Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment: Violence, Gender and Mixed Martial Arts [1 ed.] 0415896282, 9780415896283

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Figures
Preface and Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. Phenomenology and Bodies
3. Time, Space, and Sense of Fighting
4. Difference and Bodies
5. Being an MMA Fighter
6. Habit(us), Body Techniques, and Body Callusing
7. Narratives of Despair, Loss, and Failure: Pain, Injury, and Masculinities
8. Emotions and Violence
9. Homosociality, (Homo)eroticism, and Dueling Practice
10. Conclusion
About the Biography
Glossary of Terms
Appendix: The Senses and Ethnographic Research
Notes
References
Index

Citation preview

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

Routledge Research in Sport, Culture and Society

1 Sport, Masculinities and the Body Ian Wellard 2 India and the Olympics Boria Majumdar and Nalin Mehta 3 Social Capital and Sport Governance in Europe Edited by Margaret Groeneveld, Barrie Houlihan and Fabien Ohl 4 Theology, Ethics and Transcendence in Sports Edited by Jim Parry, Mark Nesti and Nick Watson 5 Women and Exercise The Body, Health and Consumerism Edited by Eileen Kennedy and Pirkko Markula 6 Race, Ethnicity and Football Persisting Debates and Emergent Issues Edited by Daniel Burdsey 7 The Organisation and Governance of Top Football Across Europe An Institutional Perspective Edited by Hallgeir Gammelsæter and Benoît Senaux 8 Sport and Social Mobility Crossing Boundaries Ramón Spaaij

9 Critical Readings in Bodybuilding Edited by Adam Locks and Niall Richardson 10 The Cultural Politics of Post-9/11 American Sport Politics, Culture & Pedagogy Michael Silk 11 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment Violence, Gender and Mixed Martial Arts Dale C. Spencer

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment Violence, Gender, and Mixed Martial Arts Dale C. Spencer

NEW YORK

LONDON

First published 2012 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2012 Taylor & Francis The right of Dale C. Spencer to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Typeset in Sabon by IBT Global. Printed and bound in the United States of America on acid-free paper by IBT Global. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book. ISBN: 978-0-415-89628-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-14291-2 (ebk)

To my parents, Bonita and Richard Spencer

Contents

List of Figures Preface and Acknowledgments

ix xi

1

Introduction

1

2

Phenomenology and Bodies

16

3

Time, Space, and Sense of Fighting

33

4

Difference and Bodies

53

5

Being an MMA Fighter

72

6

Habit(us), Body Techniques, and Body Callusing

86

7

Narratives of Despair, Loss, and Failure: Pain, Injury, and Masculinities

99

8

Emotions and Violence

114

9

Homosociality, (Homo)eroticism, and Dueling Practice

127

10 Conclusion Author Biography Glossary of Terms Appendix: The Senses and Ethnographic Research Notes References Index

150 157 159 163 171 177 193

Figures

1.1 Venn diagram illustrating schema of book. 1.2 Before my Muay Thai fight in Chiang Mai, Thailand. 3.1 Muay Thai equipment from top left: sparring gloves, bag gloves, and Muay Thai pads. 3.2 Mixed martial arts sparring gear from top left: headgear, gloves, and shin guards. 3.3 Muay Thai and traditional boxing heavy bags. 5.1 Cauliflower ear. 7.1 Stitches under left eye. 7.2 Hand in cast. 7.3 X-ray of fractured fifth metacarpal. 9.1 Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gi. 9.2 Rashguard (top) and fight shorts (bottom). 9.3 Friends after training. 9.4 Relaxing before the fight. 9.5 Getting a feel for the cage before the fight. 9.6 Getting hands taped before the fight. 9.7 Ring girl holding a card indicating the round at a small show in Quebec, Canada.

10 11 35 36 39 78 103 104 104 135 136 138 144 145 146 147

Preface and Acknowledgments

I will begin by stating what this book is not. This is not an instructional text like the one offered by the adept fighter, BJ Penn, nor is it a fi rst-person account of life as a mixed martial arts fighter like that written by former UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell. I am not physically gifted enough to produce such texts. What is to be found in the following pages is a sociological account of mixed martial arts. While I reflect on my personal experiences, this sort of reflection is oriented toward a thick description of social interactions that take place in mixed martial arts. Some would fi nd this ethnography to be overly ‘intellectualized’ relying on abstract theory to explain mixed martial arts. Although I would not deny that I bring phenomenology to bear on mixed martial arts, I will contend that martial arts has always lent itself to philosophical refl ection. Bruce Lee’s (1975) Tao of Jeet Kune Do is a case in point in this regard, as his proverbs reveal the complexities of fighting bodies. Due to the technical nature of the sport of mixed martial arts, I have included a glossary of terms and pictures to guide the reader through the different sport-specific terms mentioned in the text. This research was made possible through a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council doctoral fellowship, Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and a Banting postdoctoral fellowship. Without such support, this research would not have been possible. Loïc Wacquant (2004) describes in Body and Soul the story of his initiation into boxing and how the sport consumed both the body and soul of the pugilist. However, it was his body and his soul. The following narrative is the product of engagements with many bodies and many souls. To these bodies and souls I am very thankful. My parents Bonita and Richard Spencer have continually been a source of immense support, love, and spiritual guidance. My mother’s voice keeps me going during the hard times, and her embrace continually reminds me that I am loved. My father is the source of wisdom and an example of integrity and work ethic that I strive to emulate. I hope that in some meagre way this book serves as a symbol of my gratitude for all that they have done for me. Also to my dearest friend and sibling, Blair, who has helped me

xii Preface and Acknowledgments through the tough times and rejoiced with me in triumphs, may life bring you joy, love, and success. I thank my grandparents, Richard and Lolly Dunn, and my grandmother, Mary Spencer. In addition, I also thank my extended family, Connie and Ted Sinasac, Lolly and Will Robinet, Beverly Lavin, Mike and Donna Dunn, Gary and Cathy Dunn, Richard and Jan Dunn, and all my cousins for all their encouragement. A special thanks to Brian Sinasac and Beth Sulkovsky for giving me a place to stay and making me feel like I was at home all the times that I went down to Toronto to train and conduct interviews for this project. Friedrich Nietzsche once said that a good writer possesses not only his spirit but also the spirit of his friends. This axiom has been particularly apt as whatever points of insight found in this book are in no small part to my ongoing conversations with my close friends and colleagues. As an academic, friend, and human being, Kevin Walby has been a guiding light throughout my doctorate. Kevin’s work ethic and commitment to helping others pleasantly humbles me. Chris Hurl has been the agent for beingtogether, continually bringing ‘the boys’ together to have fun and relax. A true polymath, Chris’s wide-ranging knowledge and willingness to offer advice has kept me from making some bigger scholarly blunders. Jamie Brownlee’s quick wittedness, humour, and friendship has made my graduate experience considerably more enjoyable. Jamie’s political fervour and critical eye has been a source of inspiration. I thank my committee and colleagues for their comments on earlier drafts of this book. To my PhD supervisor Neil Gerlach, thank you for your approachability, generosity with research knowledge, and willingness to help me with career development. Neil has been both a supervisor and a friend whose willingness to listen to both academic and personal issues has been exemplary. From the start of this project, Aaron Doyle has been supportive of my inquiry into the world of mixed martial arts. His emphasis on writing clearly and carefully elaborating on concepts has defi nitely strengthened this ethnographic work. My ongoing discussions with Andrea Doucet throughout my doctoral candidacy have pushed me to reflect on my writing and methodological practice in ways that have made this qualitative project far better than it would have been otherwise. I hope that Andrea and I will remain ‘in conversation’ long after the completion of this project. I thank the following colleagues for their friendship and for reviewing drafts of chapters: Justin Piche, Jennifer Whitson, Darryl Ross, Darryl Leroux, Aimee Campeau, Nick Scott, Scott Kenney, Alan Sears, James Gillet, and Susan Salhany. I also thank David Howes and Peter Hodgins for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this book. I thank the following individuals for being helpful somewhere along the way to me fi nishing my book: Peter Gose, Alan Hall, Niki Carlan, Pauline Elor, Brad and Laura Spencer, Dave and Laura Rivait, Kevin Haggerty, Anita Lacey, Kelly Greenfield, Phil Boyle, Steve Richter, Nicolas Carrier,

Preface and Acknowledgments xiii Augustine Park, and Steve and Ricki Samuels. I am particularly thankful to Max Novick at Routledge for his guidance and patience with me through the publication stages of this book. Thanks to all of the battling bodies that I trained with throughout this ethnography. To my coaches and friends in the mixed martial arts community, Ben Meireles, Felipe Heidrich, Jamie Helmer, Sean Mikkelborg, Ryan Kellar, Eric Girard, Mustafa Khalil, and Wade Shanley, thanks for all your instruction, help, and encouragement. Damien Sabourin has been both a great friend and training partner, and more than anyone else, has shown me the philosophy of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Nick Denis has been both influential on my thinking on mixed martial arts and source of encouragement throughout this project. I also thank my love, Laurie Samuels, who came into my life at the perfect time.

Parts of Chapters 5 and 6 were originally published as Dale Spencer (2009) “Habit(us), Body Techniques and Body Callusing: an Ethnography of Mixed Martial Arts”, Body and Society 15(4): 119-143. SAGE Publications Ltd.

1

Introduction

BEGINNING WITH MY BODY In 2005, I took Body and Soul by Loïc Wacqant (2004) out of my school’s library based on academic curiosity and my past interest and participation in various combat sports. What I found in the text is a narrative documenting the bodily aches and pains associated with boxing and the joys and exhilaration associated with bodily mastery gained through sport. Attentive readers will notice that I deviate from Wacquant in terms of the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of our respective projects, but his work remains the inspiration of this book. Wacquant’s embodied ethnography continually energized my commitment to experiencing my subject matter, in this case mixed martial arts (herein MMA), with my body as an instrument of data collection. Because of this commitment, this project is not without many regrets. My academic colleagues, friends, and family expressed how weary they were of the harm I was subjecting my body to, and their worries are not without substance. During this ethnography I pulled my groin twice, my knee cap popped out on two occasions (residue of a past injury), I fractured my fifth metacarpal in my right hand, I suffered the pain associated with having cauliflower ear, and I received stitches under my left eye. I limp on days when I have had a hard training session and aside from when I am wearing a hat, my ear shows the wear and tear of my participation in MMA. I am marked by this ethnography. My body tells my story for all to see. What will become evident in the pages of this book is that by submitting my body to the sport of MMA, I was granted a degree of access into a world that some academics can only imagine. This level of access is the gift of exploring the carnal dimensions of sporting (and other body-centered) activities on an embodied level (see Wacquant 2004; Downey 2005; AllenCollinson 2009). Moreover, the veil that masks the interior of masculine and sporting spaces is pushed aside. In relation to this study, we come to see the accumulation of fighting bodies as productive of bodies capable of both giving and taking pain. We can explore sensing bodies that smell, taste, touch, see, and hear combat. At this level the payoff may be academic; on another level there was another, often overlooked benefit of this ethnography that is evidenced in Wacquant’s inspirational work: friendship. So, this is ethnography of MMA and friendship, albeit, as the Italian philosopher

2

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

Giorgio Agamben (2009) has argued, friendship should never be far off our considerations when we engage in discussions of sociality and ontology. The following ethnographic text engages with MMA at an embodied level and reveals the centrality of bodies to contemporary understandings of gender, race, emotions, and violence.

FROM THE PROBLEM OF MIND–BODY DUALISM TO ‘THE BODY’ AND BODIES To Descartes ([1641] 1998) we can attribute the philosophic problem of the relationship of the mind to the body. Henceforth from Descartes, the mind and the mental is ascribed a number of features, including, but not exhaustively, its ability to know itself incorrigibly, its ability to exist separate from the body, its ability to form part of our social group, and the inability of the mental to be identified with any object in the world (Rorty [1979] 2009). The body is, then, an unthinking material substance. While the problems of the Cartesian approach will be dealt with in the next chapter, it should be noted that even those advocating such a position have conceded that the mind is not separate from the body (see Kim 1995). While Cartesianism is a spectre that still haunts contemporary sociological theory (see Burkitt 1998; Vahabzadeh 2009), the additional problem of what ‘the body’ is remains hotly debated (see Grosz 1994; Bray and Colebrook 1998; Nancy 2008; Shilling 2008). The contemporary social scientific and philosophic problem of ‘the body’, in terms of its positioning in philosophic and social scientific discourse, is that ‘the body’ is posited in the singular, an object or surface to receive a plethora of externally imposed inscriptions. Feminist philosopher, Elizabeth Grosz (1994) puts the problem in more positive terms in arguing that bodies always possess the ability to “extend the frameworks which attempt to contain them, to seep beyond their domains of control” (xi). Because of the potentialities of bodies to elude defi nition, the quest for defi ning what the body is, turns to how bodies move and experience in manifold ways and what bodies can do. Bray and Colebrook (1998) emphatically argue that ‘refiguring the problem of the body’ must involve seeing ‘the body’ as more than a semiotic system. They assert that the “body is a negotiation with images, but it is also a negotiation with pleasures, pains, other bodies, space, visibility, and medical practice; no single event in this field can act as a general ground for determining the status of the body” (my emphasis, 43). In Butler (1993), Foucault (1980), and to a lesser extent Bourdieu (1977), the body is the repository of cultural and societal norms. In such a view, the governmental management of the body sets the key parameters to the overarching external environment in which social action takes place (see Shilling 2008). The materiality of bodies disappears in such approaches

Introduction

3

to ‘the body’. The experience of and continually morphing character of bodies, then, is altogether overlooked. I contend that the body in the singular must be analyzed continually in relation to other bodies. Bodies experience pleasures and pain with other bodies at any and all times and spaces. The emphasis on bodies, beyond an elucidation of the experience of embodiment (Leder 1990; Frank 1991), pushes us to consider continually metamorphosing and moving bodies that in many ways resignify culture. The phenomenological approach employed here, which utilizes the work of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Luc Nancy, emphasizes the sensory experience of embodied singularities. This book takes seriously the primacy of bodies to sociality not only at the level of ontology, but also at the level of epistemology. Through a sensory ethnography of MMA, the sport became real to me at the level of embodied experience. Sensory ethnography (Pink 2009; Stoller 2004) can be seen as part of a recent fragmentation of approaches to ethnography (P. Atkinson, Delamont, and Housley 2007). As an ethnographic approach it involves the description of the senses and sociality of research participants through traditional techniques such as field notes, participant observation, and in-depth interviews, as well as photographing and audio- and video recording alongside and with research participants. Through such ethnography, I consider the embodied experience of pain and injury, habits and body techniques, and the senses and rhythms of combat. The emotional experience of battle, whereas overlooked in contemporary discussions of violence and combat (see Collins 2008), is elucidated in terms of how bodies’ experience particular emotions that lead to specific action responses. In addition, I consider how the co-mingling of bodies, especially male bodies, transgresses the cultural scripts of masculinity in popular culture.

WHAT IS MMA? While boxing has been understood in the West as the most violent and physically demanding of sports (Wacquant 1995a, 2004), since the early 1990s a new and equally violent and taxing sport has emerged that challenges this conception. MMA competitions feature competitors in a ring or a caged-in area, inflicting pain on their opponents, inter alia, by punching, kicking, elbowing, and kneeing their opponents into submission. While initially only men participated in MMA competitions, women now enter into these contests. Countries within Europe, North and South America, and Asia regularly host MMA competitions. Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain draws crowds of 20,000 or more, in addition to millions of televised viewers worldwide. This organization brings trained MMA fighters from all over the globe, offering a spectacle sport like no other. Despite public backlash against

4

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

MMA in the United States, the UFC has progressed to the point of televising their competitions on the Spike TV cable network. MMA has eclipsed boxing in popularity. MMA should not be confused with traditional martial arts like some forms of Japanese karate (see Bar-On Cohen 2006), Aikido (see Levine 1991) or Kung Fu (Li 2001). In fact, its training regimens and techniques have more in common with Western boxing, Muay Thai, or Thai kickboxing, freestyle wrestling, and sport judo. The affi nities lay not so much in the strict adherence to these styles (although these particular styles are incorporated into MMA), but the fact that MMA is often practiced in live situations with a resisting opponent. This is often not the case in traditional martial arts that place emphasis on kata, technique forms that are more likened to a dance or dramatization of a battle with an invisible opponent. Most importantly, there is emphasis in MMA on integrating techniques of multiple styles together (primarily Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai, judo, wrestling, and boxing) into a fighter’s technical corpus and a concentration on only the most effective techniques. In addition, MMA battles are closest to fights that occur outside the sphere of sports, as matches are fought standing and on the ground.

A COMMENTARY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF MMA In a general sense, martial arts are behaviors commonly practiced by warriors, or associated with them (Jones 2002: xi). Jones (2002: xi–xii) has identified three aspects of all martial arts that are present in varying degrees: combat, ritual, and performance. Combat is the techniques and practice of a specific martial art. Ritual is the element that consists of repetitive patterns, bodily movements, breathing techniques, visualizations, chants, or vocalizations of a martial art. Performance is the stylized forms of dancing and gymnastics. Whereas nearly all societies have some type of martial arts tradition (Sidky 2002: 11), Western visions of martial arts are usually associated with Chinese and Japanese styles (Chan 2000; Krug 2001). Western popular and dominant conceptions regarding martial arts have fi rst been of the ‘deadly’ nature of martial arts, and secondarily, of the spiritual dimension (Donohue 2002: 66). Many authors have commented on the introduction and diffusion of Asian martial arts into the English speaking cultures and its impact on the philosophical and spiritual elements of martial arts (Chan 2000; Krug 2001; Villamon et al. 2004). Krug asserts that post-World War II, the cultural appropriation of Okinawan karate and integration of this martial art into American culture had the effect of removing many of the knowledges and meanings systems of karate and replacing them with American meaning systems. Karate became converted into a sport, free of its original bunkai

Introduction

5

(explanations) of kata and a considerable portion of its esoteric philosophies. Also, the underlying sciences of ch’i, healing, and health enhancing aspects were removed and replaced with individualized competitive sport form of karate, more closely aligned with the American ethos (Krug 2001: 403). According to Villamon et al. (2004), judo has undergone a similar translation in its ascendancy into an Olympic sport. Drawing from Anthony Giddens’s concept of reflexive modernization, these authors show the dis-embedding of the philosophic and moral aspects of mutual prosperity integral to traditional forms of judo developed by Jigaro Kano, and a re-embedding of a philosophy of meritocratic individualism central to Western sports. The effect is the conversion of judo as a way of life into an efficiency-based, winner-take-all mentality sport (Villamon et al. 2004: 146). If we were to follow the trajectory proposed by the previously discussed authors, we would assume that the development of MMA is a testament to the Western cultural appropriation of martial arts and the conversion of various styles into a synthesized martial art sport. However, the history of MMA presents a counterargument to the Westernization thesis. In the North American context, MMA came to prominence with the fi rst contest of the UFC in Denver, Colorado in 1993, whereas considerably earlier, Japan and Brazil featured similar MMA contests. In Brazil, fighting competitions like ‘Vale Tudo’ precedes the UFC by over fi fty years and Japan’s ‘Pancrase’ predates the UFC by over a month. Furthermore, it was the Brazilian ‘no-holds-barred’ version that was brought over by Royce and Rickson Gracie (Gentry 2005). It should also be noted that despite illuminating some of the negative effects of the diffusion of Asian martial arts into the West, Krug (2001) and Villamon et al. (2004) offer a romanticized vision of what comprised Japanese martial arts prior to Western cultural appropriation. Specifically, by enunciating what was lost (the spiritual and moral aspects), the authors overlook the fact that traditionally women were excluded from karate and judo in Japan, a practice that was dismantled in the conversion of these arts into Western sport. Initially, the UFC pitted fighters of different martial art styles to see what form of martial art was superior. For example, in the fi rst UFC a karate practitioner fought against a sumo wrestler, and a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioner against a shootfighter. In these ‘no-holds-barred’ elimination tournaments, martial artists fought bloody wars by kicking, punching, elbowing, and kneeing each other or forcing their opponents into submission through arm bars or choke holds. There were very little rules aside from prohibitions on eye gouging, fish hooking1 and biting. Competitions ended in one of two ways: A fighter was left unconscious due to a blow or an opponent ‘tapping out’ (submitting to their opponent by tapping the ground three times). However, what is particular about this period is that individual fighters remained practitioners of a particular style and MMA at that time was not considered a sport, only a fighting contest.

6

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

As MMA contests progressed, it came to be recognized by practitioners and enthusiasts that elements of certain styles were susceptible to the strengths of other styles and vice versa. Rather than remaining tied to their styles, martial arts practitioners began to train in other styles. As competitors became more versatile in a range of martial arts, less emphasis was placed in pitting one type of martial artist against another (Krauss 2004; Gentry 2005). Competitors came to be recognized as having strengths in particular fighting styles and elements of styles that were shown to be ineffective in scoring a knockout or forcing a submission on an opponent were dismissed. In the late 1990s a shift occurred from a focus on martial arts to a focus on individual fighters. It was not until this point that MMA became thought of and referred to as a sport, moving away from the quest to determine what martial art was superior (Krauss 2004; Gentry 2005). A byproduct of this shift was the dismissal of kata as it was seen as ineffective and therefore useless.2 Fighting styles in MMA have now coalesced into three basic tendencies that have effaced the firm distinctions between different martial arts. One tendency, ‘ground and pound’, is when fighters use techniques associated with freestyle wresting or Russian Sambo and, as the name implies, take their opponent to the ground and then pound their opponents into submission using their fists, elbows, and knees. Another tendency, ‘striking’, in which fighters draw from karate, tae kwon do, Muay Thai and while standing they utilize kicks, punches, elbows, and knees against their opponents. A third fighting tendency is ‘submissions’ in which fighters utilize techniques associated with judo, Japanese and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and shootfighting and while on the ground try to make their opponents submit3 by putting them in arm bars, choke holds, and leg locks. Whereas these fighting tendencies serve as indicators of particular styles, there are innumerable cross-articulations of these styles in which MMA fighters learn to defend against and utilize techniques from other tendencies. For example, a fighter who favours standing up will need to learn how to defend against being taken down by a ‘ground and pound’ specialist through learning wrestling and grappling techniques (Krauss 2004; Gentry 2005). Also, the evaluation of MMA fighters comes to be articulated in terms of her/his talents as a striker and ground fighter and not as representations of any particular style.

THE MORALITY OF MMA In a chapter entitled ‘The Morality of Representations’ in Telling about Society, Howard Becker (2007) considers the morality of social scientific research. In accessible language, he discusses two ways in which misrepresentation occurs in sociological research that are pertinent to this work. These two interrelated misrepresentations are of the

Introduction

7

facts and the research subjects being studied. These moral matters are pertinent to MMA on a number of levels. The history of MMA is saturated with examples of journalists (primarily) and moral entrepreneurs (Senator John McCain)4 misrepresenting facts regarding the sport. ‘Bloodsport’, ‘bloodbath’, and comparing MMA events to Roman gladiators in the coliseum are but a few examples of how MMA is still depicted. A relatively recent charge against MMA has been from New York Assemblyman, Bob Reilly. During an interview with Sherdog.com’s Josh Gross on the popular online show Fightweek (Sherdog.com 2010), in reference to MMA, Reilly stated that “violence begets violence and it is not something we want in our society” as one justification for the banning of MMA in New York. Here Reilly is presenting a latent behavioural affects argument, suggesting a link between watching violent behaviour and increased inclinations toward aggressive behaviour. The reality is that despite over seventy-five years of research and over 10,000 studies investigating possible linkages between watching violent behaviour and increased inclinations toward aggressive behaviour, this approach has never been satisfactorily proven, even in laboratory settings, and the ‘media made me do it’ is not an acceptable legal defence (see Boyle 2005; Trend 2007). The reality of the matter is that politicians, like Bob Reilly, and governments accept and advocate arguments about behavioural effects because it avoids their having to scrutinize how violence in society might be caused by wider structural inequalities between people in society and political decision making. New York State is an apposite case in point. The fact is that since the initial backlash in the late 1990s, MMA, specifically the UFC, has come to be accepted and sanctioned in most U.S. states. This acceptance was predicated on effective commercialization and a process of appeasement by making the sport less violent through the institution of rules. The process by which rules were instituted in the UFC reflects a process by which this organization moved from a ‘no-holds-barred’ competition to a rule-based sport. What is also reflected in this ‘sportization’ (Elias 1986) is a reaction to the shame and repugnance, which ultimately lead various individuals central to the UFC to institute rules. Through appeasing sanctioning bodies like athletic commissions and boards in individual states, there is a parliamentization of the sport and secondarily, a legitimization of the sport itself. The process by which MMA competitions came under the regulation of athletic commissions reveals that the Nation State (U.S. state in this case) has not lost its monopoly over the means of violence (Weber 1978), rather the state governs the conduct of MMA fighters and competitions at a distance (N. Rose 1999). The standardization and imposition of rules by athletic commissions act as the technical instruments by which the individual states are able to maintain control of the violence that is inherent to MMA competitions and limit its occurrence both

8

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

spatially and temporally to MMA competition events and other related areas (Stovkis 1992). Whilst I fully concede that MMA is violent, the singular depiction of MMA as violent does not fully capture what comprises the contemporary sport of MMA. Through a process of creative evolution, the sport has moved vastly away from being mere unconstrained violence. What I witnessed, what I experienced, was much more than just a bloodbath. On a more personal level, MMA is not singularly about committing violence against another body. Whereas the formal ultimate goal in the sport is to be the ‘champ’, fighters expressed throughout my study that their closest friends are their training partners and that the MMA club is like a second family. Fighters often refuse to fight their stable mates because of the deep friendship forged through training5, much to the dismay of promoters like the UFC’s Dana White. An apposite description is that MMA is a way of life; that is, a way of being-in-the-world. As I experienced, it comes to frame ones life. This is not only on a practical level, in terms of the fact that fighters must dedicate large amounts of time to being in the gym training, but it also comes to dominate one’s thought process.6 MMA is, for me and those that I interviewed, a focal point in our lives. With respect to the second misrepresentation, the misrepresentation of research subjects, we continuously fi nd that MMA fighters are depicted as Neanderthal figures that unskilfully bash each other’s heads in. Despite the documentation of MMA training regimes of famous professional MMA fighters on Spike UFC All Access, in media reporting, and what I heard in my day-to-day life, there is a continual misunderstanding of what is involved in the production of bodies capable of participation in the rigorous sport of MMA. In addition, having met and trained with some of the top professional MMA athletes in the world, I see that the public representation of MMA fighters does not meet with their lived reality. Whereas media constructions of MMA tend to depict the sport as populated and observed by obstreperous rabble, many of the fighters included in this project attained undergraduate degrees and masters degrees, are fathers and mothers, and some carry on professional careers aside from their participation in MMA. A third misrepresentation, missed by Becker (2007), is in regards to the way in which academics allow their view of the subject matter to override those they are studying (Katz 2004). This is an aristocratic archetype that eschews any evidence presented by their research subjects that contradicts their theories. This aristocratic phenomenon in ethnographic research is, as far as I am concerned, a form of symbolic violence. In the end, their research is more of a representation of their worldview than an actual veracious description and careful analysis of their subject matter. In this book, I have tried as much as possible to be fair to the account of MMA put forward by my research subjects and in phenomenological form, often suspend

Introduction

9

social scientific discourse to provide a detailed description of the experience of life in the MMA club. Accordingly, in terms of participant observation, I have tried to cautiously document the goings-on of the club, not being quick to form an opinion of those being studied despite the fact that I found some individuals more enjoyable to associate with than others.

OF MMA AND BODIES In the preceding discussion, I have made clear both the focus on bodies and my commitments in terms of social scientific discourse and my relationship to those that I studied over a four-year period. One could suggest (and a number of colleagues have) that my study could have been conducted differently and just as well without the in-depth, bodily engagement with MMA fighters. Accordingly, it could have been a study of the symbolism in MMA and the language used in popular media to describe MMA. This is, to me, precisely the problem of contemporary social scientific approaches to ‘the body’. In limiting engagement with ‘the body’ to an Archimedean, armchair position, the researcher must assume that what is shown and said in popular media is what is happening to and between people’s bodies on a day-to-day basis. In this study, I found out that the public representations failed to meet with what I experienced at a corporeal level on a day-to-day basis in the local MMA club and other clubs I visited across Canada and the United States. As such, my initial interest in MMA and bodies was based on a number of central research questions or puzzles: What are the ways in which bodies are produced to be able to participate in the arduous sport of MMA? Exactly, what goes on ‘behind close doors’? Of equal importance, I believe, what does it take to become and what is the experience of becoming an MMA practitioner? How do fighters incorporate body techniques into their technical corpus? What does the accumulation of bodies for a common goal bring to the lives of those participating in MMA? How do those participating in the sport of MMA see themselves in terms of their individual identities in relation to other fighters and those outside of the sport of MMA? This book is organized around and singularly focused on bodies. The book is primarily rooted in a bodies-centred phenomenological approach and contributes to the sociology of the body literature. The attentive reader will notice that the work of German-Jewish sociologist, Georg Simmel is weaved into the text throughout. The radial Venn diagram in Figure 1.1 illustrates the schema of the book and the various themes that are discussed in relation to bodies. Whereas bodies were a central focus from the beginning of the ethnography, these themes emerged in the course of the research on MMA. As shown in the diagram, the subthemes do not merely relate to bodies but overlap.

10

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

Figure 1.1

Venn diagram illustrating schema of book.

MY ETHNOGRAPHY7 To answer the previously mentioned questions, I engaged in a four-year ethnography of MMA. In May 2006, I joined an MMA club in a major Canadian city based on prior interest in combat arts.8 In June of the same year I decided to convert what was initially a hobby into an ethnographic study. Initially, I attended classes and/or trained two to five times a week. This intensified to training seven training sessions a week and training in the morning and the evenings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In addition, in the spring of 2008, I trained Muay Thai for two months in San Kampang, Thailand, where I fought in a Muay Thai match in Chaing Mai, Thailand (see Figure 1.2).

Introduction

Figure 1.2

11

Before my Muay Thai fight in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

The club where I trained consists of approximately eighty members with four fighters preparing for an upcoming fight card at any one time.9 The club space has two floors, both completely matted, with punching bags in the basement. It is open to members six days a week, in the evenings during weekdays, and for two hours midday on Saturdays. The club focuses on and has structured classes in two primary styles—Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai—with additional semiweekly freestyle wrestling classes. Twice a week, trainers run arduous MMA training sessions where the three styles are combined. These sessions are primarily for serious fighters who are either training for an upcoming fight or helping other fighters to prepare for their fights. When I decided to convert my hobby into an ethnographic study, I began to casually take field notes after structured classes and informal training sessions at the club. This usually took the form of what Emerson, Fretz,

12

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

and Shaw (1995) call ‘jottings’ in my field book, which were later converted into longer narratives. The jottings correspond to particular events that illuminate the themes of the study. Field notes also involved reflections on my embodied experiences of aspects of MMA, particularly the difficult, painful elements of participation in such a grueling sport (cf. Stone 2009). This autoethnographic approach allowed me to foreground often overlooked aspects – pain, injury and failure – of life as an athlete (see Douglas 2009). Keeping with the mandates of sensory ethnography, this study involved my own multisensory, emplaced experiences of MMA (see Pink 2009; Richardson 1997). Both photographs and video recording supplement field notes (Pink 2008; Becker 2007; Katz 1999). The combination of field notes, photography, and video help to describe the sensory experiences of MMA training in situ; this amalgam contributed to the production of thick descriptions offered in field notes excerpts (see Katz 1999). In September 2006 I began interviewing fighters from the MMA club. Two months later, I began to interview fighters from other clubs in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec and the state of Florida to enrich and support the accounts offered by club members. Forty-five interviews were conducted with MMA fighters (forty-three men, two women). Interviews were primarily with fighters who have participated in one or more professional MMA events and those training for their first MMA fight. A small number of amateur MMA practitioners were included (n = 3). Pseudonyms have been assigned to all interviewees and certain descriptive information has been taken out of the responses to ensure confidentiality and the anonymity of fighters.10 Twenty-three fighters self-identified as Canadian, four as French Canadian, three as Caribbean Canadian, three as Brazilian Canadian, two as Arabic Canadian, and two as European Canadian. Three fighters selfidentified as American, two as African American, and three as Brazilian American. Age range of fighters was eighteen to thirty-nine years of age. The average age was twenty-eight. Of the forty-five fighters, twenty stated MMA was their full-time profession.11 Ten interviewees were MMA club owners. As such, of the forty-five interviews, two thirds of the sample relied, at various levels, on MMA for their livelihood. At the time of the interview, two fighters had not completed secondary school, ten fighters just completed secondary school, five had completed credits toward postsecondary education, and twenty-eight of the participants had completed some form of postsecondary education. One interview participant has a master degree. Pseudonyms have been assigned to all interviewees and certain descriptive information has been taken out of the responses to ensure confidentiality and anonymity of the fighters. In terms of the experience level of fighters in this study, they varied from six months to over twenty-five years of martial arts experience. With respect to the caliber of fighters interviewed, beyond the distinction of amateur versus professional, there were considerable disparities in the skill level and accolades of the professional class of fighters. In a segment of my interviews,

Introduction

13

fighters were solid journeymen that had losing records but were reliable fighters always ready to fight for a fight promotion. In another segment of my sample, fighters had a few professional fights and were content to continue to train without any significant urge at the moment to jump back into the ring or cage. A portion of the interviewees had MMA careers marked by distinctions (belts, etc.), but due to injury had retired from professional fighting and were dedicated to training up-and-coming fighters. There are the rising stars: These fighters aim to make a name for themselves, fighting every three months, but not taking high level fights in order to build their records before stepping up to the next caliber in the sport. Finally, there are the elite level professional fighters that gained a level of notoriety so that they were regularly in the discussions of the MMA community. Five of my interview subjects were currently or in the past considered in the list of top ten fighters in the world in their respective weight classes. One of the fighters was on the list of pound-for-pound top MMA fighters in the world at the time of the interview. The semistructured interviews focused on manifold issues related to MMA. The interview guide was continually modified based on observations and experiences in the field and previous interviews (see Corbin and Strauss 1990; Strauss and Corbin 1990).12 All interviews were face-to-face and lasted between thirty-five minutes and ninety-five minutes in length, with the average interview lasting around sixty minutes long. Interviews were in fighters’ homes (n = 15), offices in MMA clubs (n = 25), or in a small number of cases, in coffee shops or bars (n = 5). Interviewees were gathered through a variety of techniques. Following the mandates of theoretical sampling (Glaser and Strauss 1967), I traveled to various MMA clubs in Ontario, Quebec, and Florida and sought out professional fighters that train at a particular club to be interviewed. Using snowball sampling (Biernacki and Waldorf 1981), I also asked fighters to recommend other fighters to be interviewed. In other cases, I used Facebook (see Onwuegbuzie, Leech, and Collins 2010) and their personal websites (see Walby 2010; Pruitt 2008) to contact fighters and ask them if I could interview them at a time and place most conducive to their schedules. Research participants were asked specific questions regarding their experiences in the sport of MMA, the training they engage outside of the MMA club, their perceptions of the current state of MMA in terms of its development, and their everyday lives outside the sport. These questions were formed out of my experience of MMA and what I assimilated through informal discussions and formal interviews that, in turn, acted as a feedback loop to my interview guide. Interviews were transcribed and coded according to a set of themes related to, inter alia, violence, gender and sport. However, statements made by respondents did not necessarily fit into only one discrete category; therefore, open coding was also used to better capture the complex and blended meanings often inherent in the statements made by the respondents (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Ainsworth and Hardy 2004).

14

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

SIGNPOSTING THE NARRATIVE In this section, I map out the chapters that comprise this book. In the next chapter, I offer an overview of the ontological underpinnings of this project, a particular genealogy of phenomenology in Western philosophy, and point to the centrality of bodies to sociality. In addition, I discuss how the post-Husserlian phenomenology pursued here contributes to the sociology of the body literature and existing discussions of identity in the social sciences. In this chapter, I also epistemologically ground my discussions of sense and meaning generation through a discussion of the bodies-centered phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Nancy, but also those within the hermeneutic phenomenological tradition. In the third chapter entitled ‘Time, Space, and Sense of Fighting’, I offer a close phenomenological analysis of life in the MMA club and combat more generally to offer a ground for subsequent discussion of MMA. I also elucidate how, through contact between bodies, rhythms are experienced and open fi ghters to the rhythms of other bodies and as such, add to the proliferation of meanings generated through the ongoing intermixing of bodies in the MMA club. In the fourth chapter, I return to a discussion of my position in relation to the extant literature on identity in the social sciences. I consider both the gendered and ‘racial’ aspects of MMA and how these categories, as they are affi xed to bodies qua singularities, work to include some bodies and exclude others from participation and consideration as viable bodies in the sport of MMA. In the fi fth chapter, I consider the ways of beingin-the-world of MMA fighters. Here I document the ways of becoming a MMA fighter and how this form of being-in-the-world impacts upon various dimensions of their lives and social relations. The distinction between everyday and heroic life is utilized to discuss the implications of being an MMA fighter outside of the club environment and the novelty of the adventurous life of MMA fighters. The sixth chapter examines the process by which fighters learn body techniques and, consequently, contribute to the production of MMA habitus. In addition, I develop the concept of body callusing and describe the use of reflexive body techniques in constructing bodies capable of both giving and taking pain. In the seventh chapter entitled ‘Narratives of Pain, Loss, and Failure: Pain, Injury, and Masculinities’, I explore the ways that fighters experience pain and injury and the role it plays in their everyday lives and the emotional experiences of pain and injury. I also elucidate how fighters experience and react to failure. Chapter 8 examines the emotional dimensions—confidence, frustration, elation, and anger—related to participation in MMA, from training to the MMA event. There I elaborate on and challenge Collins’s (2008) concept of confrontational tension through examining the role of confi dence as efficacious in enabling

Introduction

15

fighters to engage in combat. In the last empirical chapter, I examine the homosociality and homoeroticism that is constitutive of MMA and the significance of the practice of dueling in the sport. Through a consideration of the historical development of the duel across cultures, I relate dueling practice to homosociality and homoeroticism. Productive of this connection is an exposition of two dueling tendencies—creation and negation—and how such tendencies characterize the engagement of bodies vis-à-vis dueling.

2

Phenomenology and Bodies

The Husserlian version of phenomenology remains the dominant paradigm in phenomenological sociology (see, e.g., Moustakas 1994; H.R. Wagner 1973; Schutz 1967). This has led over time to a reduction of phenomenology to the study of ‘experience’, without the methodological techniques that are constitutive of this tradition (cf., Katz and Csordas 2003). Another problem lies within the Husserlian phenomenological tradition itself: the integration of Cartesianism and occularcentrism into the phenomenological project. Edmund Husserl’s engagement with and use of Descartes’s meditations institutes a proffering of the mind over the body and a subjection of phenomenological projects to the work of the mind. This is carried over into sociology vis-à-vis Alfred Schutz’s distillation of Husserl’s work into a more sociological form. This chapter offers an alternative to this dominant phenomenological paradigm, primarily through the work of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Luc Nancy. Heidegger’s philosophy provides the means to depart from Husserl’s phenomenology toward a focus on human existence and temporality. Both Merleau-Ponty and Nancy situate bodies at the forefront of inquiry and reveal the meaning generation that takes place between bodies in social relations. This chapter has three primary aims: fi rst, to situate the phenomenological approaches utilized in this book within the development of phenomenology in Western philosophy; second, to outline the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of this project; third, to relate this ontological and epistemological approach to discussions of the body, sense, and identity in the social sciences. In the fi rst section of this chapter, I offer a brief overview of Descartes and his mind–body dualism. I then offer an account of Husserl’s phenomenology, revealing the mind-centered nature of this approach. In the next section, I review the work of Heidegger and his departure from the Husserlian approach and the intellectual path that he opens for Merleau-Ponty and Nancy’s work. The fourth section engages with the work of Merleau-Ponty on the body. In the fifth section, I elucidate elements of Nancy’s ontology. In the subsequent section, I discuss the implications of a body-centered phenomenology for discussions of bodies and identity. In the final sections, I discuss the epistemological implications of my body-centered approach to

Phenomenology and Bodies 17 phenomenology and how a body-centered phenomenological approach will be deployed in this book.

DESCARTES AND MIND–BODY DUALISM Despite the passage of four centuries, in both popular, mainstream discussions (in sayings like ‘mind over matter’) and the academy, we remain influenced by the work of Rene Descartes (see Burkitt 1998; Vahabzadeh 2009). In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes’s modernist philosophy asserts a substance ontology with a bifurcation between mind/thinking substance, res cogitans, and body/extended substance, res extensa (Descartes [1641] 1998). Descartes conceived of the mind as categorically and existentially separate from the body. He asserted that persons qua minds are separate from their bodies and at the very least could not be reduced to any part of their body. Minds are the immaterial site of human meaning and intelligence, whereas bodies are mere matter or machines. Descartes wanted to establish a firm ground for existence and knowledge production. He begins from the position that all things in the world can be doubted and the only thing that is absolutely indubitable is the mind. He thought that he existed on the ground that he possessed the ability to think (Descartes [1641] 1998). The body in this perspective must be radically doubted in order to produce a more solid foundation of existence. In fact, nothing was more doubtful than the body for Descartes. The emphasis on mind and doubt of the body, then, serves as the epistemological ground for what we can defi nitively know. The Cartesian body, comprised of flesh and bones, is ruled by the ghostly mind. The ghost registers the memories of the past and commands the body (see Narvaez 2006). The mind–body dualism forms the basis of the emotion–reason separation. Emotions, for Descartes, are not what selves, but rather what their bodies, do to them. In this frame, reason is allocated to the mind and emotions to the body (see Barbalet 2001; Goldie 2002). This separation of mind/ reason and body/emotions can be followed through Western thought from Descartes through Weber’s debilitating fear of the irrational (the ‘emotional), to contemporary rational-choice theories that aver that emotions distort the course of reason and search for truth itself (Williams 2000). The criticisms of Descartes have been many and varied, and as such, I will limit my criticisms to his depictions on the relationship of the mind to the body in order to later depict Cartesian seepage into phenomenology and resultant problems with such incursions. To begin, on an ontological level, we are not immaterial minds separate from our bodies. Rather, following Merleau-Ponty and Nancy, we are, existentially speaking, our bodies. We think through our bodies and as singularities we are not reducible to our minds. We have a material existence and do not, as idealists would aver, exist as monads qua minds. The meaning of being, as Heidegger ([1926]

18 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment 1962) evinced, is left out of analysis when there is a turn to the cogito. The mind as a reservoir of memory undervalues the mnemonic importance of the body. In the Cartesian reliance on the mind and the relegation of emotions to the body (and thus emotions to be mistrusted), we overlook emotions as the impetus to and efficacious of all social action (see Heidegger [1926] 1962; Katz 1999; Barbalet 2001; Damasio 2006). Whereas this is but a fraction of the problems associated with a Cartesian metaphysics of substance, the following chapter illustrates further issues in relying on this metaphysical underpinning in phenomenology and the advantages of a body-centered phenomenological approach.

CARTESIAN BEGINNINGS OF PHENOMENOLOGY—PROBING HUSSERL The contemporary iteration of phenomenology was inaugurated by the German philosopher Edmund Husserl at the turn of the twentieth century and bears only diminutive affi nities or connections to Hegel’s phenomenology (see Cerbone 2006).1 In its purest sense, phenomenology means the study of phenomena. In its philosophic form, that which was set into motion by Husserl, it connotes a study of experience toward something, which involves attention to the experience itself, specifically its structure and character. The notion that it is the analysis of the experience of something is called ‘intentionality’. In sum, the Husserlian phenomenological tradition can be viewed as a study of intentionality that proceeds by studying the essential structures of experience. One of Husserl’s main aims was to make philosophy a communal exercise that would save European civilization through the establishment of a common self-responsible and edifying philosophy (Husserl 1970). Transcendental phenomenology was to be an exercise of self-exploration (Husserl [1931] 1960). Husserl’s philosophy contends and is predicated on a rejection of the idea that the natural sciences provide an all-embracing or absolute explanation of reality. The natural sciences fail to attend to forms of consciousness that precede all forms of scientific inquiry. Hence, Husserl intended to create a presuppositionless mode of investigation. To do so, Husserl turned to Descartes. Husserl sees the move to the cogito as a foundational mark in the history of philosophy. The turn to the subject of consciousness, the figure of modernity, becomes the cornerstone of transcendental phenomenology. The turn to the cogito is only adopted in a particular way. In the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl ([1931] 1960) rejects most of Descartes’s meditations and retains only a single aspect of the subject or the regression to the ego: that is, its indubitability. This regression to the ego allows Husserl, and phenomenological sociologists like Alfred Schutz (1967), to perform the epoche (or commonly recognized in sociology as the action of bracketing), arriving at a “nonparticipating spectator, surveyor of the world” (Husserl

Phenomenology and Bodies 19 1970: 331). This affords transcendental phenomenology an Archimedean point for philosophic endeavors. The reliance on the Cartesian cogito inadvertently leads Husserl to assert that thoughts or everyday experiences, or cogitatones, cannot be doubted and that everything that involves being attentively directed toward some object is unequivocally real. As such, in no way does the phenomenological epoche involve any process of doubt (Husserl [1931] 1960). The act of bracketing is a matter of refraining or suspension of belief by putting certain elements out of play to establish the essential structures of the experience of something. The attainment of the Archimedean point for analysis involves the abandonment of the natural attitude, the quotidian taken-for-granted assurance of the reality of the world. Whereas the phenomenological epoche involves the suspension of the natural attitude, the phenomenological reduction involves a turn toward inquiries pertaining to subjectivity. Focus then becomes on consciousness, specifically the conscious life of the subject. As noted earlier, for Husserl, there can be no experience or consciousness without objects. Intentionality is primarily aimed at the constitutional narrative for any potential object of consciousness. Husserl ([1931] 1960) asserts that phenomenology involves the mental seeing of something itself, an experience of things themselves (52–54). Intentionality is essentially a fundamental character of mental phenomenon (79). Furthermore, such investigation involves sensorial explanation of various conscious states and processes (Husserl [1931] 1960). Any object is offered to us only in parts, what he calls adumbrations, more or less profiles. These profiles are never complete but subject to synthesis resulting in the identification of a given object. Synthesis actively relates different conscious states despite objects remaining the same (Husserl [1931] 1960: 77–78). Any inquiry into consciousness involves two sides: the noetic, which involves the subjective side of directedness toward objects, and the noematic, which concerns the object itself. Transcendental phenomenology views the consciousness of time, specifically of the temporal character of consciousness itself as the most primordial of all intentional accomplishments. Temporality underpins every aspect of consciousness (Husserl 1990). This is the consciousness of duration and succession. Experiences are closely packed and are characterized by flow where our awareness involves continuity of consciousness of past, present, and future. Consciousness of time is ultimately a mental achievement in which one experiences perception of a given object emerging out of an experienced past, and as such the present is unequivocally borne of the past. For Husserl, we also possess, through our retention of the past, a sense of imminent future experience, or what he calls, protention. Consequently, we experience a flowing synthesis governed by incessant inner consciousness of time (Husserl [1931] 1960, 1990). Husserl ([1931] 1960) considers meaning or the world as an achievement of intersubjectivity. The ideal harmonization of experience that

20 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment corresponds to a real world is that of subjectivity, specifically of the egos embedded within an intermonadic community. 2 As such, the foundation of the world—objectivity in general—entails the harmony of the monads. This is not to imply that Husserl considers all monads as possessing the same lifeworld.3 He suggests that all monad’s lifeworlds possess the same structural core (Husserl [1931] 1960: 160). Transcendental phenomenological analysis then includes an elucidation of the interrelatedness of all monads and the objective world that is constituted therein. For Husserl ([1931] 1960), our recognition of other subjects is mediated by perception of their bodies and, as such, is integral to intersubjectivity. The primordial taking of another body as a body is based on a likeness between the thing and one’s own body. In Husserl, the body is the original center of a monad’s orientation to the world. Insofar as this is the case, the body is our ‘here’ in the world, it constitutes our place in the world. The place where one resides is not an objective Euclidean space, but rather the space whereby a given monad perceives the world. The body is the perceptual origin by which we perceive things relationally (up–down, left– right) and egocentrically. The body is the means by which I engage with the world, that is, kinesthetically move and move other things. It is also the locus of emotions and bodily sensations and is the basis by which we are affected and aware of our surroundings. The integral connection between my body and myself is characterized by Husserl as the ego (mind) governing the body. It is this form of phenomenology, with its emphasis on intentionality, time, and intersubjectivity that found its way into sociology through Alfred Schutz (1962, 1967, 1976). Through Husserl, Schutz provides an epistemic and ontological grounding of phenomenological sociology. Schutz’s distillation of philosophical phenomenological concepts made such concepts as bracketing, intersubjectivity, and lifeworld part of the lexicon of sociology. Schutz offers both a theory and methodology for conducting sociological inquiry, especially as it pertains to the experiential and meaningful aspects of sociality. In Schutz (1967), phenomenological analysis becomes the examination of empirical observations but transitions into the development of more abstract formulations, specifically ideal-typical analyses. Our experience, action, and knowledge become the datum of analysis and are divided and subdivided into manifold types and subtypes (e.g., see Psathas 1973; Zaner 1973). Phenomenological eidetic analysis seeks to see through the particulars (concrete experiences) to the identification of essences (idealities). This entails the typification of typifications. The phenomenological sociologist begins with a quiet attitude and attempts to break out of the quotidian, natural attitude through its suspension vis-à-vis bracketing. This methodological approach primarily involves a change of attitude toward and distancing from the world, a change of disposition into one characterized by astonishment. We are to interrupt the dominant, popular notions of truth,

Phenomenology and Bodies 21 knowledge, and ontologies of reality and utilize bracketing to get at phenomenon in themselves.4 Both in Husserl and Schutz the mind is integrally implicated in all conscious acts. Sensorial registers received from the body are acted upon by the mind and act as datum for the typification of the external world. Due to this emphasis, all phenomena are reduced to idealities, and the phenomenological project becomes another form of idealism (see Husserl [1931] 1960). The sociological phenomenological project in this tradition is to enact bracketing, an Archimedean point where the social world can be objectified. In the next section, I consider the work of Heidegger and the ways he troubles the Husserlian phenomenological approach and provides the grounds for an alternative phenomenological approach.

HEIDEGGER’S EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY In Martin Heidegger’s ([1926] 1962) version of phenomenology, the focus shifts away from streams of consciousness to fundamental ontology, or more specifically, the question of being (Hudelson and Evans 2003). Whereas Husserl saw the Cartesian execution of the cogito as a great achievement in the history of philosophy, Heidegger saw this move as one of, if not the, greatest catastrophes in the canon of Western thought. For Heidegger, the question of being, the true call of philosophy, was abandoned in favor of inferior areas of inquiry. Unlike Cartesian philosophy where the focus is on the thinking subject, Heidegger’s fundamental ontological investigation is concerned with the way we act and as such, the activities of human beings. Heideggerian existential phenomenology, most clearly and extensively explicated in Being and Time (Heidegger [1926] 1962), is interested in the pre-ontological understanding of Dasein, an idiosyncratic locution meaning ‘being-there’. 5 Clearly, as a striking departure from his mentor Husserl, the method of existential phenomenology does not involve the activity of bracketing. The beingthere connoted in the term Dasein precludes any conceivable possibility of arriving at any Archimedean point; that is, we are continually and forever locked in activities with things and beings, so much so that the phenomenological reduction of Husserlian phenomenology ineluctably runs counter to the study of fundamental ontology. The Cartesian influenced philosophers, like Husserl, from their Archimedean towers looked down as gods upon objects that populate the world awhile failing to distinguish between objects and humans. For Heidegger, there is something peculiar about this approach as it is impossible to conceive of a being that is not ‘in-the-world’. Existence is essentially being-in-the-world, that is, there is an internal relation between being and world (Heidegger [1926] 1962: 78). For Heidegger, humans cannot occupy an Archimedean, god-like position outside of their situatedness in the world (cf. Haraway 1988).

22

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

When Heidegger ([1926] 1962) states that he is concerned with fundamental ontology, he is concerned with the meaning of being. He is concerned with the presumed comprehension when Dasein is involved in activities and our awareness of objects and their respective potentialities. Throughout the life course of a given Dasein, manifestly there is a capacity for comprehending interaction with entities as actual and as possessing a specific nature. He is concerned with the what-being of entities, their particular mode of being. In plain, what exclusively makes an object or thing what it is. We also possess the capacity to comprehend the being of beings. All this takes place within our ongoing daily interactions or encounters with specific beings. Heidegger is not concerned with the specific nature of particular types of entity, that which is investigated in such scientific disciplines as biology or chemistry. He would call this form of investigation Ontic and as producing Ontic knowledge (Heidegger [1926] 1962: 32). What Heidegger is interested in is the ontological presuppositions that make it even possible for any such ontic inquiry. In contradistinction to the speculative gaze or analysis of objects as present-at-hand (in a Cartesian way), Heidegger initiates an analysis of objects as equipment, that which we use for a particular purpose. These are the practical dealings with ready-at-hand objects. He avers that all objects are locked in an equipmental totality within which all objects fi nd a place. The objects in order to be a tool must have a specific purpose or function. Our interpretative structures of our everyday life, then, determine our engagements with these objects thereby they become our concern. This is what he calls the directedness-toward-which of equipment. Objects are always locked into numerous assignment relations that are connected to Dasein’s ongoing activities. Signs serve as entities that legislate the characteristics of ready-to-hand objects that are disclosed to us on a daily basis (Heidegger [1926] 1962: 110). Our engagement with ready-to-hand objects is predicated upon a ‘knowing how’ as opposed to the ‘knowing that’ that is associated with purely theoretical cognition (that which is associated with Husserl). Dasein is always in a spatial-relational connection to ready-tohand objects. For Heidegger, the ready-to-handedness of objects sets into motion systems of production and reception of products that is characteristic of Dasein’s involvements. All private productions are set against the backdrop of a much larger public social world. Through our engagements with ready-to-hand objects, we take on our diverse social roles, and ultimately, our manifold identities are continually formed. What is particular about Dasein is that he/she is a being for whom their existence is an issue: it must take a stand about which what he/she is going to be and what one is going to do. This is not to be misunderstood as a Sartrean existential voluntarism but rather our choices are circumscribed by our social, cultural and historical/temporal circumstances (Heidegger [1926] 1962: 37–38). Heidegger is clear that all constitutive structures of Dasein must be interpreted as modes of temporality, and as such, whenever

Phenomenology and Bodies 23 trying to understand any question of being, one must do so as temporality as his/her standpoint (40). Dasein does not exist in time, rather he/she is primordially temporality. For Heidegger, in our inauthentic6, everyday mode of life, we incur all three moments of temporality coextensively. There is a unity of temporalities or, in his term, of the three ecstasies (Heidegger [1926] 1962: 377). Dasein is ‘ahead of itself’, that is, open to the future; he/she is also ‘already being in’ which reflects its openness to the past; and lastly, Dasein is ‘being alongside’ which represents his/her process of making the present (Heidegger [1926] 1962: 386). Emotions, for Heidegger ([1926] 1962), reveal that Dasein is open to the world and could be affected by it. As such, emotions are primordial to existence. Emotions arise out of being-in-the-world and are not, strictly speaking, psychical but rather social phenomenon. For Heidegger ([1926] 1962), because Dasein’s being is being-with, its individual states not only affect but are affected it by its relations to others. Heidegger posits a tripartite view of emotions. Emotions have both a subjective and objective face, but are experienced in relation to particular situations. Emotions are efficacious insofar as particular emotions provoke or do things in particular social situations. Within Heidegger’s existential analytic, language is a significant component that derives from and establishes the collective (social) structures of Dasein’s world. Heidegger ([1926] 1962) defi nes an assertion as that which defi nes that which it refers to “a pointing-out which gives something a defi nite character and which communicates” (199). Our interpretations of the various objects that make up our world are based on our continual interaction with objects. All interpretations are existentially founded on temporality: a past, present, and future engagement with and experience of the object (Heidegger [1926] 1962, 199). Discourse or talk is the existential-ontological foundation of language and the articulation of intelligibility as the “intelligibility of being-in-the-world as expressing itself in discourse” (204). In Heidegger, we see recognition of the importance of language and a move away from analysis of streams of consciousness to hermeneutics. For the present purposes, perhaps the greatest critique of the Husserlian tradition lies in the varied approaches to perception of features in the world or more appropriately, the act of witnessing. Here Husserl (and Schutz) carries on the occularcentrism so prominent in the West. Transcendental phenomenological analysis proceeds through the metaphoric appropriation of visual perception, whereby there is a production of a nonsensuous seeing and a univocal language of ‘the general’, rendering them ‘idealities’. This form of analysis articulates visual perception so as to recapitulate certain features in a nonperceptual register, and as such, the descriptions reflect this theoretical itinerary (see Derrida 1973). In Ideas, Husserl (1972) views the body as merely the platform for witnessing (cf. Featherstone 2006). He describes the moving around of a table and reflects on how his perceptions

24

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

change as he arrives at different angles. When closing his eyes, his other senses are rendered inactive in relation to the table. When he opens his eyes, his full perceptive powers return. Here we see the occularcentrism of transcendental phenomenology most acutely. The body and all its sensuous potentialities are rendered null and void and are subservient to the functioning of the eye. Because all objects are present-at-hand in Husserl and not ready-at-hand, as it is in Heidegger, we only engage with the world of objects at a distance and not in an active engagement with those objects. Sight at a distance in Husserl, then, is singularly the only way we can engage with the world as it is illustrated in his engagement with the table. In Heidegger’s ([1926] 1962) analysis of all the objects that comprise the world, we see beings that are actively engaged with objects. The readyat-handness that characterizes our engagement with the world opens the space for the recognition of the fully sensuous nature of our engagement with objects. Dasein does not discover the world through an Archimedean, occularcentric standpoint but continually unearths the many dimensions and meanings connected to objects in the world through an active utility-oriented engagement with worldly objects. The active orientation of beings-in-the world means that interpretations of the world of objects involve hermeneutic schemes that are unearthed and colored by our experiences with and of those objects. This would mean that a table would not be reduced to metaphoric idealities of ‘the table’, but would take on significations that are formed within the active ongoing daily use of that table that would exceed simple idealities of the Husserlian approach.

MERLEAU-PONTY: THE BODY-SUBJECT AND THE INTENTIONAL ARC Heidegger moves the phenomenological project in an anti-solipsistic/ antiCartesian direction, but he has been criticized for failing to explicitly address the body in his analysis of fundamental ontology in Being and Time (Heidegger [1926] 1962; see for example Sartre 1956). Sorial (2004) suggests that the body remains an implicit or background element of Heidegger’s analysis, whereas Aho (2005) has pointed to Heidegger’s comments on the body and rebuttal to his detractors in the Zollikon Seminars (Heidegger 2001). Even in the latter work, there is not a sustained effort to explicitly include the body in his fundamental ontology. In regards to this criticism, Maurice Merleau-Ponty ([1962] 2000) offers a phenomenological account focused on the body to fill what was a relative lacuna in the phenomenological tradition. Unlike Husserl, primordial experience is not demoted to abstract logical essences but the experience of the body. That is, the experience of an incarnate existence that is fi nite and situated. The body is not reduced to an object like others (as it is in Descartes); it is the mode by which we perceive the world. As beings-in-the-world, we

Phenomenology and Bodies 25 are body-subjects that actively engage with the world from a particular perspective from a particular place and time (Merleau-Ponty [1962] 2000). Our bodily (directed) orientation is the pivot to which we engage objects and ultimately, the world (Merleau-Ponty [1962] 2000: 82). In addition, the concept of mind, so central to Cartesian models, is not situated as categorically opposed or separate from the body. In Merleau-Ponty, mind is to be understood as only in relation to thinking bodies. As he states in his fi nal work, The Visible and the Invisible, “We have no idea of a mind that would not be doubled with a body, that would not be established on this ground” (italics in original, Merleau-Ponty 1968: 259). Merleau-Ponty (1962) argues that consciousness or perceptual life is subtended by an intentional arc that “projects round about us our past, present and future, or human setting, our physical, ideological and moral situation, or rather which results in our being situated in all these respects” (136). The intentional arc unifies the senses, intelligence, motility, and sensibility. The intentional arc is precognitive and a prereflexive facet of bodily orientation to the world. As noted in the previous quote, in a spatio-temporal sense, the body’s intentional arc is the mode by which we perceive the world. The body is the modality under which we experience temporality and space. The body for Merleau-Ponty ([1962] 2000, 1968) is inserted into the world and the world is inserted into the body. The world does not form an outside, an objectifiable outside, which accompanies the body. The world is something that the body itself constitutes in its secretion and projection of a horizon of sense. The body, in its material existence, is inserted into the world of things. Our intimate corporeal confrontations with things make the world intelligible. Our animate bodies swell with sense and take on meanings that are spatio-temporally ordered. Merleau-Ponty (1968) uses the term ‘thickness’ to describe this facet of bodies. “The thickness of the body, far from rivaling the world, is on the contrary the sole means I have of going to the heart of things, by making myself world and by making them flesh” (135). Merleau-Ponty (1968) uses the term ‘flesh’ to denote the body’s composition insofar as the body is not the product or object of discursive construction or situated within the symbolic order. The existence of the body is disclosed in the interrelationship between discourse and matter. This focus on embodiment and the role of the body is taken up most clearly in the work of Nancy. In Nancy, as it is in Merleau-Ponty, the body is the pivot in the world, and therefore, existence cannot be conceived of outside bodily fi nitude. Therefore, we can see how Nancy’s approach leads from Merleau-Ponty’s approach, but Nancy takes his focus on the body back to an interrogation of the question of being or fundamental ontology.7 In Merleau-Ponty, because of his untimely death, his discussion of ontology remains poorly developed. It was only in his last remaining work, The Visible and the Invisible that Merleau-Ponty (1968) addressed ontology; but he did not complete this work. In Merleau-Ponty’s ([1962] 2000) early work,

26

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

The Phenomenology of Perception, there is a tendency found therein to focus on ‘the body’ and consciousness and its opposition to objects, rather than bodies always already situated in the world. Ontology, the study of being or existence and its basic categories and relationships, is important on the basis that it provides a starting point and does not limit one to just considering the body. A fully developed social ontology, while cognizant of the salience of bodies, allows us to describe the world and its interactive parts and bodies situatedness in that world. This starting point allows for and indicates the lines of inquiry required for a complete social description (see Katz 2002). It is on this basis, that I now turn to Jean-Luc Nancy’s bodies-centered, fully social ontology.

NANCY: CORPUS AND BEING SINGULAR PLURAL Nancy (2000) can be seen as most indebted to Heidegger on the basis that his work is, in many ways, a response to Heidegger’s ‘Ontological Question’ (Heidegger [1926] 1962). Be that the case, Nancy vehemently rejects the authentic/inauthentic distinction (and the attendant concepts of thrownness and falleness of being) offered by Heidegger and his discussions of the question of being at the individual level, separated from social relations. In addition, a second point of criticism lies in Heidegger’s deemphasis of the being-with or mitsein of human existence (Nancy 2000). The being-there or Dasein receives far more attention despite the primacy of the Other in our day-to-day activities. As such, whereas this endowment to Heidegger acts to, in some instances, thematically frame Nancy’s work, as will be shown, in form and content, Nancy is more amenable to the sociological project. In one of Nancy’s (2000) more popular texts, Being Singular Plural, his principal aim is to refigure fundamental ontology and usher in an ontology that “starts from the plural singular of origins, from being-with” or mitsein (Nancy 2000: 26). Whereas Heidegger designated particular salience to the being-with as constitutive of being-there (Dasein), Nancy is the only one in the phenomenological tradition to radically thematize the ‘with’ as the essential trait of being and its proper plural singular co-essence (Nancy 2000: 34). ‘Being singular plural’ is a term deployed by Nancy to signify the being-with of existence. The term has no determined syntax, insofar as ‘being’ is a verb or noun, ‘singular’ and ‘plural’ are nouns and adjectives, and all can be rearranged in different arrangements. This being the case, “Being is singularly plural and plurally singular” (Nancy 2000: 28). Being does not pre-exist its singular or plural. The world, its creation, is the coexistence that puts these existences together (Nancy 2000, 2007). In fine, being singular plural means that the essence of being is exclusively co-essence. Nancy (2000) explains the implications of this ontology in the following way:

Phenomenology and Bodies 27 In turn, co-essence, or being-with (being-with-many), designates the essence of the co-, or even more so, the co-(the cum) itself in the position or guise of an essence . . . Co-essentiality signifies the essential sharing of essentiality, sharing in the guise of assembling, as it were. This could also be put in the following way: if Being is being-with, then it is, in its being-with, the “with” that constitutes Being; the with is not simply an addition. (30) ‘With’ is also the sharing of time-space, which is founded and conditional on the arrangement of an indefi nite plurality of singularities (Nancy 2000: 34). In addition, in being singular plural as fundamental ontology, various problems within philosophies of the subject arise. If the essence of being is always co-essence, the ‘I’ of traditional notions of the subject is found to be untenable. The solitary monad or ‘I’ (of Husserlian phenomenology) becomes inevitably displaced for the ‘with’: the emphasis is on singularities socially immersed in the plurality. The ‘with’ is perpetually and always at the center of being. Nancy’s ontology of being singular plural amounts to a co-existential analytic. For Nancy, it is not just a matter of recognizing mitsein as fundamental ontology, but to recognize the salience of bodies within this ontology and bodies’ role in meaning generation. Nancy (1993a: 193) avers that ‘there has never been any body in philosophy’. The body has always been the object, forever trapped in the structure of sign and signification meaning. The body remains, in Nancy’s language, “the dark reserve of sense, and the dark sign of this reserve. But in this way, the body is absolutely trapped by the sign and my sense” (Nancy 1993a: 193; see also Butler 1993). Nancy claims that thought has fallen short of comprehending bodies as an expression of meaning: the body as the site of singularity, distinctiveness, and alterity. To posit an ontology of being-with inaugurates thinking in terms of a community of bodies as singularities (Nancy 1993a, 2000). Each being or Dasein is a singularity in the sense that we all possess a body and face, a voice and death. Each singularity has a continually morphing habitus, a silhouette, and a different narrative. “From faces to voices, gestures, attitudes, dress and conduct, whatever the ‘typical’ traits are, everyone distinguishes himself [sic] by a sort of sudden and headlong precipitation where the strangeness of a singularity is concentrated” (Nancy 2000: 8). The utilization of the term ‘singularity’ allows Nancy to capture that which is different and cannot be subsumed, annexed, or altogether comprehended. Difference does not, however, preclude or stand against the immersion of the singular in the community. Singularities are always exposed, intruded, and vulnerable: We are open to be affected by others. Bodies are entangled and forced into relations with others.8 Touch, in terms of contact, forms a

28 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment central aspect of being singular plural (Nancy 1993a, 2000). Touch is to be understood as not reducible to the single sense touch, but in the sense of contact where we are fully sensually involved. This is an open immanence where there is the circulation of sense through empirical experiences of contact and social relations between bodies (see Hutchens 2005). Open immanence allows for the surprise of the circulation of sense through the reticulated relations of bodies. As exposed, touching bodies express meaning as the other’s body expresses a meaning that touches our own. Bodies express meaning visà-vis each body’s unique faces and voices, gait, gesture, mannerisms and traits, and its particular relations to other bodies. This also means recognition of the tension between touch and spacing that co-existence entails (Nancy 1993a, 2000). Here bodies form the limit, the threshold that one singularity cannot cross into the other or fully capture the other. Touch forms the limit of our engagement with the other (Nancy 1993a: 206). For Nancy (2000), “from one singular to another, there is contiguity but not continuity. There is proximity, but only to the extent that extreme closeness emphasizes the distancing it opens up” (5). Resulting from contiguity as the limit between bodies is a strangeness that is reflected in all sociality. This strangeness is the feature of human existence that is incompatible with generalities concerning the human condition and universal ideals of humanity (Nancy 2000; see Derrida [1974] 1998). Individual bodies as singularities signifies bodies as meaning as we are “the element in which significations can be produced and circulate” (Nancy 2000: 1–2). For Nancy (2000; see also Nancy 2007) meaning is inextricably part of the mitsein of the world. Worlds are constituted and maintained, and are heterogeneous in character. Meaning is always shared and divided between different singularities, between singularities and objects, between one thing and another. This view attends to the continual polysemy of meaning that is an ever-present feature of the world. Language is essentially in the ‘with’, between bodies. It does not form an exterior (Nancy 2000: 86). As such, language is nothing except for beingwith, the incorporeal of the being-body. Nancy (2000) explains this predicament in stating that “[B]efore being spoken, before being a particular language or signification, before being verbal, language is the following: the extension and simultaneity of the ‘with’ insofar as it is the ownmost power of a body, the propriety of its touching another body (or of touching itself), which is nothing other than its defi nition as body” (92). Language is a contact with other singularities vis-à-vis bodies. Language, then, is not instrumental of communication. Rather, communication is being as such and forms the incorporeal mode by which bodies express themselves to one another (Nancy 2000: 93). Furthermore, language is world forming (Nancy 2000: 3; Nancy 2007). In language, the speaker speaks for the world, that is, speaks to it, on behalf of it, to make a world. Concomitantly, the speaker is exposed to the world and other interlocutors.

Phenomenology and Bodies 29 For Nancy (1991, 1993b), community is our native state and something that is not attained vis-à-vis politics or assertions of a common identity. Community is the open spacing of others that negates the prospect of foundation, even the foundation that would seemingly be manufactured by the exclusion of others. Here, the communitarian ideal cannot be actualized based on the nonrepresentability of singularities (Nancy 2000; see Derrida [1974] 1998). It is this sharing of mitsein and ‘compearance’ with others as penetrable beings that comprises Nancy’s (1991, 1992) insubstantial version of community. It is shared but always irreducible and unavowable experience that is comprised of fragmented singular selves related to one another along trajectories of existence (Nancy 1991: 28). Community is comprised of the ongoing communication between singularities. Community and communication are constitutive of individuality, rather than the reverse, and individuality is merely the boundary of community (Nancy 1993a: 154). Symbols do not mediate but rather serve as the primary modality of sharing (of existence). Nancy sums up this ontological human predicament: “Community has not taken place . . . So that community, far from being what society has crushed or lost, is what happens to us— question, waiting, event, imperative—in the wake of society” (emphasis in original; Nancy 1991: 11). For Nancy (1993a), time, space, and community are intricately linked together. Like many of his contemporaries (Lyotard, Derrida, etc.), Nancy denies the grand narrative and, following this line, proclaims the end of (that sort of) history. The project of history becomes that of fi nite history. Nancy (1993a) explains fi nite history as: It is a matter of the space of time, of spacing time and/or of spaced time, which gives to “us” the possibility of saying “we”—that is, the possibility of being in common, and of presenting or representing ourselves as a community—a community that shares or that partakes of the same space of time, for community itself is this space. (151) Time/History in this lens becomes the examination of the study of mitsein as it pertains to specific epochs subject to space-production (espacement). ‘Happenings’ become the foci of study as it consists in the spacing of time, where something takes place, which inextricably, inducts time itself (Nancy 1993a: 151; cf. Schatzki 2003). Finite history is the happening of the time of existence or of existence as spacing time, “spacing the presence and the present of time” (Nancy 1993a: 157). In this framework, individual narratives are historical only insofar as it belongs to a community (Nancy 1993a: 152). Community is fi nite community as the community of otherness, of happening (Nancy 1993a: 156). Reflecting the ‘we’ of history, worlds are the time of history (Nancy 1993a: 165). In the next section, I consider the implications of Merleau-Ponty and Nancy’s body-centered positions for social inquiry.

30

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

TOWARD AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL GROUNDING: BEGINNING WITH SENSE/MEANING AND BODIES For Maurice Merleau-Ponty ([1962] 2000), as a being-in-the-world, the subject is necessarily embodied. Body-subjects are positioned within the world and are restricted by the constraints of time and space. In his last work, The Visible and Invisible (Merleau-Ponty 1968), he deploys the term ‘flesh’ to denote the seen body, which is the “coiling over of the visible upon the seen body, of the tangible upon the touching body” (146). This ontology asserts the body’s possibility of being touched and to touch: to be acted upon by the world and concomitantly to act upon the world. For MerleauPonty, then, our primary engagements with the world and, hence, meaning making is vis-à-vis touch and sight. Whereas this is a move beyond the occularcentric models proposed by Husserl, Schutz, and others, witnessing of or engagements with a given event implies the primacy, if not singularity, of touch and sight. As such, the totality of senses that are elemental to embodied existence, are not adequately accounted for in Merleau-Ponty’s bodily ontology. Jean-Luc Nancy, on the other hand, offers a bodies-centered ontology that emphasizes the primacy of all the senses in our engagement with the world and meaning making therein. Through Nancy’s (2000) notion of being singular plural, he grounds discussions of bodies in the being-with of existence. His ontology places bodies in the forefront of social inquiry and reveals the meaning generation that takes place between bodies in social relations. Bodies and sensory perception emerges as an expression of meaning in the context of being-with-others. The concept of ‘being singular plural’ denotes the sharing of the world with others, but also is true to our singularity of being and the spatiality of, and spacing between, bodies (Nancy 2000, 2008). Through our sensory engagement with the world, meaning is both inscribed upon us and exscribed by bodies (Nancy 2008: 19). Nancy (2000) uses the French term ‘sens’ to signify the element of being, that is, the totality of meaningful relations constitutive of world-hood and the precondition for linguistic meanings and signification (see James 2006). Sense is the element of existence by which significations, interpretations, and representations can occur. Touch is used by Nancy to emphasize sensory engagements between bodies. Through such engagements meaning generation in its originary sense occurs. In the being-with of bodies, the five senses emerge as constitutive of existence insofar as it signifies the particularities of bodies, that is, the specific smell, sound, taste, bodily arrangement, and feel of other bodies. This is the originary and continual process by which other bodies become recognizable and interpreted, respectively (for a further discussion of the senses, see Chapter 3). In terms of translation of the interpretation of sensory, embodied experience into narratives intelligible to an Other, words are “lamps which shed light on parts of our experience” (Bauman 1978: 215). We can only

Phenomenology and Bodies 31 interpret and reveal elements of our experience. We are trapped by the interpretive schemes (Ricoeur 1974) that we operate out of, that are, in the case of sociologists, distilled into social scientific discourse. Through the bringing together of the body-centered ontology of Merleau-Ponty and Nancy, we recognize that social inquiry is characterized by fractal knowledges of sensory embodied experience that is further limited by the process of translating bodily experience into written text.

TOWARD BODIES QUA SINGULARITIES IN SOCIOLOGY Whereas the body within certain sociological traditions has been seen as something that is inscribed and merely acted upon rather than something that moves and feels (Featherstone 2006; Massumi 2002), a body-centered approach situates bodies centrally in sociality and emphasizes the activity and affectivity of bodies. For Merleau-Ponty ([1962] 2000), the body is the pivot of the world, and existence cannot be thought outside of, or in abstraction from, bodily fi nitude. Bodies are vehicles of language and that which initially articulates space (Heidegger 2001). They are, foremost, the taking place of sense, not just vision, but of all the senses and the meaning making that springs forth from the intermixing of bodies (Nancy 2000). Here we see bodies asserted as central to sociality, not inserted into social relations vis-à-vis discursive constructions. Within this frame, sociality consists of bodies touching each other, continually asserting meaning within social relations. Nancy (1991, 2000) turns the focus of analysis from the being of community to the community of being. For Nancy (1993a), community is “not a gathering of individuals, posterior to the elaboration of individuality, for individuality can be given only within such a gathering” (153). Social inquiry turns to community as it is articulated in the plurality of evocative sharings and voices of bodies. Such analysis does not mean an explication of atomistic individuals that are rendered anomic by society, but an elucidation of the ‘happenings’ of intermixing of bodies eventuated through sociality (Nancy 1993a: 143). As Manning (2007) has shown, approaches to bodies have implications for how we understand popular and academic notions regarding identity. Manning (2007) states, “To touch is to engage in the potential of an individuation” (xv). Individuation is predicated on the contact with bodies. Individuation is the process that testifies to and tries to unthink the individual as a discrete sexed/raced/classed category (see Nancy 2008; Manning 2007; Derrida 1998). In the strict application of a stable, unchanging identity upon singularities, we ignore bodies in movement and bodies in communal relations of contact with other bodies. In the claim to and reliance on strict identity categories, be it racial, gendered, classed, we in a fashion eerily similar to Nation States stabilize bodies and signify in toto

32

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

what these bodies are. Bodies must be stilled, frozen in time and space, to be characterized into stable categories. Such ‘stilling’, characteristic of many studies of gender, race, and class in the social sciences, disregards the fact that bodies move, change, and interact in a multitude of ways. Individuation is achieved in the intermixing of bodies characteristic of sociation. The metastability of bodies is disrupted through bodies responding to each other through intercorporeal contact that, in turn, create new mutating configurations. Bodies qua singularities are fused through intensities of dispositions and formations that are inventive of new bodies (Nancy 2008; Manning 2007). Singularities individuations are always collective, and as sensing bodies they are always in movement in relation to other bodies, interfering with the stability of matter.

DISCUSSION Through the reliance on the post-Husserlian tradition that I have mapped out here, this book moves beyond some of the roadblocks that have plagued the sociology of the body and broader social scientific discussions of identity. Through a focus on the language of singularities qua bodies over identity, I move beyond fi xed typologies regarding identity that commit symbolic violence on those that the labels are affi xed to them and the multiplicity of differance (Derrida 1991a) of those that the label is applied to. In addition, this necessitates a move to the understanding of bodies as inventions: a phenomenological habitus that is a lived-through-structure-in-process continually amenable to changes. Singularities can be characterized by their habitus, and as such, attention is to be turned to what bodies do and how they are produced changed, and broken down within various contexts. Herein I focus on the mixed martial arts habitus that is specific to each fighter and not reducible to their socioeconomic or cultural backgrounds (cf. Bourdieu 1977; 1990). Pulling away from focus on what comprises the fi xed ‘identity’ of fighters, I concentrate on the hermeneutics deployed by fighters to describe what it means to be a fighter and what it means to be male and masculine.

3

Time, Space, and Sense of Fighting

I recall the initial moments when I joined the local MMA club. While intimidated and out of shape, I felt as though being part of and participating in MMA would bring the same sense of bodily mastery I experienced while wrestling in high school. I believed it would engender an experience of intense one-on-one combat, an experience that I find a high level of pleasure in. Yet, to those closest to me, this ‘violent’ aspect of my life is incomprehensible. After reflection, I have come to the conclusion that, like many of my research participants, the experiences of fighting registers carnally in ways that are only comprehensible to those who partake in fighting, be it sparring or a professional or amateur MMA fight. Fighters get lost in the social goings-on of the club, wrapped up in the intense sensory aspects of fighting and bodily mastery through practicing technique. This sensory ethnography dominated my life for four years, cutting up my days and weeks, leaving me with sore muscles and broken bones. MMA has become meaningful to me through the embodied experience of the sport and all its sensory dimensions. This chapter elucidates the time, space, and senses of fighting through a careful documentation of the embodied experience of MMA. In the last decade, there has been an upsurge in interest in the senses in the social sciences (Pink 2009; Westhaver 2006; Stoller 2004; Howes 2003). This growing attention is due, in part, to the recognition of the primacy of the senses in our day-to-day lives. Howes (2003) and Simmel ([1907] 1997) both assert that we learn our social divisions based on the senses, insofar as we come to recognize various cultural characteristics through sensory distinctions. In the sociology of sport specifically, the senses remain poorly studied despite the fact that the body has received considerable attention over the last two decades. Hockey and Allen-Collinson (2007) fi nd it peculiar that despite the primacy of bodies to sport, they are often addressed at the abstract, theoretical level with relatively few accounts grounded in the corporeal realities of the lived sporting body. Both Shilling (2007) and Klein (2002) affi rm such a diagnosis citing the lack of consideration of bodily practices within the sociology of sport (see also Allen-Collinson 2009; Sparkes 2009; Rinehart 2010). Quotidian and academic descriptions, while hinting at the various ways the senses are registered in sport, fail to adequately engage with the full spectrum of the senses and how sensory dimensions are experienced in concert. The primary aim of this

34

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

chapter is to go beyond the public, mediatized vision of MMA and offer a depiction of this sport at the level of embodied experience. This chapter explores the experiences of the temporality and spatiality of MMA, as well as the touch, sight, smells, tastes, and sounds associated with participation in the training regimens and fighting associated with MMA. Herein, I delve into the extreme and unsavory aspects of MMA training: the pain of clashing shins and punches to the face; the smells of liniment, jock straps, and flatulence; the taste of blood and sweat; the sound of screams and counting repetitions; and the sight of (primarily male) MMA fighters trying to exert their will on their training partners. This chapter also entails an analysis of the cadence of doing drills, the flow of sparring and grappling sessions, the attunement of bodies to other bodies through touch, to the beat of music accompanying training sessions, and to the throbbing pain that is registered through taste and touch.

TEMPORALITY AND MMA According to Bluedorn (2002) time provides a tangible, observable way for groups to defi ne who is and is not a member. In the case of MMA, temporal decisions and practices shape practitioners’ lives and, as a result, contribute to the experience of the life of MMA fighters. Accordingly, life in the MMA club has a rhythm that is not altogether perceptible to outsiders. From a position of externality, classes appear structured in terms of chronological, clock time with one class at 7:00 p.m. and the next at 8:00 p.m. However, internal to the classes, based on the cooperation and leadership of the instructors, classes are, for the most part, continually subject to change in terms of their individual structure. Warm-up sessions primarily constitute the beginning of classes, but the remainder of class occurs in accordance with the discretion of the instructors. The practicing of individual techniques primarily follows warm-up sessions, but this may be modified according to the instructor’s whim. In addition, the intensity of sparring and grappling sessions proceed according to a rhythm that is greater than the class’s individual parts or any dyadic association. This is an ‘appropriated’ form of time (Lefebvre and Regurer) 2004: 193) insofar as it is characterized by a self-creation as it is not strictly monitored nor imposed from the outside. It is even fair to say that such appropriated time is time forgotten, as one gets lost in the goings-on of the milieu. Adding to the cacophony of voices in the club and forming backdrop to the ongoing activities of classes are the blaring rings of round timers and interval training timers. Similar to boxing (Wacquant 2004), round timers are used to cut up three-minute rounds of Muay Thai training sessions; they structure punching bag, pad, and sparring sessions. Muay Thai equipment and mixed martial arts sparring gear are shown in Figures 3.1 and 3.2, respectively.

Time, Space, and Sense of Fighting

35

Figure 3.1 Muay Thai equipment from top left: sparring gloves, bag gloves, and Muay Thai pads.

Three bells ring out: The fi rst to initiate the round, another when there is thirty seconds left, and another bell to salute the end of the round. Bodies take to and cease movement with the timing of the bells and come to be entrained (Bluedorn 2002; Collins 2004) to the rhythm of other bodies and the sound of the bells, with an intensification of body technique practice and sparring in the fi nal thirty seconds. Interval training timers are used during Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, as well as MMA grappling and sparring sessions, and are set at five minutes with an additional minute rest.

36

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

Figure 3.2 Mixed martial arts sparring gear from top left: headgear, gloves, and shin guards.

Various events break up the monotony of practice and contribute to meaning making in the club. Time is in the events; the events do not occur in time (Bluedorn 2002; Romano [1998] 2009). Events form the very basis of the associations between MMA club members and, as such, enrich the experience of practice of body techniques between members (see Spencer 2009). These events break up the mundane rhythms of life in the club, but this is not to say that these events do not have their own rhythm in their own right. These events recur according to a rhythm that I found to be recognizable after being at the club for over a year. In a more epochal sense, MMA fight events serve as the basis by which combatants are signified as MMA fighters and are modes by which interactions are engaged in outside of the club environment. In addition, MMA events, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournaments, and Muay Thai fights serve as the basis by which club members coordinate their efforts, insofar as they aid each other in preparing for these organized events. These events, then, affect the rhythms of the club in terms of the intensity of sparring, as fighters increase the intensity of training when preparing for a fight.

Time, Space, and Sense of Fighting

37

Flaherty (1999) has aptly shown that clocks and calendars represent cultural unanimity, but they do not prevent individuals from experiencing personal disjuncture with the time of clocks and calendars. Specifi c events, like MMA fight events, alter the experience of time and contrast with the normal, nearly unnoticed synchronization between lived duration and the passage of standard temporal units. Consider the following two interview responses: Clarence: As soon as the fight started, my vision just went (makes sound, quwiickk), sunk in, complete tunnel vision. . . . I don’t know what was happening, my memory of the fight feels like thirty seconds; it went seven and half minutes or so. All I could see was his face, it was weird, it was like having a bobble head in front of your head, I couldn’t see his arms, I could only see his head. I felt very, very weak, I had no power, I didn’t feel strong and I felt my arms were asleep when we were fighting. Robert: So all of the plans I had before [the fight], everything that I thought I would do, it was just gone. I like to use the analogy that everybody has a plan before they get hit, it’s true, everybody has the idea that they are going to do this move, and that move, and then you get hit, then its all a pile a crap, and then the fight is over. You have no more time to think. When I fought, it was fi fteen minutes and it seemed the slowest time when I was fighting. Everything seemed like forever; I can remember the whole fight. In the fi rst response, there is the perception that time has passed quickly, what Flaherty (1999; Flaherty and Meer 1994) refers to as ‘temporal compression’. Here, under the condition of a losing an MMA battle, Clarence feels as though much less time had elapsed than is measured by the fight clock. In this case, his sensory experience is primarily reduced to the sight of his opponent. In the case of Robert, his perception of time passes slowly, what Flaherty (1991, 1999) calls ‘protracted duration’. Robert’s statement reflects the fact that every element of his fight is remembered and is experienced as feeling like ‘forever’. In a more mundane sense, this experience of time passing slowly was a common experience for me during arduous training sessions.

THE SPACE OF THE MMA CLUB The space of the MMA club is a reverential space. A reverential space is defi ned here as one where there is an imposition of informal and formal rules and proceeds according to a logic that is only perceptible to members. The rules of conduct are embodied over time and members come to abide by the rules of the club without reflection. In a phenomenological

38 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment sense, reverential spaces also have a nest-like character (Bachelard 1969). That is, there is a continual return to the space with a religious adherence. In addition, a sense of security is experienced in this space insofar as members can engage in homosocial activities without receiving the scrutiny of the outside world. In the case of the MMA, the close corporeal contact between members, whereas unacceptable in public spaces, is elemental to, and protected by, the milieu. In this way, the club is an appropriated space (Lefebvre and Regulier 2003), because members can lose themselves in this reverential space and suspend the bodily distance that they maintain in their everyday life. In addition, part of the enjoyment of the space is in honoring the order of the club. Events take place in reverential space as fighters ritualistically structure their activity in order to be prepared for an MMA event. Whereas MMA events do not take place in reverential space, they punctuate everyday life. MMA events serve as a space where outsiders get a glimpse of the product of the training regimes undertaken by club members. The appropriated, reverential space of the club is open to outsiders, but there is an immediate imposition of the interior logic in terms of how one enters the club. This is not, in the fi rst instance, intended to discourage outsiders. The interior logic is intended for the preservation of the space of the club, and conformity to the rules maintains orderly relations between club members. The fi rst immediate imposition of the interior logic of the club is the mandate that those entering the premises must remove their shoes. This was a practice common to all clubs and is imposed for hygienic reasons. A second imposition of an interior spatial logic of the club is in regards to the ways in which fighters step on the mats. Depending on the instructor and the specific club, combatants must bow prior to stepping on the mats to show respect for the art and their instructors. With a few exceptions, in most of the clubs I trained in, mats were arranged in certain parts of the club in such a way as to designate particular styles to be practiced. In my home club, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is practiced on the top floor and Muay Thai in the basement. MMA sparring is practiced on both floors. In the basement, mirrors are lined across the far wall next to a pair of change rooms. Mirrors are used so that fighters can watch their technique as they shadowbox and for pedagogical reasons so that instructors can, in a detailed fashion, correct the technique of participants (cf. Wacquant 2004). Hanging in the corner of the basement are four Thai punching bags that are regularly rocking back and forth from being hit by club members.1 Muay Thai and traditional boxing heavy bags are shown in Figure 3.3. At fi rst glance the division between styles appeared to be merely for organizational reasons, but emerging out of this spatial boundary are certain distinctions. Some members came to be recognized as ‘Brazilian Jiu Jitsu guys’ and others as ‘Muay Thai guys’. The respective spaces are not only constituted by such practices but are constitutive of the very bodies

Time, Space, and Sense of Fighting

Figure 3.3

39

Muay Thai and traditional boxing heavy bags.

that take up such spaces. Training sessions are designated at particular time slots and determine when club members enter into the space of the club. As such, long-term associations are impacted by such distinctions proceeding from the separations of bodies. On any given day, barefoot fighters step on the mats feeling the foam compress to the weight of the practitioner. The variously colored mats cushion bodies, as the edges of the mats delimit practice and interactions between combatants. The texture and feel of the mats change as bodies sweat; the space of the club comes to be dominated by the lingering salty smell of perspiration. For neophytes the mats can feel hard and unforgiving, especially when trapped under a more adept ground fighter. As I found through the course of this ethnography and was confi rmed in the course of my conversations with various fighters, the mats over time become a source of comfort. Jonathan, a seasoned veteran, stated: “As long as I am on the mats rolling, all is well in the world.” Fighters come to savor the feel of the mats, their interactions on the mats, and the break from their everyday lives that being on the mats entails. Scattered along the walls of MMA clubs are the many pictures of famous MMA fighters. Serving as a customary wall of heroes, neophyte fighters look to these mythologized figures for inspiration in training. Alongside such effigies are pictures of past and current members, be it at fight events or events within the club environment. Fighters embrace and pose for pictures or are memorialized in battle by photos (cf. Wacquant 2004). These photos also mark rites of passage within the club, be it the granting of belts or the ceremonial belt whipping associated with such belt granting. 2 As such, these photos act as signifiers of legacies in the club and the hierarchical positioning of members.

40 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment MMA fighters also hold a conception of and protect the integrity of the reverential space of the MMA gym. Fighters expressed a distinction between commercialized gyms and ‘hole in the wall’ serious gyms. A commercialized gym, often referred to as ‘McDojos’, is a heavily advertised gym that teaches watered-down, impractical techniques, caters to all types of clientele, and grants belts and promotions on the basis of the ability to pay rather than the development of skill. Little emphasis is placed on competition in these schools, and the space is filled with new, sanitized equipment. In contradistinction to such types of gyms are ‘hole in the wall’ gyms where ‘real’ training occurs that produce competitive fighters. Max, an elite-level fighter, expresses the value placed on worn and weathered gyms: Max:

It’s like, if the facility is beautiful, that is because that’s how it’s advertised. It isn’t a hole in the wall gym. I like that type of gym atmosphere where there are no distractions. Like I don’t, actually like I don’t like, like [names gym], it’s ok to teach at; it would be nice to own for financial reasons but I mean for training I don’t enjoy that. I don’t like a posh country club training club. I like a hole in the wall with you know mats that are ten years old, the heavy bag just hanging on by one thread, a pair of old gloves that I’ve used for five years in the corner, the gym that is forty-five years old. That’s the type of gym I like, that’s the atmosphere I like.

Here Max explains in detail how he values the type of gym that is worn in, a space that bears the markings of past training sessions. These spaces, like the club I trained, reflect a singular focus on training and the exchange of skills. Among serious fighters, I discovered a general disdain for clubs that are more oriented toward leisurely forms of sociality and generating capital than training. In line with Milligan’s (1998) work on attachment to place, the club is made meaningful to the members in and through a sense of a past, a belonging to a lineage of warriors that came before. There is also a sense that ‘hole in the wall’ gyms hold the interactional potential for future training experiences and production of future champions.

MOVEMENT, SIGHT AND TOUCH OF FIGHTING Bodies learn, in particular ways, to move across space, and this movement is a product of habits developed throughout our lives (see Merleau-Ponty [1962] 2000; I.M. Young 1990; Spencer 2009). The focus on movement brings the question from what a body is to what it can do. As Sheets-Johnstone (1999) states, “thinking and movement are not separate happenings but are aspects of a kinetic bodily logos attuned to an evolving dynamic situation” (xxxi). Bodies creatively become attuned to situations and move according to the situations presented to them (see Shilling 2008).

Time, Space, and Sense of Fighting

41

Hockey and Allen-Collinson (2007) are correct to assert that movement in sport (in order to be successful) requires the development of a particular sense of movement and timing. An embodied sense of movement necessitates a developed awareness of sensations emanating from organs (including the skin), ligaments, tendons, and muscles as they move (cf. Serres 2009). The culmination of sensations is experienced in the real-time of sport. This is the case in MMA, where timing and interpreting movement is the difference between hitting an opponent and being hit. To be successful in the sport of MMA requires the ability to anticipate the actions of one’s opponent through sensing an adversary’s future actions. This anticipation is registered both at the level of touch and sight and involves sensing an opponent’s movements as cues to particular actions. This happens at such a fast speed that, at times, it requires a level of improvisation by thinking bodies (cf. Manning 2007; Blackman 2008; Wilson 2009). Fighters must be attuned to the bodies of their opponent’s movement in a way that allows them to avoid being hit by their opponents. 3 Fighters learn (or not) to ‘feel out’ their opponents and strike their opponents at opportune times. The following interview illustrates this aspect of stand-up striking: Walter:

You can kind of read your opponent. You can tell if he is ready or not. You cannot fake that. You can tell right there, you are sizing him up. When you first get in your thoughts are a mile a minute. Can’t think. So what I will do is stick out a jab and move around. You move around and you get composure. “Now I feel it, now here it is; now I’m ready.” Then I step inside to engage. At first a lot is going on and you step inside and engage. If he is not moving, you give him something to move with, to see how he reacts. That is how you base your game plan. Because, beforehand, you have a game plan going into the match. When you are out there and you see how he reacts, that is when you decide to keep strictly with the game plan or if he has changed up. My opponent this week I know what punch he is going to throw, because he does it all the time. He sticks his arm out and then comes with a looping one. So I am going to step in and see if he is going to give me that same look. If he gives me that same look, I am going to eat him up. If he gives me another look, I am going to step back and come through and eat him up then. I know every move he is going to make before he makes it.

Bodily cues serve as the basis by which fighters anticipate the movements of an opponent. Strategies are predicated on the tendencies of fighters—their techniques, rhythms and movements—in which fighters attempt to act and capitalize on these tendencies. Here ‘eating him up’ means to either take their opponent down or counter with a strike. In the rhythm of the fight, fighters must engage with the bodies of their opponents, an engagement

42

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

that is reminiscent of a dance. Bodies circle each other in combat, stepping in ways that are as habituated as brushing one’s teeth. Fights are never so predictable, but bodily cues serve as a basis to act on one’s opponent. When things go awry fighters must, to a degree, improvise with the situations with which they are confronted. Reacting to an opponent involves a level of improvisation where, especially on the ground, fighters must reach and feel their ways through combat. While on the ground grappling or in the clinch standing, be it with a gi on or not, a fighter is in constant contact with their opponent; touch is the paramount experience. As I experienced fi rsthand when I joined, neophytes feel like they are drowning in a bottomless pool when facing an experienced grappler on the ground. Every action is met with a string of techniques that place the beginner in a disadvantageous position. Being ‘tapped out’ by way of choke or arm bar becomes a painful reminder of one’s position in the club. In the progression from neophyte to master, fighters develop particular styles both on the ground and standing. Fighters develop a stand-up style of movement across space to elude and engage in attacks on their opponents. Accordingly, fighters must interpret the rhythm of their opponents’ bodies and know the precise moment to strike and take down their opponents. With respect to the ground game, these particular styles are often predicated on the body type of the fighter with techniques lending themselves to certain bodily dimensions.4 Irrespective of bodily disposition, fighters must learn how to feel the movements of the opponent’s body and execute techniques at opportune moments. The following field note reflects this reality of ground fighting: We are circled around George, and he is going to be teaching half guard techniques. He has Marion come over and assist him in teaching the technique. Marion assumes his position in George’s half guard. George fi rst says “Ok, so you want to keep your hands in front of you to protect your neck [his arms are bent toward his face tight to his body]. You want to be on your side [he is on his right side]. If he is able to flatten you out, you will not be able to attack or sweep him.” George’s body is coiled tight on his right side and he moves his arm under and between Marion’s left leg. George resumes instruction “You want to hook your arm under his body and shift his weight onto your body so you can control his posture. And notice that I do not have my legs crossed around his leg.” His knees are pointed toward the ceiling and Marion’s leg is cradled between his legs. “Make sure to sink your free hand underneath the leg you have between your legs so that he can not kimura your free arm. Then you want to shift his weight back and forth and up and down with your legs” George remarks. He swings his legs back and forth and up and down the length of his body. “You do this to throw his posture off and then you can sweep him and so that you can make sure he can not collapse you onto your back. You want

Time, Space, and Sense of Fighting

43

to feel his body and if his body shifts forward onto his hands, you want to go back door.” George then executes the sweep, throwing Marion’s body forth, shifting Marion’s body through his legs over and smoothly transitioning to an advantageous position behind Marion. George then motions for Marion to resume his position in George’s half guard. “But if he bases out on his hands when you shift his weight, shift his weight over to the other side. If you turn into him you can sweep him on to his back.” George rocks back and forth making sure to keep Marion unbalanced. In a forceful manner, George rolls into Marion, putting him on his back. George then shifts his weight onto Marion’s leg that he had trapped between his legs. George explains, “So those are two of the techniques that can be used on your opponent when he is in your half guard. It depends on his reaction, what he does. Action— Reaction, Action, and Reaction.” (Field note excerpt) George’s instruction illustrates the bodily sensitivity fighters must develop on the ground in order to be successful. Combatants must feel when to move, a touch sensitivity that is built up over time through practice. Not only must fighters have a heightened sense of their own bodies, but they must also feel their way through the body of their opponents. They must become attuned to their opponents’ bodily movement across time and space. This is predicated on a level of presentiment of the future actions of one’s opponent. George frequently stated the centrality of an action-reaction sequence to grappling. This carried over into his description of takedowns and of ways to effectively apply submission techniques. Practice is based on the perceived actions of a typical opponent, and strategies are based on possible reactions to a fighter’s action. In cases of elite-level grapplers, the ground game is likened to a chess match where fighters attempt to predict and capitalize on the movement of their opponent (cf. Sheridan 2007). Beyond the forms of sight and touch that involve timing and feeling one’s opponent attacking and reacting to them, MMA fighters regularly watch other fighters engage in MMA events. Fighters watch future opponents’ past matches so that they can develop a strategy to defeat their opponents (see Spencer 2009). They also watch fights as an end in itself: for the pleasure that they derive from watching violence. The enjoyment fighters derive from violence is markedly different than the spectacularized violence of war (Skinner 2008) and enjoyment derived by the uneducated spectator who enjoys watching fighters smash each other’s faces. Rather this aestheticization of violence involves focus on what bodies do and the various techniques they display: Marcus: Yeah, I enjoy watching skilled fights where the participants are, this is my own small bias, but I prefer you know your 155-pound fighters to your 260. I fi nd them those are big guys and they’re in the clubs and you can tell they’ve always beat up everybody

44

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

easily so they didn’t learn the skill. The smaller fighters, it’s a beautiful thing to watch. To see two fighters countering each and go and counter each other with techniques arm bar, punching, it’s just gorgeous. Samuel: Uh, I just enjoy watching the strategy of both fighters I mean I think the fights I enjoy the least are the brawls to be honest, that’s not skill. When you are educated on the sport it is really interesting to watch two people that know what they’re doing execute solid techniques, have a well planned fight, things like that you can really appreciate it when you have done it. Both fighters comment that it is not the haphazard brawls that they enjoy watching but the execution of technically sound techniques that they find beautiful. MMA is a form of autotelic violence (see Schinkel 2004) that is enjoyed as an end in itself, but the aesthetic experience of watching MMA events by fighters involves a level of embodied knowledge that is predicated on learning the styles and techniques being performed by the fighters on display (see Maivorsdotter and Lundvall 2009). In the next section, I consider the aural component of fighting.

THE AURAL AND COMBAT Simmel ([1907] 1997) notes that the ear, in terms of sociality, is the most selfish of the senses; it takes and gives nothing back to the other. The ear is not telling like the eye. In comparison to other senses, the aural has received considerable attention in the social sciences (see, e.g., Rawes 2008; Downey 2005; Chernoff, 1985). For example, in Downey’s insightful work on capoeira, he shows how the ear must be trained to effectively participate in this combat art. Instrumental rhythms are shown in his work to affect how the game of capoeira unfolds, controls the severity of competition, and sets the style of interaction. Similarly, in MMA the aural takes on a particular social character that requires a level of learning. A fighter must be attuned to the aural aspects of MMA. Insofar as in our day-to-day lives we verbally respond to what we hear from others, an MMA fighter’s bodies must respond to the commands of coaches and teammates without verbally responding. As I found out personally, learning to respond by doing is not always easy. The following field note excerpt is based on an MMA training session where my training partners are preparing for a fight: Vince passes my guard and starts to rain down punches from the half guard. Scott yells out “you got to do something Dale, you can’t just stay there! Do something!” I am freezing and I am very frustrated because I can’t do anything and he is raining down punches and I am

Time, Space, and Sense of Fighting

45

only blocking some of them. I murmur “I can’t” to which Scott immediately retorts “Don’t talk, get back your guard!” Without contemplation I turn to my right side and push on his left knee and wrap my legs around his waist returning to guard. I lock up both of his arms and try to regain my focus. “Time!” The round is over. Vince gets off of me and I slowly get my feet. Immediately William makes his way over to me and tries to get water in my mouth. In a low voice he says, “Don’t think about what is going wrong, just listen and do something about it. When you stopped talking and thinking negatively and just listened, you got out of the bad position.” (Field note excerpt) The preceding field note illustrates the fundamental connection between hearing and embodied action. Where reflection is, to a degree, detrimental to success in MMA, fighters must rapidly react to the violent situations that they fi nd themselves in. That is, they must learn to listen to the instructions of their coaches, specifically, and execute embodied body techniques to be successful as a fighter.5 Moreover, fighters must learn to listen to the instructions of their coaches and act accordingly without thinking about what they are doing.6 This aural experience not only implies hearing, but listening and doing. The dyadic connection of coach and fighter is coveted and is seen as integral to the experience of combat. The aural can briefly become the singular sense of combat. With the continuous flow of emotions experienced prior to, within, and after combat, fighters are also confronted by the cacophony of the fans whose voices echo in the arenas and stadiums that host MMA events. In fact, many fighters conceded that the sheer volume of the crowd intensified the fear (confrontational tension) experienced prior to combat (see Collins 2008). Hearing can also be limited to the sounds of one’s body. The following interview reflects this singularity: DS: Edwin:

Right before you went into fight, how did you feel? I was nervous, I was really nervous. My heart was beating, and I had no idea why. But I could feel (pause), I was thinking nothing. I could actually hear my heart beat and nothing was going through my mind. Absolutely a blank. You could say something to me and it would go in one ear and out the other, it was a complete blank.

Here Edwin reflects on confronting the tension customary to the prefight experience. He could not think of anything, but he became attuned to the aural experience toward the rhythm of his beating heart. Hearing the rhythm of one’s beating heart is not a typical experience and reflects the gravity of the event of confronting another body in combat. This demonstrates the novelty of the event of combat in which a fighter becomes lost in the deluge of emotions experienced prior to and during combat.

46

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

Downey (2005) aptly points out that before we reflect on music, we are already culturally conditioned to be attentive to and perceive it through bodily habit and comportment. Furthermore, DeNora (2000) and LaBelle (2008) also suggest that music often forms the rhythmic scaffolding for the everyday life of individuals, as individuals latch onto musical frames thereby generating the means for ordering and organizing a sense of self within varied environments. Forms of ‘auditory latching’ (Labelle 2008) can be located within musical experience and a relation to self and a world modulated by musical structures. Musical rhythms, then, operate as devices for entrainment, insofar as they involve the alignment of bodily features with some continuous features in the environment (DeNora 2000). For the present purposes, I consider the relationship between music and how the MMA club is experienced. In the main, music is played in the background of club practices. Music genres range from rap and techno dance music to heavy metal depending on who decides on the music, which is often on a fi rst-come-fi rst-serve basis. Musical choice is subject to commentary by the class attendees, be it positive or negative. Many of the warm up strength training regimes are grueling, and it is commonplace for techno dance or heavy metal to accompany such workouts and act as a fulcrum to intensify workouts. Here bodies come to be attuned to the rhythm of music and grueling drills are often measured by the songs that accompany them. This form of auditory scaffolding provides the basis of many competition-based, bodycentered spaces. Temporally, music signals the type of activities engaged in throughout the class. If the teacher is showing technique, then music is absent, whereas live grappling and striking sessions are accompanied by music. This is mainly due to the fact that while technique is being shown and practiced, teachers must be able to clearly communicate the specificities of the body technique. In terms of auditory latching, it is apposite to consider the cutting up of musical audio tracks for the purposes of tabata protocol-based exercises. Tabata protocol is a high intensity training where an athlete does a maximum intensity exercise for twenty seconds, followed by a ten-second rest, and repeated eight to ten times.7 With respect to MMA, this form of training is utilized to mimic the nature of fighting where fighters exert themselves at an extremely high level for short spurts and then must recover quickly. In addition to relying on a stopwatch or a timer, fighters sometimes splice songs and string them together in accordance with tabata protocol, with high intensity music for twenty seconds and low intensity music for ten seconds. The following extract from a field note reflects how auditory latching occurs in relation to tabata protocol: I line up across from the heavy bag and Dane walks over to the other side of the room and yells out “You guys ready?” We both reply with a loud “Yeah!” and Dane presses play on the CD player. He runs back

Time, Space, and Sense of Fighting

47

to the open bag and a gun shot rings out and the heavy metal music begins. We are throwing hard straight punches at the bag as fast as we can while Rory is doing ground and pound on the bag across from us. Ughh, I am feeling the burn in the shoulders already. What is wrong with me? I peer out of the corner of my eye at Frank; wow, he is heaving punches in at that bag faster than me. I better pick up the pace. Every punch I throw my shoulders feel more on fire. The music is still going and I am wondering when it is going to end. I am keenly listening to the sound of the shot to signal the end of this session. By now I am breathing harder and can hear Rory pounding away at the bag across from me. Thud, Thud, tap, tap is the dominant sounds in the room. A shotgun runs rings off and the slow music commences. I must get my breath back quickly. (Field note excerpt) This example illustrates how bodies latch on to auditory signals and how, beyond the lyrics of the song, music can have additional meanings and purposes beyond the pleasure of listening. Here music can frame the way in which a fighter engages with an exercise, framing the ways bodies perform a movement. Tabata protocol can be just as easily carried out with a stopwatch rather than music, but the important aspect to note is that fighters, as the tabata goes on, become attuned to the stages of the song, learning in an embodied way, when the high intensity sections will end (this is equally the case with respect to the rest section of the tabata). In regards to the sound of gloves crashing into bags, sounds can grip the fighter, becoming the dominant sense of training. This sound also serves as an indicator for fighters as they can hear how hard their training partners are training. This often has a disciplinary function insofar as, in the competitive space of the club (Shilling 2008; Wacquant 2004), fighters want to keep up with their training partners.

THE OLFACTORY AND COMBAT Synnott (1991), and Simmel ([1907] 1997) before him, asserts that odors delineate the individual, group, and place. The smelling of a person’s body odor is the most intimate perception of them. As Simmel states, in smelling another person, one penetrates “in a gaseous form into our most sensory inner being, and it is obvious that, with an enhanced sensitivity to olfactory impressions in general, this must lead to a selection and a distancing that to some extent creates one of the sensory foundations for the sociological reserve of the modern individual” (119). The singularity of existence of a person is revealed, in part, through our smelling of another. Our sense of them, their significance to us, and our histories of them are formed in and through smell (Curtis 2008). In addition, meaning generation is formed, in part, through the olfactory sense of the group and space.

48 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment When entering into the MMA club, a collage of the thick salty odor of sweat and sweet pungent smell of mat cleaning products fills the nostrils. Initially, this smell is indefi nable. After about a month at the club, I grew fonder of this distinct odor, insofar as it came to be associated with training. The change rooms are almost entirely drenched with the smell of muscle liniment and sweat, which can sometimes be seen rising off from the bodies of fighters after training sessions. The smells of these spaces intensifies according to the accumulation of bodies. In terms of temporality, intensification of odor corresponds to the time of classes and the forms of dueling that dominate the experience of MMA. Whereas the mats have the faint smell of cleaning products prior to night classes, odors reach their highest intensity after three hours of grappling or stand-up sparring as bodies shed heat and sweat. The spatial boundaries between bodies are formed through the senses (Simmel, [1907] 1997, [1911] 1997). The formation and maintenance of the group is predicated, in part, on individual’s tolerance and recognition of the olfactory smell of others (Curtis 2008). At times, odors can also become the preoccupation of the group, which can disrupt practice. The following field note reflects how odors can have this effect on the group: Twelve of us are assembled in a circle and Richard is orchestrating some strength exercises as part of our warm up. Everyone is ready to go and Richard yells out, “sit-ups! Everyone counts 10!” Marion starts out and he is counting out loud with everyone executing sit-ups. He finishes his ten repetitions and Geoff starts yelling out the cadence. He reaches about five repetitions and suddenly I am struck with the smell of flatulence. I look over at Marion and he has a smile on his face. The ordure stench is so intense that I am finding it hard to do sit-ups. I look over quickly at Geoff and Claude and they both have grimacing faces. The sound of cadence is broken when Simon interrupts and says, “Who farted? That stinks so bad!” By now a few of the guys on the far side of the room have their hands over their face and seemed to be having a hard time doing the sit-ups. Some of the guys on the other side of the room are laughing at the guys holding hands over their face. Richard yells over at Marion, “You have the worst farts!” Everyone is by now laughing and the sit-ups have slowed to almost to halt. (Field note excerpt) Flatulence in the MMA club seemed to be a constant, with rotten egg and manure filling the nostrils. Sometimes it was the topic of humor, with laughs being had all around the room. The importance of this form of group bonding should not be disregarded. We form understandings of individuals through smell, but also odor constitutes the experience of the group. Being part of the group is not just based on skill but on conforming to the humor sensibilities of the group. Part of the abidance to the masculine order of the club involves fi nding humor in flatulence.

Time, Space, and Sense of Fighting

49

Beyond the more mundane olfactory sensory experience of the club, olfactory sense can color significant events in MMA. Particular odors come to be attached with particular individuals, and the olfactory sense of them may dominate our memories of significant events. Edwin recalls his experience of his fi rst professional fight in the cage: DS: Edwin:

How did you feel when you got into the cage? So [names coach], is like “It’s time to fight. Do what you always do and just kick his ass.” He had really fucking bad breath, [Names coach], he really needs to brush his teeth, especially when he is coaching, holy fuck. That is the only thing I was thinking, he was next to me breathing and motherfucker has the worst breath, “brush your teeth bro.” So that scent hit me.

Here Edwin explains how, upon entering the cage, rather than heading the advice of his coach, the foul breath of his coach gripped him and dominated his thought process prior to engaging with his opponent. Olfactory sense, being subjective in nature, ‘hits’ us and, at times, dominates our perceptions of others. The olfactory grips us sometimes against our will: We do not choose to experience the olfactory. Dewey (1967) argued that we sense by bringing past experiences to bear upon the present for interpretations of contextual factors. In that respect, odors are “unmatched in catalyzing the evocation of distant memories and places” (Drobnick 2006: 1). Smells are efficacious in evoking memories that aid in possible future actions. In MMA, combat is drenched with the odors of the club. The smells of combat can be evoked in ritualistic form for future MMA events, as demonstrated in the following interview: DS: Do you have any rituals that you go through before you fight? Frederick: I do what I used to do in college; it has worked out for me so much, because I train so hard. So no matter how much you wash your outfits, there is still this stench embedded in your clothes. What I would always do, is whenever I would work out, when I go to competition, I would take off my shirt and I would always have a shirt there that I trained with, I would put it to my face and I would take a deep breath in. There is a smell that you get wrestling and training, and that smell gets you in the fight mode, so you are not clean or cold, you are right back there. It triggers you to thinking; this is what I did in training. Here Frederick reveals the use of smell to evoke memories of combat so that he can compete in MMA events. In line with the fi ndings of Waskul, Vannini, and Wilson (2009), ritual sensations and sense-making rituals are intertwined and situate the self within a particular place and time. Olfactory sensation in this case brings back memories of training that is

50 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment efficacious of putting him into fight mode. This olfactory-memory recall brings Frederick back to the moment of intensity customary of training. As such, memories are not passive records but acts that shape a sense of bodily self and ground that sense of self into experienced and re-livable sensations (Waskul, Vannini, and Wilson 2009; Rapoport, Lomsky-Feder, and Heider 2002; Seremetakis 1994).

TASTE, PAIN, AND COMBAT Tied to olfactory, taste has more recently been studied, in anthropology specifically, as a social sense in its own rite (Howes 1991; Classen 1993). On this point, Borthwick (2000) has asserted the primacy of taste for founding forms of sociality. In this section, I explore what taste brings to and initiates in forms of sociality within MMA. The MMA club is not a locus where food is consumed, but it remains a space filled with the sensory taste of the rudiments and products of combat. After and during a long training session, water is transformed into a divine fluid. The mundane taste of water becomes extraordinary. Beyond the necessary consumption of water to keep properly hydrated, the plastic mouth guard remains the dominant taste of the fighter. The taste of the mouth guards range from sweet fluoride to neutral to bitter. A more significant taste that marks the experience of the club is that of blood. The following part of a field note reflects the meaning of the taste of blood: All the guys are quickly putting on their equipment a few guys are stretching over by the crash mats. Scott comes up the stairs and yells out “All right, let’s go! Everyone suit up!” I put on my gloves and start to stretch out my legs again on the mats. Scott switches on the bell and yells out “We are starting after this round!” By now everyone is fully equipped and either stretching or bobbing back and forth on the balls of their feet trying to get warmed up. Scott again yells out “Ok, make sure to put your mouth guards in. Everyone pair up with guys close to your same weight!” I point over at Riley to pair up with him and he nods his head. I put my mouth guard in and the bell rings to start the round. We touch gloves and the sparring begins. He leads with a jab and I pat it away with a parry, he follows with a cross and by then I am circling away so his strike does not hit its mark. I counter immediately with a right kick to his ribs to which he hollows out his rib cage and I miss entirely. I try to regain my stance and he shoots in for a double leg take down. I slow his take down with a sprawl and end up with my back against the padded wall. I push his head down and try to create separation in my hips and legs from his arms that are trying to collapse me at the back of my legs. I prevent the takedown

Time, Space, and Sense of Fighting

51

and circle away from the wall. He surprises me by immediately hitting me with a quick left hook—right cross combo. I must have had my hands low for a second. I cover up and grasp for the clinch. I am feeling cobwebs in my head; trying to shake the dizziness off. I grab a hold of Riley with my right hand by the back of the head and with an underhook under his right arm with my left arm; I use my legs to push him against the wall to get my wits. As I regain composure, I taste iron-salt fl avor of blood in my mouth and I don’t know if it is coming from my nose or my mouth. The area around my nose and mouth are stinging. I am now in a bit of a panic as I now realize I am in a duel. Pull down on the back of his head; by now the dizziness is starting to disperse. He reacts by pulling up on his head; I use this opportunity to slip in the other under hook. I get both under-hooks and turn his body toward my right side. At the same time, I roll my right leg around the back of his left leg and push my weight toward that side. I catch him off balance and I land on top of him getting the take down. We get back up with me extending my arm to help him up. The sparring resumes. (Field note excerpt) In many cases, fighters expressed that until they got hit in a match, they did not feel as though they were in a fight. The shock of being struck, the attendant pain and taste of blood signals to the combatant the gravity of the chaotic situation that they fi nd themselves in. The taste of blood, in this sense, both signals the event of battle and characterizes the sensory experience of fighting. The breakdown of bodies is refl ected in the taste of blood. Its salty-iron fl avor reflects that bodies’ fi ssure. Bodies in combat are never whole but are reflective of the fact that bodies affect and are affected by other bodies. Blood marks a sense of belonging to the broader community of fighters. To submit oneself to fighting, to bleed in the gym alongside fellow fighters, signifies one’s membership amongst the MMA community.

DISCUSSION In this chapter, I document the temporal and spatial dimensions of fighting both within the club and at fight events and the sensuous experiences of MMA. Whereas this chapter does not explore all aspects of MMA, it offers a contextual basis by which to understand the mundane sensory elements in the MMA club and the extraordinary experience of fighting in an MMA fight event. Historically, attention has been paid primarily to sight to the neglect of other elements in the sensorium. As such, the senses are analyzed individually in this chapter so as to not overly proffer one sense over another and to give each due analytical attention. We experience the senses

52 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment in real time, and in fighting, one’s sensory experience becomes particularly acute in ways that are often learned in and through repetition. Contact with other bodies holds the promise of both sensory experiences in the fi rst place, but also a proliferation of meanings in the ongoing intermixing of bodies. Social bonds are formed and pleasures are derived in and through sensory contact between bodies. This challenges existing explanations that attribute the popularity of MMA as being due to an abstract notion like ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (see Akihiko and Kei-ho Pih 2010).

4

Difference and Bodies

Over twenty years ago, Messner (1988) contended that women’s movement into sport represented a genuine quest by women for equality, control of their own bodies, and self-defi nition that represented a challenge to the ideological basis of male domination. This chapter returns to the question of the acceptance of certain gendered bodies into the sport of MMA and also considers the interpretive schemes for racialized bodies. At the crux of the gendered and racialized notions of bodies in MMA are broader notions regarding bodies’ proclivities, in terms of acceptable ways of being-in-theworld, and bodies’ potentialities, in terms of whether or not the bodies can withstand the rigors of the sport. These understandings of bodies are not only limited to perceived proclivities of bodies but also, in the case of racialized bodies, provides the basis by which there is a homogenization of styles of fighting. Drawing primarily from interview responses of MMA fighters, I contend that gendered and racialized generalizations involve particular essentialized understandings regarding racialized and gendered bodies’ ways of being-in-the-world and habitus. This chapter is structured into six sections. The fi rst section returns to earlier discussions of how I approach ‘identity’ and difference and the relationship of these categories to bodies. In the second section, I defi ne the conceptual basis by which I will discuss gender and race in this chapter and throughout the book. Specifically, in this section I engage with the concept of normative masculinity to account for the intelligibility of gender performances in local settings. In the third section, I offer a discussion of gender and ‘race’ in sport. The following section discusses issues pertaining to racism in MMA and the racialization of bodies in the sport. The fi fth section elucidates what it means to be a man amongst MMA fighters. In the sixth section, I present various views by male MMA fighters on women’s inclusion in MMA organizations.

IDENTITY AND DIFFÉRANCE—BODIES/SINGULARITIES Approaches to identity often begin from the standpoint that there are fi xed identities and a certain purity and wholeness that they presuppose. This

54

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

approach can be loosely identified as predicated on the metaphysics of presence, insofar as there is a belief that everything is known of an object or someone; the ‘who’ is immediately present to consciousness. In relation to this thinking of identity, Derrida ([1974] 1998) asks: “What is identity, this concept of which the transparent identity to itself is always dogmatically presupposed by so many debates in monoculturalism or multiculturalism, nationality, citizenship, in general, belonging?” (14). Derrida is correct to characterize such debates regarding identity as dogmatic in light of the fact that what is commonly contested is the very categories that stand in for the bodies of some and not others. A prime example of such discussions of ‘identity types’ can be found in the influential work of Berger and Luckmann (1966) in which identity types are derivative of social structures and are conceived of as observable and verifiable, relatively solid elements of objective reality. Another tendency with approaches to identity is that the ‘question of identity’ is a product of modernity (see Bauman 1996). Giddens (1991) views self-identity as a characteristically modern project whereby individuals reflexively construct personal narratives that, in turn, offer them a level of self-realization and control over their futures. Giddens approach is predicated on the assumption that there is a distinction between social identity and personal identity. Similar to Giddens, Bauman(1996) asserts that the modern project was premised on how to construct an identity and keep it solid, the postmodern problem of identity is to avoid fi xation and “keep the options open” (18; see also Bauman 2000; Klinger 2004). Embedded within a postmodern, consumer society, the individual must choose their identity and must consume accordingly (Bauman 2000). The position of Giddens and Bauman is overly voluntaristic in relation to identity types that can only be comprehended in a Western, affluent context. The idea that choice in identity is a product of modernity is an Archimedean glimpse at identities that overlooks the variation in bodies (qua singularities) in terms of bodily movement and habitus. The meanings associated with identity are always generated in a contested terrain, with degrees of consensus and incongruity. Identity and identification is a continual process of being and becoming (see Jenkins 1996). Here I deploy the language of singularity/singularities in lieu of identity as a way to denote the primordial uniqueness of bodies and their qualitatively discrete character. Our being or ‘humanness’ is not an internal essence, but the product of difference, not just of linguistic signifiers but heterogeneous bodies. Singularity is derived vis-à-vis being a body that differs from other bodies. As Nancy (2000) states, “A singularity is always a body, and all bodies are singularities.” (18). Meaning is expressed in the unique face and voice, pattern of gestures, mannerisms, and traits and habitus of bodies (Nancy 2000). The singularity of experience itself, of my lived experience, is something that defies and resists repetition (Derrida 2002). This position stands in opposition to the voluntaristic approaches to identity insofar as

Difference and Bodies

55

bodies are and always have been singularities. There has never been fi xity of identity: This is a modern (sociological) dream. We are always already, at all times, unique. We have no ‘choice’ in this matter. Derrida ([1974] 1998, 1991a, 1991b) deploys the concept of différance to account for the fact that identity is always divided in itself. The term differance accounts for the activity of differing and deferring. Differance represents the spatial differing and temporal deferral at the heart of memory and identity. By differing, this is to say that in every word or label, there is always a trace or reference to another word or classification. A relation to the outside, then, manifests identity, a relation that Derrida calls ‘spacing’. By deferring, Derrida goes beyond the metaphysics of presence by evincing that the invocation of identity is marked by an absence, that which is not known. The total recollection or account of a given identity is endlessly deferred. In light of differance, Derrida (2002: 28, [1974] 1998) argues at many points that identity is never given or attained in any fi xed sense; rather we go through a continual processes of identification (to nationhood, ethnicity, etc.). Herein, when discussing questions related to the singularity of existence, I will be doing so in the context of the processes of identification that involve practices and events where fighters attempt to become mixed martial artists, men, and so forth (cf. Jenkins 1996; Whitehead 2002), but also the myriad of significations that are laid upon fighters. This is to say that fighters remain singularities, and stable identities are never solidified on the bodies of mixed martial artists.

GETTING STARTED: DEFINING GENDER/SEX AND ‘RACE’

Gender Gender, specifically masculinities, will be given considerable attention in this book. Sex, separate categorically from gender, refers commonly to the dichotomous, biological differences between bodies (penis vs. vagina). Gender, on the other hand, is separate and is not the result of sex categories. One is not born a man or woman but through continuous process of becoming assumes a gendered body (de Beauvoir 1997). Bodies do not conform easily to the multitude of gender archetypes we seek to identify with and are continually subject to failure (Butler 1990, 1993). Gender is defi ned here as socially produced distinctions based on sex differences that are enacted through various practices that (re)work bodies in specific ways in the attempt to signify specific masculinities and femininities (see Connell [1995] 2005, 2002; Whitehead 2002). As Connell (2002) notes, masculinity is not a fi xed entity embedded in the body or personality traits of individuals. Masculinities are configurations of practice that are accomplished vis-à-vis social action. Masculinities are continually signified as antipodal to femininities, primarily with masculinities associated with

56

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

hardness and femininities associated with softness. At an ontological level, femininities and masculinities involve various ways of being-in-the-world, that is, particular relationships to the world, whereby beings are signified and perceived as having particular positions in the world and possessing specific knowledges (see Heidegger [1926] 1962). These involve modes of identifying with particular environs. For example, femininity is associated with caring for children. The effect is a continual separation of femininities from masculinities across time and space, and a hierarchical positioning of some bodies over other bodies. Hierarchies are across genders but also within masculinities and femininities. With respect to the relationship between gender and practices, the work of Paechter (2003, 2006a, 2006b) is particularly instructive. She treats femininities and masculinities as communities of practice to conceptualize actors’ ability to move between a variety of masculinity and femininity performances and identities. Drawing from and building on the work of Butler (1990, 1993), what is important for the present discussion is Paechter’s use of the concept of communities of practice to develop understanding of masculinities and femininities to unravel the relationship between the performative nature of gender and the actuality and multiplicity of such performances within their social contexts. The communities of practice model allows for and shows how individuals take on a variety of roles within sometimes overlapping localized communities and to forge their identities through and within these. This model allows us explicitly to acknowledge that being a man or woman, boy or girl (or an intersex individual of one sort or another) is something that has manifold meanings at different times and places and is not a universal phenomenon. Paechter shows how, through communities of practice, we enact masculinities and femininities and how individuals change as they move between groups, between places and spaces, and through time. Paechter’s model also recognizes the continually changing nature of these communities and how they are reflected in the performativities of gender. Conceptualizations regarding gender are constantly circulating through various institutions that serve to defi ne gender differences and essentialize ideas regarding male and female bodies and notions regarding masculinity and femininity emanating from these bodies, respectively. Events, specifically, are not merely the consequence of gender differences. Rather, sporting events create and disseminate gender difference, through the displays of masculinities and femininities. Events arrange female and male bodies in particular ways that assign roles to particular bodies based on perceived proclivities over and above bodies’ actual manifold potentialities (see Chapter 9). There has been ample discussion of manifold masculinities within the sociology of gender and men and masculinities literature. Connell (1995 [2005], 2000; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005) has been particularly influential in her commentary on ‘hegemonic masculinity’. Whitehead

Difference and Bodies

57

(1998, 2002) has noted however that this concept remains too global in scope to provide an adequate understanding of how certain dominant masculinities subordinate other masculinities. Even Connell (Connell and Messerschmitt 2005) admits that there is an insufficient understanding of how masculinities are performed and organized in group settings. In addition to a documentation of the practices associated with MMA masculinities, this book, through the phenomenological analytic developed earlier, develops the concept of normative masculinity to account for a number of factors integral to the ways in which bodies are interpreted in relation to masculine identifications in local and group settings and how, as a result, bodies are organized. An analysis of normative masculinity allows for the acknowledgement of particular constructions and policing of appropriate masculine behaviors and identities in specific locales (see Gill, Henwood, and McLean 2005). This level of analysis is missing from Connell’s hegemonic masculinity approach and from research that study gender far removed from the actual performance in local settings. Assertions regarding normative masculinity are what make particular performances of masculinity intelligible in the fi rst instance. Normative masculinity, in local settings, work to organize bodies that through the desire to be a member of a given milieu elicit conformance to particular ways of being-in-the-world (Heidegger [1926] 1962). The following analysis departs from Gill, Henwood, and McLean’s (2005) analysis of normative masculinity in several ways. In customary form, I relate the concept of normative masculinity to the type of honored or idealized masculinity in the particular locale. However, as it is developed here, normative masculinity prescribes ways of being-in-the-world and engagements with ready-to-hand objects (see Heidegger [1926] 1962) and as such, the particular relations that are prescribed between sexes. Normative masculinity prescribes the attitudes and conduct between singularities in local settings. Important to note, normative masculinity requires levels of cooperation and confl ict (Simmel 1955) and as such, prescribes types of competition within local settings. Normative masculinity provides the interpretive frames necessary for understanding particular social actions and which bodies belong in a given setting and which bodies do not. Furthermore, normative masculinity establishes the framework for hierarchies pertaining to the particular masculinity honored in local settings. These hierarchies are established and honored locally and may extend beyond the local level. Normative masculinity is subject to consent and contestation as singularities continually interpret particular bodies and their position within hierarchies. In addition, drawing from Paechter’s analysis I examine the particular practices that are part of the performance of MMA masculinities. Whereas Paechter’s work tends to emphasize the performative rather than the relational constructions of gender, I elucidate through the concept of normative masculinity the ways in which attempts to stabilize and police what bodies belong in specific milieus occur along gender lines.

58

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

In this book, I elaborate on the normative masculinity and masculine practices prevalent in MMA.

‘Race’ In defining ‘race’, I concur with Miles and Brown (2003) that “‘Races’ are socially imagined rather than biological realities” (89). ‘Race’ is generally accepted in diverse academic disciplines as not a natural or biological feature of human beings (Hier 2007). The concept of ‘race’, therefore, is not a given or natural category, but involves the signification of specific somatic characteristics (skin colour, etc.), and these categories are used to separate ‘us’ from ‘them’. Those who possess certain phenotypical characteristics (blackness, etc.) are believed to possess the concomitant cultural characteristics. These characteristics can be certain proclivities, limitations, and potentialities. This essentialism denies difference within groups and violently homogenizes groups according to such characteristics. ‘Race’ is intertwined with nationhood, as historical, cultural, and political factors of a nation are subsumed under the concept of ‘race’ (Miles and Brown 2003). Racism, then, is the deployment of discourses regarding specific ‘races’ and the corresponding negative evaluation of certain ‘races’ and sets of exclusionary practices that exclude certain individuals or groups based on understandings of putative ‘races’ (Hier 2007; Satzewich 2007; Miles and Brown 2003; Wievorka 1995). Henceforth, ‘race’ will be associated with a dialectical process of racialization whereby social relations between people are structured by the signification of human biological characteristics so as to construct differentiated social collectivities. This process involves not only the categorization of meaning to define the Other, but also to defi ne one’s ‘identity’ concomitantly (Miles and Brown 2003).

RACISM, MISOGYNY, AND EXCLUSION IN SPORT

‘Race’ and Racism Race, like gender, has been a contested terrain in terms of participation in sport, which can be seen in the history of baseball and other sports (Hylton 2009; Lomax 2004; Parry and Parry 1991). Racism continues to be a factor in contemporary sport and, as such, is an important avenue to explore the social dynamics in sport (Carrington 2008; Lovell 1991; Maguire 1991a; see Stanfield 1993). The continuity of racism is evidenced in terms of the racialization of bodies in sport in the form of racial essentialism (Azzarito and Harrison 2008; Singer 2005; Oates and Durham 2004; St. Louis 2003). The black male body remains a prime cache for present-day desires, fantasies, and fears about blackness (Fanon 1986). The photography of black athletes typifies these fears and fantasies through the extent to which it has

Difference and Bodies

59

been sexualized, eroticized, and reconstructed into an object of desire and envy (Hylton 2009). Racism also emerges in relation to blackness where phenotypical characteristics come to stand in for and (re)produce a coherent or homogeneous collective group. Moreover, this constitution of the bodies in terms of race is accompanied by understandings of racialized bodies in terms of their proclivities in sport (Hoberman 1997; Burfoot 1999). Numerous studies buttress the assertion that sport is a prime locus for essentializing notions regarding racialized bodies. In their study of the ways young people negotiate, take up, and/or resist dominant discourses of race, athleticism, and sport, Azzarito and Harrison (2008) found that young white males complied with the notion of blacks’ ‘natural’ physical superiority, and black boys occupied an ambiguous position within dominant discourses of race and natural athleticism. In relation to the National Football League draft, Oates and Durham (2004) discovered three main themes in the discursive construction of the athletes’ bodies: the delineation of the body in terms of its dimensions; the assessment of the body’s performance; and the body’s productivity in terms of mastery of the sport. Oates and Durham contend that in the deployment of quantification by white team-owners and managers in the evaluation of mainly nonwhite players of a lower class position, the numeric logics of the draft reinscribe power hierarchies of ‘race’ and class. St. Louis (2003) shows in his analysis of ‘race science’ how these popular notions of racial proclivities are actually supported by fuzzy racial science. He contends that ideas regarding the racial basis of athletic ability strategically employ genetic science so as to support erroneous understandings of racial physicality and dismiss the irrational ‘politically correct’ dogmas of social constructionism.

Misogyny and Exclusion of Women Beyond quantitative work that points to the statistical underrepresentation of women in sport (see Dufur [1999] 2006), qualitative research on women in sport clearly articulates that women face enormous obstacles when seeking to participate in sport. The extant literature on gender and discrimination in sport focuses on the overt and subtle forms of discrimination, and on the sexist and misogynist behavior and sexual harassment women incur while participating at various levels in sport (see, e.g., Krauchek and Ranson 1999; Fields 2001; McGinnis, McQuillan, and Chapple 2005). In Halbert’s (1997) study of women professional boxers, she found that female pugilists faced various forms of discrimination in gyms and were cognizant of the many stereotypes of women in a sport in which women are clearly outsiders. They had to exercise a level of impression management, trying not to appear too masculine or feminine. This balance of public identity was done to avoid negative sanctions and improve their chances of developing into successful professional boxers. In another study of women’s participation in boxing, Mennesson (2000) suggests that, although

60

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

women’s participation in boxing challenged the existing gendered order, they also reinforced the existing order by performing traditional modes of femininity. In the case of golf, which does not inherently privilege men over women, McGinnis, McQuillan and Chapple (2005) reveal that women report feeling ignored, overlooked, and unimportant on the course. Walk (1999) observed that female athletic trainers had to choose between behaviors that either ‘defeminized’ or ‘deprofessionalized’ them. In the former case, a professional attitude was viewed favorably by trainers and coaches but defeminized them in the eyes of peer trainers and male athletes. In the latter case, although taking on such labels of mom, sister, and lady and a more sociable attitude created positive peer relations, this approach deprofessionalized them in the eyes of peer trainers and male attitudes, thus contributing to their disempowerment and sexualization. Meanwhile, women’s historical attempts at governance of physical education and collegiate level sports has resulted in limited decision-making roles of women in U.S. amateur athletics (Hult 1989). Eitzen and Zinn (1993) have noted that naming techniques trivialize women’s sport (adding Lady or the suffi x ‘ette’ to the mascot name) even though team supporters adamantly defend such naming. In her analysis of four prominent German newspapers, Klein (1988) reports that discourse of sport legitimized the marginal position of women in sport by continually invoking the putatively natural differences between the sexes. In a similar vein, Harris and Clayton (2002), in their review of the British newspaper Sun and Mirror, found that 5.9% of sports reporting focused on women’s sport and found an overrepresentation of Anna Kournikova (a sexualized tennis player known more for her sexually attractive body than her tennis abilities), which they deemed as reinforcing an idealized feminine image in sport. In a more recent review of Spanish media coverage of the 2004 Olympics, Crolley and Teso (2007) concede that the gender gap in the coverage of the Olympic Games in Spain is narrowing, and ideologies regarding masculinity and femininity are gradually changing, but the gendered discursive strategies and subtexts prevent this process from evolving further. In a longitudinal analysis of media coverage of Olympic track and field in The Times and Daily Mail since 1948, King (2007) reveals that despite the recent increase of coverage of women, men still receive the lion’s share of exposure. One of the main explanations that is offered by defenders of the status quo to legitimate women’s marginal position in sport is the use of the most extreme attributes of the male sex to claim inherent biological superiority over women (Theberge 1993). Clayton and Humberstone (2006) analyzed extracts of male university U.K. soccer players’ conversations from the changing room and student bar and revealed the ways in which men in conversations confer masculine positional identity and (re)affi rm separation from the ‘other’, such as women and gay men. In addition, the gendered division of space within domestic and occupational spheres is

Difference and Bodies

61

reflected in sport, insofar as women cheer on the sidelines and men compete on the field.

‘RACE’, HOMOGENEITY, AND MMA The question of ‘race’ or whether or not there is an underlying, insidious form of racism present in MMA was not an explicit research question at the beginning of this project. Moreover, the overarching racial discourses present in MMA were not a prime consideration when the project began. Consideration of the racialization of bodies arose within the interviews and closer examination of specific events and high-profile organizations in the world of MMA. This is to say that, with an eye to the primacy of bodies to MMA and to how certain bodies are depicted at manifold levels, I ‘inductively’ came to certain conclusions regarding how certain racialized bodies are positioned in the sport of MMA. This is not to say that there is a ‘unique’ or ‘inherent’ racism to MMA. It is merely to say that MMA provides, at certain levels, an avenue in which to understand underlying forms of racism in sport that position certain racialized bodies in certain ways and to understand racial tropes that are laid upon certain bodies that are present in sport and elsewhere. This positioning is by no means benign or inconsequential, as it is translates into certain fighters receiving perceived undeserved benefits over other fighters. In this section, I seek to elucidate the ways in which there is not only a preference for some bodies in MMA, but also a homogenization of racialized bodies. This homogenization is not predicated on (necessarily) the sameness of bodies in terms of their appearance, but sameness in terms of the habitus of specific fighters. As noted earlier, the UFC has reached a level of notoriety, especially in North America, where MMA is synonymous with the UFC. This is despite the fact that there are a multitude of other MMA organizations across the globe. The UFC is also an American sports organization and is penetrated by a plethora of discourses that reflect the underlying sentiments and understandings of ‘race’ and ethnicity within the United States. In the following excerpt, Bradley comments on the preference of certain fighters over others based on ethnic background: Bradley: I think, depending on the organization, race is an issue. I think in certain organizations you can tell. I think the UFC, they cater to one race over another. Because they like to see their poster boys in a certain way. I mean look at their poster boys, one of which you can see on their video game. You look at the game, they have Forrest Griffi n on the cover. How many other fighters are way above Forrest Griffi n? Forrest Griffi n is their boy . . . Forrest got destroyed by Rashad. Why not put Rashad on the game? Why not put Anderson Silva on the game? Which are both in the

62 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment running for pound for pound No. 1 fighter. Forrest is just a 205er and after it is all said and done he is maybe No. 7 over all in his weight category, but give him the cover of the game. Bradley’s commentary reflects an experience of indignation that American ‘white’ fighters are given a greater level of exposure and preferential treatment within the UFC. Forrest Griffi n is a fighter out of Texas that, in his ring entry song, interviews, and multiple appearances on The Ultimate Fighter reflects a certain Anglo-American, ‘white’ persona. In comparison to the many fighters named by Bradley, Forrest Griffin has neither the record or skill set of the other fighters mentioned, but he receives a greater level of notoriety than the other fighters, specifically being featured on the multimillion copy selling video game Undisputed 2009. Bradley’s indignation is also based on the Americanism prevalent within the UFC. The emphasis on nationalism is evident in instances when an American fighter is matched up with a non-American fighter. A prime example of this came after American Mike Swick knocked out Canadian Jonathan Goulet at the ‘UFC—Fight for the Troops’ event. As Goulet lay unconscious in the cage, the American audience began to repeatedly chant “U-S-A.” Issues related to ‘race’ are not limited to specific organizations preferences but are reflective of the racialization of bodies in sport more generally. This is concerning the proclivities regarding certain racialized bodies and the homogenization of these bodies in terms of styles in media sources and broader discussions of MMA athletes. Manuel, an elite level fighter, reflects on this form of racialization: Manuel: Umm, yeah, I think race has a lot to do with it. A lot of people say race does not matter, but race does matter in MMA. Like ahh, Rashad beat Chuck, Booed, Rampage beat Chuck, Booed, Anderson Silva beat, everybody, booed. When Rashad beat Forrest, he was booed. Ok, come on . . . On top of that we get: “We’re great athletes! So explosive, this and that!” But we are not technical. DS: So they kind of generalize? Manuel: Yeah, people compare me to Sokoudjou? (Gives me a look of puzzlement.) Do you ever see Randy Couture get compared to anybody. GSP does not get compared to anybody, Forrest does not get compared to nobody. To me, Forrest Griffi n and Rich Franklin are the same fighter in a lot of ways [both are white fighters]. Basically same fighter, what is different? Except for one’s southpaw and one is orthodox. Same fighter, brown hair. Like to move a lot, peater patter, not much power. Tough, will fight through anything. Do you see those two guys get compared to eachother? No. But me, Houston Alexander, Jon Jones, Sokoudjou, Rampage [black fighters], bla, and bla. We are athletic, this and that, so quick and so fast, you know. Who would win,

Difference and Bodies

63

[His name] vs. Houston? Its like, put us all in the same category. It’s like after a while it gets annoying. You know what I am saying. I am probably athletic, but you know what, my style, my technique, as far as being an MMA athlete works for me. DS: Yeah, you are quite a bit better wrestler. Manuel: Yeah, I wrestled at a higher level than all of them. DS: Yeah. Manuel: Like a lot of people talk about how Rashad has no class. “I can’t wait to see him get his ass wooped.” [Makes quotation marks with index fi nger and middle fi nger] . . . I can relate to Rashad, but you see a lot of people doing unsportsmanlike shit all over the place. They don’t get bashed, but if someone of a different race does it, it is unsportsmanlike-like. Like me, I showboat. But you see, Genki Sudo [a Japanese fighter] turn his back to people when he fights, no one says anything. “That is cool! That is cool!” You see Mayhem [white fighter] dancing and throwing peace signs, “he’s so funny.” [Followed by a sarcastic look] Initially, it is the reception of black bodies that is the subject of complaint for Manuel. Irrespective of national citizenship, black athletes are shown contempt by audiences for their perceived personalities. The sense of indignation and sarcasm expressed by Manuel is the result of the conflation of racialized bodies into certain characteristics. The idea that certain racialized bodies are not capable of being technically proficient relates to the understanding of certain bodies as having some innate athletic characteristics or as chaotic bodies that just naturally take to fighting. Manuel objects to this homogenization of black bodies as having certain characteristics based on his personal style of fighting. At the base of the homogenization of black bodies is a form of symbolic violence that is directed at the very bodies of the fighters, displacing difference in habitus. Similar to Lawrence’s (2005) study of African American athletes, black bodies are depicted as showboats without class. Fighters of other ethnic backgrounds are revered for their grandstanding, but fighters of African American descent (Rashad Evans) are criticized for their attitudes in the cage.

IDEAL MASCULINE EMBODIMENT: BEING A ‘MAN’, ASCETICISM, AND BODIES Throughout this study, I asked research subjects about how MMA impacted their sense of self and how they saw themselves as men. I received three types of responses corresponding to three themes: dominance, confidence, and asceticism. With respect to domination, fighters believed that to be masculine, to participate in the sport of MMA, one must be a dominant force. When asked what it means to be a man, Mario and Manuel explained what it means to be dominant:

64 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment Mario:

You know stubborn-headed you know and you have to have a little bit of an extremist attitude if you still want to be here. You have to be masculine; you know alpha male type of guy I think. Manuel: I think being a man is about taking care of business and taking care of your responsibilities, being a stand up guy when you need to be. Sometimes a man has to lie, cheat, and steal to get what he wants. Sometimes he has to undercut, it is a little bit of everything. Being a man is complicated, because you could be a nice guy and get used, you could be the mean guy and no one will fuck with you. You could be the guy that is in between that is nice when he has to be and you are fi rm when you got to be. Being a man, involves being right down the middle, doing what you got to do to make ends meet. Or you have to do what you have to do to make it to the top. As long as you are not killing and murdering, but in some cases with things you have to do what you have to do. I am not in that situation that I got to kill somebody, but what I will do is kill somebody’s dreams by knocking them out to get to where I got to get. To get to the top, you have to crush some dreams and a man will realize that. To get somewhere, you have to make sure someone fails, you have to use people as stepping-stones, people coming up. Not everybody can have a success story. You have to squash them to get to the top. You have to use them as stepping-stones, you have to stop them. A man will see that. Can’t be a nice guy all the time. Mario indicates clearly that to be a man is to be the ‘alpha male’ that has the will to dominate. As the term implies, being an ‘alpha male’, means possessing a will to be at the top of the hierarchy. Manuel offers a more elaborate discussion of what it means to be a man. Here being a man involves particular actions that involve dominating other fighters. ‘Dream crushing’ is a particular attitude predicated on an understanding of a limited economy of accolades in sport and that a fighter must succeed while others fail (cf. Shilling 2008). Underlying such an understanding is the willingness to go to certain ends to achieve what one wants. In the case of MMA this involves a willingness to engage in ‘whatever necessary’ to end a fight. Research subjects were generally reluctant to say that a ‘mean streak’ is necessary to participate in MMA, but most thought that in order to succeed, a fighter must destroy his opponent if necessary. Another conceptualization of being a man for MMA fighters was not necessarily in relation to direct involvement in the sport, but was in the sense of confidence that the MMA practitioner took away from the sport to the outside world. As per the normative masculinity of MMA, not only having the technical proclivity to defend oneself, but also knowing one could defend themselves in a violent situation plays into MMA fighter’s

Difference and Bodies

65

sense of masculine self. This confidence is articulated in the following two interview excerpts: Harold:

Because I know that I could do anything, but I don’t have to prove myself. It’s OK. So in that way I think it’s changed me in the sense that I’m not afraid of the usual things. I don’t have to act like the big tough guy. I can be very open and friendly and I’m not, not in the sense of, not in the sense of getting beat up in the sense of being, of being weak, it doesn’t bother me at all. Raymond: It gives you confidence in everything in life you know, even in school, in university. It’s funny because it gives you confidence with the women, with everything you do, it’s, it really keeps you up. Harold reveals that the technical abilities in fighting that he receives from his participation in MMA leads to an increase in confidence that he experiences in relation to objects that would have otherwise been the objects of fear. Raymond conveys that the confidence built through participation in MMA gives him confidence in relation to all aspects in life. In line with Collins’s (1990, 2004) interaction rituals, the repetitious techniques (see Chapter 5) characteristic of MMA builds and sustains emotional energy, specifically confidence, outside of the confi nes of the club to other areas of everyday life (for more on confidence, see Chapter 8). The last of the more prominent responses to the question of what it means to be a man and its relationship between MMA was in reference to a form of asceticism with affi nities to forms of asceticism common across various cultures (see M. Atkinson, 2006; Foucault 1987, 1990, 2003; Khandelwal 1997; Weber 1976) that in some cases have ties to understandings regarding masculinity (see, e.g., Roy 2002). According to Foucault (1990), as with the Greeks and present day forms of caring for oneself, there is a marked effort to align one’s diet with the activities an individual engages in. This alignment involves a careful consideration for the equilibrium of the body, a sort of vigilance toward the body’s condition in relation to food intake with the goal of governing one’s health (see B. Turner 1982a, 1982b; Shilling 1993) Shilling (1993) notes the efforts of individuals in late modern society to form their bodies in accordance with manifold social values: fitness, health, efficiency, and self-mastery. The asceticism prominent in MMA focuses on particular masculinized notions of bodily management and consumption. Cody offers an example of the connection between asceticism and MMA: DS: Cody:

What does it mean to be a man and what do you see as the relationship between being a man and MMA? Hard work baby. Hard work. Me and Tom were actually talking about this earlier. To be a man, you have to wake up everyday, you know you can’t be laying on the couch everyday, hard work,

66 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment putting yourself to the test everyday, providing for yourself and your family, not being a bum. There is nothing more hard than training your body and mind every single day for two months for a fight. Basically getting out everything you put in. If you half ass your training for all two months, you are probably going to lose, you might get lucky with a punch or a quick submission, but if you do not work hard it’s going to show in the cage. If you disrespect the sport, the sport has a funny way of disrespecting you. So to be a man is an analogy really, training for the fight, and leading up to the fight, and having success, is basically an analogy for life, working hard everyday and then being able to enjoy the successes of your hard work. Fighters characterized their commitment to their diets and training regimes, especially when coming up to their fights, as ‘religious’, following strict guidelines. Here Cody connects the asceticism that is customary among MMA athletes in relation to being a man, as having the fortitude to withstand the rigors of the lifestyle of an MMA fighter. This form of asceticism relates to a perception of others in relation to their adherence to the strict training and dietary regimes of MMA (cf. M. Atkinson 2006). While training at the local club and in Thailand, I was subject to the disciplinary gaze (Foucault 1979) of trainers and other fighters. At the local club, while training and in the change room, fighters would comment on the fat levels of other fighters (Crossley 2004a). In this regard, I received both negative and positive reception, but this form of ‘body fascism’ (Pronger 2002) had the effect of making me view food in terms of its function in relation to MMA. While training in Thailand, the trainers called me ‘Pompui’, meaning ‘fat man’, when I fi rst arrived. Training with your shirt off and surrounded by mirrors, I became all too aware of my ‘imperfections’. By the time I left, I had lost twelve kilograms and was now in the acceptable range of weight for fighters my size (seventy-seven kilograms). They then extended the title of ‘Pompui’ on another Western fighter coming into the camp.

WOMEN, BODIES, AND MMA The cage is not for women. Please, Gina Carano is a very beautiful girl, I don’t know why she wants to mess her face up and get in that cage? Me personally, I don’t want any girl to get in the cage and fight. Come on, do one thing, can’t there be one thing that guys do that women don’t? . . . It’s too brutal for women. I am not saying they can’t do it. Gina Carano fights better than guys. . . . But I am still against it, I don’t want girls to fight in MMA. (Karo Parisyan, UFC welterweight fighter, quoted in Carano 2008).

Difference and Bodies

67

In an interview on Inside MMA, Gina Carano, who was at the time widely considered the female face of MMA, responds to the above quote. “Well, guys can pee standing up, you can have that. But you guys cannot have fighting. We are obviously different creatures, but women are great fighters. Training is a completely different thing and living the lifestyle of the fighter. Why would someone want to restrict someone from doing something that they are passionate about and a way of life?” (Carano 2008). Carano’s response is somewhat tongue and cheek, but it speaks to the fact that presence of some bodies in modern sport continues to be a point of contention. In North America, there are only a small amount of fight promotions that feature women MMA competitors. This exclusion is due, in part, to the lesser numbers of women training as MMA fighters, but the resistance to include elite-level female professional MMA fighters in bigger shows, like the UFC, is less comprehensible. Women remain, for the most part, shut out of the swath of MMA promotions and receive considerably less attention than male MMA fighters.1 To belong and be interpreted as being worthy of inclusion (and hence, an audience) in MMA is something that women have found resistance in terms of entry into some prominent MMA organizations. 2 As per the normative masculinity of MMA, the interpretation of female bodies as not belonging in MMA, in this sense, creates the reality. Interpretations regarding female bodies’ ‘proper’ place in the domestic sphere remain an obdurate interpretive scheme prevalent in MMA. Women’s performance as MMA fighters remains seen as transgressive to the normative masculinity of MMA. As will be shown, this interpretation is not without contestation as pro-female discourses counterpose such interpretations of female bodies’ positioning in relation to the normative masculinity of the sport. The MMA fighters, primarily male, had three primary responses to the inclusion of female bodies in MMA that can be classified into three types: tradition-based rejection, ability-based rejection, and pro-female affi rmation. The tradition-based rejection of inclusion of female bodies was offered in a portion of research subjects in this study. Aaron, Alexander, and Clark respond to the question of whether or not women should participate in MMA events: Aaron:

I don’t like it, women should stay at home and cook, certainly not fighting. Alexander: I’m not a real fan you know it’s, I like women being at home more lady-like you know. Clark: I just don’t think that they should fight, you know, ahh, like people ask me how I would feel if your girlfriend was fighting? I would say I would hate it, you know. I don’t want to see her coming home with a missing tooth or a black eye or, seeing guys doing MMA with her, kind of roughing her up. I don’t

68

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment think women should be doing that, there were no women in the gladiator days, were there? I don’t think so right. So I don’t think they should be doing it.

The respondents invoke home to signify the perceived apposite positionality of female bodies. Home here signifies a specific place of female bodies in relation to everyday life (see Chapter 5 for a discussion of everyday life) and a conception of apposite way of being-in-the-world. Female bodies are also signified as demure and their bodies are to be whole, not marked by the fissures of skin like male bodies. Clark invokes the historical incidence of the Roman gladiators—taken as a masculine epoch—to justify the exclusion of female bodies from the masculine sport of MMA. The second theme of responses, which was a less common response, was in relation to women’s perceived inability, or lesser abilities as compared to men, to participate in the sport of MMA. The interpretation that women are unable to compete at the level of men has been present in MMA rule making, as female professional MMA matches have three three-minute rounds, as compared to the men, who have three five-minute rounds (women now compete with three five-minute rounds). Christian, Trevor, and Kevin offer this discourse regarding women’s abilities to compete in MMA. Christian: DS: Christian:

Trevor:

Kevin:

I think they [women] should hold the numbers between rounds [as ring girls]. so you do not think that women should participate in MMA? I just don’t want to see them fighting, they can fight but I have no interest, I don’t have an interest in women’s combat sports. I want to see the fastest, the strongest people, and they are not the fastest nor the strongest. I think women should be feminine, and take care of themselves and be pretty. I don’t think they should be brutalizing themselves, and hurting each other. Umm, well, if they want to train MMA all the power to them, but I don’t think that they can train with other males. Because when you are training with someone you want to win you want to punch them in the face. In my own personal opinion, I don’t think you should hit women or compete in sports with them. Cause physically we are bigger and more powerful than most women, so it is a danger to them. They could get hurt and you don’t really want to hurt a woman, you know. Ahh, you know, I guess if they are good enough, but I mean ahh, I don’t know, I watched, I tried to watch women boxing and it is not the same. Even watching, you know, even watching Ali’s daughter there, it is still not all that good to me.

Here, female bodies are essentialized as having particular feminine qualities that make them unfit to participate in the sport of MMA. The positioning of female bodies as feminine and having aesthetic beauty reflects broader

Difference and Bodies

69

discourses regarding the natural proclivities and appearance of female bodies (cf. Eichberg 1998; G. Rose 1993). In Trevor’s response, there is an understanding that involves women’s perceived inability to compete alongside male bodies. Notions regarding female bodies limit their potentialities in terms of what their bodies can do and the caliber of women in the sport more generally. Within the academic literature it is widespread to analyze the talk of men and subject such discourse to pro-feminist critique, but there is very little work that highlights men’s talk that is itself pro-female. In this study half of the research subjects presented what can be classified as pro-female discourses regarding women’s inclusion in MMA. Here both male and female research subjects offer pro-female, inclusionary discourses regarding female bodies in MMA: Brock:

Whatever role they want, its ahh, a sport for everybody, there is women that fight, in my opinion, women fighting are more fun to watch than men, they are more technical they are more umm, they bang a lot more, I just think it is more fights that we like to see. You know men fight, you get bored, boring fights sometimes, I think it is great for women, I think it is great for men. I think it is all around great sport, you know. John: I do think women should fight and I will tell you something to, as an instructor, my best students ever have been women, women listen, women do what they are trained, for some reason. They do not have the egos men have, like when, I have had students for years and years and years and I have to tell them things that I have told them since the beginning, stop doing this, stop doing that, but because they are men, they know they can just go in there and pound the crap out of the pads, women ask me am I doing this right. Yes you are doing that right or no you are not doing it right do it like this and they listen to me. I think completely 100% support women fighting, I love watching the women fight, if you and you will notice this too, you probably don’t notice it, but you will from now on. If you go to a mixed card, where there is guys’ fights and girls’ fights, it does not matter if it is Muay Thai, or if it’s MMA, women’s fights are the best and most technical fights on the card. They have heart and they have technique and they go in there just throw down, I love it. Samantha: I, OK I think like a woman but I can also think like a man. As a woman I’m going to say that no matter what type of sport it is women should have a choice to do that, it’s their choice, if they want to fight then fight, go, do it. It’s very infantile [sic] for women so there’s still like a lot of technique lacking and what not but frigging tons of women out there have the heart and there’s not a lot of things in society for women to let out

70 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment their aggression. I mean everyone needs to be aggressive like you know if you have a hard day at the office you need to go to the gym and work out or whatever. And if you give women outlets they really let it out. So like I know there’s women out there like thirsty for this kind of thing. If they want to do MMA by all means go for it you know and nothing stopping for you. But at the other end of it I see the sport as a business and it’s, it’s going to make, it’s going to be huge. It’s going to be bigger than WWF because it’s a real fight and because, and who doesn’t want to see a real fight. And as a business, society is not ready to see women bleed. Society is not, you know they don’t want to see girls like beating each other up. They’d rather see them like in a pillow fight or on mud you know. And also maybe some of the women who do MMA aren’t, you know maybe they’re a little hard on the eye and what not. I know there’s, I talk to guys who have you know seen MMA women classes and totally respected it and like appreciated the technique and they watched that fight as they would watch a man’s fight. Brock’s response reflects an understanding regarding female bodies and possessing a habitus that relies less on physical strength and, in some cases, comprised of superior technique as compared to male bodies. In addition, pro-female positions on female bodies in MMA asserted female bodies as having heart, that is, a tenacious commitment to winning irrespective of the pain and rigors faced by the combatant. ‘Heart’ in MMA, is what Sheridan’s (2007) journalistic account of MMA called ‘gameness’ by the Brazilian fighters he observed. Female bodies are prized for their potentiality to fight in the face of the dangers faced in the cage. As shown in John’s account, the more technical habitus of female bodies is the product of not possessing the proclivity to assume a ‘natural’ technical mastery, a proclivity found in the habitus of some male bodies. Samantha’s statement, while critical, reflects a broader sentiment with regard to female bodies and normative masculine understandings with regard to their apposite ways of being-in-the-world. As asserted by Christian and Samantha, female bodies are to be the objects of pleasure, not subjects of strength, power, and technical proficiency in combat. Even in pro-female accounts, research subjects expressed that ring girls are necessary to MMA events, as ‘sex sells’, and male viewers wanted to see scantily clad female bodies alongside the violence of MMA competitions.

DISCUSSION In this chapter, I have discussed my position in relation to the extant literature on identity in the social sciences and laid out the conceptual tools I will

Difference and Bodies

71

use in subsequent chapters. I have discussed the racialization of bodies in MMA and the organizational forms of racism and nationalism in MMA. In addition, I have surveyed the understandings among fighters of being a man and how MMA impacts on their sense of being a man. Lastly, I have looked at the various responses to the inclusion of female bodies in the sport of MMA. Before moving on, I want to draw attention to a problem in Bourdieu’s (1977; 1990) work that I have highlighted in previous work (see Spencer 2009). For Bourdieu, the body is a mnemonic device upon and in which the basics of class and culture (the practical taxonomies of the habitus) are impressed upon and encoded in a socializing or learning process that begins during early childhood. Within this approach, the habitus is stable as there is a close, reproductive, link between the subjectivities of the habitus and the objectivity of the social world. As such, it is difficult not to view them as tied together in a closed feedback loop, each affi rming the other. This model of habitus makes it difficult to account for variation of habitus at the individual or group level (see Jenkins 2002). Related to this problem with his conception of habitus, the preceding discussion on the racialization of bodies in MMA highlighted an inherent problem with Bourdieu (and by extension Wacquant’s [2004] work on boxing) discussion of habitus. In Distinction, Bourdieu (1984) shows a number of pictures of various bodies corresponding to class and cultures. He does so to illustrate how particular bodies are the product of specific classes and cultures. Be that as it may, this chapter shows that such generalizations across racial or cultural lines regarding bodies can actually produce resentment in those that these generalizations are imposed on and may be viewed as a form of symbolic violence. In Chapter 7 I will show that Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, which is based on the conjecture that the stylization of bodies is a product of culture, overlooks the infi nite variations of bodies.

5

Being an MMA Fighter

In this chapter, I consider the embodied ways of being-in-the-world (Heidegger [1926] 1962; Merleau-Ponty 1968) of MMA fighters. I probe how fighters come to be recognized as mixed martial artists and how this way of being-inthe-world impacts on various dimensions of their lives and social relations. I utilize the distinction between everyday life and heroic life (Featherstone 1992; Simmel 1971) to discuss the social implications of being a mixed martial artist, but also to illustrate what is unique about being a mixed martial artist and how mixed martial artists are unique in their own right. This chapter is structured in two main sections. In the fi rst section I defi ne the realms of everyday life and heroic life and the relationship between the two spheres. In the second section, I elucidate the ways in which fighters become mixed martial artists, the significance of the MMA match in this process of becoming, and the ways fighters are recognizable as mixed martial artists within and outside of the sport of MMA. Throughout this chapter, I utilize the distinctions between and intersection of everyday life and heroic life to elucidate the existence of MMA fighters. I utilize the phenomenological insights offered by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty and marry such insights to sociological work done by Georg Simmel (1971).

EVERYDAY LIFE VERSUS HEROIC LIFE In terms of a coherent definition, the notion of everyday life is a point of debate in the social sciences. Mike Featherstone (1992) has suggested that despite this contestation, certain attributes can be put forward. Everyday life is the sphere of the quotidian, taken-for-granted experiences, beliefs, and practices. The everyday is dominated by reproduction and maintenance, primarily carried out by women. It is temporally fi xated on the here and now and provides a nonreflexive sense of immersion in the experiences of current experiences and activities. The everyday is seamless, undifferentiated by events. There is a focus on the nonindividual embodied sense of being together in playful sociability within or outside of institutional settings. Lastly, heterogeneous knowledges and voices are valued in everyday life. Antipodal to everyday life is the heroic life. In heroic life, the emphasis is on resisting everyday routine activities and subjugating the everyday for a higher purpose. Featherstone (1992) provides that heroic life is based on

Being an MMA Fighter

73

“the courage to struggle and achieve extraordinary goals, the quest for virtue, glory and fame, which contrasts with the lesser everyday pursuit of wealth, property and earthly love” (164–165). The heroic life revolves around deliberately risking one’s life. It is the sphere of danger, violence, and the courting of risk to which the hero seeks to prove themself by displaying courage and sacrificing one’s life (Featherstone 1992). The heroic life is predicated on distinction, not on egoism that aspires to have something, but rather personalism that is predicated on being something. It was Simmel (1971) that brought attention to the heroic life in his analysis of the figure of the adventurer. The notion of the adventure implies an attitude toward life that treats the “incalculable elements in life in the way we ordinarily treat only what we think is by defi nition calculable” (Simmel 1971: 194). The heroic life of the adventurer is based on a passion for what most would perceive as an incalculable risk and the use of skill and chance to overcome such an adventure. Featherstone (1992) evinces that warriors were the first adventurers, leaving behind concerns of everyday life for battles. Herein, I show that the categories of everyday life and heroic life can be usefully deployed to understand the lives and the embodiment of MMA fighters. MMA fighters achieve status as mixed martial artists vis-à-vis their participation in an MMA match. In line with the heroic life, MMA fighters are recognizable and interpreted for their embodied martial art skills and abilities and for overcoming risk. The forms of life that MMA fighters undertake involve the subjugation of and disengagement from the everyday life in the pursuits of the heroic life but also involve modes of togetherness that are more in line with everyday life.

BEING A MIXED MARTIAL ARTIST

The Significance of the MMA Event and Being a Mixed Martial Artist On the question of what ‘officially’ constitutes being a mixed martial artist, meaning and identity are inextricably intertwined. Within MMA culture, a dimension of the signification of an MMA fighter is in a widely understood rite of passage that takes place when he/she fights in a professional MMA event. Officially becoming a mixed martial artist is recognized both by fighters that have and have not entered the ring. Brad explains this process: DS: Brad:

DS:

So do you consider yourself a mixed martial artist? Not yet. You have to have a professional fight to be a mixed martial artist. I have had a ton of BJJ [Brazilian Jiu Jitsu] matches and a couple of Thai fights. But, no pro MMA fights. What would you consider or what does it mean to be a mixed martial artist? By virtue of fighting in a pro event you are a true mixed martial artist?

74 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment Brad:

That’s what I would say, because without an actual fight and ring experience, like you can teach but you can’t. You don’t get that title. Like most people don’t say I am a mixed martial artist, they say I am an MMA fighter. But they don’t say that until they have had pro fights. I guess you could say you are an MMA practitioner, but you couldn’t be a mixed martial artist without a fight, per se. Samantha: When it comes down to it I ask guys, I’m like, “So how many fights have you had?” “Have you ever had a pro fight?” you know. “Have you ever had?” “No.” Like nobody unless you’re actively training and fighting and getting paid and getting contracts OK then you’re an MMA fighter. The view that one is not a mixed martial artist until after they have had their fi rst fight was held by all participants in the study. A fighter becomes a mixed martial artist in the experience of being in the ring. This transformation in status occurs because it is believed that only those that enter the ring can comprehend the significance of the event. Clark explains the experiential significance of entering the ring: Clark:

Well, ahh, when I say something like ahh, you know I respect any guy who steps into the ring. I think only another fighter would understand that, cause they would not really know what you are talking about unless you did it yourself.

Entering the ring holds a particular significance as a point where the fighter is recognized by his/her peers as becoming a mixed martial artist. Also embedded within this event is an experiential dimension that is unique in that it signifies the metamorphosis of the fighter. The chaos of the fight, the sheer magnitude of the event is experientially inscribed upon the fighter and, as noted in Clark’s response, endows the fighter with an anomalous experiential knowledge that only she or he can comprehend. The MMA event holds uniqueness, insofar as it is experienced in the flesh and is unsubstitutable. It implies a mode of understanding that involves a projection for the sake of being a mixed martial artist. The fighter will never be the same again as his/her possibilities are altered (see Romano [1998] 2009). In Chapter 9, I will be discussing further the significance of the MMA event.

Technique and Being a Mixed Martial Artist The training that is integral to MMA molds the bodies of the fighters, significantly impinging on their habitus, how they see themselves and how their identities are reflected to those within and outside of the MMA community. As will be shown in subsequent chapters, the very bodies of the fighters reflect their participation in MMA. What it means to be a mixed martial artist also depends on the incorporation of various styles into one’s technical corpus.

Being an MMA Fighter

75

Whereas entering into the ring marks completion of a rite of passage, to be an MMA fighter the individual has a particular (continually morphing) habitus. This is perhaps the most important dimension of being an MMA fighter. This bodily schema is comprised of a hybridization of martial art styles that continuously materializes in the fighter: Chris:

To be complete, to not be one dimensional, to be multidimensional when it comes to martial arts. If you want to be successful, you cannot just be a boxer or just be a Thai fighter or just a jiu jitsu artist. . . . Everybody is multidimensional these days. Whoever doesn’t learn a certain martial art will be the guy who is behind the pack as far as I am concerned. You have to focus on every martial art just as hard as the next one, I can’t afford to lack in any, if I want to get anywhere. Robert: I defi nitely consider myself a mixed martial artist. I think that the biggest part of being a mixed martial artist is being open to other styles of martial arts. That and recognizing what truly is effective and what is not. George: MMA is just a mix of styles, right, that means that it is not just a Karate fighter or a judo guy. It means that at that moment, a guy is training in and mixes all those styles. People that defi ne mixed martial arts as its own martial art, do not know what they are talking about. It’s just a mix revealed in that fighter. As revealed in these responses, to be a mixed martial artist is to train in manifold martial art styles and mix those martial arts in order to be successful in fighting. To be one dimensional would leave the fighter open to the weaknesses of that particular style. For example, only training in stand up fight scenarios leaves a fighter open to being taken down by a wrestler and being pounded into submission. The fighter must also be able to react to a range of situations that can and will arise in a fight and as such, they must possess the effective body techniques to react to that situation. Due to fighters training in diverse martial art styles and taking on the specific body techniques of those styles, every fighter’s habitus is a veritable invention, a corporeal bricolage (cf. Hebdige 1979; de Certeau 1984). Moreover, the mixing of styles and the fighter’s bodily predisposition to fi nd particular body techniques more useful than others1, makes every fighter an original articulation, in varying degrees different than other fighters. Being a mixed martial artist, for many respondents, was not about being a ‘fighter’ but rather was characterized by a commitment to develop as an MMA fighter on many different levels. Patrick reflects on this element of being a mixed martial artist: Patrick:

A mixed martial artist for me I don’t think, you don’t necessarily have to be a fighter. A mixed martial artist is someone who trains and understands different aspects of martial arts because there’s

76 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment still a lot of people out there, let’s say they don’t even know, they only know the term mixed martial artist. I think they’re all fighter guys, just because you’ve got a couple of videotapes and train in your basement doesn’t mean you’re a fighter or an ultimate fighter. And then too is you see guys, yeah I’m a mixed martial artist, I’m a striker. You say you’re a striker because your groundwork sucks not because you’re a good puncher. Your groundwork just happens to be worse than your stand up. If you, I think if you grasp the concepts and you make the attempt to train and everything and I, and also acknowledge that you never stop learning no matter what martial art or what sport taken from then I think you can call yourself a mixed martial artist for sure. Here, what constitutes a mixed martial artist is a personal ethos, one that involves a commitment to a group of individuals that are committed to continuously learning with others and subjecting oneself to various styles. This involves a form of proxemics (see Maffesoli 1996), which will be discussed thoroughly in Chapter 9, where membership is determined by whether one associates on a regular basis with other MMA fighters. The ritual of togetherness, be it within or outside the club, adds another meaningful layer to this form of sociality. Throughout this ethnography, there was an expressed disdain by fighters and club members for those that claim to be fighters, but never actually trained in a club and go through the rigors of training. Similar to Becker’s (1997) jazz musicians, MMA fighters’ group formation is achieved in and through perceived and real embodied differentiation from those outside the group. This disdain was not limited to claims of being a fighter but, with the increasing popularity of the sport, the widespread wearing of apparel associated with MMA. These perceived aesthetic transgressions reveal that group membership is not merely an ethical commitment (diet, etc.) and corporeal commitment (the never ending practice of body techniques, etc.), but is also an aesthetic commitment in terms of patterns of consumption (see Maffesoli 1996). As noted earlier, the practice of the styles associated with MMA are often done in real time with a resisting opponent, where only the most effective techniques are employed. To train in a live environment with resisting opponents constitutes another element of what it means to be a mixed martial artist. Scott explains this aspect of MMA training: DS: Scott:

So what does it mean to you to be a mixed martial artist? Someone who trains for every range of fighting, who does it in a live environment, where they are actually sparring against a resisting opponent. It’s not static, it’s not predetermined, it’s very chaotic.

In traditional martial arts, rituals like kata are carried out, and the practitioner seeks to learn the system and show their conformity to the system

Being an MMA Fighter

77

through the performance of rituals. In the predetermined, tradition-based system of martial arts, practitioners demonstrate their skills in a particular style by hitting wooden boards that do not move or hit back. This system operates under a closed or controlled system with very little sparring. In the open system of MMA, martial art styles are mixed and the fighter in their practice reveals their particular character as an MMA fighter. To be chaotic and not static or predetermined signifies that the training sessions of MMA fighters are open to the utilization of body techniques both on the ground, standing and in the clinch. In this open system, training is always scenario based, often emulating actual combat situations. Beyond possessing effective body techniques, a fi nal aspect of what is required to be a mixed martial artist is the bodily constitution capable of withstanding the rigors and level of competition of the sport. As evinced by George, this does not imply that a fi ghter must take on a specifi c body composition: George: Today for someone to fight in MMA they have to train really hard, it is not like before, you walk in and you fight, today the competition is so big, you have to be well rounded. Physically, mentally, and technically. You cannot be just a big guy that is ‘tough’, you cannot be just ahh, a bodybuilder walking in there. You have champions like Fedor [name of famous fighter], he does not look like an athlete, but he has a lot of technique, he has a lot of heart, very strong mentally and then you have champions like CroCop [nickname of a famous fighter], you know, he looks like a bodybuilder, like nice body, toned, so you have all the difference, between them. Here, it is not the aesthetic composition of the body but what a body can do. Accordingly, by looking at a fighter, it is not easily possible to tell in advance what that fighter’s body can do. Exuding an ominous presence before entering the ring does not translate into being recognized as the ‘toughest’ fighter. Although substantive meaning of the fighter’s action is presupposed by entering into the ring, it is what a fighter’s body does that matters. All fighters in this study stated that some of the toughest, most successful fighters in the world are the nicest, most humble guys outside of the ring. 2 This is in contradistinction to Katz’s (1988) tough guy ‘badass’ or Monaghan’s (2002a, 2002b) bouncers whose identities are achieved vis-àvis intimidation, the adornment of weapons, and the perceived propensity to violence. For the most part, the MMA fighter ‘brackets’ off or suspends who they are in their day-to-day lives, but when they enter the ring, they reveal a combative self and their body’s manifold technical potentialities. In addition, as shown in George’s response, there is not one hegemonic masculinity but a number of dominant masculinities that are, in a global sense, on display for aspiring MMA fighters (cf. Connell [1995] 2005). Similar to Monaghan’s (1999) study of bodybuilders, there is not one homogenous

78

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

mixed martial art identity (in his case, bodybuilder), but a heterogeneous plurality of identities in MMA. In another sense, fighter’s bodies reveal their identities as combatants: bumps, bruises, scrapes, black eyes, broken bones, and callused surfaces on the body. These act as significations of past altercations but also constitute long term wear on the body. These significations of being a fighter are not just relayed to other fighters in the gym, but signify participation in the sport to people outside of the MMA club. Clark tells of how the body reveals the fighter’s identity: Clark:

Like five years ago, if I walked into a store, whatever, I have had people say what is wrong with your ears, what happened to your ears? You know, it is so weird, because now when I go to a store, people say, who don’t even know me, don’t know anything about me, will say, are you a fighter?

Here Clark is referring to having cauliflower ear3 (see Figure 5.1) and how with the increasing popularity of the sport through television shows like

Figure 5.1

Cauliflower ear.

Being an MMA Fighter

79

4

Spike’s The Ultimate Fighter , more people outside of the sport are recognizing bodily characteristics associated with a being an MMA fighter. This attributes a positive stigma on the bodies of fighters as members of an exclusive group (see Goffman 1963). Bodies tell the story of being an MMA fighter and confer status upon the fighter and identification with an elite population. This is not an achieved impression that the fighter must perform (as in Katz’s 1988 ‘badass’), but an embodied signification of being tough.

Lifestyles and Being a Mixed Martial Artist Modes of identification with particular identities not only involve presentations of self in everyday life (see Goffman 1959), but also the way in which singularities relate to others in their lives. With respect to MMA fighters, being an MMA fighter impacts their various other ways of being-in-theworld. Patrick elucidates the impact of being an MMA fighter has on other elements of his existence. Patrick: I think of myself as a martial artist before anything, before a husband or a father or a friend. I think not to say that I put it fi rst, but I identify myself as a person because what makes me a good husband makes me a good father, makes me a good friend. It’s, it’s what I’ve got from martial arts that makes me the person that I am. Defi nitely makes you, if you have a true understanding of martial arts and the martial way then you’re number one goal should be to improve your life one way or another whether it’s through competition, being in shape, teaching someone else or constantly learning, martial arts is there not only to teach you how to fight and defend yourself but make you a better man for sure. Here, Patrick states how he sees himself as a martial artist over and above any categories that may be laid upon him. This mode of self-identification is believed to bring to bear positive qualities upon his marriage and parental duties, in addition to other affective associations. The ethos of martial arts is conceived of as being based on self-improvement. The identification with being a mixed martial artist over and above any other categories was a commonality amongst a significant portion of the research subjects. The involvement in MMA and the attendant identifi cation with being a mixed martial artist tended to colonize not only significant portions of their time but also colored their modes of understanding their worlds (see Gadamer 2004). In other cases, identifying with particular categories is negotiated, assumed in particular circumstances, or resisted. In the following transcripts, Justin, Malcolm, and Nigel explain how the identity as a fighter is something that they do not accept carte blanche:

80 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment Justin:

It wasn’t really; it kind of snowballed upon myself actually. I didn’t really tell people for years. People really didn’t know what we did, they just learned about more recently. So I didn’t really tell people but and then the popularity sort of brought the defi nition upon me. So now when I go close to people just assume that I’m some, you know, badass kind of guy. They start talking to me and I’m very nice and pleasant and articulate and can discuss whichever they want and they kind of, it takes them back a little bit. It, I think it’s sort of defi ned me because I don’t walk around and tell people, but people just sort of fi nd out. I would prefer that people didn’t know just because of the preconceived notions that they have like being meatheads that just beat on each other and it’s far from the truth. Malcolm: Well it’s like certain people, I think it’s a problem too if people have a big issue of disassociating what they do, who they actually are. So like I know a lot of fighters if they couldn’t fight they would just be bums. If I didn’t fight there’s so many other things I can do now. I’ve got my degree in [names area] and doing that part-time. I just like to fight. I like to teach and train that’s my preferred profession but if I didn’t do that there’s a lot of other things I could do. So it’s, it’s not all consuming. I make it that way at times. If I have a fight coming up everything that I’m doing, I’m not socializing much, I’m just training, training, training but it’s because it’s out of choice not out of necessity. Nigel: I think it plays a big role. Me personally I’m a very nice guy and most people would never think I’m into that, into mixed martial arts. Even when I presented it and said it to some fellow workers at work, they said, “You are into what?” “Yeah, I’m into mixed martial arts, you know I kind of, you know we fight and we roll around and grapple and you know we do Muay Thai and stuff like that.” “What? We would never know that was, you know you’re that type of guy.” And that’s why I like it. I’m totally different in mixed martial arts, right? I’m a civil person. I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. I’m law-abiding you know and I just but when it comes down to in the gym conditioning and when I get in that cage then it’s a different story.

In the case of Justin, the category of mixed martial artist was thrust upon him. His response reveals that he, as a singularity, is different from the perceived quotidian understanding of MMA fighters of being less intelligent and more myopic than the ‘average’ person. The notion of the ‘bad ass’ again is eschewed and is shown to be in contradistinction to who he is. Malcolm reveals the colonizing character of the category of mixed martial artist and the fact that he is not just an MMA fighter. He asserts, with some level of indignation, that he is much more than just a fighter but could carry

Being an MMA Fighter

81

on other professions. His identification with MMA fighter galvanizes at the point at which he is about to fight which demands a high level of fi xation. Nigel represents a level of disassociation with identity of the MMA fighter and states that he identifies with other categories outside of the sport. His identity as an MMA fighter is assumed in the gym and when stepping into the cage to fight.

Risk and Everyday Life There has been a proliferation of discussions of risk in sociological theory in the last two decades (Giddens 1991; Beck 1992; Lupton 1999; Bauman 2000). The discussion of risk has found its way into the sociology of sport and the body, especially in relation to high performance, elite-level, or extreme athletes (Murphy and Waddington 2007; Laurendeau 2006). Despite the recognition of risk in sport (which is usually taken as ‘real’), there is a paucity of research on the experience of risk taking in sport. The edgework model has received sporadic attention in the sport literature. Edgework (see Lyng 1990, 2005) is defi ned as forms of voluntaristic risk taking. Edgeworkers engage in forms of voluntaristic risk taking for selfrealization and self-determination. In his study of skydiving, Laurendeau (2006) employed the edgework model to explore the ways skydivers create and sustain the belief that they can maintain control while working the ‘edge’. He explicates the various ways in which the athletes maintain a sense of control while engaging in the ‘risky’ sport of skydiving. Edgeworkers can be seen as engaging in the heroic life insofar as edgeworkers use their embodied skills and abilities to overcome the risk associated with participation in MMA (cf. Lyng 2005).5 The notion of voluntary risk taking can be, in some instances, applied to the heroic life pursued by MMA fighters. Many fighters interpreted the sport of MMA as riddled with risks, but because of their passion for the sport, such risks did not inhibit them from participation. Kenneth speaks to the drive to participate despite the risks of MMA: Kenneth: I’m hooked. I’m hooked. It’s the challenge of it. It’s the challenge, challenging my own body. It’s not even about me and another man it’s about me and myself sometimes, right? It’s the challenge of it. You know some of this stuff is dangerous; you can get hurt, jaw broke, whatever, whatever right? I don’t look at it that way though. You know it could happen sure but I don’t look at it that way. Kenneth’s drive to participate overrides the perceived bodily risks of the sport. For Kenneth, participation in MMA becomes more akin to edgework where he is voluntarily engaging in risk for the purpose of self-determination and self-realization in and through testing his body. In other cases, there is reflexivity regarding what are risks and which risks are acceptable:

82 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment Hal:

Like for me the risk for me is losing, not much physically. I’ve had fights where I’ve been in choke holds and I’ve went out cold because I didn’t give up and never tapped. If someone had me in an arm bar I am smart enough to know then I’ll tap out in an arm bar. I’ll go to the limit where you know I’ll go until I can’t get out but I mean I’m not going to take, I’m not going to snap my arm because I know that’s the risk that I don’t want to take.

Hal, a seasoned fighter, evaluates risk with regard to his fighting record and types of acceptable bodily risk. This evaluation of acceptable risk is based on his individual bodily knowledge and of an unacceptable level of bodily damage. This stands against notions of objective risk (i.e., being choked in a fight), insofar as there is a specific interpretive scheme that he applies going into a fight. In a significant portion of research subjects, especially among the more experienced and seasoned fighters, there was an eschewing of risk. This was articulated in many cases in which fighters stated that risk was a part of everyday life (i.e., the risk of crossing the street), and participation in the sport of MMA is riddled with risks like any other aspect of life. That is, because the ubiquitous nature of risk, the concept as a guiding principle is superfluous. Despite the wider belief that MMA is a dangerous sport in the media and various groups against MMA, there is a belief that risk is not something to be considered: Anthony: I really don’t have a fear of risk. I think like if something happens it was meant to be and you have to work on that. For me, I don’t have problems; I have solutions. I cannot focus on that risk because if I broke my hand and freak out, I would have to stop my life. So it’s all about what are you going to do if you have a broken hand, if you have a broken hand. It’s not like I want to get a broken hand, but risk is part of the life. You know like I used to say to everybody here, my father, he’s undefeated in mixed martial arts. He never fought; that’s the risk. If you never fight you’re never going to lose, you’re never going to win or whatever. You have to take the risk to keep going. Dustin: If you’ve got nothing to lose then what’s the risk? I mean if I was really that concerned about, I’m not, I don’t worry about anything in my life as long as I’ve got, there’s no risk. I mean I just think of myself as a good person and who always tries to do the best that he can so what do I have to lose by doing anything? I’m not afraid to die, no matter what happens to me, when I’m done here I’m going, I’m going to be all right. Risk is I guess it’s something for people to worry about if they’ve got, they feel they haven’t fulfi lled something or that they have a conscience about something.

Being an MMA Fighter

83

In Anthony’s statement, risk is something that must be rejected if you are to live the heroic life of the MMA fighter. The pursuit of distinction as an MMA fighter involves responding to the vagaries attendant to the sport. Bodily risk is something to be acknowledged as problematic, but at the same time something that must be solved. In both Anthony and Dustin’s statements, the world of battle, is not an object of fear but rather is something to be pragmatically dealt with. In relation to Dustin’s statement, an element that was echoed by a number of research subjects is that risk is associated with a particular ethical system of beliefs that stands in against the ethos of the heroic life. The normative masculinity of MMA mandates that one must overcome and be interpreted as part of participation of MMA.

The Everyday and the Heroic As stated earlier, the heroic life involves the subjugation of everyday life. In the former relationship this involves a particular arrangement of bodies to technical objects that support the continuation of the heroic life. This arrangement requires feminized bodies to carry out the practical activities of everyday life (cf. Massey 1994). Bodies must comply with their positionality in order to maintain such arrangements. George and Clark reveal this relationship between heroic life and everyday life: George: If you don’t have good support from your wife and your family it is hard. You got to have the support. For fighters, if their wives don’t understand that he has to spend four hours sometimes a night training, it is going to be hard. Clark: My girlfriend cooks my meals, ahh, she cooks my meals when I cut weight, even though there is not that much to cook during that time, umm, keeps me honest, supports it 100%. You know, lets me know if she thinks I am slacking. . . . Totally supports it, I never thought I would meet someone that would support a fighter lifestyle. The belief that George and others in this study put forward is that for a fighter to be successful and carry on the life of an MMA fighter, he or she must have someone to support their training and must comply with the level of training a fighter must invest in the activities related to the sport. Clark reveals that his partner performs the duties associated with everyday life but also buttresses the heroic life of the MMA fighter. The ethos of hard work and sacrifice is reinforced by everyday life. The necessity of supportive relationships and the emphasis on an ethos of hard work can be seen as indicative of the normative masculinity of the sport of MMA. In the next excerpt, Caleb reveals another level of support of the heroic life by everyday life:

84

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

Caleb:

I think it’s a very necessary part, yeah, for sure because without people supporting you, you know like it’s just like you know you have to have support. With no support like you know you get a loss, you get into the ring you get a loss without support you might not pursue your career. There’s a lot of mixed martial artists out there like you get two or three losses and they’re done. That’s it, they’ll do their regular job and it’s over. But if you have a lot of support you can carry on you know hold your head up high and carry on. Support is where it’s at.

Here, the caring ethos of everyday life (see Featherstone 1992) works in a dialectical relationship with the adventurous life to re-energize the participation of a fighter in the sport, even after a loss in the ring (for more on failure, see Chapter 7). This is seen as necessary to the continuation in the sport and the maintenance of confidence requisite for persisting in MMA (for more on confidence, see Chapter 8). There is not always a cooperative relationship between everyday life and heroic life. Throughout the course of my ethnography there were many cases where fighters expressed that their partners were ‘giving me shit’ for training too much or that there was ‘going to be hell to pay’ for being so late at the MMA club: William: No, my parents were really against it, I mean my coach had a vested interest so, you could not count him, you know, you could make all kinds of arguments. But my mother to this day I can hear her saying you cannot do school and train at the same time, and I would get so frustrated because in my mind I knew I could do it, at the time it was the wrong thing to say. I was a kid, I didn’t care, I knew I could do it, I did not have a choice, I had to do it. For me it was just about, there was just no other way, I had to do both, I had to do everything. My parents never came to tournaments, never came to watch a fight. My mother came once, but she did not watch she just talked to the other mothers. They never came. They were hoping it was just a hobby and it would not turn into a career. Here, William’s family objected to his career in MMA and shows that the heroic life is incommensurate with everyday life pursuits. As some of my participants and I experienced, riding the line between the concerns of the everyday and the heroic presented a number of challenges to participation in MMA. As can be seen in the case of William, as with all forms of domination, the attempt of the everyday actors to dominate the heroic life of the fighter is met with resistance.

Being an MMA Fighter

85

DISCUSSION It is no surprise that the inspiration for discussions of the adventurous life in sociology—in Simmel and Lefebvre—are inspired by the work of Friedrich Nietzsche ([1885] 1976). Nietzsche diagnosed Western Civilization as moving in the direction of the ‘Last Man’, an apathetic creature that lacks passion and commitment. The Last Man is immersed in stupid daily pleasures and never takes risks. Counterposed to the ‘Last Man’ is the ‘Overman’. The Overman is ready to take risks and is strong enough to embrace change as ultimate reality. In a significant portion of the cases, fighters asserted that their only permanent institution for sociality is the MMA club and the friendships that are maintained there. I am not positing that MMA fighters are the ideal type of Nietzschean ‘Overman’, but it is important to recognize the significance of the relationship of the ‘Last Man’ and the ‘Overman’ as the backdrop under which fighters pursue the life of an MMA fighter. Fighters who pursued multiple careers—one within the world of MMA and one outside—commented on the boredom of their ‘9-to-5’ occupations. MMA is the career that makes their other careers tolerable. In addition, many participants that rely on MMA as their careers assert that they could never pursue the humdrum life as an office worker. This chapter demonstrates that what is meaningful to fighters is the excitement that is part of the life of an MMA fighter and engaging in the riskladen event of combat. Another point drawn out in this chapter, that is drawn out further in the next chapter, is the assertion that every fighters’ body reflects their singularity within the being singularities of existence. The combining of techniques and its articulation in the fighting style of the individual fighter reflects how every fighter’s body is a veritable invention, dissimilar to (an)other body. Fighters’ movements, gait, and posture offer clues to their uniqueness and serve as an expression of who they are in the world of MMA.

6

Habit(us), Body Techniques, and Body Callusing

In this chapter I focus on the learning of body techniques in situ that contribute to the production of a mixed martial art fighter habitus (see Merleau-Ponty [1962] 2000; Crossley 2001a). This involves focusing on ways of training that instill body techniques (Mauss 1973; see also Crossley 2001b, 2005). I focus on the role of reflexive body techniques (RBTs) in constructing bodies capable of both giving and taking pain, an aspect that is necessary to participation in the sport (see Milton 2004; Green 2011). In this analysis I utilize a phenomenological conceptualization of habitus to discuss the production of an MMA fighter’s habitus as a lived-through structure-in-process that is continually subject to change through the learning of additional body techniques and the working on the body vis-à-vis the former and RBTs. I develop the concept of body callusing to account for the ways in which fighters condition their bodies to be capable of giving and of taking pain, withstand the rigors of the sport more generally, and lastly, to illustrate the ways in which bodies become harder and more attuned for battle as they come closer to an upcoming fight. This chapter is structured in three main sections. In the fi rst section, I discuss extant discussions of habitus and introduce RBTs (see Crossley 2004b) and body callusing. The second section examines the actual processes fighters engage in to learn body techniques. In the fi nal section, I examine the various RBTs fighters use to produce callused bodies up to the task of participation in MMA.

HABIT(US), RBTS, AND BODY CALLUSING In his review of habit in sociology, Camic (1986) explains that despite the prominence of habit or habitus in the classical sociological writings of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, the sociological theories that followed were primarily focused on the conscious, reflective, and meaningful aspects of practice, action, and self. He explicates this move away from habit as being due to an effort by sociologists to set apart their discipline from psychology, where behaviorism placed much emphasis on habit. It is only in the work

Habit(us), Body Techniques, and Body Callusing

87

of Dewey (1922, 1929), Merleau-Ponty ([1962] 2000), and more recently, Bourdieu (1990), that there is a marked effort to explain the importance of habit in social action (see also Mixon 1980). The word ‘habit’ is derived from the Latin habere, meaning to have or to hold. This notion is particularly revealing of possession and belonging as integral to habit. Habit involves both (mental, physical, and vocal) action and repetition. It is the result of action and exposes the power of action to not only generate an effect, but to produce and shape subsequent actions from the same source (Carlisle 2006: 21–22). This leads Carlisle (2006), to argue that habit “does not require memory, but rather a retention of the traces of past actions which may or may not become conscious” (26). This retention of past actions in habit, Merleau-Ponty ([1962] 2000) states, “expresses our power of dilating our being in the world” (143). This is not to suggest that we merely passively take on habits. In Merleau-Ponty’s ([1962] 2000, 238) phenomenological frame, habits are the result of a perpetual dialectic between being (intersubjectivity) experienced and presently experiencing the environments that situate us. Habit reveals how highly sensitive we are, the affectivity and plasticity of the subject that endows a capability of both giving and taking on habits. As Dewey (1929) so effectively puts it, “even if we think of habits as so many grooves, the power to acquire many and varied grooves denotes high sensitivity, explosiveness” (281). The social sensitivity of the embodiment of habits has led some to conceive of the accumulation of habits as disposition or habitus. Habitus is understood as the acquired ability and faculty (Mauss 1973). In the phenomenological tradition, habitus is a lived-through structure-in-process, continuously developing new abilities or technical capacities as an effect of the interactions of agent or group with others and their physical environment. In this tradition, it is the product of the power and prereflective tendency of the body-subject to habituate and as such, maintain structures of comportment and experience that has proven valuable or useful (Merleau-Ponty [1962] 2000; Crossley 2004b: 39–40; Ostrow 1990). Habitus varies across groups, cultures, and societies, reflecting the accordant membership (Durkheim [1913] 1995). Habits sometimes materialize into techniques that are the work of “collective and individual practical reason rather than, in the ordinary way, merely the soul and its repetitive faculties” (Mauss 1973: 73). These corporeal schemas are body techniques (Mauss 1973) that are learned in and through imitation and repetition and passed down through tradition. Perhaps the most developed utilization of the concept of body techniques is in the work of Crossley (2004a, 2004b, 2005). Crossley (2005) defi nes RBTs as “those body techniques whose primary purpose is to work back upon the body, so as to modify, maintain or thematize it in some way” (emphasis in original, 9). RBTs may involve more than one embodied agent where a body is worked on by another or by a team of embodied agents.

88

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

RBTs are both techniques of the body and for the body. In the former sense, they are those techniques that are performed by a body and involving a type of knowledge and comprehension that consists completely in embodied competence, below the threshold of language and consciousness. In the latter sense, RBTs are techniques that transform and sustain a body in specific ways (Crossley 2004b, 2005: 10). RBTs are organized in ensembles; that is, they are collections of body techniques that are practiced together for a common purpose or goal. They are purposive in the sense that RBTs can be transmogrified for varying reasons (Crossley 2005). In this chapter, I utilize a phenomenological conceptualization of habitus to discuss the production of an MMA fighter’s habitus as a lived-through structure-in-process that is continually subject to change through the learning of additional body techniques and the working on the body vis-à-vis the former and RBTs. Conceiving of the MMA fighter’s habitus as a structurein-process permits an understanding of habits qua body techniques as something learned and unlearned. In addition, this conceptualization of habitus allows for a consideration of situations where habits collide, where one habit must be unlearned and another, preferable, habit learned (see Dewey 1929; Burkitt 2002). In this chapter, I consider how, through the collective efforts of MMA fighters and trainers, body techniques, specifically fighting techniques, are learned and comprise the MMA fighter’s habitus. Body techniques in MMA are habitual in the sense that they are learned and then repeated a countless amount of times. In the repetition, learning and unlearning of body techniques, they form and reform the MMA fighter’s habitus causing it to be in a continual state of flux or becoming (cf. Shilling 1993). This chapter attempts to identify the elements of the continual metamorphosis that are part of being a mixed martial arts fighter. The phenomenologically inspired concept of habitus as a lived-through structure-in-process is used in lieu of Bourdieu’s (1977, 1990), concept of habitus for one main reason. For Bourdieu, the body is a mneumonic device upon and in which the basics of class and culture (the practical taxonomies of the habitus) are impressed upon and encoded in a socializing or learning process that begins during early childhood. In many respects, Bourdieu’s study of Kabyle is brilliant in its attentiveness to the role of habitus and the embodiment of culture and class. As previously stated, within this approach, due to the fact that the habitus is so stable and that the close, reproductive, link between the subjectivities of the habitus and the objectivity of the social world, it is very difficult not to view them as tied together in a closed feedback loop, each affi rming the other. This model of habitus makes it difficult to account for change at the individual or group level or even experimentation (see Jenkins 2002). As Crossley (2004b) states in comparison to Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, “phenomenologists generally have a more dynamic and fluid notion of the habitus as a lived-through structure-in-process, constantly evolving as an effect of the interactions of the agent or group with both others and their physical environment” (39;

Habit(us), Body Techniques, and Body Callusing

89

see also Katz and Csordas 2003). With a sport like MMA that is continually undergoing change (see Downey 2007), both stylistically and in terms of the rules, the durability of the habitus in Bourdieu’s model makes it a poor fit for this study. Through the phenomenological model, which is attuned and open to the changes in habitus, however small, this chapter is focused on documenting the mechanisms that change fighters, making them more effective combatants. Messner (1994b; see also Jefferson 1998) has examined the use of the (primarily male) body as a weapon in sport. Some have found this idea illuminating (see Connell and Messerschmidt 2005), but I fi nd this type of analysis somewhat impoverished. It fails to look at the day-to-day processes that an athlete, especially in the case of MMA, goes through in order for their body to become a weapon and the varying levels at which a body can be considered a weapon. In the latter case, it would be inappropriate to consider participation in all sports as leading to the production of the body as a weapon. Unlike professional golfers, for example, professional MMA fighters’ bodies are subject to immense levels of pain and must exert a level of pain almost unrivaled in sport. As such, fighters must be subject to a process I call body callusing, whereby the fighter takes his/her body as a site of action and aggressively seeks, through the incorporation of body techniques and utilization of various RBTs, to harden the body and turn it into a weapon.1 As will be shown, this does not consist of relying on a single RBT but a complex ensemble of RBTs. Sport and the attendant training regimes involve a toleration of pain and a denial of the long-term costs associated with the use of the body in this manner (see Maguire 1993; Hoberman 1992). The work of Howe (2001) and Allen-Collinson (2005) in the sociology of sport has been particularly illuminating in exposing the diverse reactions to pain and injury in rugby and long-distance running, respectively. Despite this, there is a paucity of academic literature on the various ways in which athletes, prior to sporting events, attempt to produce bodies capable of taking pain and withstanding the rigors of the sport more generally (for a notable exception, see Wacquant 2004). The concept of body callusing, as it is deployed in this chapter, moves to understand the advertent and inadvertent ways this is achieved.

LEARNING BODY TECHNIQUES MMA fighters continually aim to attain mastery over body techniques, but not just for the sake of it, as is often the case in traditional martial arts. Techniques are learned because of their perceived effectiveness in combat scenarios. Irrespective of style, body techniques are continually incorporated and combined with the fighter’s existing technical corpus, and as such, the fighter’s habitus is continually formed and reformed. The fighter’s

90 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment body is continually in a state of flux or metamorphosis. Irrespective of the stage of the fighter’s advancement, there is a continued vigilance to perfect weaknesses (Crossley 2005; cf. Foucault 1980, 2003). In this section, I will discuss the nature of and processes associated with learning body techniques.

Becoming Parrot: Repetition and the Learning of Body Techniques George tells the students to gather around and asks Philip to assist him to show us a technique. Everyone gathers in a circle watching intently what George is trying to show and tell everyone. George gets on his back and Philip enters his closed guard. “So we are going to practice arm bars. First grab the back of his collar on the same side as the arm that you are going to do the arm bar, with your palm up as close as you can to his neck, trying to keep your wrist straight [he demonstrates, grabbing the collar of his gi deep and fi rm]. Then grab on the end of the sleeve of the arm you are going to arm bar with your thumb out [he demonstrates, digging his fi ngers into the sleeve of the gi, gripping it fi rmly]. Then you put your foot on his hip, keeping your knee close to his arm and push off. While you are pushing off, slide your other leg across his back [he demonstrates, fluidly gliding his body across the mat and placing himself in position for the arm bar]. Then you just grab with both hands fi rmly on the inside of his arm and submit him [pulls down on the arm and Philip taps to show that the arm bar has worked effectively]. Any questions?” No one responds and George exclaims, “Pick a partner and do the technique over and over.” I go with Gilles and we fi nd a place on the mat to do the move. I start on my back and do ten repetitions of the arm bar on each arm and then we switch so Gilles can try the technique. When Gilles gets ten repetitions in on the left arm, George, who was walking along the mats inspecting everyone’s technique and answering questions, tells the class to stop and gather around again. “Look guys, you guys are thinking too much. Just do the technique. Some of you guys are asking me, ‘what if this happens or this’ or ‘this feels awkward’. Do you guys know what a parrot does?” Everyone in the class seems stunned and no one responds immediately. Not waiting for someone to respond, George answers his question: “A parrot repeats exactly what you say. It does not think, it just does it. Just do the move, don’t think. It will make sense to you later. Just do the technique over and over and when you are rolling later and it works you will see why I have you do the technique this specific way. Now keep doing the technique.” (Field note excerpt) As George states, the parrot does not reflect, it repeats. The act of becoming parrot does not involve thought, but the performance of an act over

Habit(us), Body Techniques, and Body Callusing

91

and over again. Similar to Wacquant’s (2004: 60) experience with boxing, in the course of my training in various styles repetition has been of utmost centrality in the embodiment of body techniques. While training Muay Thai for two months in Thailand in the spring of 2008, the other fighters and I performed rib kicks on punching bags over 1,000 times per training session. In addition, in the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes at my home club, prior to formal grappling sessions, we continually drill several techniques for forty-five minutes switching back and forth with our partners and between techniques. Repetition, then, is the axiom for learning, and reflection is viewed as being an impediment to the learning of body techniques. Through repetition, there is a mastery of the body technique and a production of change in the fighter’s habitus, in so far as another body technique is added to the body’s technical corpus. Reflection is not only seen as an impediment to learning a body technique, it is also problematic because it is not part of the fight event. Jack and George explain this element of the fight: Jack:

They train you a certain way, so when you are in a fight, you fight exactly the way you train, you don’t even think about it, in fact, you don’t have time to think. Everything is happening too quickly, you just have to react. That is another thing that I try to instill on my students, but it is really, really, hard for them to understand it. I can theorize and theorize, you have to do this and this is going to happen. But until it actually happens, it’s hard to get a grasp, it’s hard to grasp. George: Drills and drills and drills, because, the problem is when you are fighting, you have no time to think, your body is only going to do what it is conditioned to do, even without thinking, next thing you see the hip is out and the arm bar is in. Here Jack and George are reflecting on the nature of fighting and the fact that everything happens at such a fast pace that fighters cannot reflect on their actions. All action in battle is prereflective, or beyond thought (Merleau-Ponty [1962] 2000). The fighter’s body intuitively reacts to their opponents based on the body techniques learned in training. Through the accumulation of proprioceptive memory, the body has registered what it is to do in a given fight scenario. That is, the body senses what it is to do in a fight and reacts accordingly (cf. Featherstone 2006; Massumi 2002).

Strategy Embodied With action in a fight operating at the prereflective level and the fighter’s body acting and reacting intuitively to the actions of their opponent, MMA coaches try to instill strategy into their fighter’s bodies through the repetition of body techniques. That is, in the training of the fighter, the coaches

92

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

try to incorporate techniques that strategically capitalize on the opponent’s weaknesses. Robert discusses this attempt to embody strategy: DS: Robert:

When you are training a fighter, do you develop a strategy to who they are fighting? Yeah, so, a lot of the drills that we train during the week we would tailor them to his strength and his opponent’s weaknesses. So if you are fighting a striker, a guy that likes to strike, and you are a wrestler, you would train a lot of you getting punched until you get the person down, vice versa, if you are a striker fighting a wrestler, you would focus a lot, a lot, on takedown defense.

Drilling techniques repeatedly so that the fighter can embody the strategy and exploit the weaknesses of their opponent is key to success in the sport of MMA. When available, coaches assiduously and thoroughly study the videotapes of their fighter’s opponents, looking for weaknesses in their game. Strategies are then devised and implemented through the drilling of specific techniques. Insofar as fight strategies involve the training of body techniques for a future opponent, the fighter’s body unites the past, present, and the future (cf. Merleau-Ponty [1962] 2000: 239–240). In addition, as George relays in the following excerpt, coaches also develop strategies to utilize the strengths of their fighter: George: I always try to work to what is strongest of our fighters, if they have a strong right cross; everything is going to work from that right cross. If you have a strong kimura, everything is going to start and fi nish from that kimura. I always work based on that. Working to the strengths of their fighters was a common strategy amongst coaches interviewed for this study. MMA fighters are made aware of the strategy to be employed and are cognizant of the rationale behind the strategy. 2 Scott relays why the fighter is informed of the strategy: Scott:

We tell him the strategy. We tell him the strategy so he is invested in it and he knows what we are doing and he understands why we are training him the way we are. I don’t want him to wonder why we are having him sprawl all the time, shouldn’t I be working on my jiu jitsu, shouldn’t I be working on my standup, I want him to know why we are doing the drills we do. It’s easier on them if they know why you are doing something.

Taking the fighter’s body as a field of action, coaches and fighters collaborate in their efforts to embody a strategy to defeat an opponent. Both have an understanding of the goal of training and direct their energies toward bringing the plan to fruition. A fighter is subject to the correction and

Habit(us), Body Techniques, and Body Callusing

93

incitement by his/her coach, but this cooperative approach can be seen as counter to the top-down teaching modus operandi insofar as it is not under the complete control of the coach. Nonetheless, fighters are still forced to take responsibility for their training and to abide by the plan.

Good and Bad Habits We fi nish that and then Brian has us grab two Thai pads and tells us that we are going to practice kicks. He informs us to gather around him in a circle. Everyone is watching intently and he waves Frank over who now has the Thai pads on his arms, so that he can demonstrate a kick.3 “As I said, we are going to practice some Thai kicks today. I want everyone to work on their form, paying attention to details. When you are throwing your kicks from the back leg you want to make sure you get enough rotation in your front leg, to the point that your ankle is facing the pad holder when your shin hits the pad. I know this is hard to do, but try to work on it.” He then demonstrates the kick, his leg swinging around like a whip in an arc-like trajectory, slamming into the Thai pads, driving Frank back a step. “So everyone do kicks off the rear leg for the whole round.” Everyone pairs up and for the three-minute round everyone does Thai kicks off the rear leg. I am holding the pads for Joseph and as he kicks, I point out what mistakes he is making as he kicks the pads. As the round goes on his kicks become progressively better, getting more rotation from the front leg and utilizing the hips to generate power. By the last thirty seconds, Joseph looks apparently tired; sweat beats pouring down his brow, as the kicks become more infrequent. The round is over and I take off the Thai pads and Joseph works to rapidly put them on in the thirty seconds between the round. The bell rings and I start to throw kicks, working to rotate my front leg, concentrating on hitting the pads with my shin. In between the roar of pads being smashed, Brian yells out the crucial aspects of the technique as he walks about the room inspecting everyone’s technique. One minute in and I notice out of the corner of my eye that he is walking over toward me, so I concentrate on getting the technique perfect. To no avail, he says to me, “Keep both hands up, you are dropping your right hand. I know some guys tell you that is OK, but it is a bad habit to get into. If you miss with your kick you are open to getting punched in the face.” He watches me kick again and I try to keep my hands up and he says “Better” and walks away. (Field note excerpt) What is considered a good or bad habit is always in relation to a specific (ideal) way of executing a body technique. In the course of the repetition of a specific body technique, fighters sometimes develop ‘bad’ habits, as I developed the bad habit of dropping my right hand as I threw a Thai kick with my right leg. Both in terms of observation and in terms of personal

94 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment experience, these differences and errors are subtle and sometimes unrecognizable to the fighter but also to a nonpractitioner. This is especially the case with experienced practitioners, where the errors are subtle but make a significant difference in the overall effectiveness of a given technique. As Dewey (1929) states: “the [human] organism is compelled to make variations, and exposed to error and disappointment” (281). Openness to variation can lead to the development of bad habits in the course of attempting to master specific body techniques. On the other hand, it is our sensitivity that provides the basis for change in habit and the development of new habits (Dewey 1929: 281). As shown in the previous field note, the development of new habits is a social act, as while I was holding the Thai pads for my partner, Joseph, I was continually pointing out areas for improvement in his technique. This is not an idiosyncratic form of interaction that is specific to me, but rather, partner-to-partner correction is part of all training sessions (irrespective of the style being trained). MMA departs from traditional martial arts in that it does not involve a system of pedagogy based solely on a top-down master and student relationship. Coupled with partner-to-partner correction is also the correction of the teacher who walks about the class offering points of correction to the students while they are demonstrating their technique. Trainers must be vigilant in their inspection of students’ technique. In addition, as revealed in the following excerpt from Clark, trainers must make sure that students continually perform the technique so as not develop any bad habits: Clark:

DS: Clark:

We spend about forty-five minutes doing repetitions of technique with no resistance so you get the move down and you don’t develop any bad habits, cause the guy is not resisting and then after that, you spar. . . . That is basically the way I was trained. To ensure someone grasps a technique, you just have them do repetition? Yeah, and I check it over and make sure they are doing it right, I will say move your hip out a little more. Make sure they are doing it right and make sure they keep doing it that way.

Here, a nonresisting opponent is used to develop a body technique because it is seen as necessary to not developing bad habits. Bad habits in this sense means poor techniques that are inefficacious in a fight, would leave the fighter open to an opponent’s attack, or that a fighter would not be able to execute a technique on a resisting opponent. Here Clark is vigilant in his attempt to make sure that his students maintain good form in terms of their body techniques. In my experience, this vigilance can be a source of frustration, as some habits are durable and are often unnoticeable to the practitioner. Proprioceptive memory is malleable but the ‘conscious’ actor cannot by fiat change it; bodily memories change over time and in and through social working and reworking of bodies.

Habit(us), Body Techniques, and Body Callusing

95

Gyms as Zones of Body Technique Transference and Development The MMA gym or training facilities are necessary to the production of the MMA fighter. This space provides the social environment for the development of body techniques. Suited with mats, sometimes rings and cages, punching bags, and various types of pads, it provides the rudiments for fighters to practice their techniques. More importantly gyms bring fighters and trainers together in one locus so their combined energies can coproduce the fighter’s body and (possibly) novel body techniques. They act as a zone where body techniques are not only transferred between trainers and students, but between students. As Gabe’s testimony shows, it is the interactions with other fighters with various levels of experience that leads to learning new body techniques and gaining more experience: Gabe:

To be dead honest with you everybody, everybody has something to offer, whether you’re amateur or an experienced fighter. Whether it is your fi rst day training or you have been doing it for thirty years, I think it is a learning experience for everybody. It is a different body to train with, like I said before, any one has the chance to knock any one out so.

A different body provides new challenges, a new field to carry out a fighter’s body techniques. As such, the fighter must adapt to the new body, as the intersubjectivity of sparring engenders a new experience. Fighters do not limit their field of possible bodies to train with to learn new body techniques from their club; they sometimes sojourn to other camps and gyms across the world: Clark:

I box at [name] boxing club downtown, I wrestle at the national training centre in [names city], umm, I do some jiu jitsu and MMA with my students, I got some really good students that I have trained, that push me now, that are around my weight, they have been successful in grappling tournaments, so I can train some jiu jitsu and MMA with them. . . . If I have a big fight coming up, I might take a training trip, like ahh, before [name of fight organization] I was in California, training at [names fight club], with [name of fighter]. Before my last fight, I was in Hawaii training with [names fighter].

Many fighters in this study take trips to Thailand and Brazil to train in Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, respectively, to sharpen their skills in the respective styles. In my case, the trainers at my club encouraged me to travel to Thailand to hone my stand up fighting skills, an area of my technical corpus that was poorly developed. Clark’s statement also shows that the space of the club for fighters is always fluid and that a zone of body

96 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment technique transference is dependent on time and the bodies that are within a given space. Mead ([1934] 1967) locates innovation in the reconstruction that takes place through the reaction of the individual to the group to which he/she belongs. The interaction of the ‘I’ with the group, the propensity for expression, holds the kernels of emergence and innovation. In the case of MMA fighters, the space of the club (however fluid) and the interaction and experience of other fighters’ bodies provides the basis of innovation. Fighters express who they are and often experiment with body techniques, combining them in novel ways. Furthermore, as was the case with world famous Brazilian Jiu Jitsu master and MMA trainer, Eddie Bravo, innovations can develop into a different style of ground fighting (Bravo 2005).4

RBTS AND BODY CALLUSING RBTs are integral to the production of a reflexive sense of self. RBTs in effect produce Mead’s ([1934] 1967) ‘I’ and ‘Me’ split, whereby the agent takes one’s body as a field of action and objectifies oneself as an Other would. “Qua active agent (‘I’) we act upon ourselves as a passive object (‘me’). The rhythm by which we vacillate between I and me in these activities will vary according to the body technique in question” (Crossley 2005: 13). In addition, the actual learning of RBTs is part of the process through which our particular sense of self is developed. This is the mode, in a practical sense, in which we learn to constitute ourselves for ourselves and form a specific experience of self (Crossley 2005: 14). In most cases, the utilization and learning of specifi c RBTs are connected to particular projects of self-development. Specific life-projects require particular RBTs for their practice. The training and learning of body techniques and the sparring that is routinely part of the training of styles associated with MMA requires a level of cardiovascular fitness and strength comparable to, or greater than, high intensity sports like boxing, (ice) hockey, or basketball. At the most basic level, MMA requires that fighters can both give and take pain. Pain thresholds are increased through the actual training, from the toughening the shins while kicking heavy bags, to abdominal exercises in which medicine balls are used to condition the stomach against blows. Beyond this essential requirement, fighters must train to have the stamina of being able to fight three five-minute rounds5. In the practice of training in various martial art styles, the fighter’s body develops the ability to withstand the rigors of the sport, a process I refer to as body callusing. It is also widely recognized by the fighters participating in this study that training in the MMA gym is simply not enough to be successful. That is, body callusing– the process of making the body harder and stronger–extends beyond the spatial confi nes of the club. MMA fighters engage in training associated

Habit(us), Body Techniques, and Body Callusing

97

with RBTs outside of the club that enables them to develop both a body capable of efficiently giving and taking pain and the fitness level requisite of the sport. In the next response, Frank describes his prefight preparation: Frank:

The fight training I was doing every morning either sprints or workout, a weight workout. And then after work I trained ah I would say five days a week, every weekday. And then four (pause), I’d train four weeknights a week [at the MMA club], took Thursdays off, just cause so draining. And then I came in on Saturdays. So I do have five training sessions a week and then five or six conditioning like sprints.

Frank describes a specific RBT assemblage that he engaged in six weeks before and up to his fi rst fight. However, in some cases, fighters are forced to reconsider their fight preparation: Jack:

Run, its fundamental, I learned that in boxing, you have to run, and you have to lift weights, I found in my fi rst fight, I found I was weak. So, for my second fight, I started lifting weights again and adding that to my regimen, I felt actually better, I felt stronger.

In this case, the inclusion of another RBT was included to rectify a weakness before his next fight. Based on his previous fight, Jack reconstructed his prefight regimen and included weight lifting so that he would be stronger in his next fight. As shown in Gabe’s response, reflection on weaknesses does not always follow from the experience of a fight: Gabe:

Every other day I run four K [kilometers], umm and in between those days I sprint, interval training, I also do strength training and plyometrics. Umm, which keeps me in shape, for the most part and that changes, like I will add something to my workout or change it to work on certain aspects of my game or what I need to improve on.

Here, Gabe affects the I/me distinction, where he takes his body as an object in need of change, incorporating additional RBTs into his regimen to improve upon his weaknesses. In addition, he engages in an assemblage of RBTs to maintain the fitness level necessary to participate in MMA. The employment of an assemblage of RBTs is typical of most professional MMA fighters included in this study. After six months of training at the club, I was encouraged by trainers to sprint and lift weights to improve my overall fitness and to keep up with the rigors of the sparring sessions. RBTs are incorporated to raise/maintain endurance levels (swimming, running, sprinting); increase/maintain explosiveness and strength (plyometrics,

98

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

conventional weight training); and increase/maintain coordination (skipping, floor ladder work). Every fighter employs a complex assemblage of RBTs to withstand the rigorous demands of the sport. Six weeks prior to a fight, fighters intensify their training, increasing their engagement with RBTs and specific MMA training sessions. This is both for fight conditioning and to decrease body weight. All coaches in this study noted that the main idea was that at the end of the six weeks, at the time of the fight event, the fighter would ‘peak’. That is, at the end of the six weeks the fighter’s body reaches its zenith in terms of fight preparation (cardiovascular fitness and the precision of fight techniques) and crystallizes into a veritable weapon. The fighter’s body is its hardest and poised for battle.

DISCUSSION In this chapter, I have shown the processes by which an MMA fighter habitus is produced. The phenomenological concept of habitus as a livedthrough-structure-in-process is utilized to show the continually morphing character of fighters’ bodies. I have shown how through mimesis and repetition or ‘becoming parrot,’ fighters learn new fighting techniques and how these techniques are ingrained in the body to the point that they are utilized, prereflexively, in a fight. The inscription of strategy on the bodies of fighters involves the training of specific body techniques for a future opponent, and in so doing, the fighter’s body unites the past, present, and the future. The formation of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ habits was one of the central problematics for MMA trainers, insofar that they have to be vigilant in their efforts to ensure that their fighters maintain good technique. The gym is shown to be the space where techniques are transferred between fighters and fighters and trainers. Body callusing involves a complex and variable combination of RBTs, hardening a fighter’s body so that it can withstand the rigors of the sport. More than anything else, the genesis of habits reveals the being-with of existence. In the development of habits, the intermixing of bodies takes place and the embodied techniques of fighters are transferred. The effect of this intermixing is not a straightforward transference, but in this process there is augmentation that leads to new techniques and development of new styles. This emergence is the locus of creativity and betrays any attempt to reduce habituating bodies to automatons. It is here that attempts to defi ne and produce ‘docile’ bodies (Foucault 1979) ultimatly fail.

7

Narratives of Despair, Loss, and Failure Pain, Injury, and Masculinities

The following field note entry was written, tears running down my face, at a coffee shop in a mall in Chiang Mai, Thailand the day after I was injured by a cut kick from my Thai opponent: I find myself at an impasse; after my Muay Thai match last night I am bruised and battered. I re-injured my left knee at the end in the first round. I was forced to stop the match. . . . I am very disappointed. I trained a long time for this fight and was dominating my opponent until he kicked the side of my left knee. How could this have happened? Now I will have to rehabilitate my knee and will lose all that I gained while in Thailand. Fuck. I feel impotent; my heart hurts. It is laborious to breathe. Pain and injury reminds us of our bodies. When injured, our bodies’ potentialities are limited (Leder 1970). Beyond these factors, injury and failure grips our bodies and reminds us that bodies can be affected. Whereas everyday discourse inscribes notions of bodily integrity and wholeness, injury reveals the vulnerability and breakdown of bodies. As revealed in the previous field note entry, injury and failure engender experiences that make us feel as though we cannot go on. In this chapter I examine the narratives of MMA fighters to explore the experiences of pain, injury, and failure in MMA. Over the last decade, a greater level of focus has been on the experience of pain and the social implications of pain and injury. Specifically, sociological research has drawn attention to the experience of pain in relation to sport (M. Atkinson 2008; Hockey and Allen-Collinson 2007; Loland, Skirstad, and Waddington 2006; Allen-Collinson 2005; Howe 2004; K. Young 2004; Sparkes and Smith 2003). In this chapter, I join a number of qualitative researchers that have illuminated the paradoxical relationship between pain and injury and the performance of masculinities through sport (see Sparkes and Smith 2002; White and Young, 1999; K. Young, White, and McTeer 1994; Messner 1992a). On the one hand, athletes are mandated to live in and through pain associated with injury while participating

100

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

in sport (e.g., Burstyn 1999). On the other hand, bodily injury, especially debilitating and chronic injuries, actually contribute to the cessation of the performance of specific masculinities through sport. In their analysis of the sportization of MMA, Van Bottenburg and Heilbron (2006) briefly consider perceptions of risk of injury in MMA, but fail to engage with how fighters become injured and how they experience injury. This is important, as the institution of rules limits the types of injuries that may be incurred by athletes. Furthermore, as I found, fighters sustain the majority of their injuries training for their fights. This fact makes sport science approaches to injury in MMA faulty, as in their tabulations of injury at MMA events they miss the majority of the injuries that actually take place in the sport (e.g., Bledsoe et al. 2006). Taking the work of Howe (2001, 2004) and Smith and Sparkes (2008; see also Sparkes and Smith 2002, 2003) as axiomatic for researching pain and injury in sport, this chapter elucidates the ways fighters experience pain and injury in everyday life. Roderick, Waddington, and Parker (2000) show that the meanings associated with pain and injury, along with the status of athletes who are unable to play because of injury, can only be understood by locating these shared meanings within the network of social relations characteristic of a given sport. To this end, I examine how fighters within the sport of MMA interpret pain while participating in MMA and their resultant bodily injuries, how injury impacts upon their sport narratives, and how this impacts their masculine self. Predicated on the earlier discussions of ideal masculine embodiment as by MMA fighters in Chapter 4, I analyze narratives of despair and loss that correspond to various phases (from the perspective within current MMA careers and life after MMA careers) in the lives of professional MMA fighters. This chapter links earlier discussions of fighters’ perceptions of ideal masculine embodiment to perceptions of injury both during their careers as professional MMA fighters and after their careers as MMA professional fighters. This chapter contributes to the existing literature on pain, injury, and masculinities through a consideration of the various temporalities pertaining to how professional athletes interpret their bodies through various stages of their careers, from active participation to after their careers. In addition, I explore the role of failure in the cage in the reorientation of fighter’s careers.

MASCULINITIES, SPORT, AND INJURY Various masculinities are, in part, formed through violence, and its performance works to signify specific masculinities on bodies in particular locales. In this sense, violence “pervades, infuses and reproduces bodies, gendered bodies. Violence is not a thing that is affected or even determined by gender; rather it is the very constructions of both violence and gender that are formed in relation to each other” (Hearn 2003: 181). Hearn (2003)

Narratives of Despair, Loss, and Failure 101 has argued that, in one sense, violence is antithetic to health and bodily integrity. That is, it contributes to the degradation of bodies. In another sense, he suggests that violence makes the body of the violator. Some boys are taught from a very young age to be violent and as such, the performance of physically violent acts may be an indicator of development of an ‘ideal’, healthy masculinity (White, Young, and McTeer 1995; Connell 2000; Hearn 2003). Hearn exclaims that “the doing of violence involves action on the body of others, and it also involves the making of the body of the violator, in this context the bodies of men” (Hearn 2003: 170). In terms of sport performance, due to the fact that every sport has some level of violence (Guilbert 2004), it is one of the primary means of becoming masculine (Whitehead 2002). Moreover, (primarily) male bodies’ successful performance of masculinities through violence in sport is a key site for understanding men’s health and broader constructions of masculinity (see Burstyn 1999; Courtenay 2009; Lohan 2010). Sport and the attendant training regimes involve a toleration of pain and a denial of the long-term costs associated with the use of the body in this manner (Smith and Sparkes 2005, 2008; Sparkes and Smith 2002, 2003; Seidler 1994; Maguire 1993; Hoberman 1992). In Chapter 6, I focused on the learning of body techniques in situ that contribute to the production of a particular mixed martial art fighter habitus. The previous chapter moved us closer to understanding the training regimes fighters engage in to turn their bodies into weapons, but I did not explicate how fighters experience pain while training and fighting. In this chapter, I elucidate how fighters’ injuries render their bodies as benign (in terms of their potential to commit violence through participation in MMA) and alter their interpretation of their embodied selves. Pain is defi ned in quotidian defi nitions as an unpleasant sensation that is in contradistinction to pleasure (see Strawson 1994). The issue with this conceptualization is that it does not consider the variance of perceptions of pain and the many ways and contexts in which the concept of pain is deployed. The articulation of a person’s pain threshold is a significant cultural expression, heavily influenced by the subject’s social characteristics (Bendelow 1993). Herein, I employ a definition of pain as an indicator of bodily damage, an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage (Kenney and Craig 2012; Howe 2004; Ahmed 2004). Pain is subjectively experienced and, in its sensory form, is associated with acute and chronic types of pain that are tied to temporality. Acute pain is short in duration and happens at the point of bodily harm. Chronic pain is longer term pain that may continue for months and sometimes years (Howe 2004). The emotional dimension of acute and chronic pain is efficacious of particular action responses. With respect to injury, herein I defi ne injury as the breakdown in the structure of a body, which may affect or limit its abilities. Injury may circumscribe, but certainly not suspended, bodies’ potentialities.

102

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

In attempts to perform masculinities through violence, pain, and injuries evince failures to adhere to the precepts of normative masculinity. Bodies do not merely adhere to the cultural discourses regarding masculinity. As Butler (1990) explains: “Gender is also a norm that can never be fully internalized; ‘the internal’ is a surface signification, and gender norms are fi nally phantasmatic, impossible to embody” (141). Efforts to embody masculine ideals inevitably fail (Kaufman 1993). Whereas Butler points to the failure of performances of gender ideals, she does not articulate the specific ways bodies fail to materialize gender ideals in the course of attempts to perform gender. Herein, I explore how withstanding of pain and injury is interpreted as elemental to participation in MMA. I also examine injury as failure amongst professional MMA fighters both in terms of failure to perform violence through the participation in MMA and also, in the ways that fighters lament and offer narratives of despair and loss regarding failures to participate and maintain their positions within the hierarchies of the sport. I show the ways in which bodies breaking down through injury reflect a failure to perform masculinities and loss of status in the masculine hierarchy of MMA amongst current and former professional fighters. Narratives of despair correspond to a temporary diminution of status and participation in MMA resulting from pain and injury and the attendant emotional states of sadness (cf. Kemper 1990; Kemper and Collins 1990). Narratives of loss are based on a past that could have been and a loss of status in the masculine hierarchy of MMA due to debilitating injury, the chronic pain associated with long-term injury, and the attendant emotional states of sadness. In the fi nal remaining section, I consider how fighters’ react to failure in the cage and the implications of this form of failure to their future careers.

PAIN IN BATTLE Throughout this ethnography, I primarily experienced pain associated with injury and muscle soreness before and after training. In the ‘heat of battle,’ pain is not experienced in the same intensity. The following field note reflects an occasion where I was injured during a sparring session: I am paired up with Martin for sparring. I slip on my gloves and put in my mouth guard. . . . We touch gloves and immediately I circle away from his power side [his right side]. I throw a right kick into his ribs, it lands and he winces. I murmur through my mouth guard asking if he is ok. He nods and we touch gloves and he throws a double jab. I cover up and he throws a right cross to the body. It lands on the ribs and I immediately circle away. Immediately I throw a jab, then a right cross. He covers up and I throw a right kick to his left leg. The kick

Narratives of Despair, Loss, and Failure 103 lands on the fleshy part of the thigh and Martin lunges in and returns with a cross. I cover and he throws a left kick. He is close and I grab hold of his leg as he kicks me. He resists and tries to squirm away. I push toward him driving him back. He loses his balance and we fall to the ground. My head falls into his knee and my head bounces off. I quickly get up and Martin makes his way to his feet. I am back on my toes ready to go. He drops his right hand and with his left glove he points to his left eye. Through his mouth guard he says, “you are cut, you are bleeding.” I look over into the mirror and there is a sizeable cut under my eye. Blood starts to flow down my face. I cannot feel the cut. (Field note excerpt) As shown in this excerpt, the differentiation of pain in and outside of battle is salient as it is what allows fighters to push past (manageable) injuries and muscle soreness to compete in the cage. A fighter, for the most part, does not feel the pain associated with injuries while fighting. In one of many Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournaments I competed in, I had a broken hand but chose to compete as I interpreted the pain as manageable enough to compete.1 See Figures 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 for a examples of the injuries than can be sustained while fighting.

Figure 7.1

Stitches under left eye.

104

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

Figure 7.2

Hand in cast.

Figure 7.3

X-ray of fractured fifth metacarpal.

Narratives of Despair, Loss, and Failure 105 Bodies’ ability to withstand extreme pain answers, more than any other response, the Spinozan question of what a body can do. Fractured and broken, bodies’ manifold potentialities are displayed. Such a potentiality is revealed in the pushing through pain in combat. The following excerpts by Bernard and Alexander reveal the experience of pain in combat: Bernard:

Your adrenaline is rushing so much that at that point you know you don’t, you don’t really feel that, you know you feel the blow a little bit but not to the point of shying away you know what I mean? The fight is down and you get to work. You make sure it’s him or me you know what I mean so it’s better him than me. Alexander: I mean you’re not going to feel stuff that you would feel in training. I mean but it defi nitely does play a part. I mean we’re human beings and if you get hit hard enough it hurts. I mean I have felt shots. Here, pain is not seen as an impediment to combat but something that can be overcome in battle. In Bernard’s case, pain associated with opponent’s attacks acts as a signal to (re)action. A portion of the research subjects stated that until a strike in the head from their opponents, they did not really feel like they were in a fight. That is, the seriousness of the fight event was not apparent until they got hit in the head. When struck, fi ghters discussed two potentialities: fight or fl ight. The potentiality to fight is a reaction trained into fighters in terms of technique but also a reaction developed vis-à-vis sparring. The potentiality toward fl ight, while learned earlier in a person’s life, is never something exorcised as even the most experienced fighters may cover up or cower in the face of their opponent’s attacks. 2 In regards to habituating to a fight response, learning of how to take pain and reacting to getting hit is reflected in the responses of elitelevel professional fighters: Jacque:

With experience you build toughness, through sparring. When you fi rst start sparring you get tense, and it hurts more. The more you get hit, the more you spar, the more you are able to relax, when you get hit, it is much easier. Nelson: I train to take pain, like I don’t know if you have seen me train on [names site], but I do pain conditioning exercises where I will take kicks and punches and do squats and get hit over and over again. Pain is temporary; suffering is long term. It is not like I am suffering. I don’t worry about getting hit, I get hit and then I feel the pain, but I don’t worry about it. You cannot fi ght through suffering. That is a little bit different, usually when you are suffering you are dying. If it’s pain, I don’t worry about pain.

106

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

Lucas:

The training sucks when you are training for a fight like that, it is painful, I had cauliflower ear, going into the fight every part of my body was injured, my body ached. So, I was super injured. . . . I would stop telling my coaches that I was injured because I was so embarrassed. I would go to physio, and I would not tell them everything because I thought they would think I was a hypochondriac . . .

Jacque and Nelson’s responses reflect a ‘body pedagogics’ (Shilling and Mellor 2007; Shilling 2008), whereby through adaptive learning, fighters learn how to react to the pain incurred in an MMA event. Part of the normative masculinity of MMA involves building the ‘toughness’ that Jacque and Nelson refer to. In relation to Nelson, as part of the practice of MMA masculinity, he engages in exercises that ‘callus’ (see Chapter 6) his body in particular ways to withstand the rigors of the sport. With regard to Lucas, we can see that expressing one’s pain to others is shunned in the sport of MMA (cf. Kenney and Craig, 2011). In my home MMA club and some of the clubs I visited, signs adorned the wall saying ‘The More you sweat in the club, the Less you bleed in combat’ and ‘Pain is weakness leaving the body’. These ‘maxims’ reflect the virtues of the normative masculinity of MMA, that is, learning to live with and through pain to attain victory. This training and fighting through pain becomes a normalized element of participation in the sport.

NARRATIVES OF DESPAIR: LIVING WITH PAIN AND INJURY Pain and injury impacts on the ways athletes construct their narratives, see themselves in terms of their identities, and view their futures in sport or life more broadly (Allen-Collinson 2005). Successful participation in sport, especially at the elite level, requires constant and unencumbered practice of skills and technique. As noted in Chapters 5 and 6, to be successful in the sport of MMA, fighters must continually add new body techniques to their technical fighting corpus. Mastery of fight techniques involves continually practicing techniques, but injury can disrupt practice. Scott and Malcolm explain the impact of injury on training: Scott:

When I was injured, I was depressed. Big time depressed because I couldn’t get over my injury, I had to keep taking months off training . . . this is my lower back. I injured it lifting weights, while I was training for my fight, and it just kept nagging, it wouldn’t heal no matter what I did, no matter what doctors I went to. For me I really need to come in and train. When I am training hard, I feel good, I am happy. And when I am not training, I am not

Narratives of Despair, Loss, and Failure 107 getting I guess the endorphin rush all the time; I really felt, I felt depressed for the last year and a half. Not badly depressed, but I felt miserable, for sure. It feels almost like, it feels like I am spinning my wheels, like I’m completely wasting my time, like I am sitting and doing nothing. . . . I couldn’t maintain my training regimen, I couldn’t maintain my technique, so, it was somewhat disturbing to see myself going backwards and not being able to do anything about it. Malcolm: Terrible man. At fi rst real bad because I like hurt my knee and I was like I had never had a serious injury so to speak before with months off and stuff but that was a disaster for me because that was my income as well as my training and what I love to do. So that kind of threw everything into a spin. But I had people supporting me and stuff so I got through that and now I’m back training a little bit in terms of ground and stand up is getting good. Here Scott refl ects on the impact of injury on his ability to return to training. Scott’s discussion of chronic pain and attendant frustration refl ects what I call a narrative of despair. This narrative of despair is predicated on discrepancy between an ideal state of bodily performance and an actual injured state of being. The ideal bodily state according to the normative masculinity of MMA is a way of being-in-the-world, the maintenance of a body active in fi ghting (cf. Gill, Henwood, and McLean 2005). When enjoyment is derived from the optimal level of performance in MMA, this narrative of despair is an absence or loss in the lives of fi ghters. Furthermore, Scott believes that some of the technique he has worked to master and incorporate into his technical corpus is lost in his time off from training. As Malcolm’s statement shows, this narrative of despair regarding injury is also in relation to the loss of income and control over one’s future. In injury the body speaks back to discourses regarding participation in sport and reorients our potentialities. Gilbert reveals this aspect of injury: Gilbert: When I am injured I get a little bit depressed and I’m a real positive guy but even then I feel pretty positive about it. Like I try, I have a real optimistic outlook on everything and I kind of always have and it’s just one more, usually I look at it as one more obstacle you know it’s like this is part of it. You know you have to learn these things, there’s always obstacles to try and do what you want and injury is something that is another one. But it is a bit depressing. It’s like you know you’re working so hard on something and now your body has told you that you can’t; you have to take a break and that kind of sucks but you know you try and make the best of it.

108

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

Jacque:

Yeah, I have been injured. I have had several different surgeries even. It’s depressing. When you exercise a lot, you get that natural high, without that you can get depressed. It’s hard man, you try to train as hard as you can and get some exercise when you can cause a day without exercise is a day without sunshine. My body hurts a lot worse when I am not training. I get more ache and it feels like the arthritis is kicking in.

Prior to this response, Gilbert had listed over a dozen different injuries he had incurred in the course of training. He reflects on how his relation to the world is altered in the event of injury and shows how, through injury, bodies’ potentialities are reoriented. With regard to Jacque’s narrative, injury removes an activity from his life that brings a considerable level of joy. Bodies convey their limits and cause fighters to readjust to their new state of embodiment. With Jacque, life comes to be dominated by a state of deterioration. In both cases, a degree of impairment is interpreted as part of the sport of MMA and an ongoing struggle to be dealt with. 3 As stated earlier, chronic pain is a longer term pain that may continue for months, sometimes years. Chronic pain can become part of one’s identity and how one views himself/herself. Certain injuries incurred in sport or otherwise can mark movement from one form of embodiment to another (Smith and Sparkes 2008; see also Ewan, Lowy, and Reid 1991). Athletes often live through pain both while performing their roles as sporting participants and in their day-to-day lives (see Roderick, Waddington, and Parker 2000). Meanings related to MMA may be intricately tied with the experience of chronic pain. When asked about being injured in the course of training, Peter responded in the following way: Peter:

Oh yeah. I’ve never went into a fight un-injured. I think that goes back to the level of intensity I train. I don’t like breaking, stopping. So I think that’s hurt me a lot. Like I have had two shoulders surgeries over the last eight years and I just, I won’t let myself heal, like I know that’s a bad thing. Like I broke my hand and not get a cast. I mean I’ve done stupid things just because of my love and passion for the sport I just want to train. Like I know it’s going to hurt me in the long run and everything like that but I mean that’s what I do. . . . Yeah I work, you know I go to bed every night sore and can’t sleep and you know I can’t, can’t do like a lot of things in my life. Like you know it hurts me to twist a bottle off like it hurts my shoulder to do anything, sleep, drive the car. It doesn’t matter and eventually it’s just a part of who I am.

Peter conveys that his participation in MMA is characterized by injury. His particular style of training leads to chronic injuries. The pursuit of a

Narratives of Despair, Loss, and Failure 109 life dominated by passion for MMA leads to continual injuries and a failure to allow his body to properly heal and overcome the trauma of injury. Chronic injuries come to dominate the experience of activities related to everyday life. Being injured comes to be a recurrent embodied experience. The persistence in MMA despite the continual experience of pain is a form of adherence to the normative masculinity of MMA.

NARRATIVE OF LOSS Drawing on biographical data from athletes experiencing spinal cord injury, Sparkes and Smith (2002) show how body-self relationships shifted from an absent presence in the lives of these men to something that was other, problematic, and alien. They reveal that transformation instigated anxieties concerning the combined loss of specific masculine and athletic identities that were formerly at the apex of the participants’ identity hierarchy. In such circumstances, their respondents showed an intensified desire for a restored self. In the same study of spinal cord injury, Smith and Sparkes (2005) found that the most common kinds of hope used by the men were shaped by powerful narrative tropes that circulate in Western cultures. In this section, I consider MMA fighters’ narratives regarding living with pain and injury after participation in the sport and how this impacts on their involvement in the sport and their sense of masculine self. Injuries ineluctably lead to missed opportunities. During the course of my training, I was offered to fight in an amateur MMA match. Due to a pulled groin, I had to withdraw from the fight. Injuries not only reorient bodily potentialities but also prevent and enable career paths of the MMA fighter. A fighter’s existence is not only predicated on wins and losses, but also injury can set a particular line or path of existence. The event of injury can be a specter that lingers in a fighter’s body. The following narrative of loss (cf. Smith and Sparkes 2005) reveals the transmogrification of the fighter’s path: Patrick: Blown out both shoulders, my knee, broke my nose. These aren’t my teeth. . . . Funny, but one thing that really kills you is my neck that doesn’t allow me to wrestle anymore and do judo and stuff that I really like. And you know as far as injuries that’s my big injury, and that’s from training. DS: What is your general, what is your general mood or how do you feel when you’re, like what is it, what are you feeling? Patrick: It’s depressing, it’s awful. And it, for me when you’re injured, it depends on what it is. You have to learn about your injury and see what it is and if you can fight with it, for this, this has been going on for years and years and it’s going to haunt me the rest of my life. I’ll never be the same. I can’t do things the way I used to. My body doesn’t, my whole left side from my waist up, it doesn’t

110 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment act, it doesn’t do the things that I tell it to do anymore and I was just, what really sucks about that end, what really haunts you with injuries is I’m in constant pain, some days are worse than others. But the fact is like that, my last fight I got hurt but, it fi nally went about three or four weeks after my last fight. I was offered fights for two years after that and all those guys who offered me to fight they’re all [names fighter], you know, who else, [names fighter], all the guys that are in the top ten now are all the guys that they wanted me to fight because you know my fight, my two fights at [names fighter organization], my last one in Japan put me at number ten in the world. Bodies and life trajectories are reoriented in the event of injury, that is, bodies take on a different character. Bodies’ reactions or intentionality, broadly speaking, can be transmogrified in less than ‘ideal’ ways. Patrick is a retired elite-level professional fighter, and he holds the residues of past injuries. His body is limited in terms of his potentialities due to his injuries, and the mastery of his body that comes with engaging with martial arts is fundamentally limited. Patrick’s case reveals missed futures and missed fight events because of his injuries. Patrick’s narrative of loss is based on a past that could have been and a loss of status in the masculine hierarchy of MMA. The constant pain resulting of his injuries is a continual reminder of this loss of status within the sport. The pain of combat can also affect individuals in ways that are not reflected in the mere listing off of injuries. Pain and injury remind us of our bodies. When injured, bodies’ potentialities are limited. Beyond these factors, injury and failure grips bodies and reminds us that bodies can be affected. Whereas everyday discourse inscribes notions of bodily integrity and wholeness, injury reveals the vulnerability and breakdown of bodies. The less spectacular but equally meaningful participation in training is limited for Patrick because of his injuries. As shown in my field note reflection at the beginning of this chapter and Patrick’s case, this relation to injury can be experienced as a living death (cf. Ahmed 2004), where one experiences a form of pain and regret associated with a life that could have been.

FAILURE IN THE CAGE In MMA (and most combat sports), a common idiom expressed by many interview subjects and found in many commentaries is that “You’re only as good as your last fight.” This indicates that fighter’s performance in MMA events is crucial to the way in which they are perceived by fellow fighters and fans. In the following section, I consider the ways in which fighters experience failure and what it means in terms of their participation in MMA.

Narratives of Despair, Loss, and Failure 111 In MMA, losing a match forces fighters to make choices in terms of paths to take in relation to the sport. In aging fighters, the question of retirement becomes a consideration. In the case of younger fighters, they can either remain in inertia or they can creatively respond to what contributed to their loss (cf. Shilling 2008). This may mean incorporating additional body techniques, improving on existing body techniques, or engaging in RBTs that will improve their strength, speed, and endurance. Beyond these readjustments, failure can also produce lifestyle changes in fighters. DS:

Has there been a particular event in MMA that has changed your life? Alfonso: In my career, one of the key moments was when I went to the UFC in 2006 and then I had two losses. Then I had a choice to fight or to teach. If I had to do something, to teach, I had to do it for good. By then, my wife, she got pregnant. That moment, I remember vividly because I had to decide whether to fight in Russia or open my own gym and just do my business. I chose then to be a professional in everything I do, and start to be successful. That was the moment in 2006 when I fought in Russia; that really stands out for me. Since then, I have never lost. Alfonso’s two losses were formative in terms of his relation to his career in the sport of MMA. The two possible career trajectories, if she or he wants to remain in the sport in relative capacities, are either coaching or fighting. Prior to his losses he was a professional mixed martial artist, but his lifestyle was not in line with the asceticism that is necessary for success in the sport of MMA. Coupled with the event of the birth of his child, the failures acted as a catalyst to a greater level of conformance to the normative masculinity of MMA. Failure can also produce emotional experiences in fighters and attendant physical manifestations of weeping. The experience of failure can, beyond markings on the flesh, impact a fighter in terms of leaving an emotional trace on the experience of fighting. The following excerpts reveal this impression of failure on fighters: Karl: Ethan:

Clark:

You know a loss in front of a hometown crowd, something like that, that shit will fuck you up for a while. It was a bad loss. I was crying but I mean the second time around when I lost in the fi nal bout due to submission it was, I didn’t mind so much you know. The loser of the fi rst fight [of the event], who got knocked out in ten seconds, I see him come back into the change room and he has got his hoodie over his head, it is his fi rst MMA fight and he got knocked out in ten seconds and he is crying, the doctor comes over and he is like, do you even remember what happened, you

112

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment got knocked out senseless, the doctor goes to him. He is crying and I was just thinking what an asshole, right, and then I was thinking, this was the best thing that could of happened because I see this guy and remember saying to myself, there is no way that is going to be me by the end of the night.

Karl reflects on the fact that, due to the public nature of the MMA event, losing in front of family and friends may have a negative impact on fighter’s level of confidence and their ability to carry on in the sport. Ethan reveals that after his fi rst loss, due to the shock of failure, he began to weep. Clark witnessing of another fighters devastating loss and weeping impelled him to recognize the gravity of the situation and focus his attention towards the impending fight. Weeping in these cases is to be understood as socially induced in the transformation of the self qua singularity (Barbalet 2005). The bodily process of weeping plays a key role in harmonizing or reintegrating a fighter’s self-concept after the traumatic event of a loss in a fight that disrupts their prior image as a fighter. Weeping acts as a facilitating mechanism as it is implicated in the changes of their self-concept as a fighter (see Barbalet 2005). Weeping works to discharge the experience of loss and the relation of failure to the opponent and those that witness the MMA event (cf. Katz 1999). In many senses, weeping can signal a loss of status in the hierarchy amongst fellow fighters and reflect a changing interpretation of the fighter in his everyday associations.

CONCLUSION In this chapter I have reflected on the narratives of despair and loss resulting from the pain and injury experienced in relation to the sport of MMA. This article speaks to existing popular and academic understandings of men and masculinities and sport bodies more generally, insofar as it rejects notions regarding ‘unfeeling’ men in sport. Firstly, this chapter reveals, through an analysis of the narratives, athletes’ lives and how pain and injury has implications for many aspects of their lives beyond sporting activities. Secondly, pain reveals the potentialities of bodies and not merely reduces bodies to meaninglessness (cf. Scarry 1985). Injury in MMA is important as it reveals the breakdown of bodies vis-à-vis training and fighting. Malpas and Wickham (1995) note that despite failure being a central feature of social life, little attention in sociology has been dedicated to the role that failure plays in social action. This chapter contributes to an understanding of failure in the sociology of sport through elucidating how through injury bodies fail to materialize ideal masculinities through participation in sport. In regards to MMA, pain and injury inhibits fighters’ capacities to perform masculinity vis-à-vis violence that is characteristic of

Narratives of Despair, Loss, and Failure 113 participation in the sport of MMA. Failure to perform violence through participation in sport does not necessarily point to the end of the performance of masculinities but a continual reformation of meanings associated with masculinity. In the world of MMA, fighters capitalize on other fighters’ specific injuries, in some cases, purposely attacking a damaged knee with leg kicks. This also reveals the specificity of injuries as they are often localized to specific areas of the bodies of fighters. Bodies are never whole and they cannot be conceived as a coherent sums of their parts (see Nancy, 2000, 2008). This makes Wacquant (2004) and Bourdieu’s (1984) concept of body capital problematic on a number of levels. Body capital is based on the notion that embodied actors, boxers in Wacquant’s (1995b, 2004) case, build body capital in and through working on the body and, in turn, exchange body capital for economic capital through prize fighting. This is a zero sum game where the body can be rationally traded for economic capital. It is as if the rational actor, motivated by the acquisition of economic capital, enters into the game of MMA and strategically attempts to capitalize on the body capital generated in the gym. This concept is flawed specifically in relation to MMA and more broadly in terms of its ontological presuppositions. In the fi rst instance, MMA fighters are considerably less remunerated than other professional athletes, making earning enough to subsist on earnings a difficult task. Only the elite level fighters, primarily in heavier weight categories, make enough money to be considered wealthy. Prizefighting boxers in the 1980s and 1990s, like Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield, made considerably more than any MMA fighter has ever made in MMA. All this is to say that the working on the body associated with the concept of body capital is a poor fit as most fighters fight for the love of the sport (this was indicated by almost all the research subjects interviewed). In addition, keeping with the conjecture that bodies are never a coherent whole, fighters build parts of their bodies and add to their technical corpus in varying intensities and not as capital. Bodies may become injured in a part of a body while remaining strong in other parts. Bodies are never built in wholes; they are never traded as wholes for economic capital.

8

Emotions and Violence

Despite early assertions regarding the salience of emotions in sporting activity (see Ferguson 1981; Maguire 1991b), the study of emotions remains marginal within the sociology of sport literature (for notable exceptions, see Allen-Collinson 2005; Lilleaas 2007). Emotions are important as they lead persons to corresponding modes of action. Emotion is produced by situations and is experienced as transformations of dispositions to act (Barbalet 2001; Katz 1999; Collins 2004). In MMA, fighters cite various ways in which they prepare themselves to fight including ‘getting psyched up’ and, in some cases, such Cartesian sayings as ‘mind over matter’. Whereas getting ‘psyched up’ is part of many high performance sports (see Snyder and Ammons 1993), there is very little research on how fighters experience and habituate to the experience of intense emotions associated with fighting situations. In this chapter I emphasize the importance of emotions prior to and during MMA fighting contexts. Edwards’s (2006) has opined that there is often confusion between men and masculinities in discussions of violence. Frequently lacking is an “interrogation of the relations of violence and masculinity, rather than men, and this in turn often involves questions of the violation of men themselves as well as their violence against others” (Edwards 2006: 4–5). As noted earlier, various masculinities are, in part, formed through violence, and its performance works to signify specific masculinities on bodies (Hearn 2003) in particular locales. What I also want to stress and what will be shown is that even the most powerful of men fi nd it difficult to bring themselves to physical violence. This is to say that violence is not easy and involves transcending intense emotional experiences. This chapter is structured in seven sections. In the fi rst section, I offer my approach to emotions. I then consider the relationship between masculinity and violence and sport, violence, and emotions in the next two sections, respectively. I then consider confrontational tension as fundamental to the precombat experience. This is followed by a consideration of the positive emotion (productive) of confidence and how the experience of confidence is intensified through training. In the next section, I treat frustration as an oppositional, negative emotion (to confidence) and show how such an experience is intensified in relation to an opponent and through

Emotions and Violence

115

the objectification of one’s body. In the fi nal section, I consider how certain emotions are seen as apposite in a fight and others are viewed as clouding a fighter’s ability to control their aggression.

MEN, MASCULINITY, AND EMOTIONS The dominant view of men is that they are unemotional, inexpressive, and impersonal (Kiesling 2005). This view is replicated in academic work focused on men and masculinities (e.g., see Bird 1996). Bird (1996) avers that within ‘hegemonic masculinity’ expressing certain emotions signifies weakness and is devalued, whereas emotional detachment signifies strength and is valued. Consequently, emotions come to be associated with women, who are represented as closer to nature, ruled by appetite, and less able to transcend the body through thought, will, and judgment. In my view, this approach to gender and emotions conflates emotions and facial affect and therefore takes men as emotionless. Affect control and the lack of expression of specific emotions among men is interpreted as men not experiencing or being able to in some way negate their experience of emotion. Contrary to such a view, I follow Heidegger ([1926] 1962), Barbalet (2001), and Ahmed (2004) and consider emotions as integral to all social processes. In this view, emotions are relational and experienced within all forms of sociality between and toward humans and objects (see also Walby and Spencer 2012). Particular emotions dispose persons to commensurate types of action. Emotion is provoked by circumstances and is experienced as transformations of dispositions to act (Barbalet 2001; see also Katz 1999). Emotions also leave distinct impressions on those that experience them in particular social situations (Heidegger [1926] 1962; Ahmed 2004). Positive and negative emotions are also intensified through the carrying out of ritualistic social encounters (Collins 2004). I am not interested in the classification of emotions or approaches that try to establish patterns between emotions, be it primary, secondary, and tertiary emotions (see J. Turner and Stets 2005). Rather, I am interested in what emotions do (Barbalet 2001; Ahmed 2004), specifically efficacious emotions that lead to particular actions. One of the main concerns is on the experiential fl ow or shading of specifi c emotions into other emotions (see Katz 1999; Barbalet 2001).

MASCULINITY AND VIOLENCE Traditionally, commentators on violence have slipped into the presupposition that violence is a ‘natural proclivity’ of humanity, insofar as it inheres in ‘human nature’ and it is a requisite to the maintenance of community (Couzens 1971; cf. Collins 2008). Another presupposition is that violence

116

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

is always and everywhere instrumental, that is, utilized as a means to an external end. In a more specific sense, analysts continually posit that men have a greater propensity for committing violence (Scheff 2003; Theweleit 2003). Based on this regularity, Theweleit (2003) has gone so far as to state that women give birth to life and men give birth to death. Discussions of men and violence fi rst emphasize the regularity of physical violence among men (Bowker 1998; Comack 2008) and then stress the instrumental element of physical violence among men, be it in sport (Burstyn 1999; Dunning 1986) or against women (Pappas, McKenry, and Catlett 2004; Gadd 2003; Mullaney 2007). Such arguments that discuss specifi cally male relationships to violence sometimes verge on an essentialism, misdiagnose the ingredients necessary for violence, and/or the specifi c masculinities that are associated with socially corrosive violent behavior. A case in point of this phenomenon is Scheff’s (2003) work on ‘male’ emotions and violence. Scheff posits that rage and violence are predicated on three conditions: no affectional attachments, a single overarching obsession, and the complete repression of shame. These conditions must be met before destructive violence can be carried out. In customary fashion, Scheff evinces that men qualify for such acts more frequently. This is, putatively, due in part to men’s socialization into being strong, brave, and competent and the suppression and disguising of such emotions as grief and shame. Another assertion Scheff makes is that men are socialized into paying less attention to affectual bonds than women, and hence, are able to engage in destructive violence. There are several problems with such an approach to violence. Based on Collins’s (2008) exhaustive work on violence and emotions and evidence provided here, individuals, specifically men, have to overcome tension and fear before they can commit violence. This is, by no means, an automatic or uncomplicated task. In light of the research on sport (Nixon 1996; Bramham 2003) and men’s groups (Tiger [1969] 1984; Nardi 1992), the notion that men avoid affectual attachments is flawed. Men seek different affectual attachments. The experience of bonds does not necessarily deter or preclude engagement in violence. What is at stake here is first a knee-jerk association between being a male and testosterone and failure to recognize that there are men that live their lives without engaging in violence and women who are extremely violent (the Ladette1 phenomenon in the United Kingdom is a case in point).2 Secondly, the failure to place emphasis on the connection between certain masculinities and specific types of violence results in a further failure to understand and address the types of violence that are not characterized by abuse and coercion. Lastly, by limiting the analysis of violence to male relationships, we fail to understand the precipitants of violence and the situational characteristics of violence in general. In the next section, I consider sport and violence and the type of violence in MMA.

Emotions and Violence

117

VIOLENCE, EMOTIONS, AND SPORT Whereas Guilbert (2004) has shown that forms of violence are prevalent across the spectrum of sports from judo to swimming, Dunning (1986) has argued that several distinctions should be made when considering the phenomenology of violence in sport. One main distinction that must be considered is whether violence is in a ‘rational’ or an ‘affective’ form (Dunning 1986: 226). Rational or instrumental forms of violence, common to modern, civilized sports, are engaged in for the purposes of achieving an end beyond the act of violence itself. Rules are transgressed and a violent act is committed so that a competitor can gain an advantage and win a competition. In the case of affective or expressive forms of violence, common to premodern, uncivilized societies, these acts of violence are committed out of emotional satisfaction, as ends in themselves (Dunning 1986: 226). As part of the segmental bonding of expressive forms of violence, individuals also engaged in violence for cathartic purposes to exact revenge on a rival group or person (Dunning 1986: 235–236). In the case of MMA, where rules are instituted to encourage certain forms of violence, there is a sublimation of the distinction between affective and rational forms of violence. Another key distinction that is recognized as crucial to typifications of violence is whether or not a weapon is used (Dunning 1986). In reflecting on the practices that constitute the violent body, the distinction between whether or not a weapon is used is moot, as the fighter’s body becomes a violent weapon. Erasure of distinction between affective and rational forms of violence within MMA can be conceptualized as a form of autotelic violence (Schinkel 2004). Autotelic violence is a form of violence that is self-referential, in which individuals engage in violence for the sake of violence: as an end in itself. To look at the form of violence in MMA in this sense is an aesthetic approach to violence that seeks to uncover the intrinsic features of violence. Schinkel (2004: 17) proposes that some people may feel drawn toward violence because it gives them pleasure. Schinkel (2004: 19) explains that the effect of this pleasurable aspect of violence is that means and ends become fluid concepts that are inseparable, and as such, form and meaning are sublimated. In Schinkel’s words, “the will to violence only wills violence itself” (original emphasis: 19). Autotelic violence can be thought of as complementary to explanations that focus on the antecedents to the act of violence, which miss forms of violence as ends in themselves or overlook the autotelic aspect of violence (cf. Katz 1988). Through a phenomenology of violence, we then elucidate the autotelic aspects of the acts themselves. The conjecture that MMA is a form of autotelic violence is not to suggest that violence in MMA training and competitions go unfettered. As noted, rules are instituted to curb certain forms of violence in MMA competitions. In training there is an accepted normative level of violence that

118

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

is specific to the individual MMA club. This is to say that fighters must not exceed levels of violence that would inhibit the building of bodies (for more on this aspect, see Chapters 6 and 9). In the rest of this chapter, I consider autotelic violence, with a primary focus on the emotional dimensions of such violence. This is a contribution to Schinkel’s elucidation of autotelic violence, as he does not adequately engage with the emotional dimensions of this form of violence.

CONFRONTATIONAL TENSION AND VIOLENCE As noted earlier, most analysis of violence focuses on intrinsically ‘violent individuals’ or the social determinants or background factors that leads to violence. In Collins’s (2008) incisive analysis of violence as a situational process, he moves beyond these traditional approaches to violence and contends that an emotional field of tension and fear shapes violence situations. Accordingly, any successful violence must overcome this tension and fear (Collins 2008: 19). As Collins (2008: 21) asserts, “it may be more useful to reverse the gestalt completely, and concentrate on the foreground to the exclusion of all else.” Collins (2008: 20) has developed the concept of confrontational tension to account for moments of antagonistic interaction when people experience a high level of tension. At higher levels of intensity, it shades over into fear. This fear stands as a barrier to violence; this makes violence difficult to execute. He then suggests that it is individuals, those who are good at violence (what he calls the ‘violent few’), that have found a way to deal with or, in some cases, circumvent confrontational tension by turning the emotional situation to their own advantage and to the disadvantage of their opponent. It is the features of the situations alone that determine what kinds of violence will or will not happen, and when and how. In varying degrees, from the moment I started training at the club I have dealt with various intensities of fear associated with confrontational tension. Especially in the beginning, prior to ground rolling with opponents, I would fear, on the one hand, making a fool of myself in front of my peers and, on the other hand, of being hurt in the course of competing. In this initial stage, every day as I would drive to the club, I would be stricken with fear and have to convince myself that I belonged in the club and was not going to get hurt. For a small portion of the respondents, they had to overcome this element of engaging in sparring in the club. Irrespective of whether a fighter experienced fear in the club at any point, all fighters faced a level of fear prior to entering the ring. Moreover, the form of fear associated with confrontational tension reaches its zenith in terms of intensity when a fighter is about to engage in competition. Despite their greater exposure to combat, MMA fighters must confront difficult emotional experiences prior to combat. Due to their greater level of knowledge of fighting, that is, what can occur during a fight and their

Emotions and Violence

119

adversaries’ capabilities, fighters can be stricken with fear. The following excerpt articulated by Jonathan illustrates the thought processes fighters engage with prior to a big fight: Jonathan: I was scared to death. It was in Japan. Yeah, I was scared to death it was my fi rst fight, I did not have the striking, back then, so for me, like I had, I have striking against a guy who did not know striking, but I did not have the striking for this guy, so my strategy was more using my judo and jiu jitsu, so I usually do a lot of mental preparation before I fight, and I managed to convince myself at some level that I could beat him but I knew that, in the rational side of my brain, knew that, I would not beat him at will, I could beat him that night but he is not the kind of guy that I could beat, out of ten fights he would probably beat me nine times. That is not how fights are judged, but that is the voice inside my head, that messes you up before you fight, the what if, what if, you know, whatever man, it sucks. The training sucks when you are training for a fight like that, it is painful, I had cauliflower ear; going into the fight every part of my body was injured, my body ached. Here, Jonathan is filled with self-doubt regarding his abilities to outdo his opponents in striking and the situational ‘voices’ that fighters sometimes hear prior to the fight event. The thought processes a fighter must contend with are managed through their own bodies and in consideration of those of their opponent. Jonathan also highlights another important point regarding how one’s bodily state comes into acute focus when facing confrontational tension. Fighters also engage in a variety of rituals to deal with the experience of confrontational tension. Ken explains this phenomenon: Ken:

Before the fight, there is times before the fight that you realize, alright so like ‘what am I doing?’ And then it will hit you and then you will kind of like, it’s like when you’re in grade school and you know you’re in a have a fight after school, so you are in the back and you are getting ready to fight this guy and you don’t really want to fight this guy. But it’s not like you’re in grade school where you can just walk away you kind of have to do it. And it’s also not like grade school the worst thing you’re going to do is get punched in the face, but these are going to knock me out or break my arm, like in an MMA fight. Not to mention you are on TV and all your friends are there, and everybody is watching just you. You know, so, so before you warm up, and that’s key, the warm-up is weird because that is when, you always secondguess when you are going to go in the ring. The same time you are worried about getting tired, but you know that you have to

120

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment warm up and get a sweat. At that point, it is so psychological, it’s really really hard you just, that is where guys have certain rituals, they will take off their shorts and fold them in certain ways, I know [names famous fighter] does that. It’s just one of those things that you do . . . just don’t want to think, you just want to, I just want to do this one thing [fight]. This stupid thing. If it means taking off my clothes and putting them back on, it just keeps my mind from thinking. I don’t know, it’s just really hard.

Ken draws parallels and distinctions between early experiences of fi ghting and the experience of competing in an MMA event. Both spectacles of violence signify masculine status upon competitors; in the former, if one does not perform, there is a loss of status, but the latter is on a much grander scale. Both involve extreme moments of tension of a future violent event, but what differentiates a childhood or adolescent fi sticuff from an MMA event is the gravity in terms of the level of physical destruction one can endure and the perceived diffi culty of walking away from a MMA fi ght. Fighters are faced with the task of managing or balancing bodily energies prior to combat so as to not to be too cold or too hot. As a general rule, fi ghters must be limber enough to fi ght, achieved through heating up the body by stretching and hitting pads, but not expend too much of the body’s energy in such practices. This is a way of combating the confrontational tension experienced prior to combat, as most fi ghters in this study engage in particular rituals to allay the acuteness of the experience.

EXPERIENCING CONFIDENCE As a supplement to Collins’s (2008) model, I show the role of confi dence in the ability of fighters to, in varying degrees, circumvent confrontational tension and engage in fighting. In Collins’s approach to confrontational tension he suggests that it is through ‘forward panic’ that individuals are able to overcome the fear and tension associated with confrontations. Forward panic starts with a buildup of tension, which is then unleashed into a frenzied attack when the situation makes it easy to do. Forward panics are typified primarily by being blatantly unfair, where crowds converge on an individual or tiny group. As Collins (2008) states the “size of the group present—the sheer number of bodies at the scene—increases the tendency for forward panic” (128). The composite mood of forward panic is derived from the transformation of tension/fear into aggressive frenzy, usually centered on rage. Even in the case of individual level transformation of fear to aggressive frenzy, Collins seems to posit that such a conversion necessitates an advantage in demeanor, strength, and size of one over another.

Emotions and Violence

121

The problem with Collins’s (2008) concept of forward panic is that it presupposes a level of anger when an individual resorts to violent behavior and that there necessarily needs to be a mismatch in size. His concept of forward panic may be apposite in some cases, but in the realm of calculated trained fighters combating in one-on-one matchups of equal weight, the concept is a poor fit. In addition, almost all fighters said that anger has a way of ‘zapping your energy’ and ‘making you gas out’ prematurely in a match. Anger was also seen as clouding your focus and causing a fighter to make mistakes in combat (dropping one’s hands, etc.). As was shown, this is not to say that violence, in turn, becomes easy. Fighters still must engage with confrontational tension, but they do so with a greater knowledge of combat and a ‘normalized’ experience of the chaos, where anything can happen. Confidence is to be understood as a relational experience predicated on an unknowable future. Barbalet (2001) defines confidence as “selfassured expectation; it functions to promote social action; it arises in (or is caused by) relations of acceptance and recognition; and its object is the future” (88–89). The past and the future are tied together through confidence as a social actor draws on experiences of the past to forge a path forward into an unknowable future. In the next excerpt, Scott reflects on the connection between ritual and confidence: Scott:

On average, I have eight workouts a week. I mean, some of those are only half an hour long. I try to do sprints twice a week, I try to do weights twice a week, I try to come in to class, teach a class, or open training at least four times a week. If I am training for a fight, at least, minimum, ten times a week. Otherwise I won’t feel good, I’ll feel that I am not training hard. I will not feel confident in myself.

The ritualistic, repetitive nature of Scott’s prefight training highlights the connection between positive emotions like confidence and performance. As Collins (2004) has pointed out, rituals are integral in building intensities of positive emotions. Confidence is achieved in and through the repetition of training regimes, which allows, to an extent, an embodied subject to project him or herself into an unknowable future. Confidence building is not merely a matter of repetition of rituals on an individual level, but is also a question of whom training is carried out with. John:

As it is now, we fight as a team, that means me and my corner man and everyone I trained with, we are a team, we all come out together, I go into the ring but they are still around, their presence is there, they are telling me things I should do and I trust them. . . . Not only do you have to have confidence in your abilities as a fighter but you have to have confidence in the people that you are training with. There is not much more important than that really, literally.

122 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment Confidence is built in and through whom one is training with. The interactive element of ritualistic training builds and sustains confidence that transcends the spatial confines of the club into formal combat (see Collins 1990, 2004). The long-term interaction characterized by corporeal co-presence provided in training generates attentiveness, mutual focus, and closeness (see Collins 2004). This is reflective of a form of intimacy that is homoerotic in nature (for more on this point, see the next chapter). This intimacy, in turn, builds confidence that can be culled by team members through speech acts of encouragement prior to a member entering into battle. At its core, this aspect of training may be a precipitant of team formations in MMA (and other sports more generally). This finding stands in contradistinction to studies of sport that posit that men do not engage in intimacy with other players (see, e.g., Bird 1996; Messner 1994a). It may be that sports participants are reluctant to admit to outsiders (i.e., researchers that have no embodied investment in the sport) their intimate relationships with other participants.

FRUSTRATION Frustration remains an underexplored emotion in the sociology of emotions literature. Frustration is commonly described as an emotion that is experienced in situations when one is being prevented from accomplishing a task or purpose. Frustration can be in relation to others and in relation to objects that block preferred choices (Brams 1997). Frustration can be seen in contradistinction to confidence, where the former experience can stultify action and the latter is efficacious in producing further lines of action. Frustration can be seen, in Collins’s (2004) terms, as a negative emotion, as it deters sociality and leads to a halt of action. The following interview excerpt reflects this aspect of frustration: Lonnie: I don’t feel afraid, some times I get frustrated, you know, if I can’t beat somebody to the punch, or if I am just not 100% that day and I just feel sluggish or whatever, I get frustrated but I wouldn’t say I get afraid. I mean ahh, it doesn’t hurt or anything like that, it is just, just frustrated. I don’t like getting the shitty end of the stick, no matter what it is. Lonnie reflects on sparring and cage experiences as not characterized by fear, but rather as a source of frustration in the event of him being in a situation where he is ‘getting the shitty end of the stick’. Frustration is in reaction to his opponent’s actions and the inability to carry out his intended line of action, be it a submission or a successfully landed punch or kick. The experience of frustration can also result from the objectification of body parts common in sport. Fighters’ aching or injured body parts can be the sources of frustration as it keeps them from training and competing.

Emotions and Violence Brad:

Gerald:

123

Yep, it’s basically just frustration for preventing from training, I don’t mind if something aches when I wake up in the morning, that does not bother me. But it’s a matter of like, if something hurts and I cannot train because of it, and it bothers me. I think it’s like anything it’s frustrating. I think the worst experience I’ve had is I broke my hand in a fight and I, I had to have surgery on it and a plate and screws put in. It’s just frustrating because you want to be back in there doing things and inevitably you rush it but it’s just more of a frustrating feeling.

Brad explains that the source of his frustration is the object of pain, a specific body part, which is keeping him from training. Gerald illustrates how parts of bodies become the source of frustration as they limit or prevent training. In my experience, throughout the course of my training I found myself objectifying parts of my body, especially as it regards my fractured hand and knee injury. I would fi nd myself referring to these parts as ‘the knee’ and ‘the hand’ and commenting to friends and training partners on the intense frustration I was experiencing. The source of the injury, the person putatively responsible for the injury, is rarely blamed for the injury as they are seen as fundamental to participation in the sport of MMA. In being deprived from what one enjoys by the injury, the body part qua object enters into a frustrating relationship with the rest of the ‘healthy’ body.

‘CONTROLLING’ ONE’S EMOTIONS, ANGER, AND AGGRESSION In commentary on MMA fights and responses by research subjects there is a negative value placed on ‘fighting with emotion’. When probed further, fighting with emotion is actually fighting angry, which drains a fighter’s energy. In battle, fighters emotional experience varies from confidence to frustration depending on the tide of the fight; that is, fighters build confidence in and through success in battle and become frustrated as a result of losing past stages of skirmishes (e.g., losing the stand up battle). Fighters may keep their composure and readjust to their opponent, react by taking high-risk maneuvers to turn the tide (a sloppy takedown, etc.) or they can ‘break’. To ‘break’ means to give in to an opponent; to accept that the tide has been turned in favor of the opponent. The act of ‘breaking’ is often associated with fatigue. Experienced fighters learn how to deal with this aspect of combat: Francois: It’s about your toughness if you can say that because if you’re in the middle of the rumble and you had a fi rst round the guy was beating you all the way and you had to go back there on the second round and try it again and I think you push yourself because your body is in pain, your body is in pain, everything is

124 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment saying to you “Stop!” but you’ve got to continue because you’ve got to push yourself more than for tennis or hockey or any of them because it’s a team sport, not tennis but your body is more involved in feeling the pain, getting hit and just fi nd a way to get out of there. Francois cites ‘toughness’ as what allows fighters to push through moments when their opponents are getting the best of various stages and facets of battle. Toughness is predicated not only on the production of bodies capable of withstanding pain, but the confidence that if one pushes forward, the tide may turn their way in the fight. Pain stands as an additional bodily experience that may lead a fighter to break, but through the embodied attribute of toughness, built in training and past experiences of battle, fighters can push through the pain and the experience of frustration. Aggression in the sociology of emotions is regularly associated with anger (see, e.g., Kemper 1984, 1990). Anger is intricately related to frustration, as it is seen as the result of the brimming over of the latter. In some cases this relationship has purchase, but generally speaking, fighters must learn how to decouple anger from aggression. As stated, anger is seen as a taxing emotional experience that drains fighters’ energy, but it also renders the body deficient to react to opponent’s attacks and clouds fighters’ limited thought processes in battle. The following excerpts reflect the interpretation of anger among MMA fighters: Ted:

Always a clear head. I never get emotional when I fight or anything. Floyd: I’m not an emotional fighter, you know what I mean. Like some people get in there and they get all worked up. Peter: So like I’m clear-headed. I don’t go in there with emotion, that’s one thing I don’t, like I fight with emotion as in like I fight to win and you know I, I really want to prove what I have but I don’t fight with emotion as in like anger. Like I don’t fight with anger, like I want to kill this guy . . . like I want to beat the guy, I want to fi nish the guy but I don’t go in there with anger. Samuel: You can’t go in there, like earlier I would always be cool externally but just like a volcano waiting to blow up and once the bell rang I’d go out there and smoke it as quick as I could. The fi rst three responses reflect a belief that anger is a negative emotion and that anger is a ‘head’ emotion, that is, something that can keep you from performing adequately in battle. Getting worked up is to engage in a relationship with one’s opponent that is characterized by anger. The uncoupling of anger from aggression involves the development of an ability to maintain an optimal level of aggression. This is by no means an aptitude

Emotions and Violence

125

that is easily developed. Fighters must learn ways to manage their levels of aggression. Managing aggression requires learning to attack opponents at opportune times so as to not ‘gas out’, that is, drain one’s energy. Samuel’s statement is an example of when a fighter is overly aggressive and depletes his energy levels.

MOMENTUM, SUCCESS, AND ELATION Despite its significance, momentum and elation are particularly underdeveloped aspects within the sociology of sport. Connected to confidence, momentum is characterized by enhanced progression toward a desired end, either immediately or in the long run (Adler and Adler 1978). Momentum can, at its apex, spiral toward elation. Elation, here, is directly related to wishing for a desired end and is the overwhelming experience of attainment of such a goal (de Rivera, Possell, Verette, and Weiner 1989). MMA fighters primarily experience elation at the moment of victory, be it decisively through a knockout or a submission or receiving a favorable decision from judges. After knocking out an opponent, fighters can be overcome with elation, screaming and sometimes yelling to the audience in celebration. Fighters often raise their hands and shake their fists in the air while running around the ring in jubilation. They aggressively embrace their coaches and teammates or ‘slap five’ in celebration. Fighters articulated the feeling of victory, especially in the bigger MMA events like the UFC, to be not fully perceptible and indescribable. With regard to the former, the fighter does not immediately understand the attainment of victory in battle, but cobbles details of the event of battle together for some time after the fight. At times, fighters express that they did not know what happened until they viewed the fi lm of the fight. With regard to the latter, the extreme experience of elation was beyond words and could not be clearly articulated to another. Cody’s statement is reflective of the ineluctability of a clear articulation of the experience of elation associated with victory: “If you win it is the greatest feeling in the world, you cannot describe it, it is complete bliss.” The overwhelming nature of elation can, at times, reduce fighters to tears. The following excerpt by Patrick illustrates this dimension of elation: Patrick: And they gave it to me [the winning decision], I was like, I didn’t fucking believe I fucking won. What the fuck? And then I went back to my change room and everyone was shaking my hand. I was in the foreigners’ changing room and then after everyone walked out on us and just, I was like, “Oh fuck.” I was crying. I said, “My God, I can’t believe that actually just fucking happened, like that was wild.”

126

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

Fighters continually emphasized the time and energy expended preparing for their next fight. In some cases, they became so invested in the fight that they cannot think of anything but their opponent and the event of battle. The culmination of all their efforts directed toward one defi ning event, coupled with the confrontational tension prior to the fight, adds a level of intensity to the elation experienced in the moment of a positive resolution, irrespective of whether it is a decision victory or knock out or submission. The weeping Patrick displays signifies a positive transformation of self ushered in and through victory in battle (cf. Barbalet 2005). The transformation of self, registered through weeping, is irrepressible. The experience of elation is not a manageable emotion that can somehow be managed through surface acting (cf. Hochschild 1983). It bursts forth over against the will of the individual experiencing it.

DISCUSSION In this chapter I have shown the emotional dimensions related to participation in MMA, from training to the MMA fight event itself. This chapter both elaborates on and challenges Collins’s (2008) concept of confrontational tension by considering the role of confidence as efficacious in enabling fighters to engage in battle. Furthermore, I elucidated how confidence is actually built in and through training and associations with team/ club members. Whereas confidence is posited as enabling fighters to engage in battle, frustration was shown as in opposition to confidence insofar as the emotional experience of frustration deters fighters from engaging in fighting. I consider the role of anger and aggression in MMA and how fighters must develop a form of toughness to withstand the pain of combat and not give into the frustration experienced when skirmishes are not going in their favour. Lastly, the experience of elation reveals the overwhelming nature of success in battle that may result in weeping. This chapter reveals in a tangible way the quotidian and academic misrepresentations of men and emotions. Bird’s (1996) comments on homosociality and emotions, or men’s ostensible lack of emotions, do not move us closer to understanding how and when men experience emotions. Bird’s analysis, which is based on shoddy ethnographic research, gives the impression that men are always stoic with each other in small groups. What was shown in this chapter and what was shown in the last chapter is that the relationship between masculinity and emotions is complex, and both female and male bodies, can conceivably, experience emotions associated with fighting in much the same manner. The practice of fighting itself gives way to a myriad of emotions that flow into each other in the course of a fight and reading emotions from the demeanour of a fighter leads to analytical problems. Future studies of fighting and combat sports should delve further into how combatants engage in emotion work (see Hochschild 1983) in order to gain advantages (or not) over their opponents.

9

Homosociality, (Homo)eroticism, and Dueling Practice

In MMA, the team or group is a necessary part of the production of fi ghting bodies. Groups once gathered are broken down into dyadic relations in order to practice techniques and for the purpose of sparring. Different bodies bring different bodily dispositions (habitus) and present new challenges for combatants, and as such, it is the qualitative diversity of bodies that matters to the production of fi ghting bodies. The interactions in the club are habitual and, over and above the physical training space, form the basis of what constitutes the club. This is a form of homosociality—nonsexual same-sex relations—insofar that it is primarily male bodies that engage in interactions in the MMA club. The reverential space of the club allows for the specifi c types of associations between primarily male bodies that are otherwise considered unacceptable outside the club. Characteristic of this form of homosociality is a form of homoeroticism that defi es and transgresses the logic of interactions between heterosexual men in public settings. This form of homoeroticism coalesces into dyad-based practices that form and destroy bodies. This chapter will elucidate two dueling practices; one oriented toward creation, and the other oriented toward negation. In pure form, the cultivating duel is a practice that builds bodies, and the duel as negation is dedicated to destroying bodies. Both dueling practices signify MMA masculinity on the combatants’ bodies that perform them. Practices, such as dueling, serve as conduits for performing masculinities and work to naturalize masculinities on the bodies of men and, sometimes, women (Butler 1990; Paechter 2006a, 2006b). In the fi rst part of this chapter, I describe homosociality and homoeroticism as particular phenomena elemental to MMA. I then offer a brief history review of the duel. The third section of this chapter examines the cultivating form of duel and its relationship to homoeroticism and homosociality. In the fi nal section I present data related to the cultivating duel and the negation form of duel.

128

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

HOMOSOCIALITY AND (HOMO)EROTICISM The homosociality that is characteristic of men in groups has had sporadic attention in the social sciences. The early work of Lionel Tiger ([1969] 1984) stands out as it offers examples of this important element of maleto-male interaction. Homosociality implies social preference for members of one’s own gender, but does not necessarily imply erotic attraction (Britton 1990). The best-known discussion of homosociality is probably Sedgwick’s (1985) Between Men, in which she argues that men’s heterosexual rivalries produce a homosociality among men that marginalizes women. Britton (1990) uses the concept of homosociality to explain homophobia and explores how the former helps maintain the boundary between social and sexual interaction in a sex-segregated society. She suggests that homosociality both directly affects homophobia and serves as an intervening variable between various correlates and homophobia. Kiesling (2005) has exposed how, through the deployment of masculine cultural discourse of dominance, there is a creation and display of homosocial desire. Flood (2008) suggests that homosociality organizes men’s socio-sexual relations in four ways. First, male–male friendships take priority over male–female relations, and platonic friendships with women are perceived as dangerously feminizing. Second, sexual activity is a key conduit to masculine status, and other men are the audience, always imagined and sometimes real, for one’s sexual activities. In addition, heterosexual sex itself can be the medium through which male bonding is enacted. Lastly, men’s sexual storytelling is shaped by homosocial masculine cultures. According to Bataille (1962: 16), eroticism is the domain of violence. The logic of eroticism is to “destroy the self-contained character of the participators as in their normal lives” (17). Eroticism stands against the prohibitions that dominate our everyday lives and mediate bodies’ relations with other bodies. Eroticism, in its extreme case, lies in the potentiality for the voluptuous and the gratuitous in humanity. It breaks down established patterns of the regulated social order and the distinctions between defi ned and separate individuals. In forms of eroticism (melee, sex, etc.), there is an intermixing of bodies. The nature of eroticism is set up against the law of decency and may involve the exposing of flesh. Due to the exposition of the bare body and violent character of eroticism, it can be considered as an organized transgression of taboos. Homoeroticism is defi ned here as forms of association between those of the same sex that disrupt or efface the established patterns of interaction between those of the same sex and have an intimate character to them that involves the breaking down of spacing between bodies and sometimes the revelation of fl esh. Commentary in the men and masculinities literature on homoeroticisms either fails to offer a coherent defi nition of homoeroticism or limits their discussion of homoeroticism just to the ‘sexual’ nature of homoeroticism, thereby reducing homoeroticism to homosexual desire (see,

Homosociality, (Homo)eroticism, and Dueling Practice

129

e.g., Pronger 1991, 1999). Moreover, homophobic comments by men, and the believed homoerotic nature of homosocial practices, have led analysts to assert that men are merely suppressing homosexual desire (Agostino 1997; Pease 2002; Muir and Seitz 2004). In a less crude approach to homoeroticism, Flood (2008) recognizes that there is homoeroticism in some homosocial practices, but he too does not offer a coherent defi nition of homoeroticism. The added benefit of the conceptualization of homoeroticism, as it is presented here, is that it reveals the paradoxical nature of the performance of specific masculinities, insofar as it runs counter to conceptualizations of existing ‘public’ masculinities that male bodies seek to identify with. If male bodies are to be conceived of as separate units that never affectively relate to each other, the phenomenon of homoeroticism as it is in MMA, not to mention other sports, shows the contradictory nature of masculinity and what it means to be a man. Homoeroticism can be seen as, but is certainly not limited to, operating within dyadic relationships (Bataille 1962). In the realm of sociology, it is Simmel (1950) that called attention to the primacy of the dyad as a sociological category of relations. According to Simmel, the dyad—simply put, a relationship between two parties—is the sole condition under which several forms of relationships exist. The social structure in toto rests on the dyadic participation of two, and the whole would be destroyed if reduced to a series of purely self-serving singularities. Granted, the structure maintains if one person drops out of a dyadic relationship and another joins. In this conception, the dyad involves a greater level of intimacy than the group level and presupposes a greater individualization of their members than large groups do (Simmel 1950: 127, 137). With regard to homosociality, it has two tendencies at the dyadic and group levels: cooperation and conflict. The cooperative tendency involves sociability wherein the participants avoid emphasizing themselves individually and act with minimal abandon and a tempered level of aggressiveness (cf. Simmel 1950, [1907] 1997). The tendency toward confl ict, by contrast, involves a level of competition between members at the dyadic and group level. These two tendencies, in their own ways, promote associations between members of the dyad and group. Simmel (1955) asserts that “the structure may be sui generis, its motivation and form being wholly self-consistent, and only in order to be able to describe and understand it, do we put it together, post-factum, out of two tendencies, one monistic, and the other antagonistic” (23). Cooperation and confl ict are also integral to the placement of individuals within hierarchies, but the continued participation in the practices associated with dyadic and group activities additionally determines the inside and outside of the group and the level of belonging to the group (Spaaij 2008; Segal 2008); in the case of MMA, this means determining who is an integral member of the club and who is not. The homoerotic tendency within some forms of homosociality, as it is evidenced in MMA, breaks down the proximity between combatants. In the

130 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment next section, I briefly historicize the duel and examine the breaking down of distance between bodies that is characteristic of dueling practices.

A COMMENTARY ON THE HISTORY OF THE DUEL In its historical form, dueling, as a fight between two opposing combatants, at times has involved the mere use of the body as a weapon, whereas at other times, it has involved weapons like rapiers and guns. Historians have noted that the duel is traceable to medieval tournaments, feuds, and judicial combat to resolve questions of honor (Shoemaker 2002; Piccato 1999; Spierenburg 1998; Schwartz, Baxter, and Ryan 1984). This phenomenon has not been limited to Western cultures, but rather has had iterations across cultures and empires. In England, France, Germany, and Italy, from approximately the sixteenth century to early twentieth century, duels were fought between members of the gentry. These battles were predicated on the fact that willingness to face an opponent in a potentially lethal one-toone combat was widely perceived as a key test of gentry masculinity, and it was affronts to honor which provoked such confrontations (Connell [1995] 2005; Chaney 1995; Wiener 2004). Duels in the European context served as a means for the symbolic defi nition of masculinity through violence, fi rst carried out through the use of swords but later converted to guns. In Japan, competition amongst spearmen and swordsmen of different schools was fierce and inexorable (Ratti and Westbrook 1999). Feuds lasted for years and challenges to duels often ended in the death of one or sometimes both combatants. The endowment of the sword to young men was simultaneously the moment they attained manhood and the marker of becoming a Samurai. Samurais traveled from school to school to learn different styles of weapon fighting. These are but a few iterations of the duel across the East and West, but the duel in varying forms has been practiced on every inhabitable continent and serves as a means of symbolizing a male’s place in the respective masculine hierarchy. Traditional sword and gun forms of dueling in the Western context became archaic as part of a new form of social order that eventually became a politics of mass citizenship. The new politics of mass citizenship was staged in terms of the dominant characteristics of a society of spectacle (Chaney 1995). Concomitant with the illegalization of gun-based dueling in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, we see the rise of bareknuckle prizefighting (Brailsford 1988). The public spectacle of boxing and the pageantry associated with prizefights were suited to the spirit of the emerging society of spectacle. It should also be noted that concomitant with the parliamentarization or bureaucratization of Western and Eastern states (Weber 1964; Elias [1978] 2000) and the state coming to possess the only legitimate means of violence (placing severe restrictions on arms-based forms of violence), shortly thereafter came the development and increasing

Homosociality, (Homo)eroticism, and Dueling Practice

131

popularity of sport-based forms of violence that had the primordial characteristics of the duel (judo, boxing, etc.). With the breakdown of traditional forms of dueling, there is an exposure of the flesh of combatants in the public spectacle of sporting events and contact between bodies in these forms of dueling (cf. Bech 1997). Blood feuds or vendetta tied to dueling have been a topic of examination since the beginnings of sociology. Both Durkheim ([1913] 1995) and Weber (1978) have reflected on the role of blood with Weber seeing the duel as a form of political violence and Durkheim viewing such violence as typical of mechanical solidarity (see Grutzpalk 2002). Both agree that blood feuds manifested in dueling are passionate phenomenon and dissipated through processes of rationalization (Weber 1978) and shifts to organic solidarity (Durkheim [1913] 1995). While blood feud has been, for the most part, abolished, dueling in terms of its dyadic structure and its relationship to honor remains. In feudal society, honor was something ascribed to nobility by birth. The dramatic nature of the feudal forms of duel was motivated by a sense of honor, and participants sought to vindicate their status as men of honor. The honor and intense dramaturgy of performance of the duel are, in the modern world, made into a resource for the dramas of new forms of public life (Chaney 1995). Honor in the modern world is no longer tied to familial attachment as it became democratized and something that someone (primarily men) can achieve through the attainment of publicly recognized achievements. Public recognitions remain tied to spectacular forms of recognition in which ritualistic ceremonies serve to ascribe honor to attainment of status. In regards to prizefighting in the context of mass entertainment, combat sports serve as a narrative of values of honorable conduct where honor is ceremoniously ascribed to the victors in public settings. MMA is the latest iteration in a line of dueling practices that provide such ascriptions to honor and ultimately, forms of masculinity.

DUELING RECONSIDERED The melee for Nancy (2000) is an action that consists of two forms. That is, the melee of the fight and the melee of love: the melee of Ares and the melee of Aphrodite. They are, in Nancy’s words, “mixed with one another, not identified” (150). The melee, in each form, takes place as a contest that can never occur without desire and without the appeal to the other as always an Other. It bears no resemblance to war; it proceeds with only a resemblance to hand-to-hand combat. In fact, modern day war has no room for the melee. The melee proceeds primarily as a symbiotic mixing of bodies. The dyadic relationship that is characteristic of the melee is markedly different than Hegel’s ([1807]1967) master–slave dialectic. The melee is not predicated on death, as it is in the master–slave dialectic, nor is it founded on subordination, but rather reciprocity between combatants.

132

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

Nancy’s (2000) exploration of the melee opens lines of inquiry into the duel that are not characterized by negation or the complete domination of the Other, but rather the cultivation of bodies through symbiotic associations that are characterized both by cooperation and confl ict.1 Here I elucidate the cultivating form of duel and document the ways in which bodies are continuously created through the duel as well as the creation and maintenance of bonds between combatants. With the cultivating duel, there is a suspension of status2 (status markers outside of the club), and as such, bodies confront bodies and singularities become formed and reformed in relation to other singularities continually through the cultivating duel. The cultivating duel, keeping with its homoerotic form, delimits the spacing between bodies characteristic of public space. Hierarchies are erected within MMA, but they do not result in the outright severing of ties between neophytes and the experienced fighters. The participation in the cultivating duel constitutes the border between the inside and outside, practitioners and nonpractitioners (the disinterested, the judgmental, ‘wannabees’ or posers). The degree to which combatants, belong, or are interior to the club is based on the intensity of their participation in the cultivating duel. Here, I want to utilize the notion of the cultivating duel in contradistinction to forms of dueling that negate the Other. As shown, historians have traced specific forms of dueling persistent throughout the public record. The historical account, for the most part, fails to attend to the forms of dueling, the cultivating form, that happens prior to the public presentation of the duel. Whereas the squire system is documented, very little is known about the forms of training that took place between adult men that were also ascriptions to honor and masculinity. The cultivating duel is what gives form and texture to public forms of the duel, produced in semipublic or private contexts between battling bodies. It does not involve the negation of the other, but the building of bodies, strengthening through intermixing.

THE DUEL AS CULTIVATING AND AS NEGATION

Blood and Sweat Sweat and, to a lesser extent, blood surfaces on the bodies of MMA combatants. Sweat is perpetually transmitted between the bodies of combatants, and its odor, which varies between singularities, fi lls the air in the club. The heat generated between heaving bodies, especially in the winter months, can be visually discerned as steam rises from the heads of combatants. Blood of combatants is smeared across the bodies, equipment, and clothing of fighters. Blood rolls down the face of fighters emptying into mouths and other crevices, signifying hurt and pain but at the same time, the strength or weakness of bodies. Strength is revealed in the body pushing through

Homosociality, (Homo)eroticism, and Dueling Practice

133

the pain, whereas weakness is reflected facially, most acutely in the wincing face. The smell and taste of iron is familiar on the fighter’s palate, as bodies are fractured in the course of intermixing. The following field note is an event of intermixing in the MMA club: We assemble for the MMA class and Scott quickly tells me that we are doing rounds of sparring with Stewart to prepare him for his amateur fight coming up. Scott informs me that Stewart will be doing three three-minute rounds, each round broken down by a minute of stand up, a minute of Stewart doing ground and pound, and a minute of Stewart being ground and pounded. Brian tells me to put on my sixteen-ounce gloves and wait for instructions. Around the room everyone is suiting up and the beginners are over in the other corner practicing MMA-related ground technique. A few minutes later, everyone stands around Scott and he tells us what we are going to be doing for Stewart’s session. Stewart tells me I will be doing ground and pound the fi rst and third rounds and getting ground and pounded the second round. Stewart starts off with Reed. Reed is circling Stewart peppering him with shots, both punches and kicks. Some are getting through his guard. Stewart is chasing him around the mat and shoots in for a takedown. Reed defends the fi rst takedown with a sprawl and punishes Stewart with a left-right, one to the jaw, and one to the nose. Undeterred, Stewart throws a left-right combo and then shoots in for the takedown. Stewart cinches in the double-leg and slams Reed to the mat. Scott tells both to quickly get up off the mat, saluting to continue on with the stand up. I notice that Stewart is bleeding from somewhere and it is dripping all over the mat. That segment continues on with Reed circling and Stewart shooting in for takedowns. Scott calls time for the switch into ground and pound and by now Stewart is bleeding heavily from his nose. Stewart gets into Scott’s guard and the blood is dropping into Scott’s face. He seems to be trying to avoid getting more on his face by moving his head. He ties up Stewart with over-hooks and has his feet on his hips to keep him off balance. Stewart gets one arm free and begins to hit Scott in the body and head with light shots. Scott goes for submissions and Stewart defends but ends up in double over-hooks again. The round ends and I jump in to ground and pound Stewart. By now his face is smeared with blood, red oozing out of his nasal area. I can hear Felix yelling at me to go hard on him and so I get my posture and begin to rain down punches on Stewart’s ribs and face. He is breathing hard and looks to be somewhat fatigued. I punch him a couple more times in the face and bloods spurts up on my face and onto my rashguard in the chest area. I can smell the iron of his blood. I keep getting in some shots on Stewart; I miss with some, get in some. He ties me up for a bit in double over-hooks, but I swim out and catch him with a couple more shots. The round ends and I am spattered with

134

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment blood, all over my face, chest, gloves. The blood is all over the mats. I walk quickly over to the bathroom and Scott is already in there, spitting into the sink, he turns to me and says, “I can taste the iron, look at me, I have Stewart’s blood everywhere.”

This narrative may tell the story of a brutal bloodbath, but it also reflects a deeper story regarding the relationship between fighters and the nature of dueling as cultivating a particular embodied self. We are trying to prepare Stewart (who went on to win his fight) for his upcoming match and exerting ourselves at our highest level in this regard. Initially, when I fi rst started aiding fighters in their prefight training, I met the act of punching someone in the head, not to mention someone that I consider a friend, with a level of disinclination. At times, I would ask my partner if he was ‘alright’. Later, I came to realize, in line with the moniker on the wall in the gym, that ‘the more you bleed in training, the less you bleed in the ring’. If my training partners and I were going to win, we must sweat and bleed, and we must operate on the premise of what our bodies can do. This form of fight training may look to the outside observer of the duel as negation, but due to the nature of the relationship of the combatants and understanding between fighters that the normative masculinity of the club dictates, this form of dueling aims at building bodies. In addition, a combatant is careful to ease up when the other fighter looks to be in a high level of distress. This level of care, respect, and cooperation is so integral to the operation of the team that it, in part, defi nes the normative masculinity of the club. In the desire to be an MMA fighter, to be recognizable in the masculine hierarchy, one is initiated through the sweat and blood of fighting.

HIERARCHY AND DUELING Hierarchies are created and maintained in and through cooperation and confl ict among group members. At most MMA clubs where I trained, there was an attendant Brazilian Jiu Jitsu program, training either with a gi (see Figure 9.1) or without a gi (see Figure 9.2). In classes where participants wore their gis, belts signified rank in the hierarchy of the club, ranging from white, the lowest rank, to black, the highest. In Muay Thai classes, the color of shorts signified the level of individual members, in addition to teaching significations of Kru and Ajahn. At some of the bigger clubs I trained in, the separation between MMA practitioners and casual members was enacted through segregated, exclusive classes for MMA practitioners: Glen:

Hierarchy, absolutely. Instructors of course number one and people who have been here the longest. We have levels in our programs so that we, we build a respect between each other.

Homosociality, (Homo)eroticism, and Dueling Practice

Figure 9.1

135

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gi.

I’ll never say look down to the lower ranking members but we always, always assist and help build them up, but yeah there’s defi nitely a hierarchy. Jonathan: You know what there is a, there’s a chain of command. No one’s better than anyone else and if you think like that you’re not going to last. It’s, it’s, we have, the way things work basically, is we line up by rank. The person at the front of the line is no better than the person at the end. And if you think that you are, get the fuck

136

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

Figure 9.2

Rashguard (top) and fight shorts (bottom).

out of my club. Yeah, no, there’s no space for you, you’re taking up someone else’s space. Everyone’s, you don’t have to like each other it doesn’t matter but in here you show each other respect. Everyone is here for the same reason. If you start thinking you’re better, bigger than someone else or better than someone else you’re a waste of space, I don’t need you here. You’re not helping. The reason, the reason clubs are successful is because they develop as teams and they function as teams. It’s like they’re, not everyone is going to be buddies outside but you show each other respect in the club. There is an acknowledgement amongst gym owners, coaches, and fighters that there is a formal hierarchy, not only related to belts, but also, in the absence of belts, the hierarchy correlates to the level of time training. However, the hierarchy, as shown in the responses by Glen and Jonathan, does not translate into the kinds of snobbery present in other social worlds, which is based on occupation, age, or class. The normative masculinity

Homosociality, (Homo)eroticism, and Dueling Practice

137

of the gym demands respect amongst members, as its absence hinders individual fighters’ learning processes and the building of bodies through intermixing. It should also be noted that the cultivating duel is a mode of humbling participants, whereas arrogance can, in the end, inhibit the continual progression of fighters and the operation of the club. As I witnessed at times in my club, hubris can create an uncooperative mood amongst combatants in which various members will not train with other members. Lack of humility can also lead fighters to take on contracts to fight opponents who are far more skilled and experienced than them. When visiting another club, one participant explained how his club mitigated against incidents of hubris: Francois: There are no big dogs in the club. The minute you starting thinking and acting like you are tougher than anyone else, there will be someone to knock you down. You have to show respect for everyone else. Here, to be ‘knocked down’ is where the arrogant member is taken to task during dueling and is defeated by another member of the club, be it during grappling, stand-up fighting or MMA sparring. As Francois states, the general attitude that is promoted is one of humility. To show a lack of support for another fighter would inhibit the smooth functioning of the club and, as such, the cooperative attitude and principle would break down. This general attitude has been promoted in all the clubs I visited in the course of my research. To exhibit gestures and verbal statements that denote arrogance would disrupt the shared mood that is necessary for the building of positive emotion in the club (Collins 2004).

Bonding, Trust, and Group Maintenance The cultivating duel involves the mixing of primarily male bodies that work to produce bodies capable of participating in MMA. As noted, the cultivating duel has the added masculine-identity-producing dimension within MMA. The participation in the practice of the cultivating duel, beyond producing an MMA habitus, signifies membership within the group and place within hierarchies of the club. Perhaps of foremost salience, the cultivating form of the duel is also the prime modality by which men bond, come to deeply care for each other, and form friendships (see Figure 9.3). This precipitates into regular meetings of club members outside of the club in various venues (primarily pubs and fighters’ houses). The camaraderie that ensues from the cultivating duel has an important temporal dimension insofar as it is built through repetition. In the case of many professional fighters, it is elevated to the medium by which they interact with their friends. As Bob states: “Mixed martial arts is a way of life, like I said, when my friends and I get together that is all we

138

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

Figure 9.3

Friends after training.

talk about. That is my life, like it is a huge part of my life.” The centrality of MMA to the lives of fighters is based on a belonging to a group and is fostered through the camaraderie between fighters. Kevin:

I just ahh, it is just an all out war you know, you walk in there you just train hard and fight but I didn’t foresee the camaraderie that would happen between people you know. There is just so much hate and animosity and stuff like that out there in the world and you go in the club and it’s totally different. Even if you are fighting in competitive clubs and stuff like that there is still that respect.

Here, distinctions are made between members of the club and those external to the sport of MMA that do not conform to the MMA normative masculinity. In the normative masculinity honored within the MMA club, there is a suspension of hate and animosity. The cultivating duel in this context serves to bond fighters to the group. My experience in this regard exemplifies this phenomenon. Those that were most involved with the club and that committed the most in terms of time to training are the members that I solidified the closest bonds with. The fighters with whom I regularly practiced techniques, grappled, and sparred were also those with whom

Homosociality, (Homo)eroticism, and Dueling Practice

139

I most associated with outside of the club. As a general rule, those who infrequently trained at the club were viewed as peripheral to the core of the club and failed to establish an identity within the club. This was evidenced where core members were simply not aware of the name of a periphery member, where core members made direct statements jeering the peripheral member for his absence, or where statements were made behind a member’s back regarding their infrequent attendance. As bodies touch, clash, and grapple, the risk of injury is high. Members must have trust in their partners, insofar as there is the belief that the other is concerned to not injure their partner beyond what is expected by participants in MMA: Robert:

We really try to teach effective fighting techniques, and we do it in friendly environments so, you can learn how to break someone’s arm, without having to break their arm. The great thing is that our club is a place where you can learn those dangerous and effective techniques without the fear of actually being hurt.

Robert describes the environment that he, as an instructor, tries to create in the club; an environment in which members can practice techniques and not have to be concerned with getting injured. In order to produce a sense of trust, particular types of relations must occur. Trust, as it is employed here, is the placing of valued outcomes in others’ hands, at risk of said others’ malfeasance. Such trust relationships include those in which people regularly take such risks (Tilly 2004). In addition, trust here is not in the particular status positions of the partners, but rather nestled in ongoing relations in which trust is developed over time in particular individuals (cf. Uslaner 2000, 2002). Fighters must be able to trust that those training with them will not be reckless in executing techniques and in the case of submissions, will release the hold when a combatant taps out. The degree of force in striking must be kept at a level that does not exact (temporary or permanent) injury on their opponent. Layered upon this emphasis on control is the recognition that one must adjust their level of force to the capabilities of those they are competing against. In many cases, throughout my training at the club, I was instructed that the force I used on a specific opponent was beyond what a given opponent could handle. The following field note illustrates an example of when a level of force exceeds what is apposite in a given situation: It is Thursday at 7:30 and I arrive at the club for the advanced jiu jitsu class. I arrive early for the 8:00 p.m. class so that I can stretch. I walk in the doors and proceed to take off my shoes. Immediately I hear the boom of Dustin’s voice. He is yelling out various actions: ‘move your hip Brian’, ‘keep your posture Dave’. He is teaching the beginner Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class and having students roll against each other. The intensity

140

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment is apparent in the class as combatants’ chests are heaving from being winded. I walk along the side of the mat toward Dustin and we exchange mutual greetings and he turns back his attention toward the class. I stop halfway down the mat and put my bag down to watch the class. Out of the corner of my eye I notice that one of the few female members is rolling against one of the other newer members. I have only seen her opponent a couple times before. It becomes instantly apparent that the male opponent is not holding back and is using his strength rather than technique against her. He is throwing her side-to-side like a ragdoll. Dustin’s attention is turned to the other side of the room while this is transpiring. Being close friends with Dustin and seeing this behavior, I pull on his gi and alert him to what is transpiring by pointing the other end of the mat. Immediately he rushes over and says in reproach “What are you doing? You are not supposed to use your strength and throw around someone smaller than you like that. You use technique.” The pair had stopped rolling and the fellow looks, from what I could tell by his facial expression, astonished and embarrassed that Dustin is rebuking him for how he was rolling. Dustin then says, “You keep that up, I will roll with you next round and I will use my strength against you. Trust me, that will be a painful experience”. The pair returns to rolling and Dustin steps away, watching to make sure he [the male opponent] is not using too much strength. (Field note excerpt)

This field note shows that there is a normative level of violence and there comes a point in which an overexertion of strength on a weaker opponent is viewed as bullying. Dustin’s intervention can be seen as a protective insertion to prevent further abuse. Dustin’s speech act works as an intervening principle to reinforce the particular normative masculinity related to MMA. In the next part of this chapter I will briefly consider the negation form of duel.

The Duel as Negation The practice of the duel in the MMA club oscillates between the cultivating duel and the negation form of dueling. The duel swings into the mode of negation at the point at which intruders or outsiders come into the club and try to assert themselves as better than the local fighters and sometimes when fighters step into a ring or cage to fight. The history of MMA is replete with stories of when a martial arts practitioner enters into another club and challenges the honor of the club’s master(s). The legendary Gracie family, widely recognized as the creators of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, were regularly challenged and challenged other martial artists (representing their particular styles).3 The following field note explains an incident of the negation form of duel where two fighters from another club come into the club to spar with some of our local fighters:

Homosociality, (Homo)eroticism, and Dueling Practice

141

I sit on the punching bag nestled against the wall meant to keep the wall barriers up. I watch as the visitors and the elite fighters from our club line up to spar. I notice that nothing is said, but it is understood that it is a competition between us and them. Sean begins with the muscular fellow and different from day-to-day sparring, the contact level is (very apparently) increased. At one point in the fight, Sean kicks the more muscular visitor in the head and they stop the fight for a second for him to shake the cobwebs out. I return to rolling with what are now a few more guys. I roll a couple more sessions, for the most part losing, and sit down on the punching bag. By now the competitors on the opposite side of the room have shifted to grappling and groundwork. Justin then steps up and rolls with the friend of the muscular fellow. Up to this point, the friend remained in the background and did not get involved with the sparring. Justin takes him down to the ground but fails in the three-minute period to submit his opponent. Thus, Scott challenges the muscular fellow to a grappling match and, after about thirty seconds, decisively submits the visitor. I begin rolling again and by then I am thoroughly exhausted. . . . After a round I sit on the punching bag with John, who talks to me about what I did wrong and what I should do in order to avoid being submitted in the same way. Ten minutes or so go by and the two visitors gather their gear together and head into the change room. Sean immediately follows the guys into the change room. I shortly after make my way into the change room and fi nd Sean and the muscular visitor are talking about their sparring match. I change into my street clothes and put away my gear. I come out of the change room to see the visitors paying Scott for the day’s training session. The muscular visitor’s friend comes over and shakes my hand and says ‘nice to meet you and bye’. The visitors then leave and I ask Scott why these guys just came to train for the day. He informs me that they came in just for ‘new’ training partners. He then tells me that he feels guilty for taking their money just for them to be ‘trounced’. (Field note excerpt) Here, you have an example of where dueling is not predicated on friendship but based on the deliberate attempt to destroy the body of the other via the practice of dueling. In addition, the nature of the duel is one where knocking out the opponent is the imperative, whereas in the cultivating duel, fighters hold back and will only assert themselves as far as their opponent can handle it. The milieu changes when fighters exterior to the club come insofar as spectating increases. The violence of the spectacle becomes the object of interest as opposed to the sharpening of skills between opponents.

When Tensions Arise . . . Even with the stress on humility between team members, there are instances of confl ict between members, when the cultivating duel swings

142

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

into the negation form of duel. Precipitants to this conversion usually arise when there is a level of taunting, derision, or what is commonly referred to as ‘shit talking’, that is in opposition to the normative masculinity of MMA. On a more general level, this type of verbal speech act is generally frowned upon as it is seen as a transgression of the normative masculinity of the club. In cases where this order is transgressed, senior members try to diffuse the confl ict by separating the fighters, making light through banter regarding the confl ict, or pin the two fighters against each other in a duel as negation. The following narrative from Clark illustrates the latter response to ‘shit talking’: Clark:

Umm, yeah there was a time when ahh, like I was saying before some guys they can just get egos in training, you know ahh, even when I am training some times, ahh, if I am training with a beginner or whatever I may play down to his level and because I am playing down to his level, I am not trying one hundred percent, I am giving him chances, you know and being a beginner, he almost gets me in something, he thinks I almost tapped out [names fighter], I am not going to be able to sleep tonight. So basically one of those situations happened with one of my students, and one of the blue belts was going around telling all the white belts that he almost tapped out the purple belt, and the purple belt overheard him and ahh, and he is just like “just stop being a bitch, just stop complaining about this, it is just training it does not mean anything. If you can beat me in a tournament that is a different,” but ahh, you know, I did not make anything of it initially, it was not too serious. But then, ahh, it got to the point where it was ahh, it was disrupting the class, so I just grabbed both of them and just said, the boxing ring is over there, throw on some sixteen-ounce gloves and shin guards and settle it that way. And ahh, they didn’t say anything after that. It just kind of died. I don’t know if anything happened after I left but, when I was there it diffused. Cause you know, MMA, it is basically like, ahh, I guess I call it the hurt game, sometimes, you know, so, if you got a problem, I mean, you don’t have to go outside, just put on some sixteen-ounce gloves, headgear, and shinguards, the ring is right there, and ahh, and go. You know, that is how you train for a fight anyways.

With the growing level of confidence, especially as it regards the mastering of body techniques, some fighters begin to jockey for higher positions in the gym hierarchy. Whereas Clark approaches dueling as cultivating bodies, in which his intention is to build bodies and help his fighters attain a greater level of self-mastery, some fighters, especially neophytes, may not

Homosociality, (Homo)eroticism, and Dueling Practice

143

heed the normative masculinity and disrespect those of higher ranking. ‘Shit talking’ also upsets the smooth running of the club and can prevent the continuous improvement of the fighters. This disruptive behavior can also emerge between two fighters at the same level in the club hierarchy. The following field entry offers a case in point: I am on the center of the mat practicing technique with Stewart; we are going through one of the techniques that we have been working on for some time now, the scissor sweep from guard. Two of the pro fighters are practicing technique over on the far end of the mats. I can hear George telling one of them that they are not doing the technique he is showing them correctly. I stop practicing with Stewart for a bit, as he walks over to get a drink of water at the edge of the mats. I observe over at the end of the mats and Geoffrey is making fun of Brian because he can’t do the technique. I hear “you are so fucking stupid, what is the matter with you.” At fi rst, I am astonished that Geoffrey is making fun of Brian, as they are friends. Brian looks to be frustrated as he is sweating from his brow and glaring at Geoffrey as he stands off to the side while Geoffrey does technique now with George, who appears to be intent on getting him to do the technique properly. Stewart comes back to the mat and we continue on with practicing the sweep. A short time later, in customary fashion, George has us break off to roll for a couple five-minute rounds. After fi nishing rolling and bowing out of the class, I notice that Geoffrey and Brian are not on the mats. I make my way downstairs and the two are standing face-to-face in the changing room. As I make my way in I hear Brian say that he is going to do to Geoffrey what happened to him in his last fight. Geoffrey quips back “Fuck you asshole” and is further into Brian’s face than he was before. The brows of both of their faces are sloped downward toward the nose and both are staring into each other’s eyes. For the fi rst time, I am uncomfortable at the gym and feel this situation is getting a little heated. A few other guys sense the gravity of the situation and we begin to pull them apart. By now they are swearing back and forth at each other and Brian is getting dressed and so is Geoffrey. Geoffrey makes his way out of the change room and Brian stays now talking to a few other fighters about what happened. (Field note excerpt) Whereas this is not a regular occurrence, this reaction—that is more in line with Collins’s (2008) model of forward panic—involves a level of anger between the two fighters that is predicated fi rst on frustration, which transmogrifies into anger when the experience of frustration is too much to handle. Each body has its own disposition, and therefore its own specific level of frustration, and this engenders particular (re)actions in some fighters and not in others. Nonetheless, the behaviors exhibited in the field

144 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment note were and are contrary to the normative masculinity of the club I was a member of and to most of the clubs I visited to train, with only one exception. Swearing4 and overly aggressive and other disruptive behaviors are seen as affronts to the normative masculinity of the club and, if excessive, are grounds for suspension from the club.

Negation Form of Duel as Spectacular Event In the course of this ethnography, I attended close to ten MMA fight events and documented the ritualized elements of this spectacular event. The ceremonial character is evident from the moment a fighter enters the building prior to the fight. When a fighter enters the fight venue, he or she is ushered into the back area or locker rooms reserved for fighters and their trainers. Part of the time prior to combat a fighter sits relaxing (see Figure 9.4), coming to grips with the fact that violence is imminent and coping with the emotions associated with battle discussed in the last chapter. Moreover, this stage of the event, according to many fighters interviewed and what I experienced backstage at fights, is the moment where a fighter contemplates that they will be standing across from an opponent that wants to destroy them. Fighters engage in various coping strategies from the more mundane strategy of merely talking with friends to cutting off themselves from others and quietly listening to their music players.

Figure 9.4

Relaxing before the fight.

Homosociality, (Homo)eroticism, and Dueling Practice

Figure 9.5

145

Getting a feel for the cage before the fight.

In some cases fighters will, depending on the fight organization, go into the ring or cage and get a feel for the space of battle (see Figure 9.5). Jerome’s response shows how fighters get a feel for the space of combat: Jerome:

If I get a chance, I go into the cage ahead of the fight. Just to get a feel for the cage; I will go in there and for ten minutes, circle the cage and go in every corner. Just make sure I touch all aspects of the cage, see how I feel, feel comfortable there. I will stay there for a bit, shadowbox and maybe do some drills on the ground. Simulate some moves. Each cage is different size, especially all the different organizations I have been in. They are all different sizes and you don’t know how the flooring is. If it is hard or soft, or if it is sticky or slippery. A lot of them have decals so there is slippery spots. And there is sticky spots. . . . I also check how much give there is to the fence. . . . I also check out the lighting and where the crowd is going to be at.

Here, Jerome tries to feel the space of combat. The character of the cage (or ring in some cases) is primarily intelligible through the feel of the space: the give of the floor and the bend of the fence (or ropes). Some fighters believe they must become acclimatized to the space of combat. Jerome later told me

146

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

that he also went through this tactile ritual to assuage the prefight experience of fear associated with confrontational tension. Fighters begin to ready themselves for the negation form of duel by getting their hands taped (see Figure 9.6). This ritual is particular to the fighter as each singularity has a particular way in which they want their hands taped.5 Then for approximately twenty to forty-five minutes (depending on the individual), fighters begin to warm up their bodies for battle. This may begin with various stretches (primarily the groin) and skipping. Customarily, hitting pads, pummeling6, and shooting in for a takedown on training partners follows. Suited with five-ounce gloves, fighters and their trainers assemble in the waiting area. Event organizers instruct the fighters which fighter will go into the ring fi rst. When given the cue, the fight team lines up to go out to the cage. The fighter’s music (which is particular to every singularity) is then played and he or she begins to walk out to the cage with their team. Most teams carry banners out to the ring, both signifying the fighter’s club or team and advertising the fighter’s sponsors.7 The role of the audience at this juncture in the event cannot be overstated. Fighters continually express the impact of the roar of the crowd on them as they walk up, further adding to the magnitude of the event. When fighters reach the cage or ring, they then take off all of their clothes except for their shorts. The athletic association official then checks to make sure they have groin protection and a mouth guard, and immediately after, the cut man applies Vaseline to the brow of the fighter. The fighters then make their way into

Figure 9.6

Getting hands taped before the fight.

Homosociality, (Homo)eroticism, and Dueling Practice

147

the cage or ring and circle the space of the cage. Flesh exposed, fighters’ bodies become a spectacle of the negation form of duel. Prior to the fi rst round and the announcement of the fighters (their names, weight, etc.), ring girls circle the cage holding cards announcing the rounds, which is done prior to each round (see Figure 9.7). They are usually clad in bikini tops and bikini bottoms or hot pants. As the negation form of duel serves as the key masculine event, the homoerotic elements of the duel must be tempered or hidden by a heterosexual interference. Bikini clad, stereotypically voluptuous, women serve to momentarily disrupt the homoerotic character of MMA events. Christian reflects on the role of ring girls in MMA events: Christian: I think it is a testosterone in event, I think it is just a change, it is just like watching a movie, and there is a, it is a dramatic movie, like in Shakespeare, they had the comedic element, just to change things up, you know. It is the same thing in MMA, it is just a testosterone, all these guys fighting and everything, it is just like what we are not gay. Look! The presence of ultrasexy female bodies works to disrupt the otherwise homoerotic script of the MMA event. The clash of primarily male bodies inevitably involves contact between (primarily) male bodies and as such, takes on a homoerotic character that stands invariably against, what Butler (1990,1993) would call, the heterosexual matrix prevalent in broader society. The normative masculinity of MMA, on display in the MMA event, rebuffs the perception of the event as anything but ‘natural’ by imputing honor on the act of engaging in the negation form of duel.

Figure 9.7 Canada.

Ring girl holding a card indicating the round at a small show in Quebec,

148

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

After the announcement of the fighters, they make their way to the middle of the ring. There the referee reinforces the rules to fighters and they touch gloves and make their way back to their respective corners. This ritual is common to all MMA organizations. The exceptionalism of the negation form of duel, the moment of intense one-on-one battle begins. Martin effectively explains the spectacular nature of this form of negation duel: Martin:

I’m always, I’m always a train wreck it’s just such a hard, for me, a stressful thing to, it’s all, it’s your ego, right as a man to be in a fight, it’s your ego and the more pressure. It’s not like you’re going out at the bar and punching each other out. I mean there’s thousands of people and in Japan there’s millions of people, it’s not even equal and it’s going to go around the whole world that you went there and fought and that can defi nitely get on your nerves but once the bell rings. In my head, I hear my corner and that’s it. I don’t hear people. I don’t hear, I don’t hear boos, I don’t hear cheers, I hear my corner man and everything else you hear and I just do my job. I just fight and it’s, and when I got to switch, I’m a nice person but when I’m in there I’m going to fucking drop you on your head.

Martin’s reflection points to the spectacular nature of this form of negation duel. The MMA event, the performance of fighters, becomes exposed for all to see. The large-scale nature of this spectacular event bears on the fighters as they feel the pressure of the audience. Martin notes how his auditory sense is limited to his corner man and he is singularly focused on the fight, pushing other elements in his environment out of focus. Fighter’s express that the event of this negation form of duel, for successful fighters, must produce what Martin refers to as a ‘switch’. Fighters must not be concerned with the wellbeing of their opponent’s bodies in the duel. They must negate the other.

DISCUSSION In this chapter, I have looked at the homosociality and homoeroticism prevalent within the sport and the coterminous elements of cooperation and conflict within the club. I have conceptualized two forms of the duel prevalent in MMA. By making a distinction between the two forms of the duel, we move beyond the reduction of the duel to mere ‘interpersonal violence’ between males and move to understand the specificities of dueling practices and the masculinity producing nature of such dueling practices. The recognition of the prevalence of the cultivating duel leads to an exposition of the affective associations resulting from such intermixing of bodies.

Homosociality, (Homo)eroticism, and Dueling Practice

149

A criticism of this chapter could be made in regards to the fact that I may be sidestepping a discussion of homosexuality in sport by opting for the language of homoeroticism and violence. As a pre-emptive counterpoint, what I found in the course of this ethnography in private conversations, interviews, and media excerpts from men is that there is a mix of views regarding the homoerotic elements in MMA. There was not a wholesale ‘fear and trembling’ regarding the threat of homosexuality in MMA, nor was the homoeroticism within MMA subliminally hidden from the minds of fighters and fans (cf. Pronger 1991, 1999). Some fighters verbally acknowledged the homoerotic elements of MMA, and it did not deter them from closeness with other men. The recurrent conflation of homoeroticism with homosexuality in the sexualities literature falls back on the customary identity politics that I have tried to avoid in this book. The production of the dichotomy between ‘straight’ and ‘gay’ men subsumes other bodily identifications. The identification of the behaviours described in this chapter as ‘homosexual’ essentializes what it means to be gay or ‘act homosexual’. In addition, I do not believe that it is progressive on a societal level to defi ne something or someone as homosexual (cf. Clark 2000). In addition, the label of homosexual is a terminology that men who have sex with men are not universally comfortable with. As such, by using the term homoerotic I seek to move beyond and blur the lines between gay and straight, the normal and the pathological. As such, I do not commit symbolic violence against my research participants and remain true to the case that I am seeking to study.

10 Conclusion

I have been affected and affected others in manifold ways through this sensory ethnography. The following section is a thematic grounding of my experience of MMA based on the preceding chapters describing the character of fighting bodies. My body is forever changed as my habitus is layered with a multitude of technical capacities that I did not have prior to conducting this study. I have been injured in numerous ways and live with markers of my participation in MMA. However, this ethnography has given me something that is the product of all the dimensions discussed in this book: that is, friendship. The bonds that are resultant of participation in cultivating duels are unlike the friendship derived from merely knowing the face and sounds of a friend. The distancing that characterizes most of my interactions with people on a day-to-day basis is dissolved when I enter into the MMA club. Beyond the quotidian sights and sounds, I know my friends qua training partners vis-à-vis their touch and smell. We sweat (and sometimes bleed) together; their sweat is mixed with my sweat. We are intermixed. Through the sharing and repetitions of body techniques between and with friends qua training partners, respectively, creates an overlapping that I have come to deeply value. Through my participation in this sensory ethnography, my body is, in form and movement, an inheritance to the styles that I have practiced, which are ultimately the product of over a millennia of development of martial arts. Through this chiasmic relationship between my body and world, I have taken on a body both capable of giving and taking pain. In the events of pain, illness, and injury, be it physical or emotional, it is my friends that were there to rejuvenate my commitment to this study. I pushed aside the question of rapport and the customary warnings in introductory texts on field research of distance between those in the field and ‘the researcher’. There is no distance between ‘I’ and ‘they’; it is the existential position of ‘we’. Boundaries were and continue to be transgressed. The thought of ‘leaving the field’ is tantamount to severing ties with my family. This is not a romanticization of my experience of participant observation. My friendships are an outgrowth of this particular study and the quixotic quest for ‘objectivity’ is left behind for a rich, fragmented depiction of life as an MMA practitioner.

Conclusion

151

In one of the fi rst paragraphs of this book I invoke the work of Agamben (2009) on friendship, noting the fundamental connection between discussions of philosophy and friendship (beginning with Aristotle). With respect to this study of MMA, this is important insofar that sport is usually posited to be inconsequential or relegated to scientific studies of performance. The fundamental connection of sport participation and friendship as illuminated in this book is important to how we think of what Nancy (2000) exclaims is our ‘co-existence’. Agamben (2009) avers that “friends do not share something: they are shared by the experience of friendship. Friendship is the con-division that precedes every division, because what has to be shared is the very fact of existence, life itself” (36). This sharing is what I have tried to carefully document throughout this book and the particular experience of life in the MMA club.

RETURNING TO THE NARRATIVE In the theory chapter of this book, I offered a sketch of the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of this project, a particular genealogy of phenomenology in Western philosophy, and argued for the centrality of bodies to sociality. In addition, I discussed how the post-Husserlian phenomenology pursued here contributes to the sociology of the body literature and existing discussions of identity in the social sciences. I grounded my analysis of sense and meaning generation through an elucidation of the bodies-centered phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Nancy in conjunction within the hermeneutic phenomenological tradition. I then relate such discussions to recent emergence of sensory ethnography and current ethnographic practices. In the third chapter I gave a close phenomenological analysis of the senses of life in the MMA club and combat more generally. I also explored how, through contact between bodies, rhythms are experienced and open fighters to the rhythms of other bodies and as a result, add to the proliferation of meanings generated through the ongoing intermixing of bodies in the MMA club. In the fourth chapter, I returned to a discussion of my position in relation to the extant literature on identity in the social sciences. I examined both the gendered and ‘racial’ aspects of MMA and how these categories, as they are affi xed to bodies qua singularities, work to include some bodies and exclude others from participation and consideration as viable bodies in the sport of MMA. In the following chapter, I analyzed the ways of beingin-the-world of MMA fighters. Here I detailed the ways of becoming an MMA fighter and how this form of being-in-the-world impacts upon various dimensions of their lives and social relations. The distinction between everyday and heroic life is utilized to discuss the implications of being an MMA fighter outside of the club environment and the novelty of the adventurous life of MMA fighters. The sixth chapter elucidated the process by

152

Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

which fighters learn body techniques and, consequently, contribute to the production of an MMA habitus. In addition, I developed the concept of body callusing and the use of RBTs in constructing a body capable of both giving and taking pain. In the seventh chapter, I elucidated the ways in which fighters experience pain and injury and the role it plays in their everyday lives and the emotional experiences of pain and injury. I also examined how fighters experience and react to failure. Chapter 9 explored the emotional dimensions—confidence, frustration, anger, and elation—related to participation in MMA, from training to the MMA event. There I elaborated on and challenged Collins’s (2008) concept of confrontational tension through examining the role of confidence as efficacious in enabling fighters to engage in combat. In the last empirical chapter, I analyzed the homosociality and homoeroticism that is constitutive of MMA and the significance of the practice of dueling in the sport. Through a consideration of the historical development of the duel across cultures, I relate dueling practice to homosociality and homoeroticism. Productive of this connection is an exposition of two dueling tendencies—creation and negation—and how such tendencies characterise the engagement of bodies vis-à-vis dueling.

CONTRIBUTIONS TOWARD A SOCIOLOGY OF BODIES This is the fi rst academic book to singularly describe and analyze the sport of MMA from a sociological standpoint. This book contributes to sociological understandings of bodies and sport in several ways. Herein I illuminated various aspects of MMA otherwise overlooked or not considered in popular conceptions of MMA. I have contributed to social studies of violence through a careful examination of the role of emotions in the experience of combat. The empirical component of this book also fills a relative lacuna of general studies of violence, as much of what one fi nds in the violence literature is theoretical postulations about violence or discussions of the impacts of violence on victims. On a broader level, through an analysis of the gendered aspects of participation in MMA, I have contributed to studies of men and masculinities, sociology of gender, and the sociology of sport. In addition, this book contributes to the sociology of injury and health through an illumination of the experience of pain and injury in sport. This book contributes to the sociology of sport by offering a bodies-centered ontology and a phenomenological approach to sporting activities (cf. Allen-Collinson 2009). Starting with a fundamentally social and body-centered ontology is important as it prescribes lines of inquiry and the means for a detailed social description of a particular sporting phenomenon (see Katz 2002). Lastly, in a small way, this book further develops sensory ethnography and offers a particular approach to understanding the sensory aspects of data collection.

Conclusion

153

With respect to the sociology of the body, this book makes efforts throughout to speak of and about bodies in the plural rather than the singular. Whereas this can be seen as trivial, I believe that speaking of bodies rather than ‘the’ body has important implications for the ways we understand social interaction and the corporeal aspects of human existence. In this respect, this work joins Shilling (2008) insofar as he explores how bodies change and are a product of living in, attending to, and working on our bodies and that we become fully embodied beings able to realize our human potentialities in a variety of ways.1 To attend to bodies’ potentialities we move beyond the parameters that have been put on ‘the’ body in sociology, philosophy, and other disciplines (see Grosz 1994). The body is not merely a surface for discourses to be inscribed upon. Bodies speak back in significant ways to prescriptions, and the potentialities of bodies cannot be determined a priori. As shown in Chapter 6, habits are social in character and are incessantly shared between bodies. We do not form habits ex nihilo; they surface on singularities through ongoing associations between bodies. The subtle particularity of specific habits qua body techniques is often only intelligible to those who have built up a specific habitus that can interpret such subtleties. The engagement of bodies through the practice of body techniques may give rise to creativity in and through crisis and/or correction (cf. Shilling 2008). The focus on bodies rather than ‘the body’ has other contributions to our understandings of carnal existence. As shown in Chapters 4 and 5, in terms of the ways in which individuals are socially organized in environs and interpreted by members of a social milieu, it is in accordance to specific bodies’ proclivities. That is, groups of bodies are divided (according to ostensible differences) and made intelligible in terms of proclivities. Groupings of bodies must be racialized and gendered in order to be divided and for some to be included and others excluded. On the other hand, as shown in Chapters 7 and 8, attempts to reduce bodies to their ostensible proclivities and dictate emotional responses to combat invariably fail. Despite breaking down and suffering pain associated with injury, bodies reveal their manifold potentialities, answering Spinoza’s question of what a body can do. Lastly, as shown in Chapter 10, bodies defy attempts to prescribe divisions between bodies insofar as nomothetic assertions regarding relations of bodies of the same gender are always transgressed, in this case through the intermixing customary of participation in MMA. In this book, I make deliberate attempts to assert the primacy of engaging with MMA (and sport and issues related to bodies more generally) at the level of bodies and the experience aspects of combat. With little to no exceptions, previous research on MMA has been from an Archimedean point (see, e.g., Akihiko, Hirose, and Kei-ho Pih 2010; Lyng, Matthews, and Miller 2009; Van Bottenburg and Heilbron 2006). I recognize that not everyone (actually very few) can engage in an embodied ethnographic

154 Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment study of MMA, but much of what has been said about MMA in the academic literature has been based on a narrow vision of what MMA entails. What is discussed is based on an examination of the UFC and very little understanding of the precursors to and competitors of this fight promotion (Downey 2007 is a notable exception). In addition, Archimedean understandings of MMA, whilst having the effect of misrepresenting what is involved in MMA, do a further injustice to the sport by reducing it to human cockfighting. Sánchez Garcia and Malcolm (2010) have asserted that only ‘cosmetic’ changes have been made to the rules in MMA in order keep it ‘sufficiently violent’. I fi nd myself in disagreement with this assertion based on how violent MMA could be. Specifically, when one considers that the UFC operated in the beginning as a ‘no-holds barred’ competition only having a few rules, and that very recently Pride (another fight promotion in Japan) had head stomps and knees to a downed opponent, the institution of unified International rules by the UFC and other fight promotions prohibiting fighters from utilizing these techniques is a considerable stride toward making the sport less violent. As someone that participated in the sport for the last four years, having the potential of having my head stomped would inhibit me from participating in MMA in any capacity.

SOME CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ON MMA The most difficult part of this ethnography was studying something that was/is continually going through a process of metamorphosis. Over this four-year ethnography, the styles of fighting and dominance of particular fighters changed considerably. In addition, when I started this ethnography in 2006, the center of the MMA world was in Japan, where the Pride Fighting Championships promotion was widely recognized as the premier fighting organization, with the UFC being a close second. Through economic sharpness and stealth, the UFC has emerged as the top MMA organization. Zuffa, the UFC’s parent company, purchase of Pride Fighting Championships, World Extreme Cagefighting and Strikeforce, three MMA promotions, marked this rise to dominance. Concomitantly, MMA was legalized in many states and provinces across North America. Three months after completing this ethnography, MMA was made legal in the province of Ontario. Prior to this, fighters in Ontario had to go outside of the province to compete in MMA events. Previous to the legalization of MMA contests, the Ontario Athletic Commission 2 did not sanction MMA because it was considered illegal under Section 83 of the criminal code of Canada. On August 14, 2010, Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario government announced that MMA would become legal and that professional fight events would be become regulated in 2011.

Conclusion

155

On April 2, 2011, the fi rst legal MMA fight contest took place in Orillia, Ontario at the Casino Rama in an event called ‘Knockout Entertainment— MMA: The Reckoning’. Later on April 30, 2011, Canadian MMA fighter George ‘Rush’ St. Pierre defended his UFC title against American Jake Shields in front of a crowd of 50,000 fans in the Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Beyond being the biggest fight event in North American MMA history, the event revealed the level of support for the sport in Ontario. This acceptance does not point to a Canadian public that craves for unbridled violence. Rather, as Bryan Hogeveen and I (Spencer and Hogeveen, forthcoming) have shown elsewhere, the picture is a lot more complicated. This may have more to do with a national pride in Canadian MMA athletes and an enjoyment of the technical abilities of the fighters. Despite the continuing acceptance of MMA and the spread of the UFC, the leading fight promotion, across provinces and states in North American and abroad, women remain locked out of the UFC. The UFC president, Dana White, has said on multiple occasions that women will never be in the UFC. Although White has been known to go back on earlier proclamations, this points to the continued exclusion of women in elite level sports. White has also stated that this is also based on the perception that audiences will not accept seeing women fighting each other. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, and this is not limited to MMA, we may engage in ethico-political positions that proceed from a standpoint of care rather than a will to rule and exclude (cf. Gregory 1994: 416). As shown throughout this book, MMA is a lot more than men and women standing around unskillfully smashing each other’s heads in. MMA is very different in kind from the interpersonal violence in bars, homes, and on the street. It proceeds from a necessity for being-together and it is through this ethico-political commitment that I have found my life enriched by my participation in MMA. Possibly, with the development of female MMA and the recognition of women’s technical abilities—what a female body can do—we may fi nd in MMA, a more inclusive sport.

About the Author

Dale C. Spencer is a Banting postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta. His interests include embodiment, emotions, violence, and victimization. He has published in such journals as Body and Society, Punishment and Society, and Criminal Law and Philosophy. He is co-editor of Emotions Matter: A Relational Approach to Emotions (University of Toronto Press, forthcoming) and co-author of Reimagining Intervention in Young Lives (University of British Columbia Press, forthcoming).

Glossary of Terms

Arm Bar: An arm lock that hyperextends the elbow joint. It is usually applied by placing an opponent’s extended arm at the elbow over a fulcrum such as an arm, leg, or hip and controlling the opponent’s body while leveraging the arm over the fulcrum. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is primarily a ground fighting style that focuses on arm and leg submissions, chokes, and defending oneself while on one’s back. Clinch: In Muay Thai, the clinch is referred to as the plumb, and it is where, while facing your opponent, you wrap both hands behind your opponent’s head, pulling down and trying to control your opponent while delivering knees to the opponents body and head and elbows to the opponents head. In wrestling, a clinch can take a variety of forms including but not limited to wrapping both arms around the arms of an opponent (double over hooks); wrapping one arm around an opponent’s arm while the other arm is hooked under the opponent’s arm pit (neutral position); and where both arms are hooked under the opponents arm-pits (double under hooks). Cut Kick: This is also referred to as a diagonal kick. The kick is performed in a semicircular motion where the shin lands on the outside of the opponent’s thigh muscle. In terms of impact it is like having a baseball bat land on the thigh. Gi: A gi is the pajama-like suit worn in judo, Japanese Jiu Jitsu, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Comparable gis are worn in karate and tae kwon do. See Chapter 9 for a picture of a gi. Guard: Both a defensive and offensive position (depending on the practitioner) that involves wrapping one’s legs around an opponent’s waist and controlling their posture so as to avoid an opponent’s strikes from the top position. Various submissions can be applied while utilizing the guard position.

160

Glossary of Terms

Half Guard: A position where a practitioner has an opponent on top of him/her and wraps their legs around one of their opponent’s legs and uses their hands to control their opponent or defend themselves against their opponent’s strikes. The practitioner can return to full guard (where they have their legs wrapped around the opponents waist), sweep their opponent onto their back, or apply a submission. Kata: A pre-arranged or choreographed activity in which students of a particular style act out the basic techniques of a specific fighting style. Kata in this sense is mimetic of a dancing style, and the connection between fighting behaviour and dancing is particularly important (Jones 2002: xi). In the Thai fighting style of Muay Thai, the Ram Muay is a dance performed by competitors before a match that features the elements of the style and appears as a mock battle to an imaginary opponent. Kimura: A type of arm bar that manipulates the shoulder joint where the opponent’s arm is bent behind his/her back in a circular motion towards the opponent’s head. Muay Thai: Also referred to as Thai boxing, Muay Thai is known to its practitioners as the science of eight limbs and is a standing striking style where practitioners utilize their fists, shins, knees, and elbows to strike their opponents. Clinching and delivering elbows and knees to a standing opponent is also a central feature of Muay Thai. See Chapter 3 for pictures of the rudiments of Muay Thai. Rolling: In rolling, the competitors attempt to master submission techniques through using them on each other in real time. Striking is not part of this practice. This type of competition has varying intensities as competitors may concentrate on keeping a low intensity (minimal use of strength and force) and master new techniques; whereas at other times, usually close to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and submission wrestling tournaments, there is an intensification of rolling where fighters are trying to submit each other (using maximum strength and force). See Chapter 9 for the uniforms used in submission wrestling and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Sparring: This involves the mimicking of mixed martial arts fights. In the course of this study, there were many different forms of sparring. ‘Stand up’ sparring is where fighters remain standing and exchange punches, kicks, knees, and sometimes elbows. In ‘ground’ sparring, one fighter practices ground and pound and the other practices fighting off of their back. Free sparring involves sparring that mimics actual mixed martial arts matches, where fighting takes place both on the feet and the ground. Sparring is also fundamentally about intensities. Sparring can range from low intensity light sparring, where fighters concentrate on technique but hit their opponents

Glossary of Terms 161 with minimal force, to high intensity sparring where participants fight with same intensity they would in an actual fight, hitting their opponents with full force. Fighters usually wear headgear, boxing gloves or mixed martial arts sparring gloves, and shin pads. A mouth guard is always worn for protection. See Chapter 3 for pictures of the rudiments of combat. Tapping Out: To ‘tap out’ is to tap on your opponent’s body or the mat indicating that you are submitting to the submission technique that he/she has you in. In addition, in mixed martial arts, a fighter can tap out when they cannot take any more strikes from their opponent. Triangle Choke: A type of four-fold chokehold that strangles the opponent by encircling the opponent’s neck and one arm with the legs in a configuration similar to the shape of a triangle.

Appendix The Senses and Ethnographic Research

Punch (1998: 156) exclaims that “fieldwork is fun; it is easy; anyone can do it.” This airy statement is meant to highlight the exciting side of fieldwork, but it belies, inter alia, the extremely arduous elements of fieldwork and the difficulties a researcher must deal with before, while in, and after leaving the field (in as much a researcher fully leaves the field). What is often labeled as fieldwork is often a one-off engagement with research subjects, and as such, the bodies of the researcher are not immersed, in any sustained way, in the lived experiences of their research subjects (see Piche and Walby 2009). This phenomenon in fieldwork is what Katz (2004) has typified as ‘aristocratic’ ethnography where the academic on high, in his/ her ivory tower, descends to engage in research but stays and engages with research subjects in a cursory way so as to not be dirtied through contact. A further problem that Katz highlights is that the academic asserts his or her theoretical agenda on the lives of their research subjects, glosses over empirical data that runs counter to their position, and sparingly offers the voices of research subjects in their write up. The aristocratic phenomenon, I believe, is on of the greatest travesties in contemporary social science. The statement ‘anyone can do it’ is ambitious as the bodies of certain researchers are more amenable to certain ethnographic research projects. What I mean by this is that some projects lend themselves to being carried out by certain bodies. Certain projects require the technical background and the physical body to be able to engage in certain projects. In addition, as Chapters 3 and 7 show, fieldwork is not always fun, and sometimes it is a very painful experience. I often felt like quitting, and it was only through the encouragement of friends and training partners that I pushed through. In this study, the pain derived from participation in MMA disrupted the body amnesia (Osbourne 1997) that is putatively an element of our normal daily experience. In addition, my body was always in the forefront, as it was one of my main instruments of data collection. It was Goffman (1989) that argued that the axiom of field work is the subjection of “yourself, your own body and your own personality, and your own social situation, to the set of contingencies that play upon a set of individuals, so that you can physically and ecologically penetrate their circle of response to their social

164 Appendix situation, or their work situation, or their ethnic situation” (my emphasis, 125; see also, Wacquant 2004). As a rejoinder to Goffman, I am calling for a more strict definition of what constitutes fieldwork and more broadly, due attention to the carnal dimension of fieldwork through body-centered, sensory ethnography. Here I discuss the bodily dimension of fieldwork and show how the ethnographer’s body is intimately linked with the entire research process. This may be viewed as an obvious assertion regarding fieldwork, but as Okely (2007) has suggested, the Cartesian mind/body dichotomy has privileged the cerebral in understanding of fieldwork practice and furthermore the bodily experience of the fieldworker has been underscrutinized. To understand the bodily engagement in fieldwork, the ethnographer’s body must be seen as integral to data collection, and ultimately, data analysis and acts of inscription. By making a concerted effort to document the full sensory spectrum during research process, we move beyond previous work on sensory ethnography that tends to document a singular sense. In addition, I consider how a sensory-based approach to data collection can serve as supplemental to the symbolic-interactionist approach to participant observation provided by Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw (1995).

SENSORY ETHNOGRAPHY In its more generic form, ethnography is a particularly rich form of interpretive knowledge production (Cerwonka and Malkki 2007). Ethnography offers a view of the messiness of actual practice (Law 2004) that Archimedean, ‘god trick’ (Haraway 1988) based, positivist methods do not provide. The materiality of the body of the researcher in ethnography functions and is part of the ethnographer’s empirical research (see, e.g., Nelson 1999). Ethnography enables the researcher to tap into another level of data collection occluded in positivist, statistical-based approaches. It is not caught up in quixotic quests towards objectivity, but thick descriptions of specific locales and populations. In addition, it exposes manifold and transient emotions experienced in situ, that is, within the ongoing day-to-day experience of social relations. Ethnography is, in its best version, a method assemblage that deploys manifold methodological techniques to uncover fractals of a given object of study (cf. Law 2004). As it is deployed here, the term ‘method assemblage’ means the utilization of multiple qualitative methodological techniques—be it participant observation, interviewing, and content analysis. This leads to the production of a data set that speaks to various dimensions of the topic under study (Katz 2009). The combination of techniques adds to the power and utility of qualitative approaches (Gerson and Horowitz 2002).

Appendix 165 The positionality of the researcher leads to questions of embodiment and the researcher’s body in the research process. As noted earlier, body-subjects are actively engaged with the world from a particular perspective and a particular place and time. As such, the ethnographer’s body is intimately linked with the research process. His or her body as the pivot in the world and as vessel and producer of sense becomes integral to data collection and, ultimately, data analysis and acts of inscription. Whereas sociology has been particularly attuned to meaning making, sociological consideration of the senses is rather limited. Simmel’s ([1907] 1997) work on the senses stands as an exception, but he places sight atop of the hierarchy devaluing other senses in social relations. Whereas visual sociologists have admirably called attention to the role of the visual in empirical investigations, this has overshadowed the role of other senses in data collection (see Grady 1996; Emmison and Smith 2000; J. Wagner 2002, 2006).1 In Jon Wagner’s (2006) plea for sociologists to pay attention to the visual in their data collection methods, he distinguishes between the visible, visual, and visualization. Here the term ‘visible’ pertains to physical– optical attributes of phenomena or materials, regardless of how interesting or meaningful they are to researchers or research subjects. ‘Visual’, on the other hand, refers to an attribute, dimension, or mode of sense perception. The term ‘visualize’ or ‘visualized’ refers to neither objects nor direct perceptions, but to a mode, process, or dimension of understanding, a strategy of comprehension or conceptualization. Wagner’s contention, inter alia, is that researchers need to recognize the importance of all three, both in their collection of data and the representation of their work. Photos, films, and videotapes are forms of data that also record the visual perceptions of those who made them, and they can stimulate additional visual perceptions among people who view them (J. Wagner 2006, 57). I concur with Wagner in the need to pay attention to these visual aspects of data collection, but I contend that in the act of placing considerable emphasis on the visible, there is a tendency to submerge the other elements of sensory perception of objects in data collection. Whereas I have utilized and fully advocate the integration of visual materials (photos, video, etc.) into the practice of ethnography, this form of data collection needs to be concomitantly linked with audio materials and traditional written documentation in order to preserve the other senses and are always part of the experiencing of a given event (see Heath and Hindmarsh 2002). That is, whether post hoc or during the witnessing of a particular event, the researcher is attuned to their full sensual experiences and actively works to document these experiences. This may seem uncontroversial, but as noted, without such attention to the full spectrum of the senses, ethnographic descriptions can fall back on the occularcentrism described in Chapter 2. The sensory ethnography of Sarah Pink (2008, 2009) stands as

166 Appendix an example of sensory ethnography. Her work analyzes the sensoriality and sociality of research participants through photographing and audio- and video-recording, alongside and with research participants. Pink argues that it is by the attuning of the researcher to other people’s practices that the ethnographer might be able, through her or his embodied experience, to make and thus comprehend the places she or he seeks to analyze. In what follows, I discuss the methodological techniques promoted and utilized in this study of MMA based on the epistemological grounds laid out thus far.

PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION Field research is synonymous with participation observation, qualitative research, or ethnography (Shaffi r, Dietz, and Stebbins 1994) and involves the researcher personally observing, discussing, and recording the worlds and actions of humans engaging in social interaction. Traditionally, participant observation is a methodological technique where the researcher immerses him/herself in the community under study and observes, records, and participates in the ongoing activities of the community (Schensul, Schensul, and Lecompte 1999). According to Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw (1995), participant observation involves two primary components. First, the researcher enters into a social setting and becomes familiar with the people involved with it. Second, the researcher writes down in regular, systematic ways what she or he observes and learns while participating in the daily rounds or activities of others. Resultant of this is a written record of these observations and experiences. This form of immersion involving the researcher performing the activities that are central to the lives of those studied remains an idealized practice amongst contemporary ethnographers (see, e.g., Adler, Adler, and Rochford 1986; Pink 2009). In participating as fully as possible in the lives of the research subjects, the ethnographer learns what is required to be a member of that world and to experience events in ways that ‘approximate’ member’s experiences (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 1995). Participant observation also involves a level of truncation in which the ethnographer selects, records, and emphasizes certain features and actions and hence, marginalizes or ignores others. The inscriptions that are resultant of participant observation are temporally specific and inevitably reduce the messiness of social worlds. Field note-taking and eventual analysis of data is an interpretive process that shapes the fi nal ethnographic product. Angrosino (2007) evinces four generally recognized reasons for making participant observation the foundation for research. The fi rst advantage is that in assuming the position as an insider, researcher is given access to settings and situations that would be closed to an outsider. Participant observers also have the advantage of blending into the scene, so much so that they become part of the scene and as such, research subjects are less apt to

Appendix 167 modify their behaviors to accommodate their presence. A third advantage is that presence in the field of study creates a platform for conducting further research in the form of interviews. Further to this point, being in the field allows the researcher to be in better tune with the normative expectations, values, and attitudes of the community. The last benefit offered by Angrosino is in regards to being able to form a fi rsthand opinion of and position within the field of study rather than just relying on informants’ positions on what is happening. There is another benefit that is not highlighted by Angrosino (2007) which is the illumination of the senses in participant observation (Pink 2009; Stoller 2004). Conducted over a long period of time, participant observation offers the greatest opening to the way the senses and emotions impinge upon the experience of a given practice in the field (see Okely 2007). The development of jottings and ultimately field notes that specify both the ‘happenings’ in the field and the embodied experiences of the field—be it at the sensual or emotional level—enrich the depiction of a given situation in the field. The form of participant observation and attendant note-taking in this study emphasizes the sensual dimension of my experience of participation in MMA. As noted in the Introduction, when I decided to convert my hobby into an ethnographic study, I began to casually take field notes after structured classes and informal training sessions at the club. This usually takes the form of what Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw (1995) call ‘jottings’ in my field book, which are later converted into longer narratives. The jottings correspond to particular events that illuminate the themes of the study. Field notes help to describe the nature of MMA training in situ. Keeping with the mandates of sensory ethnography, this study involved my own multisensory, emplaced experiences of MMA (see Pink 2009). Both photographs and video recording supplement field notes (Pink 2008; Becker 2007; Katz 1999). The combination of field notes, photography, and video help to describe the emotionally and sensory experiences of MMA training in situ. The diachronic understanding that is facilitated by participation observation has, among other things, allowed me to observe and participate in the ways in which fighters learn body techniques and transform into bodies capable of giving and taking pain and withstanding the rigors of the sport. In terms of the actual production of field notes, the project began with the traditional method for production of field notes and then developed from there into an integration and utilization of photographs and videotape customary of the sensory ethnographic techniques advocated by Pink (2001, 2008, 2009). Here I used, where and when appropriate, the photographs and tapes to buttress and enrich the production of field notes. Traditional jottings in combination with analysis of photographs and fi lm within the club and MMA events helped me to produce the thick descriptions of various happenings and events.

168

Appendix

INTERVIEWS Supplemental to participant observation, this study utilized in-depth, semistructured interviews with amateur and professional MMA fighters and MMA trainers. Generally speaking, interviews were utilized to investigate MMA practitioners’ perceptions of the sport, the forms of training they do outside the club, and other topics that may not come up in the context of the MMA club. Interviews involve a certain level of emotional labor (Hoffman 2007) and are textured by the gender context of the research environment (Pini 2005). As such, the particular responses elicited by the informants in this study were impacted by my positionality as a white, heterosexual, male. The willingness of the research subjects to conduct a candid interview with me is impacted by my positionality as a member of the MMA community. This also had the impact of granting me a level of verification of what fighters told me. For example, when fighters explained their training regimens in the club during interviews, irrespective of the research subjects’ respective club, I witnessed and participated with them in their training regimes. While at my home gym and when visiting the clubs in Montreal, Toronto, and Florida where I spent longer periods of time training with fighters (usually a week), I observed the ways in which fighters interacted and used such observations to corroborate what they told me in their interviews.

ON REFLEXIVITY: DATA ANALYSIS, ACTS OF INSCRIPTION AND KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION Issues related to data analysis, especially in relation to interview transcripts, tend to be pushed aside and viewed as an unproblematic part of the research process. This lack of reflexivity on the relationship between the researcher and their data is predicated on a lack of recognition of the epistemological and ontological commitments of the research that inevitably color the analysis of the interview data (see Mauthner and Doucet 2003). Both in the analysis of my data and in the write up, I maintained a certain level of reflexivity regarding my position as a heterosexual, ‘white’ male in the context of the MMA club. I was also reflexive regarding my particular experience of the club and how it differs from those that are just marginal to the club and specifically, my privileged participation on the MMA team. This allowed for a number of affordances, namely, extensive locker room contact with the fighters before their fights and outings with fighters outside of official club training sessions. I have remained reflexive about how fighters are saying what they are saying and doing as much as what they are saying and doing. Be that as it may, the reader will note, that this level of reflexivity has not translated into two tendencies in ethnographies. The fi rst is the sort of academic navel gazing that is customary in such reflexive ruminations, where

Appendix 169 the author spends pages discussing their experiences. Leading from the fi rst criticism, is the tendency to not only project the researcher’s experiences as ‘generalizable’ rather than nominal, and furthermore, the underrepresentation of the voices of those in their studies. The description and analysis of MMA—the product of this sensory ethnography—is predicated on an attempt to stay as close to and reflective of the data produced through participant observation and interviews. Concomitantly, the write up involved a level of truncation, organization, and focus (see Wolcott 1994; Davies 2008). As such, enjoined by the theoretical and conceptual commitments of this project, what is found in the subsequent pages is a veritable invention. This creation, in terms of data analysis, involved three interrelated, cyclical ‘moments’. To begin, while in the field, I continuously produced field notes to be analyzed at a later stage. In terms of in-depth interviews, after the completion of the interview, I listened to the interview and then transcribed the interview. At points, I returned to the audio version of the interview to note how fighters said what they said. This mattered insofar as fighter’s responses to particular questions, at times, involved inflections that reflected certain attitudes in the sport. For example, when asked about the role of women in MMA, there was, at times, hesitancy in some of the male respondent’s voices and in a smaller number of respondents; an indignant resistance to women’s inclusion in the sport was reflected in their voices. This ethnographic project involved attention to bodies and the manifold levels bodies are involved in the sport of MMA. As such, the second moment involved the designation of various topics or fundamental categories that were used to categorize the field and interview data. These categories included, but were not limited to, the following categories: ‘habits/body techniques’, ‘senses’, ‘gender’ (which was further split into subcategories), ‘race’ (which was something that was later added after reading through the interview transcripts), ‘emotions’, ‘violence’, and so forth. Nodes or categories coding reports were produced through noting the category, the interviewee number, and the actual interview excerpt. For organizational purposes, each category was saved to a separate Word document for write up. At this stage, I was reflexive about the particular categories I used to describe bodies. As Okely (1994) advocates, by taking a critical reflexive position at this stage, one can challenge the long-held classical concepts and assumptions that dominate particular sociological subareas. The easy association between male bodies and violence (see, e.g., Theweleit 2003) was challenged throughout my analysis. By troubling the ostensible ‘causal relationship’ between maleness and violence, I am able to move to a more nuanced account of the complex associations between male bodies that recognizes the ways in which combat between male bodies is both productive and destructive concomitantly (see Chapter 9). The third moment involved textualization (see Clifford 1986), which is the signification of experience, observation, reflection, and analysis into

170 Appendix written form. This process involved the creative tension that arises out of engagement with my data, my ontological and epistemological commitments, and the external sociological literatures that I engage with in this book. I was reflexive at this stage in two important ways. The fi rst way is characterized by an intellectual hesitancy to put forth conclusions about my subject matter (see Dumont 1978). In cases of ambivalence regarding a specific aspect, I returned to the field and my empirical data concentrating on this particular aspect. As such, this project involved a hermeneutic circle, or spiral if you will, in which I continuously moved from the initial data collection to the analysis stage to the write-up. The second way in which I am reflexive in writing on bodies is with respect to the earlier acknowledgement of the inability to establish any fi xity in relation to the question of ‘what are bodies’. In lieu of such a question, my focus returned to the question of ‘how’ bodies move, comingle, affect, and are affected. Being aware of the limitation of defining what is the body, the preceding ethnography is proudly a fragmentary account of the complexion of MMA and bodies.

DISCUSSION Beyond the formal discussions of my methodology, in this appendix I have explicated the role of bodies in the generation of meaning. I also linked up discussions of sense with the hermeneutic approach offered in continental philosophy. This has allowed me to not only epistemologically ground my discussions of sense and meaning generation, but the translation of such discussions into a form amenable to ethnographic practice, in terms of data collection and analysis, and also, inscription. The approach advocated in this appendix joins a growing list of scholars, in a variety of disciplines in the social sciences, engaging in sensory ethnography. I make a further contribution to ethnography, insofar as I offer one possible avenue for reconciling hermeneutic approaches and sensory approaches to ethnographic research (cf. Howe 2004). Aware of this underlying tension, we nonetheless arrive at and can produce ethnographies enriched by fractal knowledge of sensory embodied experience while cognizant of the limitations of translating bodily experience to text.

Notes

NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 1. Fish hooking is where a fighter thrusts their fi nger into a body crevice of an opponent (their mouth) and hooks or pulls at the opening. 2. This dismissal of kata or the artistic elements of traditional martial arts is both reflected in the absence of kata at the beginning of MMA competitions (as it would be in the case of Muay Thai practitioners) and in the testimony of legendary MMA fighter, Ken Shamrock (Shamrock and Hanner, 1998). When explaining the difference between other dojos (martial art organizations) and his MMA organization, the ‘Lions Den,’ Shamrock makes the following comment reflecting the perceived pointlessness of kata: “We don’t hold aerobics classes and we aren’t into kata. We are preparing for no-holdsbattles the world over” (134). 3. Submission is indicated through tapping on the ground or on an opponent multiple times. 4. The Senator labeled MMA competitions in general, the UFC in particular, as ‘repugnant’ (Moore 2004) and as a form of ‘human cockfighting’ (Weir 2005). Most states in the United States complied with this ban, and in 1997 cable television outlets dropped the event. 5. A case in point is welterweights Josh Koscheck and Jon Fitch who have continuously refused to fight each other. 6. There is a scene in Fight Club (1999) where Edward Norton, playing the protagonist, narrates that after training and participating in fight club, bruised and battered, he found himself sizing up other men in his day-to-day life. Similarly, there was a tendency from time to time in my day-to-day thought processes to size up men I came into contact with, analyzing how I would fight them if we were, in some alternate universe, to enter into combat. 7. For more information regarding the contours of this sensory ethnography, see the appendix. 8. I was involved in being a student of a Korean martial art for one year, high school free-style amateur wrestling for two years, eight months in judo, and eight months in Muay Thai in my young adult life. In addition, from the age of sixteen to the present day, I have intermittently engaged in powerlifting and bodybuilding. This background in various styles gave me a general feel for starting at the club, but after smoking cigarettes for two years my fitness level was so poor that making it through a workout was extremely difficult. 9. This ratio is not particularly revealing. Half the club members are committed members that are either at the club to take classes and to achieve belts in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or Muay Thai or both. Out of this latter group are a further segment of members that are mixed martial art fighters. Half the club would be considered as occasional or ‘recreational members’ who do not fight or help prepare for the fights and attend only the structured classes.

172 Notes There is, what one club owner called, a ‘revolving door syndrome,’ where women and men will come in, pay for a six-month membership, attend the classes for a month, and are never seen again. Various club owners, members, and practitioners expressed that this is primarily because when certain neophytes join and have plans to become professional fighters, they have a particular concept of self (revealed in bragging how tough they are, where they trained before, etc.) that is immediately challenged by the rigors of the training. They, in turn, quit and never return. 10. In terms of ensuring the anonymity of participants in the MMA club, pseudonyms have been used and, as much as possible, descriptive information has been changed to protect the participants. In terms of participant observation, the club participants recognize and refer to me as the sociologist and are cognizant that I am conducting a sociological study of MMA that involves taking notes of the activities in the club. That said, certain elements of the training regimes that are seen as particular to the broader fighting organization that the club is affiliated with, have not been part of field note-taking at the request of the club owners. While visiting other MMA clubs I have not taken field notes, as the club members are not always aware of my research. For the most part, the reflections and similarities in practices to other clubs (with my home club) are derived from interviews with research subjects at other clubs. 11. In this case, their primary income is derived from earnings gained through participating in MMA competitions. 12. An expanded semistructured interview was conducted with MMA instructors (who had professional MMA records) focusing on their teaching strategies, club management, and sentiments towards their club fighters.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 1. Franz Brentano’s work had the most profound effect on Husserl, specifically his lectures on intentionality (Cerbone 2006). 2. Husserl deploys a Leibnizian ontology. Such an ontology asserts that the world consists of monads, essentially minds, which exist in harmony due to divine arrangement. Despite this indebtedness, Husserl’s minds communicate with each other. 3. The lifeworld is the spatiotemporal world of things we experience on a daily basis. 4. The technique of bracketing is alluring but remains in the Husserlian phenomenological tradition poorly explicated in terms of its achievement (LeVasseur 2003). 5. For the purposes of this chapter, I will be only addressing Heidegger’s Being and Time ([1926] 1962). Heideggerian scholars have drawn a distinction between the early Heidegger (that of Being and Time) and the later Heidegger (1982), where he was primarily concerned with language (that of On the Way to Language). Despite this divergence, the question of being remained a fi xation of Heidegger throughout his works (Pattison 2000; Cerbone 2006). 6. Here it is important to point out the central project of Heidegger’s ([1926] 1962) phenomenology. He is interested in creating the true mode of individuality or a truly ‘authentic life’. We are, according to Heidegger, continually lost in and governed by the ‘they’, that is, what could be considered society and societal mandates. To be authentic in the temporal sense, is to possess or enact resolute anticipation. 7. The distinctions between Merleau-Ponty and Nancy’s work is much broader than just on the topic of fundamental ontology. Specifically, where

Notes

173

Merleau-Ponty (1968) deploys the language of intertwining, chiasmus, and reciprocity to describe the fashion under which the world is opened up through bodily intentionality, Nancy uses such terms as rupture and discontinuity. This distinction is beyond the scope of this chapter (and book). 8. As what could be considered an extreme example, Nancy (2002) uses his experience of a heart transplant to discuss the intrusion of bodies. Here he reflects on the intrusion of the stranger—the transplanted heart. This work also stands as a critique or questioning of identity, at the very least the idea of a pure identity or a complete mixing.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 3 1. Punching bags are a staple of most gyms. Thai bags specifically are longer in length than regular boxing punching bags as they allow fighters to practice low kicks. In some of the bigger gyms, they have octagon-shaped cages (like in the UFC) so that fighters can practice technique and spar in a cage environment. In a small number of clubs, there are boxing rings that provide the particular experience that comes with fighting in a ring. My home gym is made up of just mat space and does not have a ring or a cage. 2. In ‘traditional’ Brazilian Jiu Jitsu clubs, the belt whipping ceremony is carried out when a member of club is granted a belt of some level of distinction (blue, purple, brown, black). Members form two lines holding their belts folded in two. The belt recipients, wearing only their pants, line up at one end and run through the line. The belt holders on both sides whip the belt recipient as they run through the gauntlet. When I received my blue belt I ran the gauntlet. I had welts all over my back and some on my chest for about a week and a half. 3. UFC middleweight champion, Muay Thai specialist, and pound-for-pound king Anderson “Spider” Silva is the pinnacle example of possessing the ability to strike his opponent and not get hit. His movement and rhythm allows him to trap his opponents and catch them off balance when they attempt to engage with him in terms of striking. 4. For example, taller fighters with longer legs tend to be better at triangle chokes as the length of their legs minimizes the time in applying the technique. 5. The salience of fighter’s listening to their coaches cannot be overstated. In season 5 of The Ultimate Fighter television show, Andy Wang failed to listen to the commands of BJ Penn and lost his match on the TV show. In the postfight interview with BJ Penn, he is flabbergasted by Wang’s inability to listen to coaching instruction (Olshansky 2011). 6. Some of my Brazilian participants noted that an added benefit of having Portuguese-speaking coaches was that it allowed them to listen to the instructions of their coachers without their opponents knowing what is being said. 7. Tabata is named after Japanese researcher, Dr. Izumi Tabata, who is touted as developing this protocol.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 1. In Gentry’s (2005) No Holds Barred, he dedicates discussion to every other element of MMA, but neglects discussion of women in MMA. 2. The Strikeforce promotion held the ‘Carano vs. Cyborg’ fight event where Gina Carano and Cristiane Santos were the fi rst women to be the main event in a major televised fight card.

174

Notes

NOTES TO CHAPTER 5 1. Here I am referring to the way certain physiologies (based on height, weight, and strength) fi nd certain techniques more useful than others. For example, taller fighters may be able to utilize the jab better than shorter, stalky fighters. 2. Fighters told me on a number of occasions how they met certain elite-level professional fighters, telling me of their humility and how they were ‘just like a regular guy’. 3. Cauliflower ear is an ear condition that develops when the external portion of the ear is continually subjected to being hit and rubbed. A blood clot or other fluid develops under the perichondrium causing the cartilage to separate, die, and become permanently deformed resembling a cauliflower. 4. The Ultimate Fighter reality show takes up-and-coming fighters (or in one series experienced fighters down on their luck) and provides them with highlevel coaching, facilities, and housing. These fighters then fight each other over the course of the show for a chance to compete in the UFC. 5. I fully recognize that my depiction of the adventurous life, in terms of temporality, does not fit with Lyng’s (2005) assertions regarding edgework being a product of late modernity. Nonetheless, I believe that the description of voluntaristic risk-taking, in terms of edgeworkers relying on skills and knowledge to overcome risk, fits squarely with the description of MMA fighters offered herein.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 6 1. Some scholars do discuss the various regimens that the fighters engage in as ‘conditioning’. I believe that the use of the concept ‘body callusing’ further captures the actual hardening of the body and mind that occurs through training and reaches its zenith at the point that the fighter enters the ring. The term conditioning, I believe, does not conceptually capture the ways in which the fighter’s body goes through metamorphosis. I have interviewed and trained with fighters that balloon to a considerably heavier weight in between fights. Coming up to a fight they must diet and engage in additional training regimens (RBTs) to cut weight and prepare for their fight. They then harden their bodies and change the shape of their bodies significantly. This coincides with world famous MMA fighter Ken Shamrock’s (Shamrock and Hanner 1998) discussion of body hardening that occurs coming up to a fight. 2. The role of coaches in MMA, at least in this study, is markedly different than the role of ‘Dee Dee’ in Wacquant’s (2004) study of boxing. In MMA, the fighter takes on more of an active role in developing themselves as fighters. In Wacquant’s study, all decisions (and to a certain level, knowledge) went through Dee Dee, positioning the coach as the ultimate decision maker. 3. Two clarifications are in order here: whereas standard boxing pads are round and just larger than the holder’s hand, Thai pads are approximately the length of the wearer’s forearm and almost twice as wide as a boxing pad. Thai pads are considerably thicker than boxing pads as they have to absorb the force of a kick. It should also be noted that a Muay Thai kick is significantly different than a kick in traditional karate or tae kwon do. In Muay Thai, the shin rather than the foot is used for striking the opponent. In addition, similar to a punch in Western boxing, the entire force of the body is employed to deliver a kick. Fighters pivot on their lead leg rotating their torsos and hips around and the striking leg following like a whip striking their opponents.

Notes

175

While in Thailand training in Muay Thai in April 2008 through June 2008, I witnessed the perfection of such a kick by fighters as young at ten years old. 4. Eddie Bravo (2005) converted the traditional guard and half guard positions and attacks of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu into a new gi-less guard position called the ‘Rubber Guard’. This specific guard involves a high degree of flexibility to apply it. Many of the fighters I have trained with have incorporated this form of guard into their technical corpus. 5. This is an approximate number. In the UFC, fighters must be able to fight for three five-minute rounds, and in the case of a title fight, they must be able to fight five five-minute rounds. Having sparred numerous times for threeminute rounds, I liken the experience to running sprints for forty-five second spurts with fi fteen second rests in between the spurts for three minutes straight. It is the most grueling cardiovascular experience I have ever gone through.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 7 1. That said, I placed second and found that by the third match the pain began to figure in my reaction to opponents. To this day, I cannot fully comprehend why I was so determined to compete. Perhaps I was lost in the social milieu. 2 The documentary Smashing Machine (Hyams 2003) on Mark Kerr begins with a reflection on these two responses. 3. One of the greatest welterweight champions in MMA history, Matt Hughes, stated in the second season of The Ultimate Fighter (2007) television show that he had been injured in some capacity before every fight he competed in. This further evinces the fact that a majority of injuries are incurred prior to fight events during training.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 8 1. Ladettes are women in England who are known for heavy drinking, sexual promiscuity, and violent bar fights, behaviors associated with certain masculinities (Jacobsen 2009). 2. As Connell (2000) provides, the widespread idea that testosterone is a male hormone is the most popular current example of presumed dichotomy. Testosterone is, in fact, present in all human bodies. So is the ‘female hormone’ estrogen. Many women have higher levels of testosterone in their bloodstream than many men, and after age fi fty, men on average have higher levels of estrogen in the bloodstream than women.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 9 1. The use of the adjective ‘symbiotic’ to describe the type of associations related to the cultivating duel is purposeful. Hird (2009) has shown how evolutionary theory, based on the ‘survival of the fittest’, underpins many contemporary sociological concepts. In contradiction to such underpinnings, Hird shows the symbiotic origins of sociable life and suggests that sociologists need to be open to a sociology based on the symbiogenesis of sociality at all levels of life, from bacteria to humans. 2. I have always found it humorous to watch a lawyer dominated by a construction or custodial worker during grappling or stand up sparring. In the

176 Notes

3.

4.

5. 6. 7.

context of the club, the hierarchical spacing outside of the club between these individuals is destroyed or replaced by the existing hierarchies in the club. Helio Gracie, recognized as creating many of the techniques associated with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, challenged the legendary judo/Japanese Jiu Jitsu practitioner Kimura to a match. Kimura was eighty pounds heavier than Helio. Helio fought Kimura for thirteen minutes before being submitted with a shoulder lock. Acts to prove the Gracie style by the Gracies were common throughout the twentieth century and still continue today. I found out fi rsthand that swearing in reaction to making an error was not an acceptable response. I found myself on a Thursday night Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class sitting out for the last fi fteen minutes because I uttered ‘Fuck’ after being tapped out after being submitted. It is at this juncture that officials check the hand wraps of fighters to make sure it is in accordance with the rules and regulations of hand wrapping. See glossary of terms regarding the clinch and pummel. Sponsors are also plastered across the shorts and shirts that fighters wear out to the cage or ring.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 10 1. I fully recognize that the path that I took to arrive at this emphasis is different than Shilling’s (2008). Be that the case, after reading Shilling’s work over the last five years, his research agenda and thinking on the social character of bodies has heavily influenced this project and my thinking more generally. The same could be said for Crossley and Wacquant’s work in the sociology of bodies. 2. The Athletic Commissioner’s Office administers the Athletics Control Act and is responsible for the proper conduct of all professional combative sports in Ontario. The commission maintains liaison with community centers and arenas and issues licenses to professional boxers, kick boxers (full-contact karate), wrestlers, and all officials involved in these sports.

NOTES TO THE APPENDIX 1. In comparison to sociologists, anthropologists have been much more in tune with the role of the senses in data collection. The work of Bateson and Mead (1942) and Collier (1967) is evidentiary in this regard. This trend continues on in the work of Howes (2003) and other sensory anthropologists.

References

Adler, P., P. Adler, and E. B. Rochford. 1986. ‘The Politics of Participation in Field Research’, Urban Life 14: 363–376. Adler, P., and P. Adler. 1978. ‘The Role of Momentum in Sport’, Urban Life 7(2): 153–175. Agamben, G. 2009. What is an Apparatus? And Other Essays. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Agostino, K. 1997. ‘Masculinity, Sexuality and Life on Board Her Majesty’s Royal Australian Ships’, Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies 2(1): 15–30. Ahmed, S. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge. Aho, K. 2005. ‘The Missing Dialogue Between Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty: On the Importance of the Zollikon Seminars’, Body and Society 11(2): 1–23. Ainsworth, S., and C. Hardy. 2004. ‘Critical Discourse Analysis and Identity: Why Bother?’ Critical Discourse Studies 1, 225–159. Akihiko, H., and K. Kei-ho Pih. 2010. ‘Men Who Strike and Men Who Submit: Hegemonic and Marginalized Masculinities in Mixed Martial Arts’, Men and Masculinities 13(2): 190–209. Allen-Collinson, J. 2005. ‘Emotions, Interaction and the Injured Sporting Body’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 40(2): 221–240. Allen-Collinson, J. 2009. ‘Sporting Embodiment: Sport Studies and the (Continuing) Promise of Phenomenology’, Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise 1(3): 279–296. Angrosino, M. 2007. Naturalistic Observation. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Atkinson, M. 2006. ‘Straightedge Bodies and Civilizing Processes’, Body and Society 12(1): 69–95. Atkinson, M. 2008. ‘Triathlon, suffering and exciting significance’, Leisure Studies 27(2): 165–180. Atkinson, P., S. Delamont, and W. Housley. 2007. Contours of Culture: Complex Ethnography and the Ethnography of Complexity. Lanham, MD: Altamira. Azzarito, L., and L. Harrison. 2008. ‘‘White Men Can’t Jump’: Race, Gender and Natural Athleticism’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 43(4): 347–364. Bachelard, G. 1969. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon. Bar-On Cohen, E. 2006. ‘Kime and the Moving Body: Somatic Codes in Japanese Martial Arts’, Body and Society 12(4): 73–93. Barbalet, J. 2001. Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barbalet, J. 2005. ‘Weeping and Transformations of Self’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 35(2): 125–141.

178 References Bataille, G. 1962. Death and Sensuality: A Study of Eroticism and the Taboo. New York: Walker. Bateson, G. and M. Mead. 1942. Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis. New York: New York Academy of Sciences. Bauman, Z. 1978. Hermeneutics and Social Science. London: Hutchinson of London. Bauman, Z. 1996. ‘From Pilgrim to Tourist—or a Short History of Identity’ in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity, pp. 18–36. London: Sage. Bauman, Z. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge, England: Polity. Bech, H. 1997. When Men Meet. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Beck, U. 1992. The Risk Society. London: Sage. Becker, H. 1997. ‘The Culture of a Deviant Group: The Jazz Musician’ in K. Elder and S. Thornton (eds), The Subcultures Reader, pp. 55–65. New York: Routledge. Becker, H. 2007. Telling About Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bendelow, G. 1993. ‘Pain Perceptions, Emotions and Gender’, Sociology of Health and Illness 15(3): 273–294. Berger, P.L., and T. Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor. Biernacki, P., and D. Waldorf. 1981. ‘Snowball Sampling. Problems and Techniques of Chain Referral Sampling’, Sociological Methods and Research 10: 141–163. Bird, S.R. 1996. ‘Welcome to the Men’s Club: Homosociality and the Maintenance of Hegemonic Masculinity’, Gender & Society 10(2): 120–32. Blackman, S. 2008. The Body: The Key Concepts. London: Berg. Bledsoe, G., H. Edbert, B. Hsu, J.G. Grabowski, J.D. Brill, and G. Li. 2006. ‘Incidence of Injury in Professional Mixed Martial Arts Competitions’, Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 5(SS1): 136–142. Bluedorn, A.C. 2002. The Human Organization of Time. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Borthwick, F. 2000. ‘Olfaction and Taste: Invasive Odours and Disappearing Objects’, The Australian Journal of Anthropology 11(2): 127–140. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction. A Social Critique of Judgement of Taste. Boston: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bowker, L.H. 1998. ‘On the Difficulty of Eradicating Masculine Violence: Multisystem Overdetermination’ in L.H. Bowker (ed), Masculinities and Violence, pp. 1–14. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Boyle, K. 2005. Media and Violence. London : Sage. Brailsford, D. 1988. Bareknuckles: A Social History of Prizefighting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bramham, P. 2003. ‘Boys, Masculinity and PE’, Sport, Education and Society 8(1): 57–71. Brams, S. 1997. ‘Game Theory and Emotions’, Rationality and Society 9(1): 91–124. Bravo, E. 2005. Jiu Jitsu Unleashed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Bray, A., and C. Colebrook. 1998. ‘The Haunted Flesh: Corporeal Feminism and the Politics of (Dis)Embodiment’, Signs 24(1): 35–67. Britton, D. 1990. ‘Homophobia and Homosociality: An Analysis of Boundary Maintenance’, The Sociological Quarterly 31(3): 423–439.

References 179 Burfoot, A. 1999. ‘African Speed, African Endurance’ in R.R. Sands (ed.), Anthropology, Sport, and Culture, pp. 53–63. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey. Burkitt, I. 1998. ‘Bodies of Knowledge: Beyond Cartesian Views of Persons, Selves, and Mind’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 28(1): 63–82. Burkitt, I. 2002. ‘Technologies of the Self: Habitus and Capacities’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 32(2): 219–237. Burstyn, V. 1999. The Rites of Men: Manhood, Politics, and the Culture of Sport. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Butler, J. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York: Routledge. Camic, C. 1986. ‘The Matter of Habit’, American Journal of Sociology 91(5): 1039–1087. Carano, G. 2008. Carano, Coutures Featured on Inside MMA. http://www. sherdog.com/videos/videointerview/Carano-Coutures-Featured-on-InsideMMA-1451 (accessed March 20, 2009). Carlisle, C. 2006. ‘Creatures of Habit: The Problem and the Practice of Liberation’, Continental Philosophy Review 38: 19–39. Carrington, B. 2008. ‘‘What’s the Footballer Doing Here’: Racialized Performativity, Reflexivity, and Identity’, Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies 8(4): 423–452. Cerbone, D.R. 2006. Understanding Phenomenology. Chesham, England: Acumen. Cerwonka, A., and L.H. Malkki. 2007. Improvising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chan, S. 2000. ‘The Construction and Export of Culture as Artefact: The Case of Japanese Martial Arts’, Body and Society 6(1): 69–74. Chaney, D. 1995. ‘The Spectacle of Honour: The Changing Dramatization of Status’, Theory, Culture and Society 12: 147–167. Chernoff, J.M. 1985. ‘The Artistic Challenge of African Music: Thoughts on the Absence of Drum Orchestras in Black American Music’, Black Music Research Journal 5: 1–20. Clark, E.O. 2000. Virtuous Vice: Homoeroticism and the Public Sphere. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Classen, C. (1993). Worlds of Sense. London: Routledge. Clayton, B., and B. Humberstone. 2006. ‘Men’s Talk: A (Pro)feminist Analysis of Male University Football Players’ Discourse’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 41(3–4): 295–316. Clifford, J. 1986. ‘Introduction: Partial Truths’ in J. Clifford and G.E. Marcus (eds), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, pp. 1–26. Berkeley: University of California Press. Collier, J. Jr. 1967. Visual Anthropology: Photography as a Research Method. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Collins, R. 1990. ‘Stratification, Emotion Energy and the Transient Emotions’ in T. Kemper (ed), Research Agendas in the Sociology of Emotions, pp. 27–57. Albany: State University of New York Press. Collins, R. 2004. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Collins, R. 2008. Violence: A Microsociological Approach. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Comack, E. 2008. Out There/In Here: Masculinity, Violence and Prisoning. Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada: Fernwood.

180

References

Connell, R.W. [1995] 2005. Masculinities. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Connell, R.W. 2000. The Men and the Boys. Berkeley: University of California Press. Connell, R.W. 2002. Gender. Cambridge, England: Polity. Connell, R.W., and J. W. Messerschmidt. 2005. ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept’, Gender and Society 19(6): 829–859. Corbin, J., and A. Strauss. 1990. ‘Grounded Theory Research: Procedures, Canons, and Evaluative Criteria’, Qualitative Sociology 13(1): 3–21. Courtenay, W. 2009. ‘Theorizing Masculinity and Men’s Health’ in A. Broom and P. Tovey (eds.), Men’s Health: Body, Identity and Social Context, pp. 9–32. West Sussex, England: Wiley-Blackwell. Couzens, M. 1971. ‘Reflections on the Study of Violence’, Law & Society Review 5(4): 583–604. Crolley, L., and E. Teso. 2007. ‘Gendered Narratives in Spain: The Representation of Female Athletes in Marca and El País’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 42(2): 149–166. Crossley, N. 2001a. ‘The Phenomenological Habitus and its Construction’, Theory and Society 30: 81–120. Crossley, N. 2001b. The Social Body. London: Sage. Crossley, N. 2004a. ‘The Circuit Trainer’s Habitus: Reflexive Body Techniques and the Sociality of the Workout’, Body & Society 10(1): 37–70. Crossley, N. 2004b. ‘Ritual, Body Technique and (Inter)subjectivity’ in K. Schilbrack (ed), Thinking through Ritual: Philosophical Perspectives, pp. 31–51. London: Routledge. Crossley, N. 2005. ‘Mapping Reflexive Body Techniques: On Body Modification and Maintenance’, Body and Society 11(1): 1–35. Curtis, B. 2008. ‘“I Can Tell by the Way you Smell”: Dietetics, Smell and Social Theory’, Senses and Society 3(1): 5–22. Damasio, A. 2006. Descartes’ Error. London: Vintage. Davies, C.A. 2008. Refl exive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others. London: Routledge. de Beauvoir, S. 1997. The Second Sex. Translated by H.M. Parshley. London: Vintage Books. de Certeau, M. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. DeNora, T. 2000. Music and Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. de Rivera, J., L. Possell, J.A. Verette, and B. Weiner. 1989. ‘Distinguishing Elation, Gladness and Joy’, Personality Processes and Individual Differences 57(6): 1015–1023. Derrida, J. 1973. Speech and Phenomena. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Derrida, J. [1974] 1998. Of Grammatology. Translated by G. C. Spivak. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Derrida, J. 1991a. ‘From “Différance”’ in P. Kamuf (ed), A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds, pp. 59–79. New York: Columbia University Press. Derrida, J. 1991b. ‘Signature Event Context’ in P. Kamuf (ed), A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds, pp. 80–111. New York: Columbia University Press. Derrida, J. 1998. Monolingualism of the Other: The Prosthesis of Origin. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Derrida, J. 2002. A Taste for the Secret. Cambridge, England: Polity. Descartes, R. [1641] 1998. Discourse on Method and the Meditations. London: Penguin.

References 181 Dewey, J. 1922. Human Nature and Conduct. An Introduction to Social Psychology. New York: Random House. Dewey, J. 1929. Experience and Nature. New York: Dover. Dewey, J. 1967. John Dewey: The Early Works 1882–1898 Vol. 2. Edited by H.W. Schneider. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Donahue, J.J. 2002. ‘Wave People: The Martial Arts and the American Imagination’ in D. E. Jones (ed), Combat, Ritual, and Performance: Anthropology of the Martial Arts, pp. 65–80. London: Praeger. Douglas, K. 2009. ‘Storying my self: negotiating a relational identity in professional sport’, Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise, 1(2): 176-190. Downey, G. 2005. Learning Capoeira: Lessons in Cunning From an Afro-Brazilian Art. New York: Oxford University Press. Downey, G. 2007. ‘Producing Pain: Techniques and Technologies in No-HoldsBarred Fighting,’ Social Studies of Science 37(2): 201–226. Drobnick, J. 2006. The Smell Culture Reader. Oxford, England: Berg. Dufur, M.J. [1999] 2006. ‘Gender and Sport’ in J.S. Chafetz (ed.), Handbook of the Sociology of Gender, pp. 583–599. Boston: Springer. Dumont, J.P. 1978. The Headman and I: Ambiguity and Ambivalence in the Fieldwork Experience. Austin: University of Texas Press. Dunning, E. 1986. ‘Social Bonding and Violence in Sport,’ in N. Elias and E. Dunning (eds), Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process, pp. 224–244. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell. Durkheim, E. [1913] 1995. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Translated by K.E. Fields. New York: The Free Press. Edwards, T. 2006. Cultures of Masculinity. London: Routledge. Eichberg, H. 1998. Body Cultures: Essays on Sport, Space and Identity. Edited by J. Bale and C. Philo. London: Routledge. Eitzen, D. and M. Zinn 1993. ‘The Sexist Naming of Collegiate Athletic Teams and Resistance to Change’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 17(1): 34-41. Elias, N. [1978] 2000. The Civilizing Process. London: Blackwell. Elias, N. 1986. ‘An Essay on Sport and Violence’ in N. Elias and E. Dunning (eds), Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process, pp. 150–174. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell. Emerson, R.M., R.I. Fretz, and L.L. Shaw. 1995. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Emmison, M., and P. Smith. 2000. Researching the Visual: Images, Objects, Contexts and Interactions in Social and Cultural Inquiry. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ewan, C., E. Lowy, and J. Reid. 1991. ‘‘Falling Out of Culture’: The Effects of Repetition Strain Injury on Sufferer’s Roles and Identity’, Sociology of Health and Illness, 13(2): 168–192. Fanon, F. 1986. Black Skin White Masks. London: Pluto. Featherstone, M. 1992. ‘The Heroic Life and Everyday Life’, Theory, Culture and Society 9: 159–182. Featherstone, M. 2006. ‘Body Image/Body Without Image’, Theory, Culture and Society 23(2–3): 233–236. Ferguson, J.D. 1981. ‘Emotions in Sport Sociology’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 16(1): 15–23. Fields, S. 2001. ‘Cultural Identity, Law and Baseball’, Sport in Society 4(2): 23–42. Fight Club. DVD. Directed by David Fincher. Los Angeles, CA: 20th century Fox, 1999. Flaherty, M. 1999. A Watched Pot: How We Experience Time. New York: New York University Press.

182

References

Flaherty, M. 1991. ‘The Perception of Time and Situated Engrossment’, Social Psychology Quarterly 54(1): 76–85. Flaherty, M., and M. D. Meer. 1994. ‘How Time Flies: Age, Memory, and Temporal Compression’, The Sociological Quarterly 35(4): 705–721. Flood, M. 2008. ‘Men, Sex and Homosociality: How Bonds Between Men shape Their Sexual Relations With Women’, Men and Masculinities 10(3): 339–359. Foucault, M. 1979. Discipline and Punish. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin. Foucault, M. 1980. ‘Body/Power’ in C. Gordon (ed), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, pp. 55–62. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. 1987. The Care of the Self. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, M. 1990. The Use of Pleasure. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, M. 2003. ‘Technologies of the Self’ in P. Rabinow and N. Rose (eds), The Essential Foucault, pp. 145–169, New York: The New Press. Frank, A. 1991. “From sick role to health role: Deconstructing Parsons’ in R. Robertson and B. Turner (eds), Parsons: Theorist of Modernity, pp. 205–216. London: Sage. Gadamer, H. G. 2004. Truth and Method. New York: Continuum. Gadd, D. 2003. ‘Reading Between the Lines: Subjectivity and Men’s Violence’, Men and Masculinities 5(4): 333–354. Gentry, C. 2005. No Holds Barred: Ultimate Fighting and the Martial Arts Revolution. London: Milo Books. Gerson, K., and R. Horowitz. 2002. ‘Observation and Interviewing: Options and Choices in Qualitative Research’ in T. May (ed), Qualitative Research in Action, pp. 199–224. London: Sage. Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge, England: Polity. Gill, R., K. Henwood, and C. McLean. 2005. ‘Body Projects and the Regulation of Normative Masculinity’, Body and Society 11(1): 37–62. Glaser, B.G., and A.L. Strauss. 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago: Aldine. Goffman, E. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Goffman, E. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice Hall. Goffman, E. 1989. ‘On Fieldwork’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 18: 123–132. Goldie, P. 2002. ‘Emotions, Feelings and Intentionality’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1: 235–254. Grady, J. 1996. ‘The scope of visual sociology’, Visual Sociology 11(1): 10–24. Green, K. 2011. ‘It hurts so it is real: sensing the seduction of mixed martial arts’, Social and Cultural Geography, 12(4): 377-396. Gregory, D. 1994. Geographical Imaginations. Oxford, England: Blackwell. Grosz, E. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Grutzpalk, J. 2002. ‘Blood Feud and Modernity: Max Weber’s and Emile Durkheim’s Theories’, Journal of Classical Sociology 2(2): 115–134. Guilbert, S. 2004. ‘Sport and Violence: A Typological Analysis’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 39(1): 45–55. Halbert, C. 1997. ‘‘Tough Enough and Woman Enough’: Stereotypes, Discrimination and Impression Management Among Professional Boxers’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues 21(1): 7–36.

References 183 Haraway, D. 1988. ‘‘Situated Knowledge’s: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’, Feminist Studies 14: 575–599. Harris, J., and B. Clayton. 2002. ‘Femininity, Masculinity, Physicality and the English Tabloid Press: The Case of Anna Kournikova’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 37(3–4): 397–314. Hearn, J. 2003. ‘Searching for the Body: Making Connections Between Health, Bodies and Men’s Violence’ in S. Ervo and T. Johansson (eds), Bending Bodies: Moulding Masculinities, pp. 170–192. Aldershot, England: Ashgate. Heath, C., and J. Hindmarsh. 2002. ‘Analysing Interaction: Video, Ethnography and Situated Conduct’ in Tim May (ed), Qualitative Research in Action, pp. 99–122. London: Sage. Hebdige, D. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen. Hegel, G.W.F. [1807] 1967. The Phenomenology of Mind. Translated by G. Lichtheim. New York: Torchbook. Heidegger, M. [1926] 1962. Being and Time. San Francisco: Harper Collins. Heidegger, M. 1982. On the Way to Language. New York: Harper. Heidegger, M. 2001. Zollikon Seminars: Protocols-Conversations-Letters. Edited by M. Boss. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Hier, S. 2007. ‘Studying Race and Racism in 21st Canada’ in S.H. and S. Bolaria (eds), Race and Racism in 21st-Century Canada, pp. 19–34. New York: Broadview. Hird, M. J. 2009. The Origins of Sociable Life. Evolution After Science Studies. New York: Palgrave. Hoberman, J. 1992. Mortal Engines: The Science of Performance and the Dehumanization of Sport. New York: Free Press. Hoberman, J. 1997. Darwin’s Athletes: How Sport has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Hochschild, A. R. 1983. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hockey, J., and J. Allen-Collinson. 2007. ‘Grasping the Phenomenology of Sporting Bodies’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 42(2): 115–131. Hoffman, E. 2007. ‘Open-Ended Interviews, Power and Emotional Labour’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 36: 318–346. Howe, D. P. 2001. ‘An Ethnography of Pain and Injury in Professional Rugby Union: The Case of Pontyridd RFC’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 36(3): 289–303. Howe, D. P. 2004. Sport, Professionalism and Pain. London: Routledge. Howes, D. 1991. ‘Olfaction and Transition’ in D. Howes (ed.), The Varieties of Sensory Experience, pp. 128–147. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Howes, D. 2003. Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Hudelson, R., and R. Evans. 2003. ‘McCarthyism and Philosophy in the United States’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 33(2): 242–260. Hult, J. 1989. ‘Women’s Struggle for Governance in U.S. Amateur Athletics’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 24(3): 249–263. Husserl, E. [1931] 1960. Cartesian Meditations. The Hague, The Netherlands: Nijhoff. Husserl, E. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Translated by D. Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Husserl, E. 1972. Ideas. New York: Collier. Husserl, E. 1990. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.

184

References

Hutchens, B.C. 2005. Jean-Luc Nancy and the Future of Philosophy. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press. Hyams, J. 2003. The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr. Docurama, 92 mins + extras. DVD. New York: New Video Group. Hylton, K. 2009. ‘Race’ and Sport: Critical Race Theory. London: Routledge. Jacobsen, G. 2009. ‘Ladettes Lead Upsurge in Female Crime’, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 27, 2009. James, I. 2006. The Fragmentary Demand: An Introduction of the Philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Jefferson, T. 1998. ‘Muscle, ‘Hard Men’ and ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson: Reflection on Desire, Anxiety and the Embodiment of Masculinity’, Body & Society 4(1): 77–98. Jenkins, R. 1996. Social Identity. London: Routledge. Jenkins, R. 2002. Pierre Bourdieu. Rev. ed. New York: Routledge. Jones, D.E. 2002. ‘Introduction: Toward a Defi nition of the Martial Arts’, in D.E. Jones (ed), Combat, Ritual, and Performance: Anthropology of the Martial Arts, pp. xi–xiv. London: Praeger. Katz, J. 1988. Seductions of Crime. New York: Basic Books. Katz, J. 1999. How Emotions Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Katz, J. 2002. ‘Start Here: Social Ontology and Research Strategy’, Theoretical Criminology, 6(3): 255–278. Katz, J. 2004. ‘On the Rhetoric and Politics of Ethnographic Methodology’, Annals AAPSS, 595: 280–308. Katz, J. 2009. Interview conducted by D.C. Spencer, May 10, 2009. Katz, J., and T.J. Csordas. 2003. ‘Phenomenological Ethnography in Sociology and Anthropology’, Ethnography 4(3): 275–288. Kaufman, M. 1993. Cracking the Armour: Power, Pain and the Lives of Men. Toronto: Viking. Kemper, T. 1984. ‘Power, Status, and Emotions: A Sociological Contribution to a Psychophysiological Domain’ in K. Scherer and P. Ekman (eds), Approaches to Emotion, pp. 369–383. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Kemper, T. 1990. ‘Social Relations and Emotions: A Structural Approach’ in T.D. Kemper (ed), Research Agendas in the Sociology of Emotions, pp. 207–237. Albany: State University of New York Press. Kemper, T.D., and R. Collins. 1990. ‘Dimensions of Microinteraction’, American Journal of Sociology 96: 32–68. Kenney, S. and A. Craig. 2012. “Illegitimate Pain: Introducing a Concept and a Research Agenda” in Emotions Matter: For a relational approach to emotions, Dale Spencer, Kevin Walby and Alan Hunt (eds.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Khandelwal, M. 1997. ‘Ungendered Atma, Masculine Virility and Feminine Compassion: Ambiguities in Renunciant Discourses on Gender’, Contributions to Indian Sociology 31(1): 79–107. Kiesling, S.F. 2005. ‘Homosocial Desire in Men’s Talk: Balancing and Re-creating Cultural Discourses of Masculinity’, Language in Society 34: 695–726. Kim, J. 1995. ‘Problems in the Philosophy of Mind’ in T. Honderich (ed), Oxford Companion to Philosophy, pp. 574–579. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. King, C. 2007. ‘Media Portrayals of Male and Female Athletes: A Text and Picture Analysis of British National Newspaper Coverage of the Olympic Games Since 1948’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 42(2): 187–199. Klein, A. 2002. ‘The Anthropology of Sport: Escaping the Past and Building a Future’ in J. Maguire and K. Young (eds), Theory, Sport and Society, pp. 129– 149. Oxford, England: JAI.

References 185 Klein, M.L. 1988. ‘Women in the Discourse of Sport Reports’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 23 (2): 139—152. Klinger, C. 2004. ‘From Freedom Without Choice to Choice Without Freedom: The Trajectory of the Modern Subject’, Constellations 11(1): 121–139. Krauchek, V., and G. Ranson. 1999. ‘Playing by the Rules of the Game: Women’s Experiences and Perceptions of Sexual Harassment in Sport’, The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 36(4): 585–600. Krauss, E. 2004. Warriors of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. New York: Citadel. Krug, G.J. 2001. ‘At the Feet of the Master: Three Stages in the Appropriation of Okinawan Karate into Anglo-American Culture’, Cultural Studies—Critical Methodologies 1(4): 395–410. LaBelle, B. 2008. ‘Pump up the Bass—Rhythm, Cars and Auditory Scaffolding’, The Senses and Society 3(2): 187–204. Law, J. 2004. After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. London: Routledge. Laurendeau, J. 2006. ‘He Didn’t Go in Doing a Skydive: Sustaining the Illusion of Control in an Edgework’, Sociological Perspectives 49(4): 583–605. Lawrence, S. M. 2005. ‘African American Athletes’ Experiences of Race in Sport’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 40(1): 99–110. Leder, D. 1990. The Absent Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lee, B. 1975. Tao of Jeet Kune Do. Lancaster, England: Black Belt Communications/Gazelle Books. Lefebvre, H. 2004. Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life. New York: Continuum. LeVasseur, J. 2003. ‘The Problem of Bracketing in Sociology’, Qualitative Health Research 13(3):408–420. Levine, D. 1991. ‘Martial Arts as a Resource for Liberal Education: The Case of Aikido’ in M. Featherstone, M. Hepworth, and B.S. Turner (eds), The Body. Social Process and Cultural Theory, pp. 209–224. London: Sage. Li, S. L. 2001. ‘Kung Fu: Negotiating Nationalism and Modernity’, Cultural Studies 15(3–4): 515–542. Lilleaas, U.B. 2007. ‘Masculinities, Sport and Emotions’, Men and Masculinities 10(1): 39–53. Lohan, M. 2010. ‘Developing a Critical Men’s Health Debate in Academic Scholarship’ in B. Gough and S. Robertson (eds), Men, Masculinities and Health: Critical Perspectives, pp. 11–29. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Loland, S., B. Skirstad, and I. Waddington (eds). 2006. Pain and Injury in Sport: Social and Ethical Analysis. London: Routledge. Lomax, M.E. 2004. ‘‘Curt Flood Stood Up for Us’: The Quest to Break Down Racial Barriers and Structural Inequality in Major League Baseball’ in J.A. Mangan and A. Ritchie (eds), Ethnicity, Sport, Identity: Struggles for Status, pp. 44–70. London: Routledge. Lovell, T. 1991. ‘Sport, Racism and Young Women’ in G. Jarvie (ed), Sport, Racism and Ethnicity, pp. 58–73. New York: Falmer. Lupton, D. 1999. Risk. London: Routledge. Lyng, S. 1990. ‘Edgework: A Social Psychological Analysis of Voluntary Risk Taking’, American Journal of Sociology 95(4): 851–886. Lyng, S. 2005. ‘Sociology at the Edge: Social Theory and Voluntary Risk-Taking’ in S. Lyng (ed), Edgework: The Sociology of Risk-Taking, pp. 17–50. New York: Routledge. Lyng, S., R. Matthews, and W.J. Miller. 2009. ‘Existentialism, Edgework, and the Contingent Body: Exploring the Criminological Implications of Ultimate Fighting’ in D. Crewe and R. Lippens (eds), Existentialist Criminology, pp. 94–126. London: Routledge-Cavendish.

186

References

Maguire, J. 1991a. ‘Sport, Racism and British Society: A Sociological Study of England’s Elite Male Afro/Caribbean Soccer and Rugby Union Players’ in G. Jarvie (ed), Sport, Racism and Ethnicity, pp. 94–123. New York: Falmer. Maguire, J. 1991b. ‘Towards a Sociological Theory of Sport and the Emotions: A Figurational Perspective’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 26(1): 25–33. Maguire, J. 1993. ‘Bodies, Sportscultures and Societies: A Critical Review of Some Theories in the Sociology of the Body’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 28(1): 33–52. Maffesoli, M. 1996. The Time of the Tribes. Translated by D. Smith. London: Sage. Maivorsdottera, N., and S. Lundvall. 2009. ‘Aesthetic Experience as an Aspect of Embodied Learning: Stories From Physical Education Student Teachers’, Sport, Education and Society 14(3): 265–279. Malpas, J., and G. Wickham. 1995. ‘Governance and Failure: On the Limits of Sociology’, Journal of Sociology, 31(3): 37–50. Manning, E. 2007. Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Massey, D. 1994. Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Massumi, B. 2002. Parables for the Virtual. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mauss, M. 1973. ‘Techniques of the Body’, Economy and Society 2(1):70–88. Mauthner, N., and A. Doucet. 2003. ‘Reflexive Accounts and Accounts of Reflexivity in Qualitative Data Analysis’, Sociology 37(3): 413–431. McGinnis, L., J. McQuillan, and C. Chapple. 2005. ‘‘I Just Want to Play: Women, Sexism and Persistence in Golf’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues 29(3): 313–337. Mead, G.H. [1934] 1967. Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mennesson, C. 2000. ‘‘Hard’ Women and ‘Soft’ Women: The Social Construction of Identities among Female Boxers’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 35: 21–33. Merleau-Ponty, M. [1962] 2000. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge. Merleau-Ponty, M. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible, Followed by Working Notes. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Messner, M. 1988. ‘Sports and male domination: the female athlete as contested ideological terrain’, Sociology of Sport Journal, 5(3): 197—211. Messner, M. 1994a. Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity. Boston: Beacon. Messner, M. 1994b. ‘When Bodies are Weapons’ in M.A. Messner and D.F. Sabo (eds), Sex, Violence and Power in Sports, pp. 89–98. Freedom, CA: Crossing. Miles, R., and M. Brown. 2002. Racism. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Milligan, M.J. 1998. ‘Interactional Past and Potential: The Social Construction of Place Attachment’, Symbolic Interaction 21(1): 1–33. Milton, M. 2004. ‘Being a Fighter: It Is a Whole State of Being’, Existential Analysis 15(1): 116–130. Mixon, D. 1980. ‘The Place of Habit in the Control of Action’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 10(3): 169–186. Monaghan, L. 1999. ‘‘The Perfect Body’: A Variable Project’, Body and Society 5: 267–290. Monaghan, L. 2002a. ‘Embodying Gender, Work and Organization: Solidarity, Cool Loyalties and Contested Hierarchy in a Masculinist Occupation’, Gender, Work and Organization 9(5): 504–536.

References 187 Monaghan, L. 2002b. ‘Hard Men, Shop Boys and Others: Embodying Competence in a Masculinist Occupation’, The Sociological Review 50(3): 334–355. Moore, B. 2004. ‘Once Taboo, UFC Gaining Respect as Sport’, Albuquerque Journal (C6), 21/09. New Mexico. Moustakas, C. 1994. Phenomenological Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Muir, K.B., and T. Seitz. 2004. ‘Machismo, Misogyny, and Homophobia in a Male Athletic Subculture: A Participant-Observation Study of Deviant Rituals in Collegiate Rugby’, Deviant Behavior 25: 303–327. Mullaney, J. 2007. ‘Telling It Like a Man: Masculinities and Battering Men’s Accounts of Their Violence’, Men and Masculinities 10(2): 222–247. Murphy, P., and I. Waddington. 2007. ‘Are Elite Athletes Exploited?’ Sport in Society 10(2): 239–255. Nancy, J.L. 1991. The Inoperative Community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Nancy, J.L. 1992. ‘La Comparution/The Compearance: From the Existence of “Communism” to the Community of “Existence”’, Political Theory 20(3): 371–398. Nancy, J.L. 1993a. The Birth to Presence. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Nancy, J.L. 1993b. The Experience of Freedom. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Nancy, J.L. 2000. Being Singular Plural. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Nancy, J.L. 2002. ‘L’Intrus’, The New Centennial Review 2(3): 1–14. Nancy, J.L. 2007. The Creation of the World or Globalization. Albany: State University of New York Press. Nancy, J.L. 2008. Corpus. New York: Fordham University Press. Nardi, P. 1992. Men’s Friendships. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Narvaez, R. 2006. ‘Embodiment, Collective Memory and Time’, Body and Society 12(3): 51–73. Nelson, D.M. 1999. A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nietzsche, F. [1885] 1976. The Portable Nietzsche. Translated by W. Kaufmann. New York: Penguin. Nixon, H. 1996. ‘The Relationship of Friendship Networks, Sports Experiences, and Gender to Expressed Pain Thresholds’, Sociology of Sport Journal 13(1): 78–86. Oates, T.P., and M.G. Durham. 2004. ‘The Mismeasure of Masculinity: The Male Body, ‘Race’ and Power in the Enumerative Discourses of the NFL Draft’, Patterns of Prejudice 38(3): 301–320. Okely, J. 1994. ‘Thinking through Fieldwork’ in A. Bryman and R.G. Burgess (eds), Analyzing Qualitative Data, pp. 18–34. London: Routledge. Okely, J. 2007. ‘Fieldwork Embodied’ in C. Shilling (ed), Embodying Sociology: Retrospect, Progress and Prospects, pp. 65–78. Oxford, England: Blackwell. Olshanksy, E. 2011. Sticking to the Script. http://www.ultimatefighter.com/ blog/14287/sticking-to-the-script. Accessed July 30, 2011. Onwuegbuzie, A., N. Leech, and K. Collins. 2010. ‘Innovative Data Collection Strategies in Qualitative Research’, The Qualitative Report 15(3): 696–726. Osbourne, T. 1997. ‘Body Amnesia: Comments on Corporeality’ in D. Owen (ed.), Sociology after Postmodernism, 188–204. London: Sage. Ostrow, J.M. 1990. Social Sensitivity: A Study of Habit and Experience. New York: State University of New York Press. Paechter, C. 2003. ‘Masculinities and Femininities as Communities of Practice’, Women’s Studies International Forum 26(1): 69–77.

188

References

Paechter, C. 2006a. ‘Masculine Femininities/Feminine Masculinities: Power, Identities and Gender’, Gender and Education 18(3): 253–263. Paechter, C. 2006b. ‘Power, Knowledge and Embodiment in Communities of Sex/ Gender Practice’, Women’s Studies International Forum 29(1): 13–26. Pappas, N.T., P.C. McKenry, and B.S. Catlett. 2004. ‘Athlete Aggression on the Rink and off the Ice: Athlete Violence and Aggression in Hockey and Interpersonal Relationships’, Men and Masculinities 6(3): 291–312. Parry, J., and N. Parry. 1991. ‘Sport and the Black Experience’ in G. Jarvie (ed), Sport, Racism and Ethnicity, pp. 150–174. New York: Falmer. Pattison, G. 2000. The Later Heidegger: Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to the Later Heidegger. New York: Routledge. Pease, B. 2002. Men and Gender Relations. Melbourne, Australia: Tertiary. Piccato, P. 1999. ‘Politics and the Technology of Honor: Dueling in Turn-of-theCentury Mexico’, Journal of Social History 33(2): 331–354. Piche, J., and K. Walby. 2009. ‘Problematizing Prison Ethnography’. Paper presented at the Canadian Law and Society meeting, May 24, 2009, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.. Pini, B. 2005. ‘Interviewing Men: Gender and the Collection and Interpretation of Qualitative Data’, Journal of Sociology 41(2): 201–216. Pink, S. 2001. Doing Visual Ethnography. London: Sage. Pink, S. 2008. ‘An Urban Tour: The Sensory Sociality of Ethnographic Place-Making’, Ethnography 9(2): 175–196. Pink, S. 2009. Doing Sensory Ethnography. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Pronger, B. 1990. The Arena of Masculinity. Sports, Homosexuality and the Meaning of Sex. New York: St.Martin’s Press. Pronger, B. 1999. Fear and trembling: homophobia in men’s sport. In P. White & K. Young, (eds), Sport and Gender in Canada, pp. 182-196. Toronto: Oxford University Press. Pronger, B. 2002. Body Fascism: Salvation in the Technology of Physical Fitness. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Pruitt, M. 2008. Deviant Research: Deception, Male Internet Escorts and Response Rates. Deviant Behavior 29(1): 70–82. Psathas, G. 1973. ‘Introduction’ in G. Psathas (ed), Phenomenological Sociology: Issues and Application, pp. 1–24. New York: Wiley. Punch, M. 1998. ‘Politics and Ethics in Qualitative Research’ in N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds), The Landscape of Qualitative Research: Theories and Issues, pp. 156–184. London: Sage. Rapoport, T., E. Lomsky-Feder, and A. Heider. 2002. ‘Recollection and Relocation in Immigration: Russian–Jewish Immigrants ‘Normalize’ Their Anti-Semitic Experiences’, Symbolic Interaction 25(2): 175–198. Ratti, O., and A. Westbrook. 1999. Secret of the Samurai: A Survey of the Martial Arts of Feudal Japan. Edison, NJ: Castle. Rawes, P. 2008. ‘Sonic Envelopes’, The Senses and Society 3(1): 61–76. Richardson, L. 1997. Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Ricoeur, P. 1974. ‘Existence and Hermeneutics’ in Don Ihde (ed), The Conflict of Interpretations, pp. 3–24. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Rinehart, R. 2010. ‘Poetic Sensibilities, Humanities, and Wonder: Toward an E/ Affective Sociology of Sport’, Quest, 62: 184-201. Roderick, M., I. Waddington, and G. Parker. 2000. ‘PLAYING HURT: Managing Injuries in English Professional Football’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 35(2): 165–180. Romano, C. [1998] 2009. Event and World. New York: Fordham University Press.

References 189 Rorty, R. [1979] 2009. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rose, G. 1993. Feminism and Geography. The Limits of Geographical Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rose, N. 1999. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roy, P. 2002. ‘Meat-Eating, Masculinity, and Renunciation in India: A Gandhian Grammar of Diet’, Gender and History 14(1): 62–91. Sánchez García, R., and D. Malcolm. 2010. ‘Decivilizing, civilizing or informalizing? The international development of Mixed Martial Arts’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 45(1): 39–58. Sartre, J.P. 1956. Being and Nothingness. New York: Washington Square. Satzewich, V. 2007. ‘Whiteness Studies: Race, Diversity, and the New Essentialism’ in S. Hier and S. Bolaria (eds.), Race and Racism in 21st-Century Canada, pp. 67–84. New York: Broadview. Scarry, E. 1985. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford University Press. Schatzki, T. 2003. ‘A New Societist Social Ontology’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 33(2): 174–202. Scheff, T. J. 2003. ‘Male Emotions/Relationships and Violence: A Case Study’, Human Relations 56(6): 727–749. Schensul, S., J. Schensul, and M. LeCompte 1999. Essential Ethnographic Methods. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira. Schinkel, W. 2004. ‘The Will to Violence’, Theoretical Criminology 8(1): 5–31. Schutz, A. 1962. Collected Papers I: The Problem of Social Reality. The Hague, The Netherlands: Nijhoff. Schutz, A. 1967. The Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Schutz, A. 1976. Collected Papers II: Studies in Social Theory. The Hague, The Netherlands: Nijhoff. Schwartz, W. F., K. Baxter, and D. Ryan. 1984. ‘The Duel: Can These Gentlemen Be Acting Efficiently?’ The Journal of Legal Studies 13(2): 321–355. Sedgwick, E.K. 1985. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press. Segal, L. 2008. ‘After Judith Butler: Identities, Who Needs Them?’ Subjectivity 25: 381–394. Seidler, V.J. 1994. Unreasonable Men: Masculinity and Social Theory. London: Routledge. Seremetakis, N.C. 1994. ‘The Memory of the Senses’ in C. Nadia Seremetakis (ed),The Senses Still: Perception and Memory as Material Culture in Modernity, pp. 1–18. Boulder, CO: Westview. Serres, M. 2009. Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies. New York: Continuum. Shaffi r, W., M.L. Dietz, and R. Stebbins. 1994. ‘Field Research as Social Experience: Learning to do Ethnography’ in M.L. Dietz, R. Prus, and W. Shaffi r (eds.), Doing Everyday Life: Ethnography as Human Lived Experience, pp. 30–54. Toronto: Copp Clark Longman. Shamrock, K., and R. Hanner. 1998. Inside the Lion’s Den: The Life and Submission Fighting System of Ken Shamrock. Boston: Tuttle. Sheets-Johnstone, M. 1999. The Primacy of Movement. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Sherdog.com. 2010. ‘Fight Week: UFC, Strikeforce & Bob Reilly’, http://www. sherdog.com/videos/videointerview/Fight-Week-UFC-Strikeforce-amp-BobReilly-2746. Accessed December 2, 2010.

190 References Sheridan, S. 2007. A Fighter’s Heart: One Man’s Journey through the World of Fighting. New York: Atlantic/Grove. Shilling, C. 1993. The Body and Social Theory. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Shilling, C. 2007. ‘Sociology and the Body: Classical Traditions and New Agendas’ in C. Shilling (ed.), Embodying Sociology: Retrospect, Progress and Prospects, pp. 1–18. Oxford, England: Blackwell. Shilling, C. 2008. Changing Bodies. London: Sage. Shilling, C., and P.A. Mellor. 2007. ‘Cultures of Embodied Experience: Technology, Religion and Body Pedagogics’, The Sociological Review 55(3): 531–549. Shoemaker, R.B. 2002. ‘Taming of the Duel: Masculinity, Honour and Ritual Violence in London 1660–1800’, The Historical Journal 45(3): 525–545. Sidky, H. 2002. ‘The Ayyars: Warriors of Seistan’ in D.E. Jones (ed), Combat, Ritual and Performance, pp. 11–20. Westport, CT: Praeger. Simmel, G. [1907] 1997. ‘Sociology of the Senses’ in D. Frisby and M. Featherstone (eds), Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings, pp. 109–130. London: Sage. Simmel, G. [1911] 1997. ‘The Sociology of Space’, in D. Frisby and M. Featherstone (eds), Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings, pp. 137-169. London: Sage. Simmel, G. 1950. The Sociology of Georg Simmel. K.Wolff (trans.&ed.). New York: The Free Press. Simmel, G. 1955. Conflict and the Web of Group-Affiliations. London: Free Press. Simmel, G. 1971. On Individuality and Social Forms. Edited by D. Levine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Singer, J.N. 2005. ‘Addressing Epistemological Racism in Sport Management’, Journal of Sport Management 19(4): 464–479. Skinner, J. 2008. ‘The ‘PB’ and the Aestheticization of Violence in Northern Ireland’, Ethnography 9(3): 403–414. Smith, B., and A. Sparkes. 2005. ‘Men, Sport, Spinal Cord Injury and Narratives of Hope’, Social Science and Medicine 61: 1095–1105. Smith, B., and A. Sparkes. 2008. ‘Changing Bodies, Changing Narratives and the Consequences of Tellability: A Case Study of Becoming Disabled through Sport’, Sociology of Health and Illness, 30(2), 217–236. Snyder, E., and R. Ammons. 1993. ‘Baseball’s Emotion Work: Getting Psyched to Play’, Qualitative Sociology 16(2): 111–132. Sorial, S. 2004. ‘Heidegger, Jean-Luc Nancy, and the Question of Dasein’s Embodiment’, Philosophy Today 48(2): 216–230. Spaaij, R. 2008. ‘Men Like Us, Boys Like Them: Violence, Masculinity, and Collective Identity in Football Hooliganism’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues 32(4): 369–392. Sparkes, A. 2009. ‘Ethnography and the Senses: Challenges and possibilities’, Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise, 1(1): 21-35. Sparkes, A., and B. Smith. 2002. ‘Sport, Spinal Cord Injury, Embodied Masculinities and the Dilemmas of Narrative Identity’, Men and Masculinities 4(3): 258–285. Sparkes, A., and B. Smith. 2003. ‘Men, Sport, Spinal Cord Injury and Narrative Time’, Qualitative Research 3(3): 295–320. Spencer, D. 2009. ‘Habit(us), Body Techniques and Body Callusing: An Ethnography of Mixed Martial Arts’, Body and Society 15(4): 1–25. Spencer, D. and B. Hogeveen. accepted; under review. “Pride, Shame and Canadian Sporting Identities: Media Depictions of Wayne Gretzky, Ben Johnson and George St. Pierre” in Embodied Practice, the Media and Identity in Canadian Contexts. 27 pages. Submitted to Wilfred Laurier University Press. Spierenburg, P. 1998. ‘Masculinity, Violence and Honour: An Introduction’ in P. Spierenburg (ed), Men and Violence : Gender, Honor, and Rituals in Modern Europe and America, pp. 1–36. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

References 191 Stanfield, J., II. 1993. Race and Ethnicity in Research Methods. London: Sage. Stoller, P. 2004. ‘Sensuous Ethnography, African Persuasions, and Social Knowledge’, Qualitative Inquiry 10: 817–835. St. Louis, B. 2003. ‘Sport, Genetics and the ‘Natural Athlete’: The Resurgence of Racialized Science’, Body and Society 9(2): 75–95. Stone, B. 2009. ‘Running man’, Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise, 1(1): 67-71. Stovkis, R. 1992. ‘Sports and Civilization: Is Violence the Central Problem?’ in E. Dunning and C. Rojek (eds), Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process: Critique and Counter-Critique, pp. 121–136. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Strauss, A., and J. Corbin. 1990. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Strawson, G. 1994. Mental Reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Synnott, A. 1991. ‘A Sociology of Smell’, Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 28(4): 437–459. Theberge, N. 1993. ‘The Construction of Gender in Sport: Women, Coaching and the Naturalization of Difference’, Social Problems 40(3): 301–313. Theweleit, K. 2003. ‘Male Ways of Giving Birth’, in S. Ervo and T. Johansson (eds), Bending Bodies: Moulding Masculinities, pp. 193–207. Aldershot, England: Ashgate. Tiger, L. [1969] 1984. Men in Groups. London: Nelson. Tilly, C. 2004. ‘Trust and Rule’, Theory and Society 33:1–30. Trend, D. 2007. The Myth of Media Violence. Oxford: Blackwell. Turner, B. 1982a. ‘The Discourse on Diet’, Theory, Culture and Society 1(1): 23–32. Turner, B. 1982b. ‘The Government of the Body: Medical Regimens and the Rationalization of Diet’, British Journal of Sociology 33(2): 254–269. Turner, J., and J. Stets. 2005. The Sociology of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ultimate Fighting Championship. 2007. UFC Presents: The Ultimate Fighter, Season 2- Uncut, Untamed and Uncensored!. Las Vegas, Nevada. Uslaner, E.M. 2000. ‘Producing and Consuming Trust’, Political Science Quarterly 115: 569–590. Uslaner, E.M. 2002. The Moral Foundations of Trust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vahabzadeh, P. 2009. ‘Ultimate Referentiality: Radical Phenomenology and the New Interpretive Sociology’, Philosophy and Social Criticism 35(4): 447–465. Van Bottenburg, M., and J. Heilbron. 2006. ‘De-sportization of Fighting Contests: The Origins and Dynamics of No Holds Barred Events and the Theory of Sportization’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 41(3–4): 259–282. Villamon, M., D. Brown, J. Espartero, and C. Guiterrez. 2004. ‘Reflexive Modernization and the Disembedding of Judo From 1946 to the 2000 Sydney Olympics’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 39(2): 139–156. Wacquant, L. 1995a. ‘The Pugilist Point of View: How Boxers Think and Feel About Their Trade’, Theory and Society 24(4): 489–535. Wacquant, L. 1995b. ‘Pugs at Work: Bodily Capital and Bodily Labour Among Professional Boxers’, Body and Society 1(1): 65–93. Wacquant, L. 2004. Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. New York: Oxford University Press. Wagner, H.R. 1973. ‘The Scope of Phenomenological Sociology: Considerations and Suggestions’ in G. Psathas (ed), Phenomenological Sociology: Issues and Application, pp. 61–90. New York: Wiley. Wagner, J. 2002. ‘Contrasting Images, Complementary Trajectories: Sociology, Visual Sociology and Visual Research’, Visual Studies 17(2): 160–171.

192 References Wagner, J. 2006. ‘Visible Materials, Visualized Theory and Images of Social Research’, Visual Studies 21(1): 55–69. Walby, K. 2010. ‘Interviews as Encounters: Issues of Sexuality and Reflexivity When Men Interview Men About Commercial Same Sex Relations’, Qualitative Research 10(6): 639–657. Walby, K. and D. Spencer. 2012. “Shiri (A mass spectrometer) and the Emotional Climate of an Earth Sciences Department” in Emotions Matter: For a relational approach to emotions, Dale Spencer, Kevin Walby and Alan Hunt (eds.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Walk, S. 1999. ‘Mom, Sisters and Ladies: Women Student Trainers in Men’s Intercollegiate Sport’, Men and Masculinities 1(3): 268–283. Waskul, D., P. Vannini, and J. Wilson. 2009. ‘The Aroma of Recollection: Olfaction, Nostalgia, and the Shaping of the Sensuous Self’, The Senses and Society 4(1): 5–22. Weber, M. 1964. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. New York: Free Press. Weber, M. 1976. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. 2nd ed. London: Allen & Unwin. Weber, M. 1978. Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (2 vols.) Berkeley: University of California Press. Weir, W. 2005. ‘Ultimate Brutality, or Sport? Martial Arts Mix Retains Popularity Despite Attempts to Eliminate It’, Hartford Courant(Life), 11/05: H1. 6. Connecticut. Westhaver, R. 2006. ‘Flaunting and Empowerment: Thinking About Circuit Parties, the Body, and Power’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35: 611–644. White, P. and K. Young. (1999) ‘Is Sport Injury Gendered?’, in P. White and K. Young (eds), Sport and Gender in Canada, pp. 69-84. Toronto: Oxford University Press. White, P.G., K. Young, and W. McTeer. 1995. ‘Sport, Masculinity, and the Injured Body’ in D. Sabo and D.F. Gordon (eds.), Men’s Health and Illness: Gender, Power and the Body, pp.158–182. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Whitehead, S.M. 1998. ‘Hegemonic Masculinity Revisited’, Gender, Work, and Organization 6(1): 58–62. Whitehead, S.M. 2002. Men and Masculinities. Cambridge, England: Polity. Wiener, M. 2004. Men of Violence: Violence, Manliness, and Criminal Justice in Victorian England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wievorka, M. 1995. The Arena of Racism. London: Sage. Williams, S. 2000. ‘Reason, Emotion and Embodiment: Is Mental Health a Contradiction in Terms?’ Sociology of Health and Illness 22(5): 559–581. Wilson, L. 2009. Jurus, Jazz Riffs and the Constitution of a National Martial Art in Indonesia. Body and Society 15(3): 93–119. Wolcott, H.F. 1994. Transforming Qualitative Data: Description, Analysis, and Interpretation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Young, I. M. 1990. Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Young, K. 2004. Sporting Bodies, Damaged Selves: Sociological Studies of Sportsrelated Injury. Oxford, England: Elsevier. Young, K., White, P., and McTeer, W. 1994. ‘Body Talk: Male Athletes Reflect on Sport, Injury and Pain’, Sociology of Sport Journal 11(2): 175–195. Zaner, R. 1973. ‘Solitude and Sociality: The Critical Foundations of the Social Sciences’ in G. Psathas (ed), Phenomenological Sociology: Issues and Application, pp. 25–46. New York: Wiley.

Index

A Advertising, 146, 176 Agamben, Giorgio, 2, 151 Ahmed, Sara, 115 Aho, Kevin, 24 Aikido, 4 Ajahn, 134 Alexander, Houston, 62–63 Allen-Collinson, Jacquelyn, 33, 41, 89 Angrosino, Michael, 166–167 Archimedean point, 9, 19, 21, 24, 54, 153–154, 164 Aristocratic Archetype, 8, 163 Arm bar, 5, 6, 42, 44, 82, 90–91, 159 Arrogance, 137 Asceticism, 63–66, 111 Associations, Affective, 79, 129, 148 Auditory Latching, 46 Azzarito, Laura, 59

B Badass, 77, 79–80 Barbalet, Jack, 115,121 Basketball, 96 Bataille, Georges, 128–129 Bateson, Gregory, 176 Bauman, Zygmunt, 54 Becker, Howard, 6, 8, 76 Becoming, 9, 14, 54, 55, 72–74, 88, 90, 98, 101, 151 Behavioral Effects Argument, 7 Being and Time, 21, 24 Being-in-the-world, 8, 14, 21, 23, 30, 53, 56–57, 68, 70, 72, 79, 107, 151 Being Singular Plural, 26–28, 30 Belts, 13, 39–40, 134, 136, 142, 171, 173 Berger, Peter, 54

Between Men, 128 Bird, Sharon, 115, 126, Blood, 5, 8, 34, 50, 51, 103, 131–134, 174, 175 Bloodsport, 7 Bluedorn, Allen, 34 Body Amnesia, 163 Body and Soul, xi, 1 Bodybuilders, 77–78, 171 Body callusing, 14, 86–89, 96, 98, 152, 174 Body Fascism, 66 Body Pedagogics, 106 Bouncers, 77 Boxing, xi, 1, 3, 4, 34, 59–60, 68, 71, 95- 97, 130, 131, Borthwick, Fiona, 50 Bourdieu, Pierre, 2, 71, 87–89, 113 Bracketing, 18–21, 172 Bravo, Eddie, 96, 175 Bray, Abigail, 2 Brazil, 5, 95 Brentano, Franz, 172 Bricolage, corporeal, 75 Britton, Dana, 128 Brown, Malcolm, 58 Bunkai, 4 Butler, Judith, 2, 56, 102, 147

C Cage, 3, 13, 49, 62–63, 66, 70, 80–81, 95, 100, 102–103, 110, 122, 140, 145–147, 173, 176 California, 95 Camaraderie, 137–138 Canada, 3, 9, 154–155 Capital, 40, 113; Body, 113 Care, 64, 68, 134, 137, 155 Casino Rama, 155

194

Index

Cauliflower Ear, 1, 78, 106, 119, 174 Chapple, Constance, 60 Chiasma, 150, 173 Children/childhood, 56, 59, 71, 88, 101, 120 Carano, Gina, 66–67, 173 Carlisle, Clare, 87 Ch’i, 5 Choke, 5, 6, 42, 82, 159, 161, 173 Class, 31–32, 59, 63, 71, 88, 136 Clayton, Ben, 60 Clinch, 42, 51, 77, 159–160, 176 Coaches/coaching, xiii, 44–45, 49, 60, 84, 91–93, 98, 106, 111, 125, 136, 173–174 Coding, open, 13, 169 Colebrook, Claire, 2 Collier, John Jr., 176 Collins, Randall, 14, 65, 116–121, 126, 143, 152 Commercialization, 7 Conflict, 57, 129, 132, 134, 141–142, 148 Connell, Raewyn, 55–57, 175 Consciousness, 18–21, 23–26, 54, 88 Confrontational Tension, 114, 118– 121, 126, 146, 152 Cooperation, 34, 57, 129–134, 148 Couture, Randy, 62 Crolley, Liz, 60 Crossley, Nick, 87–88, 176 Culture, 3, 4, 15, 65, 71, 73, 87–88, 109, 128, 130, 152

D Dasein, 21–27 DeNora, Tia, 46 Denver, Colorado, 5 Derrida, Jacques, 54–55 Descarte, Rene, 2, 16–18, 24; mindbody dualism, 2, 16–18, 20–21, 25, 114, 164, 172, 174 Despair, 99–113 Dewey, John, 49, 87, 94 Diet, 65–66, 76, 174 Difference, 27, 53–71, 77, 153 Differance, 32, 53, 55 ‘Docile bodies’, 98 Downey, Greg, 44, 46, 154 Dueling, 15, 127–149, 152; as creative, 15, 127–149, 152; as negation, 15, 127–149, 152 Dunning, Eric, 117 Durham, Meenakshi, 59

Durkheim, Emile, 86, 131 Dyad, 34, 45, 127–131

E Education, 60; of fighters, 12 Edgework, 81, 174 Edwards, Tim, 114 Eitzen, D. Stanley, 60 Embarrassment, 106, 140 Embodiment, 3, 25, 63, 87–91, 100, 108 Emelianenko, Fedor, 77 Emergence, 96, 98 Emerson, Robert, 11–12, 164, 166, 167 Emotion, 2–3, 14, 17–18, 20, 23, 45, 65, 101–102, 111, 114–126, 137, 144, 150, 152–153, 164, 167–169; anger, 14, 121, 123–124, 126, 143, 152; confidence, 14, 63–65, 84, 112, 114, 120–126, 142, 152; elation, 14, 125–126, 152; frustration, 14, 94, 107, 122–124, 126,143, 152 Emotional Energy, 65 Emotional Labor, 168 Emotion Work, 126 England, 130, 175 Epoche, 18–19 Eroticism, 128–129 Essences, 20, 24, 26–27, 54 Essentialism, 58, 116 Estrogen, 175 Ethnography, xi, xiii, 1, 3, 9–10, 12, 33, 39, 76, 84, 102, 144, 149–152, 154, 163–171; autoethnography, 12; sensory, 3, 33, 164–169, 171; Ethos, 76, 79, 83, 84; American, 5 Evans, Rashad, 63 Events, 7, 8, 12, 36–39, 43–45, 49, 51, 55, 56, 61, 67, 70, 72, 89, 100, 110, 125, 131, 144, 147, 150, 154, 166–167, 175 Experience, xi-xii, 2–3, 7–9, 12–14, 16, 18–20, 23–25, 28–31, 33–34, 36–38, 40–42, 44–46, 48–54, 62, 72, 74, 81–82, 84, 87, 91, 94–97, 99–102, 105, 108–112, 114–116, 118–125, 126, 132, 137–138, 140, 143–144, 150–153, 163–170, 172–175 Eye gouging, 5

F Facebook, 13

Index Failure, 12, 14, 55, 84, 99–100, 102, 110–113, 152 Featherstone, Mike, 72–73 Femininities, 55–56 Feudalism, 131 Feuds, 130–131 Field notes, 3, 11–12, 167, 169, 172 Fight club, 171 Fightweek, 7 Filipovic, Mirko ‘CroCop’, 77 Fish hooking, 5, 171 Fitch, Jon, 171 Flaherty, Michael, 37 Flatulence, 34, 48 Flesh, 17, 25, 30, 74, 111, 128, 131,147 Flood, Michael, 128–129 Florida, 12, 13, 168 Food, 50, 65–66 Forward Panic, 120–121, 143 Foucault, Michel, 2, 65 France, 130 Franklin, Rich, 62 Friendship, xii-xii, 1–2, 8, 85, 112, 119, 123, 128, 137, 140–141, 143, 150–151, 163 Fretz, Rachel, 11–12, 164, 166, 167

G Gameness, 70 Gender, 2, 13–14, 31–32, 53–60, 100, 102, 115, 128, 151–153, 168–169 Gentry, Clyde, 173 Germany, 60, 130 Gi, 134, 135, 140, 159, 175 Giddens, Anthony, 5, 54 Gill, Rosalind, 57 Goffman, Erving, 163–164 Goulet, Jonathan, 62 Gracie, Helio, 167 Gracie, Rickson, 5 Gracie, Royce, 5 Grappling, 6, 34–35, 42–43, 46, 48, 91, 95, 137, 141, 175 Griffin, Forrest, 61–62 Gross, Josh, 7 Grosz, Elizabeth, 2, Ground and Pound, 6, 47, 133, 160 Guard, 44–45, 90, 133, 143, 159–160, 175; Half, 42–43, 160; Rubber, 175 Guilbert, Sebastien, 117 Guns, 130

195

H Habit, 3, 40, 42, 46, 86–88, 93–94, 98, 105, 114, 127, 153, 169 Habitus, 14, 27, 32, 53–54, 61, 63, 70–71, 74–75, 86–98, 101, 127, 137, 150, 152–153 Halbert, Christy, 59 Harris, John, 60 Harrison, Louis, 59 Hearn, Jeff, 100–101 Heart, 25, 45, 55, 69–70, 77, 99, 173 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 18, 131 Heidegger, Martin, 3, 16–18, 21–26, 115, 172 Heilbron, Johan, 100 Henwood, Karen, 57 Hierarchy, 39, 56–57, 59, 64, 102, 109, 110, 112, 129–130, 134–137, 142–143, 176 Hermeneutics, 14, 23, 24, 32, 151, 170 Hird, Myra, 175 Hockey, John, 33, 41 Hockey (ice), 96, 124 Hogeveen, Bryan, 155 Holyfield, Evander, 113 Homoeroticism, 15, 127–149, 152 Homogenization, 53, 58, 61–63 Homophobia, 128–129 Homosexuality, 128–129, 149 Homosociality, 15, 126–149, 152 Honor, 38, 57, 130–132, 138, 140, 147 Howe, David, 89, 100 Howes, David, xii, 33, 176 Humor, 48 Humility, 137, 141, 174 Husserl, Edmund, 14,16, 18–24, 27, 30, 32, 151, 172 Hybridization, 75

I Idealities, 20–24 Identity, 14, 16, 29–32, 53–71, 78, 81, 109, 137, 149, 151, 173 Individualism, meritocratic, 5 Individuation, 31–32 Injury, 1, 3, 12, 13, 14, 89, 99–113, 150, 152, 153; Spinal Chord, 109 Interactional Ritual Chains, 65, 122 Intersubjectivity, 19–20, 87, 95 Intensities, 34, 36, 46–48, 50, 102, 108, 113, 118, 121, 126, 132, 139, 160–161

196

Index

Intentional Arc, 24–25 Intentionality, 18–20, 110, 172–173 Interviews, in-depth, semi-structured, 3, 12–13, 164, 168–169, 172 Intimacy, 122, 129 Italy, 130

J Jackson, Quinton ‘Rampage’, 62 Japan, 5, 110, 119, 130, 148, 154 Jazz musicians, 76 Jiu Jitsu: Brazilian, xiii, 4, 5, 6, 11, 35,36, 38, 73, 91, 95, 96, 103, 134, 135, 139, 140, 159, 160, 171, 173, 175, 176; Japanese, 6, 159, 176 Jones, David, 4 Jones, Jon, 62 Journeymen, 13 Judo, 4,5, 6, 75, 109, 117, 119, 131, 159, 171, 176

K Kabyle, 88 Kano, Jigaro, 5 Karate, 4, 5, 6, 75, 159, 174, 176 Kata, 4, 5, 6, 76, 160, 171 Katz, Jack, 77, 163 Kick, 3, 5–6, 49–50, 99, 93, 96, 99, 102–103, 105, 113, 122, 133, 141, 159–160, 173–175 Kiesling, Scott, 128 Klein, A., 33 Klein, M.L., 60 Knockout, 6, 125 Koscheck, Josh, 171 Kournikova, Anna, 60 Kru, 134 Krug, Gary, 4 Kung Fu, 4

L LaBelle, Brandon, 46 Ladettes, 116, 175 Language, 6, 9, 23, 27–28, 31–32, 54, 149, 172 Last man, 85 Laurendeau, Jason, 81 Lee, Bruce, xi Lefebvre, Henri, 85 Leg lock, 6 Liddell, Chuck, xi Life, xi, 5, 8–9, 12, 14, 19, 22–23, 25, 33–34, 36, 38, 46, 65–68,

72–85, 96, 100, 105–106, 108– 112, 116, 137–138, 150–151, 155, 171, 175: Everyday, 14, 22, 38, 46, 65, 68, 72–73, 79, 81–84, 100, 109, 151; Heroic, 14, 72–73, 81–84, 151; public, 131 Lifeworld, 20, 172 Loss, 14, 84, 100, 102, 109–113, 120 Luckmann, Thomas, 54 Lyng, Stephen, 174 Lyotard, Francois, 29

M Malcolm, Dominic, 154 Malpas, Jeff, 112 Manning, Erin, 31 Masculinities, 14, 55–58, 77, 99–113, 127–149, 152; Hegemonic, 52, 56–57, 77, 115; idealized, 57, 63, 100–101, 107, 110–112; normative, 53, 57–58, 64, 67, 70, 83, 102, 106–107, 109, 134, 136, 138, 142–144, 147 McCain, John, Senator, 7 McDojo, 40 McGinnis, Lee, 60 McGuinty, Dalton, 154 McLean, Carl, 57 McQuillan, Julia, 60 Mead, George, H., 96 Mead, Margaret, 176 Mean Streak, 64 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 14, 16–17, 24–26, 29–31, 151, 172 Messner, Michael, 53, 89 Memory, 18, 37, 55, 87; Olfactory, 50; proprioceptive, 91, 94 Mennesson, Christine, 59 Metamorphosis, 74, 88, 90, 154, 174 Metaphysics, 18, 54–55; presence, 54; substance, 2, 17–18 Miles, Robert, 58 Mimesis, 98 Mitsein, 26–29 Monoculturalism, 54 Monaghan, Lee, 77–78 Moral Entrepreneur, 7 Movement, 4, 31–32, 35, 40–43, 47, 54, 85, 108, 150, 173 Muay Thai, 4, 6, 10–11, 34–36, 38–39, 69, 80, 91, 95, 99, 134, 159– 160, 171, 173–175 Multiculturalism, 54

Index Music, 34, 46–47, 144, 146

N Nancy, Jean-Luc, 3, 14, 16–17, 25–31, 54, 131–132, 151, 172–173 Natural Sciences, 18 Nationalism, 62–63, 71, 155 Nation State, 7, 31, Neophytes, 39, 42, 132, 142, 172 New York, 7 Nietzsche, Friedrich, xii, 85 No-Holds-Barred, 5, 7, 154, 171, 181 No Holds Barred, 173

O Oates, Thomas, 59 Objectivity, 20, 71, 150, 164 Occularcentrism, 16, 23–24, 165 Okely, Judith, 164, 169 Ontario, xi, 12, 13, 154–155, 176 Ontario Athletic Commission, 154 On the Way to Language, 172 Ontic, 22 Orillia, 155 Overman, 85

P Paechter, Carrie, 56–57 Pain, 1–3, 12, 14, 34, 42, 50–51, 70, 86, 89, 96–97, 99–110, 112, 119, 123–126, 132–133, 140, 150, 152–153, 163, 167, 175; Chronic, 100–102, 107–109 Pancrase, 5 Parisyan, Karo, 66 Parker, Graham, 100 Parliamentarization, 7, 130 Parrot, 90, 98 Participant Observation, 3, 9, 150, 164, 166–169, 172 Penn, BJ, xi, 173 Performance, 4, 57, 67, 77, 81, 90, 99–102, 107, 110, 114, 121, 129, 131, 148, 151; See also, performativity, 56–57 Phenomenology, xi, 14, 16–32, 117, 151, 172; Existential, 21–23; Transcendental, 18–20, 23–24 Pink, Sarah, 165–167 Pompui, 66 Positionality, 165, 168 Potentialities, 2, 22, 24, 53, 56, 58, 69, 77, 101, 105, 108–110, 112, 153 Powerlifting, 171

197

Pride Fighting Championship, 154 Proxemics, 76 Psyched Up, 114 Punch, Maurice, 163 Punching, 3, 6, 34, 41, 44, 47, 66, 68, 92–93, 105, 119, 122, 133–134, 148, 160, 174

Q Quebec, 12, 13, 147

R ‘Race’, 2, 31–32, 53, 58–59, 61–63, 169 Racialization, 53, 58, 61–62, 71 Racism, 58–59, 62–63, 71 Ready-at-hand, 22, 24, 57 Reflection, xi, 12, 33, 37, 45, 91, 97, 110, 148, 169, 172, 175 Reflexivity, 81, 168 Reilly, Bob, Assemblyman, 7 Repetition, 34, 48, 52, 87–88, 90–94, 121, 137, 150 Revolving Door syndrome, 172 Rhythm, 3, 14, 34–36, 41–46, 96, 151, 173 Ring, 3, 13, 62, 73–75, 84, 95, 118– 119, 121, 125, 134, 145, 142, 146–148, 173–174, 176 Ring Girls, 68, 147 Risk, 73, 81–85, 100, 123, 139, 174 Ritual, 4, 38, 49, 65, 76, 77, 115, 119, 120, 121, 122, 131, 144, 146 Roderick, Martin, 100 Rogers Centre, 155 Rules, 5, 7, 37, 38, 89, 100, 117, 148, 154, 176

S Sampling, 13: theoretical, 13; snowball, 13 Samurai, 130 Sanchez-Garcia, Raul, 154 Santos, Cristiane, 173 Scheff, Thomas, 116 Schinkel, Willem, 117–118 Schutz, Alfred, 16–23, 30 Security, 38 Sedgwick, Eve, 128 Self, 34, 46, 49–51, 53–54, 63, 65–66, 73, 76–81, 86, 96, 100, 108– 109, 112, 118–119, 121, 123, 126, 129, 134, 142, 163, 166, 172; masculine, 65, 100, 109

198

Index

Senses, 3, 24–25, 30–31, 33–52, 91, 151, 163, 165, 167, 169, 176: Touch, 1, 27–34, 40–43, 139, 145, 150; Sight, 24, 30, 34, 37, 40–43, 51, 150, 165; Aural, 44–47; Olfactory, 47–50; Taste, 50–51 Sex, 31, 55–60, 70, 127–129, 147, 149, 168, 175 Shamrock, Ken, 171, 174 Shaw, Linda, 11–12, 164, 166, 167 Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine, 40 Sherdog.com, 7 Sheridan, Sam, 70 Shields, Jake, 155 Shilling, Chris, 33, 153, 176 Shit talking, 142–143 Silva, Anderson, 61, 173 Simmel, Georg, 9, 33, 44, 47, 73, 85, 129, 165 Singularity, 3, 14, 17, 27–32, 45, 47, 53–55, 57, 79–80, 85, 112, 129, 132, 146, 151, 153 Smashing Machine, 175 Smith, Brett, 100, 109 Sorial, Sarah, 24 Space, 1–3, 11, 14, 20, 24–25, 27, 29, 30–33, 37–40, 42–43, 46–48, 50, 56, 60, 95–96, 98, 127, 132, 136, 145, 147, 173; appropriated, 38; public, 38, 127, 132; reverential, 37–38, 40, 127 Sparring, 33–36, 38, 48, 50–51, 76–77, 95–97, 102, 105, 118, 122, 127, 133, 137, 141, 160–161, 175 Sparkes, Andrew, 100, 109 Spectacle, 3, 120, 130–131, 141, 147 Spike UFC All-access, 8 Spinoza, Baruch, 105, 153 Sportization, 7, 100 Stigma, 79 St. Louis, Brett, 5, 9 St. Pierre, George, 155 Strangeness, 27–28, 173 Strategy, 43–44, 91–92, 98, 119, 144, 165 Strikeforce, 154, 173 Subjectivity, 19–20 Sudo, Genki, 63 Sweat, 34, 39, 48, 93, 106, 120, 132, 134, 143, 150 Swick, Mike, 62 Swords, 130 Symbols, 29, 39 Synnott, Anthony, 47

T Tabata Protocol, 46–47, 173 Tae Kwon Do, 6, 159, 174 Tao of Jeet Kune Do, xi Tape, 146 Tap out, 5, 42, 82, 90, 139, 142, 161, 171, 176 Team, 44, 59–60, 87, 121–122, 125– 127, 134, 136, 141, 146, 168 Techniques, 6, 34, 36, 40–41, 43–44, 65, 76, 85, 106, 138–139, 154, 160, 174, 176; Body, 9, 36, 45, 76–77, 86–98, 101, 111, 127, 142–143, 150, 152–153, 167, 169; Reflexive body (RBT), 86–89, 96, 98, 111, 152, 174 Telling About Society, 6 Teso, Elena, 60 Testosterone, 116, 147, 175 Thailand, 10–11, 66, 91, 95, 99, 175, Chaing Mai, Thailand, 10, 11, 99; San Kampang, Thailand, 10 The Phenomenology of Perception, 26 The Ultimate Fighter, 62, 79 The Visible and the Invisible, 25, 30 Theweleit, Klaus, 116 Thick Description, xi, 12, 164, 167 Tiger, Lionel, 128 Time/Temporality, 3, 5, 8, 11, 14, 19, 20–23, 25, 27, 29–30, 32–52, 55–56, 64, 76, 79, 83–84, 88, 91, 96–99, 101, 107–108, 111, 119, 121–122, 126, 130–133, 136–139, 142–144, 160, 165–168, 173; appropriated, 34; Chronological, 34; Compression, 37; protracted duration, 37 Timers, boxing, 34–35 Toronto, xii, 155, 168 Transgression, 76, 128, 142 Trust, 121, 137–140 Tyson, Mike, 113

U Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), xi, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 61–62, 67, 111, 125, 154–155, 171–175 Undisputed, 62 United Kingdom, 116 United States, 3, 4, 9, 61, 171

V Vale Tudo, 5 Van Bottenburg, Maarten, 100

Index Vannini, Philip, 49 Vaseline, 146 Vendetta, 131 Victims, 152 Villamon, Miguel, 5 Violence, 2–3, 7–8, 13, 32, 43–44, 63, 71, 73, 77, 100–102, 112–128, 130–131, 140–141, 144, 148–149, 152, 155, 169; affective, 117; autotelic, 44, 117–118; interpersonal, 148, 155; Rational, 117; symbolic, 8, 32, 63, 71, 149 Violent few, 118 Visual Sociology, 165

W Wacquant, Loic, xi, 1, 71, 91, 113, 174, 176 Waddington, Ivan, 100 Wagner, John, 165 Walk, Stephan, 60 Wang, Andy, 173 Waskul, Dennis, 49 Water, 45, 50, 143

199

Weapon, body as, 89, 98, 101, 117, 130 Weber, Max, 17, 86, 131 Weeping, 111–112, 126 Westernization, 5 White, Dana, 8, 155 Whitehead, Stephen, 56–57 Wickham, Gary, 112 Wilson, Janelle, 49 Women, 3, 5, 12, 53, 59–61, 65–70, 72, 115–116, 127–128, 147, 155, 169, 172- 173, 175 World, 1, 8, 13–14, 19–26, 28–30, 39, 53, 56–57, 68–72, 79, 85, 107, 113, 131, 136, 138, 150–151, 154, 165–166, 172 World Extreme Cagefighting, 154 World War II, 4 Wrestling, freestyle, 4, 6, 11, 33, 49, 159, 171

Z Zinn, Maxine, 60 Zollikon seminars, 24 Zuffa, 154