Gay Gam 2002 set to be a wner

In what ways did Sydney's Gay Gam revent the Atralian natn? In this paper I set out to exame this qutn by drawg upon the ia that sports and paras of athlet durg openg ceremoni have been five moments for the Atralian natn. I vtigate the social terras or bodysp voked by sportg gay pri durg the participants' para at the openg ceremony and sports venu of the Sydney 2002 Gay Gam. This enabl sights to whether the spac subverted the heteronormativy of sportg bodi that are metaphors for Atralian natnal space. I centre my argument wh a post-Fouuldian performance theory to nsir both lived experience and textual reprentatns of queer sports spac. This approach advot a recursive relatnship between power, disurse, and crilly reflexive, geographilly embedd subjects. The ethnographic basis of my fdgs is participant observatn and a time seri of -pth terviews wh over forty self-intifyg gay and queer mal livg Sydney. I extract two overarchg them om the bodysp of the gam: transcennce and imprisonment. For those actively volved the makg of mp bodysp, mimickg the monopoly of the domant orr through the thory of natnal signifitn provid by the para of athlet at openg ceremoni and by sportg bodi offered a transgrsive vehicle. However, the pillar of hetero- normative sportg bodi fg Atralian natnal boundari survived unchallenged. Sportg gay pri also worked to close rather than to open up a space for disurs about sexualy and natnal inty to occur. Closure om a mastream dience occurred by jettisong the shame that lks sport, sex, and bodi. Closure also occurred amongst certa rponnts who shunned the gam, regardg as disciplg bodi to `normalcy'.