Pedaling in pairs toward a ‘dialogical performance’: Partnerships and the sensory body within a tandem cycling group

Abstract

Focusing on social dialogue and the sensory body within a tandem cycling group pairing blind and sighted riders, this article addresses the creation of a ‘dialogical performance’ (Conquergood, 1985), arguing for the ways integrated tandem cycling challenges distinct binary categories, bodily hierarchies, and constructs of social otherness. Based on one year of fieldwork conducted during cycling, I examine the form of ‘togetherness’ this activity creates, as well as the ‘intersensory’ aspects of this activity, discussing the ways it allows group members to critically reflect upon their bodily and sensory identities, and to re-embody sight as an active and somatic sense. Contributing to and integrating disability ethnography, anthropology of the senses, and the sociology of sporting bodies, I examine the ways this mutual experience enriches the meanings of both blindness and sight, and challenges rigid definitions of and boundaries around the senses, social identities, and bodily functions.