On the evening of 28 August, the Place de la Concorde in Paris hosted the Summer Paralympic Games opening ceremony. Music, dance, fireworks, and inspirational speeches by the President of the International Paralympic Committee and the President of Paris 2024 comprised the four-hour ceremony.
The ceremony was marked by evident symbolism and explicit references to the French Revolution of 1789, starting with the choice of the location. In Place de la Concorde some of the more emblematic events of the Revolution took place, such as the execution of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. Reference to the French Revolution unfolded throughout the evening: the ceremony involved disabled athletes from the 168 participant delegations taking possession of the city centre in the Parade of Nations, a peaceful counterpart to French citizens roaming the capital at the end of the eighteenth century. The word ‘revolution’ was pronounced multiple times during the official speeches, and ‘Revolution du handicap’ (‘Disability Revolution’) was the unofficial title of the ceremony. Able and disabled artists danced to Ravel’s Bolero holding torches instead of attacking the symbols of the absolute monarchy.
The choice of the French Revolution as the central theme of the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paralympic Games can be interpreted in various ways. The French Revolution marked the end of the absolute monarchy in France and the first sanction of civil rights with the Declaration of the Rights of the Man and Citizen of 1789. This period was also a landmark in the history of the rights of disabled people: in 1790, the principle of the nation’s duty to assist the ‘infirmes pauvres’ (poor individuals with disabilities) was asserted for the first time before the Constituent Assembly, the Republic replacing the charitable philanthropy of the Old Regime with a civic duty towards the more vulnerable. It was during the Revolution that the Institution des enfants aveugles (Institute for Blind Youth) and the École des sourd-muets (School for Deaf-Mutes)—the first schools for blind and for deaf-mute children, founded in 1786 and 1776 respectively—were placed under the protection of the Republic. The revolutionaries pushed forward the Enlightenment idea that people with sensorial impairment are not intellectually diminished, hence galvanizing the movement toward acceptance of deaf and blind education. Evoking the Revolution of 1789 also suggested an analogy between the demand for a social and political role by a part of society previously kept at the margins, the Third Estate in 1789, and similar demands by disabled people worldwide in 2024.
By underlining how the social and political participation of disabled people is a matter of justice and human rights, the ceremony also sent a powerful reminder that much remains to be done, even by countries representative of the modern Global North such as France. During the ceremony, we were repeatedly reminded of the work to make the city venues accessible to disabled athletes and that the French capital still has significant accessibility issues for disabled inhabitants and visitors. The Paralympic Games will ensure that the topics of disability and disability rights are present in international media. But to what extent will this event advance the cause of social integration of disabled citizens?
Along with ‘revolution’, the word ‘harmony’ was also mentioned multiple times during the ceremony: the goal of creating a society suitable for both able-bodied and disabled individuals, a society in which physical and cultural obstacles, barriers, and prejudices towards disabled people would be an embarrassment of the past. However, the suitability of an event like the Paralympic Games to achieve this goal is not guaranteed. Throughout the ceremony, the exceptionality of the athletes participating in the games—men and women overcoming their physical limitations and achieving the impossible—was reiterated by the authorities, the commentators, and through interviews with Paralympians. It is important to remember that the performance of the para-athletes and their life histories do not reflect the daily life of millions of individuals with disabilities and, more importantly, that pairing the message of the creation of a harmonious society with the idea that disability is a limitation that has to be overcome by individual willpower means to embrace the values of an ableist society where one has the right to live only if can perform according to what is ‘normal’.
Corinne Doria is a historian of medicine and an Assistant Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shenzhen. Her work focuses on the history of ophthalmology and visual impairment. She authored numerous peer-reviewed articles in the fields of Disability Studies and Medical Humanities. With Marion Chottin, she is the author of the monograph Handicap, déficience, différence: une introduction aux disability studies (Lyon, Presses de l’ENS Lyon, forthcoming 2025).
Readers interested in histories of disability in France might want to look at the roundtable ‘Disability history in France: past, present and future’ published recently in French History.
