“Carnal conviviality” and the end of race?

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ABSTRACT This paper seeks to address some confusions and contestations surrounding Paul Gilroy’s conceptualisation of conviviality. In particular, it seeks to argue that conviviality cannot be reduced to mere tentative co-existence, nor does it designate the absence of racism. Rather, it aims to demonstrate the messy complexity of everyday life, as people attempt to build lives alongside one another as they find themselves throwntogether on the margins of society. It does this through the qualitative exploration of fighters at a Polish-owned Muay Thai/Kickboxing gym in East London, where fighters enact what I refer to as “carnal conviviality”, a form of intimate, bodily togetherness constituted through training to fight that bonds fighters across racial, ethnic, religious and gendered lines. Although inherently local and messy, I argue that the production of social relations that see the human in the other are essential in times of mounting crises.