects on how scholars have used and adapted Haraway’s notion of the cyborg in analyses of sport. It then examines how scholars have employed agential realism and assemblage, considering their potential for feminist studies of sport. The chapter concludes by summarizing the possibilities of feminist technoscience studies of sport, while also considering how the study of embodiment, sport, and physical activity offers important reminders for scholarship on science, technology, and society.