On Boxing — Sweet Science & Brutal Agon: A Select Bibliography

Reflecting on the elusiveness of boxing as an object of critical scrutiny, Norman Mailer once remarked that "to try to learn from boxers [is] a quintessentially comic quest. Boxers are liars. . . . Once you knew what they thought, you could hit them. So their personalities become masterpieces of concealment" (43). Despite this belated caution, the drama inside the ring has long exhibited an almost allegorical power for men and women of letters eager to find cultural meaning in such a concentrated trial of the will. For instance, in William Cobbett's 1805 essay, "In Defense of Boxing," published in the weekly Political Register on the occasion of a Coroner's decision "wherein death was the consequence of a boxing-match," the persistent cries to "eradicate the practice of boxing" compel Cobbett to summon what he saw as a more debilitating cultural spectre: England's steady fall into effeminacy (172). He begins by valorizing the pugilistic arts as a civil means of settling quarrels in a frequently uncivil society, particularly in contradistinction to the decidedly craven sword-play of the French and Italians. For Cobbett, the issue at stake appears patently simple: "[W]e must either have cuttings and stabbings, or boxing"; however, as he continues, it becomes clear that the ramifications of this choice are farther reaching: "[F]or, much as I abhor cuttings and stabbings, I have as I hope most others of my countrymen have, a still greater abhorrence of submission to a foreign yoke. Commerce, Opulence, Luxury, Effeminacy, Cowardice, Slavery: these are the stages of national degradation. We are in the fourth; and I beg the reader to consider, to look into history, to trace the states in their fall, and then say how rapid is the latter part of the progress! Of the symptoms of effeminacy none is so certain as a change from athletic and hardy sports or exercises to those requiring less bodily strength and exposing the persons engaged in them to less bodily suffering" (175). Here Cobbett's defense of boxing for its own sake (as humane, spirited, manly) gives way to a figuration of the sport as a metonymic device for "deeds of bravery of a higher order," including the military safeguarding of national borders and the instantiation of hegemonic cultural values. While the sport's origins lie in "that generous mode of terminating quarrels between the common people, a mode by which the people of England have, for ages, been distinguished from those of all other countries" (172), Cobbett reimagines prize-fighting as a form of radical pedagogy that teaches class identification through public spectacle: "But boxing matches give rise to assemblages of the people; they tend to make the people bold: they produce a communication of notions of hardihood; they serve to remind men of the importance of bodily strength; they, each in its sphere, occasion a transient relaxation from labour; they tend, in short, to keep alive, even amongst the lowest of the people, some idea of independence; whereas amongst cutters and stabbers and poisoners there is necessarily a rivalship for quietness and secrecy . . . seeing that their mode of seeking satisfaction is with the greatest chance of success pursued in the dark" (178-79).

The International Journal of Sport and Society

This study, undertaken in North East England, examines the way in which discourses around masculinity are reflected and reproduced in amateur boxing. With the decline of heavy industry, young men have had to seek other ways of expressing their masculinity. Boxing clubs provided a setting in which the hegemony of masculinity in the area could be practiced. A more inclusive environment began to develop in boxing clubs, however, and young men had to find alternative methods of expressing their masculinity while maintaining hegemonic control. One of the means by which they did this was to use boxing in an entrepreneurial way.

The work will attempt to trace a genealogy for the institution of professional boxing. Applying Michel Foucault’s method of Archeology and Biopolitical critique, the aim will be to demonstrate several things. First, that boxing has not been constituted as a proper object of connaisance and therefore exhibits the same elusive features as other Foucaultian hybrid-formations like madness and the psychiatric ward. Instead, there is a proliferation of discourses such that each constitutes pugilism in their own way with only a partial convergence of definitions, techniques, maneuvers, strikes, guards, postures and other discursive and non-discursive formations and social practices. The various techniques of the self will be analyzed at length as a field of possible “moves” within the war-game of boxing. More specifically, a space where various methods of governance crisscross and overlap. A distinction, similar to the one made by Hannah Arendt, between domination (violence in Arendt’s case) and power will show to hold in combat sports as well as in political discourse surrounding it. A testament to the heterogeneous nature of the quasi-object-institution of boxing, will be its own internal ambivalence, as expressed through the writings of the selected 18th and 19th century English fighters. Boxing is at the same time declared to be useful and harmful for the social body. Both violent and refined, transgressive and reforming. The training of boxers will play an important role in identifying the disciplinary mechanisms at play, while multiple forms of political propaganda and economic marketing campaigns, both pertaining to the present as well as the 18th century, will prove as evidence for the historical emergence of boxing, including the current state of the sport, as a type of governmentality. Boxing will show to be a sophisticated technique of administering bodies, of making live and letting die. It will be seen that the pugilistic institution, as well as combat sports in general, turn out to be a Neoliberal hub of economic governance. A complete genealogy will not be offered. Instead, the paper will concentrate on 18th century English boxing as a predecessor to combat sports as we witness its rising popularity today. The boxing institution will be used as a case example of the emergence and on-going activity in (neo)liberal governance.

The purpose of this review is to establish current knowledge in regard to the legal, medical, ethical and moral concerns of participating in boxing. The review also presents a case for boxing by highlighting the social and physical benefits associated with participation. It summarises, interprets, and critically evaluates the existing literature and introduces a safer alternative Box’Tag.

British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2012