Give Me More Body: Pushing the Boundaries of Body and Soul

Abstract

In Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer ,L oWacquant offers a lively and insightful commentary not so much about the sport of boxing, but about the functioning of men's bodies in boxing. Indeed, a significant part of this work elucidates the functioning of the black male body. Wacquant conducted his study in a boxing gymnasium on Chicago south's side, an area that has long stood as one of the most renowned African American residential sectors in urban America. The gymnasium is located in the Woodlawn section of that city, which is an impoverished, overwhelmingly African American neighborhood that sits at the southern edge of the considerably more affluent Hyde Park community area. It is in Hyde Park white collar professionals and the faculty, administrators, at students at the University of Chicago often reinforce their anxiety and insecurity about the neighboring communities (Woodlawn being just one of them) by often trying to preserve as much distance as possible between themselves and the residents of these bordering spaces. Wacquant also draws from his own experiences in training in this gym and in competing in a boxing match in order to centrally position his own (Caucasian) body in this book. In fact, one chapter of this work centers on Wacquant's experiences, even though much of the point of this part of the material is to express some understanding of the more general social, emotional, and psychological dynamics at work in the enterprise. All together, Wacquant covers broad terrain in a book that appears at first glance to be about the sweet science of boxing. His analysis moves beyond the ring, and beyond the gymnasium as well, in that he gives analytical attention to the neighborhood as a pervasive social factor affecting what goes on in the gym. In focusing on boxers' bodies Wacquant consistently informs his readers of the pain, discipline, energy, and commitment that constitutes the practice of pugilism.