ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of consent to bodily harm, with a particular focus on the criminal law’s approach to violence within sporting contexts. Emphasis is placed on leading decisions in the United Kingdom and North America, highlighting how the courts have defined ‘harm’ on the basis of ‘public utility’ when determining the scope of consent to harm. Operating as a criminal defence, consent transforms an otherwise criminal act into a legal one and, in the case of sporting activity, a universally desirable aim. The result is the production of a normative framework for players where it is both rational and laudable to subject the body to violence and high-risk activity, provided it is in pursuit of social, cultural, and economic capital. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that consent’s ‘common sense’ is integrally connected to a neoliberal rationality that both prescribes and produces subjectivities in service to its basic tenets.
