Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

Drawing on the theories of Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Luc Nancy, this study develops a body-centered epistemology as the grounding for a participant-observer ethnography of "ultimate fighting" or "mixed martial arts." It explores the gendered and racialized forms that embodiment takes in this context, considering how the co-mingling of male bodies transgresses the cultural scripts of masculinity in popular culture, and examining how the rigors of mixed martial arts reveal the potentialities of bodies.

Dale C. Spencer is a Banting postdoctoral fellow 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, 2011) and co-author of Reimagining Intervention in Young Lives (University of British Columbia Press.

1. Introduction 2. Phenomenology and Bodies 3. Time, Space and Sense of Fighting 4. Difference and Bodies 5. Being a 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