Collectively, we partake of this uniting fantasy that as ahuman race, we can get faster, higher, stronger. And, yet, the games,ironically, are simultaneously about bringing nations together and having themcompete against one another. The determination of athletes “ a trait common tocompetitors regardless of their origin “ is less of what the spectacle of theOlympics represents than it does the biopower of competing countries and theopportunity for the host nation to showboat.
It is a chance for nation-statesto put on display the standards they have reached in development and humanprowess. In this, there is a connection between the modern games and theirancient counterpart. It is believed that the purpose of the original Olympicswas to serve as a trucial event, bringing together various competitive sectorsof the Greek world. However, even so, it was a time for each of those regionsto show off the best of their male citizenry, testifying to the strength andtraining of the manpower at the disposal of the patriarchal state.
Even as peaceful events, the Olympics are notwithout their statist purpose “ there is something to be said about theequivalence between economic power and the investment necessary to support theinfrastructure required to train and groom athletes. With the games beinghosted by Britain this year, an added connection can be made with the politicsof empire and its afterlife.
The opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics which showcasedBritain’s culture and its historical achievements was titled “Isles of Wonder,”as inspired by Caliban’s speech in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. A rather strangechoice given that Caliban was Prospero’s slave in a play about racialiseddifference and colonial enterprise. Are the wondrous isles, then, England orthose faraway lands it conquered? The Danny Boyle-directed Olympic extravaganzahighlighted labour and industry as inherent to England’s historical trajectory.
However, English history and culture cannot be separated from its imperialheritage. For example, the very raw materials that led to British prosperitycame from elsewhere and the labour that transformed those resources was notalways of English stock or from within the isles.
Events like the Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee,which was celebrated a few months prior, allow the nation to cling to thevestiges of its past while filtering out the unsavoury bits of that chequeredhistory. Challenged by multiculturalism and globalization, themselves productsof a colonial history and mired in it, the once colonizer’s racial homogeneityand political hegemony find themselves in question. But the playing field hasyet to be levelled. As flags fly and anthems ring in commemoration of victory,they are reminders that nationalism is not a cause championed solely on thebattlefield. It is equally heralded in the steps across a finish line and themedal tally after a fortnight of sport among international, but notequally-equipped, adversaries.
