Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:05:40 -0400
Subject: Re: Wacquant on boxing


Your question is certainly a valid one, but it is not entirely unlike the earlier posting ["what is Wacquant all about?"] which breezily dismissed not just Wacquant the social analyst, but the work of ethnographic analysis itself. A real  understanding  of the social logic underlying social research (and therefore the motivations motivating various kinds of researchers) cannot be reached by simple speculation, or as a philosophical  problem, but as a sociological one that, in this case, would require the completely valid and important, but systematic theoretical and empirical analysis of academic  scientific practices. It is a valid question, but not one that can be seriously answered in the abstract, nor at the level of the individual.

As an individual, however, I can say that I was motivated to respond to the original posting about Wacquant on boxing, because I found the hardly veiled accusations made ("the air of Fascism" after all??) to be both completely unjust and completely ignorant of the work itself. To actually read this work is to immediately force a confrontation with the very preconception of boxing as a barbaric activity. In relation to the dystopian world of uncontrolled violence, police repression, economic destruction ,social neglect and stigma that fairly characterizes the poor African-American community in which it is located, the boxing gym that he studied, among other things can be seen as a remarkable oasis of solidarity and of mutual respect, where bodily discipline and control is practiced as a craft whose considerable skills are passed down from journeyman to apprentice. The contrast of this institution with the utter breakdown of a market for skilled labor in the poorest black communities of the U.S. is stark. Wacquant's work on boxing is a very much more complicated analysis than this, but by reading it we actually do learn quite a bit at least about his sociological view of his own motivations. These are discussed openly, reflexively and within the analysis itself, of the French edition of the forthcoming English version of his book, BODY AND SOUL: Ethnographic notebooks of an apprentice boxer [which I understand will be published by U. of Minnesota Press). 

Of course you should feel free to inveigh against intellectuals for using research questions to satisfy psychosexual urges, but please read Wacquant's work on boxing, for it forces all of us to confront the limits to our own selective outrage. 
Rick Fantasia   


 

>>> rdumain-AT-igc.org 07/13/01 05:14PM >>>
Fair enough!  But my question is a valid one.  Intellectuals love 
violence--in theory and from a safe distance in most cases--so one must 
always be suspicious until one gets the scoop.  The lesson the 20th century 
is how millions of people get psychologically primed for fascism.  Blood 
sports is one of them, and the intellectuals' fascination with boxing 
reveals their own sadomasochistic lust for power and their predisposition 
to submit their own intellectual gifts to naked power.  Hence I think you 
need to direct your concern over what is inflammatory to the real purveyors 
of barbarism.  Academics love getting angry in theory, but when somebody 
gets angry for real they shit they pants.

At 04:19 PM 7/13/01 -0400, Elaine Power wrote:
>Please don't grind your personal ax against boxing on Wacquant's back. Read
>some of his work instead.
>
>Elaine Power

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