This thesis explores athletes’ training as a complex method of interlinking processes performed by multiple agents to produce elite athletes. In this chapter I introduce Foucault’s theoretical concept of ‘correct training’. Correct training is a disciplinary technique that can be applied to anyone; however, “instead of bending all of its subjects into a single uniform mass, it separates, analyses, differentiates” individuals into distinct subjects through three instruments: 1) hierarchical observation, 2) normalising judgement and 3) a combination of the
two in the form of examination (Foucault 1991, 170). I use this theory to examine the production of elite athletes, through training, into distinct subjects.
1. Hierarchical Observation
Foucault argues that power is enacted through observation. The notion of hierarchical observation relates to stratified layers of surveillance, which commonly occur within institutions, where a hierarchy of professionals including a manager and multiple ‘specialised personnel’ surveys the actions of an individual (Foucault 1991). In the case of elite athletes, hierarchical observation occurs through coaches, other service providers and teammates as well as athletes surveying themselves. Through this observation athletes are the object of, and rendered a subject through, the gaze of many.
Foucault argues that hierarchical observation acts as a “machinery of control that function[s] like a microscope of conduct” (Foucault 1991, 173). Markula and Pringle suggest that through surveillance “a visible body is a knowable body that can subsequently become subject to the workings of power”, meaning that through observation, one comes to see and know another (Markula and Pringle 2006, 41; Foucault 1991, 172). Shogan supports this view, “The effect of observation is not merely that athletes are seen. Observation makes it possible ‘to know them, to alter them’” (Shogan 1999, 35 citing Foucault 1979, 158). In this way observation performs “the policing functions of surveillance… encouraging obedience and work” (Foucault 1991, 173). Therefore, observation is never neutral: the act of gazing and being gazed upon through hierarchical observation involves an exchange of power, and gives rise to normalising judgement.
2. Normalising Judgement
Observation incites judgement that is reflective and reinforces socio-cultural norms. Foucault suggests that normalising judgement enforces an oppositional binary of permitted and forbidden behaviour, a “double system: gratification- punishment” (Foucault 1991, 180; 183). Compliance with rules, regulations and norms is rewarded, whereas non-conforming or transgressive behaviour is punished (Foucault 1991, 179; Markula and Pringle 2006, 42). “Normalisation is the goal and the effect of discipline” that correct training provides in producing athletes (Heikkala 1993, 399).
Through training, athletes are exposed to a “discursive web of normalising practices” (Markula 2003, 88). For instance, drawing from Foucault, I argue that athletes are subjected to:
…a whole micro-penality of time (lateness, absences, interruptions to tasks), of activity (inattention, negligence lack of zeal), of behaviour (impoliteness, disobedience) of speech (idle chatter, insolence), of the body (‘incorrect’ attitudes, irregular gestures, lack of cleanliness) (Foucault 1991, 178).
Subtle procedures of punishment “from light physical punishment to minor deprivations and petty humiliations” are used to correct athletes’ misbehaviour (Foucault 1991, 178). For example, athletes may be instructed to perform sprints or push-ups as punishment; denied from sitting during drink breaks between drills in training; and humiliated through coaches or teammates calling them derogatory nicknames, yelling at them or swearing at them to express their frustration at an athlete’s non-compliant behaviour. Normalising judgement of athletes’ behaviour in training uses “reduplicated insistence”, which means repetition of disciplinary practices, which in this instance relates to the intention of reconstituting athletes’ habitus to embody training practices and socio-cultural norms (Foucault 1991, 180).
Finally, Foucault insists that normalising judgement “…compares, differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenises, excludes. In short, it normalises” behaviour and makes it possible to praise or punish (Foucault 1991, 183). In the second part of this chapter I demonstrate that, through correct training, normalising judgement not only normalises athletes’ behaviour, it also normalises the reconstitution of athletes as elite.
3. Examination
The final element of Foucault’s correct training is a combination of hierarchical observation and normalising judgement “in a procedure that is specific to it, the examination” (Foucault 1991, 184). He proposes that the examination of correct training involves a constantly repeated ritual of power (Foucault 1991, 186):
Disciplinary power… is exercised through its invisibility; at the same time it imposes on those whom it subjects a principle of compulsory visibility. In discipline it is the subjects who have been seen. …It is the fact of being constantly seen, of being able always to be seen, that maintains the disciplined individual in his subjection (Foucault 1991, 187).
Therefore, examination causes subjectification since it renders certain people into objects who are seen and, in turn, subjects whose practices are disciplined, surveyed and judged. Through examination a shift occurs from examining practices, to critiquing, comparing, describing, measuring, and judging an individual who is performing the practices.
For elite athletes, training provides a context for examination since it invites hierarchical observation and normalising judgement. For example, a regular ‘ritual of power’ that athletes perform is fitness testing. This involves athletes completing a battery of tests that assess their speed, strength, flexibility, agility, endurance and body composition. Many service providers are required to conduct such testing and record results, which means that there are a lot of staff
— as well as other athletic competitors — involved in hierarchical observation. Every assessed skill is a benchmark of performance and athletes are expected to improve on their previous results. Accordingly fitness examinations assess much more than athletes’ fitness. It charts training compliance, performance progression, potential to improve, and reiterates the necessity of athletes’ discipline through practices of hierarchical observation and normalising judgement. This example embodies a common element of examination, that is the: “accumulation of documents… the organisation of comparative fields making it possible to classify, to form categories, to determine averages, to fix norms” to create docile subjects (Foucault 1991, 190).
Another example of such record-accumulation in basketball includes the collections of statistics of players’ behaviour on court recorded by score-keeping officials.107 The gathered and averaged statistics paint a portrait of each
basketballer’s performance. They provide an ‘objective’, measured record by which to compare players, as well as an individual's previous and present results, and so provide an indicator of improvement. These data, placed in the context of normalised expectations of performance, determine whether or not a basketballer will be reconstituted as an elite athlete. Consequently, statistics are crucial in assessing athletes’ performance, and they transform athletes into “objects of knowledge” (Heikkala 1993, 401).
Shogan (1999, 35) provides an apt account of correct training in discussing the process whereby coaches measure the differences (‘gaps’) between an athletes’ ability and the desired ability:
107 For example, in every game that AIS basketballers play, a record is kept of the position they play, the
minutes on court, the field goals (shots) taken, percentage of field goals (successful shots), three point goals, three points percentage, free throws, free throws percentage, assists, steals, turn-overs, offensive rebounds, defensive rebounds, total rebounds, blocked shots, as well as the total points and efficiency.
Through the coaches’ observing and judging, comprehensive records of athletes’ performance in training sessions and competition are produced and the gaps between athlete’s performance and the standard for the activity are noted (Shogan 1999, 35).
Shogan’s example illustrates coaches’ monitoring of athletes’ performance through the statistical analysis of records with the goal of changing how athletes train and perform, so that they will reach an appropriate standard and become elite. The surveillance and judgement embedded in these coaches’ actions exemplify the processes of discipline, and in particular the processes of correct training, in athletes’ sports training.
Implied within Foucault’s concept of correct training, through normalising judgement in particular, is the influence of morality. Foucault regards morality as being socio-culturally and historically produced. Two factors he identifies as informing morality within any culture are: 1) what is understood to be forbidden; and 2) what is regarded as positively and negative valued. Foucault suggests that these factors determine whether or not one is culturally determined as a moral subject.
In the second part of this chapter I will use Foucault’s concept of morality to examine the elite athlete work ethic.