Staging an Olympic Myth: Democracy and the 2010 Vancouver Olympics

Abstract

My research examines how the discursive articulations of the Vancouver Olympics contributes to a spatial order, explored through a theoretical framework informed by Jacques Rancière’s political philosophy. Rancière (1999) explores politics as an aesthetic, spatial exercise, radically framed through equality. An Olympics case study, employing this theoretical frame, invites an emancipatory method to fill in the gap of the post-political literature and critically assess my research question: what is the status of democracy in Vancouver during the Games bidding and preparations phase? Interviews with Olympic volunteers, protestors, a city councillor, and organizing committee members have articulated the Games and urban image through themes of inevitability of the Olympic event, via aestheticization of particular neoliberalized transit infrastructure. This thesis interrogates the politics of neoliberalization in Vancouver, how urban space is (re)produced undemocratically, and discursively investigates how common-sense statements about the city are constituted through non-violent means and lack a disciplinary command.