Boxers and DNRs: Exclusivity and Agentive Embodiment

  Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock have suggested the power of emotions to bridge their three conceptualizations of the body: the individual body, the social body, and the body politic. They argue,  “Emotions affect the way in which the body, illness, and pain are experienced and are projected to images of the well or poorly functioning social body and body politic” (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987:28). Because emotions have the ability to affect and to permeate across all three body conceptualizations, Scheper-Hughes and Lock (1987) maintain, “they provide an important ‘missing link’ capable of bridging mind and body, individual, society, and body politic” (29). By asserting that emotion is the “mediatrix of the three bodies” and given the ontology of the three bodies, they draw specific attention to the ways in which experiences of the body are simultaneously thought and sensed, as well as how they have both a social, moral, and cultural dimension. However, due to the lack of vocabulary, tools, and concepts to address, what they call “the mindful body”, medical anthropologists at the time were restricted to studying the mindful body in terms of intensified pleasure and pain.

           Fast-forwarding almost three decades later, anthropologists have begun to ask different questions and in asking these different questions, they have arrived at different answers. Instead of conceptualizing the body as a “thing-like” object, anthropologists began to more thoroughly conceptualize the body as process; essentially, in changing their conceptual framework, the ontology of the body changed from “thing-like” to process. This shift in ontology allowed anthropologists to gain access to a more nuanced vocabulary, tools, and concepts to address “the mindful body” in terms of embodiment. This response paper will concentrate on embodiment in terms of the papers by Loïc Wacquant and Carolyn Rouse.

           Loïc Wacquant, Professor of Sociology and Research Associate at the Institute for Legal Research, Boalt Law School at the University of California, Berkeley, focuses his attention to the “diverse ways in which specific social worlds invest, shape, and deploy human bodies and to the concrete incorporating practices whereby their social structures are effectively embodied by the agents who partake them” (1995:65). In his paper, “Pugs at Work: Bodily Capital and Bodily Labour among Professional Boxers”, Wacquant explores how professional boxers – most of whom are “embedded in a social setting that puts a high premium on physical force and prowess” (1995:65) – conceive of, care for, and rationalize their body as a form of capital. He applies Bourdieu’s (1986:241) definition of capital to his analysis: “accumulated labour (in its materialized form or its ‘incorporated’, embodied form) which, when appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labour”. Complicated at best, Bourdieu’s definition of capital extends beyond the notion of material assets and argues that capital can also be social, cultural, or even symbolic. Nonetheless, Wacquant conceives boxers are holders of and even entrepreneurs in bodily capital (1995:66), in that their bodies are simultaneously a means of production – the raw materials he and his handlers have to work with and on – and for a good part, a somatized product of his past training and extant mode of living (1995:67). Boxers, or pugilists, are constantly working on their bodies, improving their bodies, toning their bodies, and pushing their bodies to perfection. However, “much like fixed capital and like all living organisms, the body of fighters has inherent structural limitations” (Wacqaunt 1995:67). Here, Bourdieu’s influence on Wacqaunt becomes quite obvious. The inherent structural limitations the body of fighters are subject to, demonstrate how pugilists’ bodies become deposited in a form of lasting dispositions or trained capacities and structured inclinations or propensities to think, feel, and act in certain determinant ways (Wacquant 1995). Applying Bourdieu’s ideas, Wacquant would maintain that boxers do not simply train, discipline, and improve their bodies because they “want to win”; rather, boxers partake in these bodily endeavours because the structure of amateur and professional boxing - and even the larger societal habitus of professional athletes capitalizing their strength, determination, and bodily physique – deposits, determines, and guides aspiring and professional pugilists to the “want to win”. However, Wacqaunt maintains otherwise; instead, Wacquant nuances Bourdieu’s “would-be” argument, by arguing that pugilists participate in this extensive and rigorous training of the bodies to become a form of capital, because of the “unconscious fit between his (pugilistic) habitus and the very field which has produced it and into which, therefore, it fits ‘like a hand in a glove’ (Wacquant 1995:88). The interplay between the individual and the field demonstrates how pugilists, in a sense, embody their social, cultural, and symbolic surroundings, as “The boxer’s desire to fight flows from a practical belief constituted in and by the immediate co-presence of, and mutual understanding between his (re)socialized body and the game” (Wacqant 1995:88). Essentially, Wacquant is arguing that the boxer becomes embodied or inhabited by the very game he/she embodies or inhabits (1995). However, what happens when the individual is unable to embody his or her dispositions? What happens when the desire to fight is unexpressed by the individual and is, instead, transferred to other individuals around them? How do those individuals embody the desire to fight?

           Carolyn Rouse, Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, wrote an incredibly moving and heartwarming article on how two determined parents constructed cultural metaphors to effectively reach out to the medical professionals who were against continuing their daughter, Jasperlynn, on life support. Rouse documents how Jasperlynn’s parents controlled their embodied dispositions and how those dispositions were read by medical professionals, and how they attempted to author their subjectivity “by first specifying the sign value of particular objects and then associating themselves with those signs” (Rouse 2004:514). She introduces this process of embedding oneself in a meaningful array of symbols “embodiment-by-proxy”, which she maintains, she uses proxy to denote how objects, or what she calls “translational symbols”, are used to signify the subjectivity of someone other than self (Rouse 2004:522).  With this, she describes how Jasperlynn’s parents were more concerned about the presentation of their children and how their children’s subjectivity was read when they were with themselves (Rouse 2004:522), Jasperlynn’s parents believed that the medical professionals would read their subjectivity through their children. For instance, they represented Jasperlynn’s meaning and value, in particular, by dressing her up and combing her hair, by placing a Bible on or near her bed, and by ascribing meaning to her gestures. Applying Rouse’s concept of “embodiment-by-proxy”, Jasperlynn’s parents, by representing their unconscious daughter in this way, they are attempting to essentially, “bring life back” into Jasperlynn, by replacing Jasperlynn’s lack of inner subjectivity with material and symbolic subjectivity. As Rouse maintains, “The Washingtons were put in a situation of having to prove the value and meaning of Jasperlynn’s life so that the hospital staff would continue to invest emotional and material resources in the continued care of their daughter” (1995:524). The Washington’s struggle to reify the subjectivity of Jasperlynn and their struggle to make her body meaningful to medical professionals demonstrates Rouse’s concept of “embodiment-by-proxy”, as it shifts the focus away from the structural determinants of subjectivity and shifts the focus towards how the Washingtons situated themselves relationally to others symbolically and discursively in their struggles of bringing life, subjectivity, and meaning into Jasperlynn’s body. Moreover, the Washingtons’ struggles were only amplified by their marginalized social situation. Rouse notes, “For marginalized individuals whose presumed subjectivity is mired in tropes of inferiority, attempting to author semiotic ideologies for purposes of social agency is part of a communicative battle” (1995:515). For marginalized individuals, navigating one’s mindful body through the “violences of everyday life” is already troubling; therefore, navigating one’s marginalized, “inferior”, and un-mindful body through the violences and the bullying of the biomedical system is more horrifying than can be described. The battle between the biomedical system and the Washingtons’ demonstrated how both parties used “embodiment-by-proxy” to change the others’ dispositions towards Jasperlynn – while the Washingtons’ used it to prove Jasperlynn’s subjectivity and bodily meaning, the medical professionals used it to continually assert that Jasperlynn’s body lacked life, subjectivity, and meaning. The disposition of most the medical professionals involved with Jasperlynn was that she was essentially dead and that the Washingtons’ decision to not sign the DNR was both “irresponsible and selfish”. Nonetheless, the efforts of the medical professionals to effectively bully the Washingtons with complicated medical vernacular and guilt, were futile, as the Washingtons remained relentless in their efforts to change the medical professionals’ attitudes towards the very real subjectivity Jasperlynn still maintained. Essentially, Rouse states, “Embodiment-by-proxy describes how people reanimate themselves in other by locating through signification they cultural relevance and agency” (1995:527). The parents of Jasperlynn were able to reanimate themselves in Jasperlynn through their deep commitment to God and family, effectively transforming medicine’s object to include the family (Rouse 1995).

           Wacquant’s article describes how a boxer’s embodiment is through practice and discipline – how their desire to fight is constituted within the game or fight itself – therefore, demonstrating the role of individual agency in embodiment. Rouse’s article serves as a sharp contrast to Wacqaunt’s implication, as in the case of marginalized bodies, these bodies often have little to no agency; that is, their agency is restricted by structural limitations. Wacquant and arguably, Bourdieu’s conceptualization of embodiment seems to integrate the concept of agency quite thoroughly, in that subjects have the agentive power to develop specific tendencies or dispositions. Can this conceptualization of embodiment be applied to all individuals? What happens when marginalized individual come to embody their sense of restricted agency – that is, will they begin to accept their socially perceived inferiority?

           It seems to me that if we accept Wacquant’s conceptualization of embodiment, the bodies and subjectivities of marginalized individuals will forever be stigmatized as “inferior” and, in time, will come to embody that inferiority. When or if marginalized individuals embody that inferiority, the structural inequities will only become heightened and more problematic in a neoliberal society, which will naturally have severe social, political, economic, and health consequences. There needs to be an alternative conceptualization of embodiment that can be applied to more accurately fit the dispositions of marginalized individuals, where the desire to fight is not synonymous to the desire to survive.

Un-silencing the Past, Bettering the Future

While many have tried to silence the past, partly due to their inability to face it and partly due to them deeming it not important (Trouillot 1995:98), the past remains to be inescapably loud and useful in both the production of new knowledge and analyses of interactions. Anthropologists’ earlier efforts to study “the other” have produced academic work that come from a distinct perspective and thus, have produced a distinct type of knowledge. Anthropologists’ efforts to study “themselves,” likewise, have produced academic work that comes from a distinct perspective and have also produced a distinct type of knowledge (White and Tengan 2001). The collaboration of indigenous knowledge with researched knowledge (i.e. the reconciliation and integration of the past with the present) is one of the major themes throughout a few of my readings.

White and Tengan (2001) point out, “disciplinary models and practices – from fieldwork to publication – have worked historically to authorize and reinforce dichotomies that separate native subjects and anthropological agents” (489). Instead of reinforcing these dichotomies, they advocate for and stress the importance and significance of breeding Pacific Islander anthropologists to add to current literature on the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Island. In adopting “decolonizing” approaches to anthropology, indigenous peoples are able to provide an alternative perspective on their identity and are able to bring new, once “silenced” knowledge, to current discussions and knowledge bases.

Similarly, Allen and Hamby (2011) maintain that collaborative research approaches, specifically between museums and Australian Aboriginals, can uncover new pathways to an enhanced knowledge. Instead of asking ourselves what we can tell the Australian Aboriginals about themselves, we should be asking what they could tell us about themselves. As seen in the collaborative efforts between the museum regarding the Douglas Thomson Collection and the Lamalama peoples, the integration of indigenous knowledge with current knowledge enhanced and heightened the integrative knowledge, but it also allowed for a “move[-ment] from [a] site of friction to a site where knowledge emerges and merges and new understandings are created” (Allen and Hamby 2011:210). Collaborative research models are understood to be a process of knowledge production from an integrative perspective. While collaboration and shared knowledge is surely beneficial for both groups in terms of knowledge production, political collaborations in terms of governance remains a problem.

Morphy and Morphy (2013) stress the importance of an understanding of “relative autonomy” in order to develop policies that engage the Yolngu in the process of regional development. Unfortunately, it appears that the dichotomies – as mentioned by White and Tengan – that separate the native subjects from the governmental agents are somewhat clearly defined. Morphy and Morphy (2013) argue that in order to overcome this dichotomy, “it is helpful to understand Aboriginal forms of sociality and their associated value creation processes as relatively autonomous” (185). Perhaps, White and Tengan would suggest that more Australian Aboriginals should be conducting research on “their” people to help elucidate this understanding for their “other”; Allen and Hamby (2011) would certainly not argue against this suggestion as they maintain it would create a “vastly enhanced and reinvigorated knowledge base” (211).

The past has and continues to remain particularly loud in our present. It may be time that we stop trying to silence it and come to terms with what has been done and listen to what it is trying to tell us. As seen through these readings, listening to what we once silenced, has enhanced and has significantly added to our knowledge production practices.