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ABSTRACT
This paper is divided into five parts. Parts I and II place the discussion in the context of anthropological spaces and more specifically sports spaces, including discussion of the extent to which these may be gendered. Part III focuses on the question of the nature of masculinity, while Part IV investigates the status of boxing as expression of masculine identity. Part V looks further into boxing and the spaces of boxing as an expression of modern masculinity, with part VI considering women’s recent appropriation of pugilism. The paper finishes with a brief reflection leading to the conclusion that although the boxing gym remains a masculine space it is no longer an exclusively male preserve.
KEYWORDS:
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributor
David Scott is Emeritus Professor of French (Textual and Visual Studies) at Trinity College Dublin. A semiologist, his main fields of research are travel writing, poetry and the visual arts, and graphic design. His creative writing includes a Utopian fiction (Dynamo Island, 2016), a volume of short stories (Cut up on Copacabana, forthcoming 2018) and a collection of poetry (Postcards from Sao Paulo). A former amateur boxer, he has written on boxing aesthetics (The Art and Aesthetics of Boxing, Nebraska, 2009), on boxing art (in The Cambridge Quarterly, 2019) and on boxing's social impact (Cultures of Boxing, 2015).
Notes
1 Henri Lefebvre, La Production de l’espace (Paris: Anthropos, 2000) (4th ed.). (1974).
2 Lefebvre, La Production de l’espace, 21.
3 Doreen B. Massey, Space, Place and Gender (Bristol: Polity, 1994).
4 Roberta J. Park, and Patricia Vertinsky, Women, Sport, Society. Further Reflections Reaffirming Mary Wollstonecraft (London & New York: Routledge, 2011).
5 Henning Eichberg, Leistungsräume: Sport als Umwelt Problem (Münster: Lit, 1988).
6 John Bale, Landscapes of Modern Sport (Leicester, London, New York: Leicester University Press, 1994).
7 Christopher Matthews, ‘The Tyranny of the Male Preserve’, Gender & Society 30, no. 2 (April 2016): 312–33.
8 Monique Schneider, Généalogie du masculin (Paris : Flammarion (Collection ‘Champs’), 2000).
9 Claude Lévi-Strauss, La Pensée sauvage (Paris : Plon, 1962), 24–67.
10 David Scott, The Art and Aesthetics of Boxing (Lincoln, NE: The University of Nebraska Press, 2009).
11 See Gerald Early, The Culture of Bruising. Essays on Prize-fighting, Literature and Modern American Culture (Hopewell, NJ: The Ecco Press, 1994); David Scott, ‘Boxing and Masculine Identity’, in Sport, Representation and Evolving Identities in Europe, ed. Philip Dine and Sean Crosson (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010), 143–65, and ‘Boxing: from Male Vocation to Neurotic Masculinity’, Sport in History 37, no. 4 (2017): 469–82.
12 Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1977–84).
13 Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe (Paris: Gallimard, 1949).
14 Elisabeth Badinter, XY. De l’identité masculine (Paris: Odile Jacob (Livre de Poche), 1992).
15 Schneider, Généalogie du masculin.
16 John V. Grombach, The Saga of the Fist. The 9,000 Year Story of Boxing in Text and Pictures (London: Thomas Yoseloff, 1977 (1949)).
17 Maurice Maeterlinck, ‘Eloge de la boxe’, in Morceaux choisis (Paris: Nelson, 1900).
18 Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities, 3 vols., trans Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser (London: Picador, 1930–1943).
19 Grombach, The Saga of the Fist.
20 Schneider, Généologie du masculin.
21 Shelley G. MacDonald, Observations on Boxing: a Psychoanalytic Study (Dagenham: University of East London, 2000).
22 Joyce Carol Oates On Boxing (London: Bloomsbury, 1987).
23 Maeterlinck, ‘Eloge de la boxe’.
24 Musil, The Man Without Qualities.
25 Vernon Scannell, ‘Why I Enjoy Boxing’, in The Boxing Companion, ed. D. Batchelor (London: Eyre & Spottiswood, 1963), 39–44.
26 Early, The Culture of Bruising, 46.
27 André Rauch, Boxe, violence du XXe siècle (Paris: Aubier (coll. Histoires), 1992).
28 Early, The Culture of Bruising, xiv.
29 Early, The Culture of Bruising, 86–109.
30 Early, The Culture of Bruising, 92.
31 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club (London: Vintage, 1997).
32 Vernon Scannell, Ring of Truth (London: Robson, 1983).
33 Scannell, ‘Why I Enjoy Boxing’.
34 Scannell, ‘Why I Enjoy Boxing’, 44.
35 Rene Denfeld, Kill the Body, the Head will Fall: A Closer Look at Women, Violence and Aggression (London: Vintage, 1997); Kate Sekules, The Boxer’s Heart: How I Fell in Love with the Ring (New York: Villard; London: Aurum, 2001); also Carlo Rotella, Cut Time: An Education at the Fights (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003) and Good with their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and other Characters from the Rust Belt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
36 Denfeld, Kill the Body, 11.
37 Sekules, The Boxer’s Heart, 17.
38 Sekules, The Boxer’s Heart, 50.
39 Denfeld, Kill the Body, 155.
40 Denfeld, Kill the Body, 157.
41 Sekules, The Boxer’s Heart, 108.
42 Matthews, ‘The Tyranny of the Male Preserve’, 312–33.
43 Jean Baudrillard, La Société de consommation (Paris: Denoël, 1970).
44 David Scott, ‘The Boxing Environment’, preface to Max Kandhola, The Aura of Boxing (Dewi Lewis, 2013), 5–11.
45 See Denfeld, Kill the Body and Sekules, The Boxer’s Heart.