Bare-Knuckle Boxing and the Pedagogy of National Manhood

Bare-Knuckle Boxing and the Pedagogy
of National Manhood
Reflecting onthe elusiveness ofboxing as an object ofcritical scrutiny, Norman Mailer once remarked that "to ty to leam from boxers
[is]
a quintessentially comic quest. Boxers are liars. . . . once you knew what
they thought, you could hit them. so their personalities become masterpieces ofconcealment" (43). Despite this belated caution, the drama inside the ring has long exhibited an almost allegorical power formen and
women ofletters eager to find cultural meaning in such a concenfated tial
ofthe will. For instance, in william cobbett's 1805 essay, "In Defense of
Boxing," published in the weekly Political Register ontheoccasion ofa
coroner's decision "wherein death was the consequence of a boxingmatch," the persistent cries to "eradicate the practice ofboxing,, compel
cobbett to summon what he saw as a more debilitating cultural spectre:
England's steady fall into effemin acy (172).He begins by valorizing the
pugilistic arts as a civil means of settling quarrels in a frequently uncivil
society, particularly in contradistinction to the decidedly craven swordplay ofthe French and Italians. For cobbett, the issue at stake appears
patently simple: "[w]e must either have cuttings and stabbings, or boxingl';however, as he continues, it becomes clear that the ramifications of
this choice are fartherreaching: "[F]or, much as I abhor cuttings and stab-
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Bare-Knuckle Boxing and the pedagogy of National Manhood 93
litical participation are articulated by and communicated throughout the
masses. what makes this particularly ironic is the fact that boxing had
been illegal in Britain since 1750, which suggests that the culture of the
ring (known at the time as "the fancy'') exposes the tension between state
mandate and the efficacy ofpotential counterpublics, discursive arenas
where heterogeneous groups can band and form alternative and even illicit social strategies and practices. As boxing historian Elliott Gorn asserts, the fancy represents a "hybrid culture" (29), a mobile public sphere
that bracketed difference in the service of common interests, an incongruous feature of a sport grounded in combat. In orderto suggestways in
which the culture ofthe ring is complicitwiththe mechanisms ofnational
identity formation and the "recuperation" ofmasculinist ideals, I want to
first map out the discursive politics ofthe fancy, and then interrogate the
representation of a single bare-knuckle bout, the fight between Thomas
Hickman (alias "The Gaslight Man") and Bill Neate at Hungerford-atBerkshire on December 1 1, 1821.
The Hickman-Neate contest is certainlynotthe most culturalty significant fight ofthe bare-knuckle heyday in England, nor is itnotabre as a
demonstation ofpugilistic excellence (Neate stopped Hiclanan after eighteen bloody rounds), but it is an event that captivated the popular imagination, with over 25,000 spectators in attendance, and yielded surprising
literary capital, most stikingly in william H azlitt's 1 822 essay "The Fight."
More importantly however, the Hickman-Neate bout, understood through
the competing "styles" of masculine performance assumed by the two
pugilists, allows us to consider how ttre brutality of early boxing symbolically stages the concomitant violence intrinsic to both nation and gender
formation. Both are products ofthe exigencies ofdisavowal and repudiation, and the logic ofnineteenth-century sport similarly hinges on the promise that "the better man wins," so much so that at times the outcome of a
match is presumed to underwrite certain racial and culfural stereotypes.
Intriguingly, the authenticity (and thus the narrativization) ofthe HickmanNeate bout is threatened by suspicions of a "cross,,, or fixed outcome,
suggesting that the contest between the crude, outlandish Hickman and
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Bare-Knuckle Boxing and the pedagogy of National Manhood 95
George Mosse' s pioneering w ork N at i on alis m and S exu al i ty first
explored the dual histories ofnational and sexual identity, positing that the
formation ofnationalism in modem Europe is complicit with the idealization ofmiddle-class masculinity maintained by a newly codified bourgeois
"respectability." citing the coterminous emergence ofnationalistic ideology, new cultural regimes of sexual conduct, and the revalorization of
male beauty born ofthe eighteenth-century Greek revival, Mosse charts
the way in which these discourses not only came to mutually reinforce
each other, but also how, given that nationality and gender are relational
terms having meaning onlywithin a differential system ofsignification, they
together demarcate the figurative boundaries ofthe patriotic body by stig-
matizing the masturbator, homosexual, immigrant, and Jew (among others) as examples ofa weak and undisciplined masculinity. Mosse's work
is useful in that it brings into reliefthe gendered implications implicit in
Benedict Anderson's understanding ofnation as "a deep, horizontal comradeship," an imagined "fratemi ty" orguized and policed by what Mosse
calls "respectability" (qtd. in Anderson 7). Sublimating libidinal energy
into the "higherpurpose" ofnationalism and "projecting a stereotype of
human beauty which supposedly transcend[s] sensuousness," according
to Mosse (1 1), male propriety simultaneously deepens the identification
with the state while "exorcising a homoeroticism" that might otherwise
jeopardize "the history of [male] friendship" (16). As the example from
cobbett intimates, bare-knuckle boxing is imagined as an antidote to creeping cultural effeminacyby offering a space where masculine competency
can be (over)determined, and thus, having co-opted nationalistic strategies of self-representation, the ring and its patrons function as a microcosm ofthe national "fratemity."
Therefore, the boxing ring in the early nineteenth century can be
viewed as a critical site for staging the destruction, reorganization, and.
recuperability ofthe masculine body. Unlike contemporary prize-fighting,
bare-knuckle bouts determine the limits ofraw physical being: stripped to
the waist in the open air and fighting without the protection of gloves,
mouthpiece or referee, the early modem pugilist fought rounds measured
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leEuenl 96
Bare-Knuckle Boxing and the pedagogy of National Manhood 97
leads Egan to posit a rough-and-tumble pedagogy of experience, waming
that "books alonewillnot inform us ofthe true state ofthings, without an
intercourse with that book ofbooks, REAL LIFE. . . . It becomes, then,
our duty to observe well the passing scene,, ( I : 301-02). By proposing
thatthe fancy constitutes avital supplementto "the classical acquirements,,
of the learned, Egan's analogy works to valorize boxing as a form of
cultural capital and authenticate the street patter ofthe fan as a legitimate
and cohesive discourse in its own right (not insignificantly, Egan was also
a lexicographer, and the editor of a noted dicfionary ofurban slang).
I accentuate Egan's relationship to language and sociabilitybecause
it is evident from the opening pa ges of Boxiana thathis passion for the
sport often serves as a vehicle for aggressively articulating his crudely
pro-English prejudices. According to Egaq the manly art ofpugilism should
be viewed as a "national propensity . . . in perfect unison with the feelings
of Englishmen," a propensity which apparently erases the exigencies of
station, or as Egan relates: "Distinction ofrank is of little importance when
an offense has been given, and in the impulse ofthe moment, a pRINCE
has forgot his royalty, by turning out to box . . . and a BISHOp, the
sanctity ofhis cloth, displaying those stong and national taits so congenial to the soil of liberty" (1: 3). That the imperative to box outstrips the
demands of one's civic function suggests that these staged physical encounters restage a kind ofpolitical primal scene, offering the spectator a
glimpse into what Egan calls the "great obscurity" ofthe distant past where
"wounded feelings brought manly resentment to its aid,, (1: 2-3). Not
surprisingly, Egan goes to great lengths to anchor the sport firmly in protoEnglish history: "It has been attempted by some writers to prove that
BoxNG did not originate in Great Britain; but in recurring to the times of
the immortal Alfred, according to ancient authorities, we shall find, that
wrestling and boxing formed a part ofthe manual exercise ofthe soldiers
at that distant period. The ancient Britons have always been characterized
as a manly, strong, and robust race ofpeople, inured to hardship and
fatigue, and, by the exercise ofthose manly sports, acquired that peculiar
strength ofarm which rendered them so decisive in warlike combats. . . .
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Bare-Knuckle Boxing and the pedagogy of National Manhood 99
English rudeness for [the venetian] to bear" (25). Here boxing intimates a
multi-layered narrative ofengagementwherein even the punches themselves embodyparticularnational values. Similarly, when the British cham-
pion Tom cribb first defeated the American Tom Molineaux-an exslave described as "aperfect stranger, arude, unsophisticatedbeing
[who]
was too ambitious, by threatening to wrest the laurels from the English
brow, and planting them upon the head of a foreigner,, (1: 361)-Egan
writes that cribb succeeded in "chastisfing] the bold intruder, in protecting the national practice and honour of the country, his own character
from contempt and disgrace, and the whole race of English pugilists from
ridicule and derision ' (387). This baldly chauvinistic rhetoric gains a measure ofsanction from sporting associations like the pugilistic Society, specifically founded in 1814 to "keep alive the principles of courage and hardihood which have distinguished the British character, and to check the
progress ofthat effeminacy which wealth is too apt to produce.,,Egan,
not surprisingly, offers a ringing endorsement for the civic necessity of
such clubs, comparing their cultural function to the Royal Society, Antiquarian Society, andthe Society ofArts.
ForEganthen, boxing represents both amicrocosm ofand an intervention into national life, stimulating a "love ofcounty" while reinforcing a
phallic masculinity presumed to be imperiled. That boxing is perceived to
have wide-ranging political signifi cance becomes clear in an appendix to
the fourth volume of Boxiana in which Egan reproduces an 1g20 exchange before Jeremy Bentham's "society forMutual Improvement,,,
debating whether "the Magistracy of England" deseryes censure or approbation for failing to enforce the ban on boxing and "winking at what
affords much amusement and keeps up the spirit and courage ofthe coun1ry?" (4: 577).The discussion that follows retums insistently to the largely
working-class demographics of the fan base, and the contention bythe
sporl's opponents that"pizefights were not only the means ofcollecting
numerous blackguards together, but they tend more to encourage a spirit
of gambling, andferocizy of disposition" (a: 5g6). The sport is subsequently defended by a "Mr. M." who, in espousing "the liberty of the
25.j April 2003
anqn) nrudod
ut satpnts
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seuoceq 1r su luepoqo eJolu I se{eurJleql tuslllBqceIu oq} ul l?tlt uop€leJ
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eql JJo
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le8uenl gg1
Bare-Knuckle Boxing and the Pedagogy of National Manhood
mechanisms cultivate what Foucault calls a body's "aptitude," its
l0l
utility
within and acquiescence to a broader "political anatomy."
Foucault and contemporary theorists ofmasculinity make clear that
this "political anatomy'' ofdiscipline produces a form ofgender competency that both enables and circumscribes the masculine subject: to master the skills of a sport like boxing-and thereby provide "amusemenf ' for
the assembled public-is also to participate in delimiting and reif,zing a
stereotypical gender position that makes the subject available to what
Foucault calls "a machinery ofpower that explores it, breaks it down, and
realranges it" ( 1 3 8). As a site of embattled manhood, the ring presents a
stark distillation of disciplinary logic: unmanly or effeminate behavior is
confirmed and spectacularly punished in an event that is measured by the
ability of one man to maintain consciousness over and beyond another.
That there emerges a rigorous decorum ofthe body in Foucault's model
suggests
a
theoretical complement to Mosse's focus on the powerfi.rl sexual
etiquette emergent in the period and the ideology underwritten by nineteenth-century biology's marriage ofmuscle and will. Indeed, what the
fancy rallies to witness is a crude politics ofcharacter, wherein the atavistic physical identities ofthe ring's participants are shaped and acculturated by the sport itself, offering "ample recompense for the intemrption of
harmony by their disputes."
I invoke this complex of prevailing forces-{isciplinary, biopolitical,
sexual-that accrue around the pugilistic body in order to suggest how
the realization ofnational identity is a discrete affair ofmuscle and matter,
arawpantomime thatenacts and seeminglygrounds one's Englishness in
the material world. I want to argue that the body ofthe pugilist becomes
for Cobbett ,F.gan,Hazlitt,and other Regency sportsmen a form of consolidating and sublimating the tacit violence ofnational identification and a
synecdoche for the discursive theatrics of gender and nation formation.
with this in mind, I want to turri now to Hazlitt's recounting ofthe HiclcnanNeate fight, long treated as little more than a familiar essay on a notoriously"blackguard subject," in orderto measure howHazlitt constructs a
physical public sphere for the articulation ofthis contested masculinity.
25.3 April 200j
w Eurpuoq eletu uo uoq€1tperu
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e
anryn) nudod ut salpn$
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Jo Brusuuqc eq] ssessod sleeNrouueuDlcrHJorllroN'8up eqt eplslno pue
eprsur qloq err4eEorerd su[lncsetuJo seSezn eql 3lnlecrurumuocJo espdrel
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',fio1srqerd pe13ue1s.gods eq1;o drolrsoder eql
le8uenl 761
Bare-Knuckle Boxing and the Pedagogy of National Manhood 103
the conversible world. As Hazlitt and others ofthe period describe it, the
fancy is a communal body that fashions itself out of anecdote, measures
itselfin boasting, and maintains itselfthrough convMality, even as it bears
wibress to a popular entertainment so fundamentally brutal. As any reader
of "The Fight" can attest, Hazlitt's essay is as much about the rigors of
conversation as it is about apize fight, orperhaps it is more accurate to
say that the story of "two men smashed to the ground, smeared with gore,
stunned, senseless, the breath beaten out of their bodies" ( 1 7 : 82) is rivaled only by an intense need to discuss and analyze every nuance ofthe
fight, from the odds in advance to the likelihood of a "cross" afterwards.
Hazlitt records not only the difficulties inherent in traveling to a bout taking
place ina clandestine location, butmore dramaticallythe restlessness that
the flght generates in the coffee houses, inns, and tavems in the days lead-
ing up to the opening exchange ofblows. Much of the first half of the
essay is devotedto roaming frompublichousetopublic house, "talking of
what was to happen or of what did happen, with a noble subject always at
hand, and liberty to digress to others whenever they offered" (17 : 7 3) .
This image ofboxing culture as aheterogeneous site of sociability
bound by a coflrmon compulsion works in large part because the often
gruffHazlitt not only sees the ring as a public sphere delimited by those
whose discourse animates it, but because he inverts the terms as well,
representing spirited conversation as pugilistic. For instance ,Hazlitt'star-
rativebeginswiththe authorandhis male cohorts stayingup all night in a
boisterous inn (their conversations alternating between "politics and the
fight"), and focuses principally on the conversational antics of a "tall English yeoman," "a fine fellow, with sense, wit, and spirit, a hearty body and
a joyous mind, free-spoken, frank, convivial-one ofthat true English
breed that went with Harry the Fifth to the siege of Harfl eur" ( 1 7 : 7 7). T\e
swain, whom Hazlitt explicitly compares to the renowned champion Jem
Belcher, represents Hazlitt's rugged ideal in a masculine world, in part
because he wields words like a cudgel: "It did one's heart good to see him
brandish his oaken towel and to hear him talk. He made mince-meat of a
drunken, stupid red-faced, quarrelsome frow4r farmer," who "made many
25.3 April 200j
antru) fipdod ul satprus
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pue sJelauered eqt 1no sdeur 'eurerp plJnl pu€ .fisepoul 'ecueyour pue
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otq eseql uee,tueq uollcouuoc eqt tycgdxe se{eu sseuuezeJq s6u€ru{crH
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qnd e ur esrnocsrp Ernsnor seppuere.Urp 1eq \ ',(lluecgl6ls
eql
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rruoJ Jplncelceds ur selecqder,(luoJlesI qcleru Eurxoq eql 'sprorrr reqlo
w lEurueds puorpsJeluoJ qEnorql petrunlap suo4eleJ Eusmrq;o 4roruleu
e su esmocJelut Iurcos spuqsJepunJoqlnu eqtr l\oq slse88ns Jerru€J pol€
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la8uenl 79 1
Bare-Knuckle Boxing and the Pedagogy of National Manhood 105
as its pedagogical
efficacy, for in the world ofthe ring, a man must conduct himselfwith scrupulous propriety, or end the match bloodied and
bruised, as the indecorous Gux-man discovers: "All fraces oflife, ofnatural expression, were gone from him. His face was like a human skull, a
death's head, spouting blood. The eyes were filled with blood, the nose
streamed blood, the mouth gaped blood. He was not like an actual man,
but like a preternatural, spectral appearance, or like on of the figures in
Dante's Inferno" (17:83). Hazlitt understands Hickman's defeat as "as
fine a piece of poetical justice as I had ever wifiressed" ( I 7: 80), in large
part because it corresponds to what Roland Barthes, in his now familiar
meditation on wrestling, calls o'the form of a Justice which is at last intelligible." As boxing promises Hazlitt, so wrestling promises Barthes "an
ideal understanding ofthings; it is the euphoria of men raised for a while
above the constitutive ambiguity of everyday situations and placed before
the panoramic view of a univocal Nature, in which signs at last correspond to causes, without obstacle, without evasion, without contradiction" (25). Just as verbal decorumbecomes a compensatory gesture countering the physical brutality ofbare-knuckle boxing, so does the viciousness of the ring answer the indecency of the braggart. Where Barthes'
representation ofwrestling rests upon the sport's stylized but fraudulent
theaterofintelligibility, Hazlitt's "fight"blurs the linebetween spectacle
and sport.
Thus, on the one hand, boxing becomes a mannered bit oftheater,
its outcome potently scripted in the melodramatic dumbshow ofthe participants' bodies in the ring: 'o[The Gas-Man] strutted about more than a
hero, sucked oranges with a supercilious air, and threw away the skin
with a toss ofhis head, and went up and looked atNeate, which was an
act of supererogation. The only sensible thing he did was, as he strode
away from the modern Ajax, to fling out his €rms, as ifhe wanted to try
whether they would do their work that day. By this time they had stipped
and presented a strong contrast in appearance. IfNeate was like Ajax,
'kith Atlantean shoulders, fit to beaf' the pugilistic reputation ofall Bristol,
Hickman might be compared to Diomed, light, vigorous, elastic, and his
25.3 April 2003
affiun) nlndod ut salpng
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ue ete pJeeq e,ruq no,( sgoder eql leql JBe,e\s o1 e1e4sl8eur e eroJeq oE
o1, Sufpeld puu 'en8uol srqJo re[eq eqt ]oB o8e puu >1uuo moq Surureld
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3uus88el\s ecuo eql :erueJpoleru e ut euocs e eJe,{a }rJr se sroleldsuoc
eq-plno^\ o^l1 eql ueel,qeq relunocue sq] se8els ueEE 'urrq peluo{uoc
(,fup9 '441)
pelerfrsep
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regv '(gL :7)..uno1eq]
rrBuDIcrH 's,(epgo eldnoc e ro;,fto1s s1q o1Eq1c4s
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'
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laEuenl 961
Bare-Knuckle Boxing and the Pedagogy of National Manhood 107
person, to lose the battle: and I now publicly declare I was beaten by
Neate against my will" (4: 79). Despite the display of contrition, Egan
immediately supplies anecdotal evidence that suggests Hickman was seen
cashing a f 1000 Exchequer-bill at the Bank of England shortly after the
bout; however, rather than pass judgment on his subject, Egan only
"pledgefs] . . . fortheplainunvamished statementwhich appears inthe
succeeding pages, leaving the reader to make his own comments" (4: 7 5).
The cross that haunts the bout's outcome also bedevils any telling ofthe
fight: for instance, that Hickman ends his concession to Gulley by "uqw
publicly declar[ing]" that he lost the fight "against his will" seemingly calls
the former "public-ness" ofthe bout into question, and with it any subse-
quent representation ofthe boxer's will.
I raise the problem ofthe fix because it serves as a scandalous re-
minder ofthe kind ofpotent ideological naratives thatplague the ring and
flut define it. Where Egan seemingly tums even Hiclcnan's
repentance into a counterfeit byjuxtaposing the vignette ofhis mortification with additional suspicions of shadowy "unpleasanfiress," Hazlitt insists on ajust outcome even as he tropes the entire spectacle as theater,
its artfulness marked immediately and ironically by his epigraph, a misthe performances
quotationofHamlet's famous resolve, "-11" fight, the fight'sthething, /
Wherein I'll catch the conscience ofthe king" (17: 72). Similarly ,Hazlitt, s
defense ofthe fight's integrity retums at essay's end in the form of a curious postscript: "P.S. Toms called upon me the next day, to ask me ifl did
not think the fight was a complete thing? I said I thought it was. I hope he
will relish my account of it" (17: 36). Hazlitt's equivocal closure-the
fi ght's "completeness" is ultimately avowed only beyond the boundaries
of the narrative itself, thereby allowing always for supplementary revisions-points to the way in whichbare-knuckle boxing in Regency England is complicit in a greater narative project of imagining and reconstituting national manhood. I intenogate the manner in which Hazlitt's text
figures the fight as both a self-consciously constructed artifact and a brutal
event unfolding in real time because I want to end by showing how Hazlitt's
conflicted representation ofboxing participates in what might be called
25.3 April 2003
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Bare-Knuckle Boxing and the Pedagogy of National Manhood 109
givingvoice to what "the world did not allow."Hazlitt'schance meeting
with the older fan has its antecedent in the same fan's youthful conversationwiththe aging Stevenson, andcoming as itdoes immediately afterthe
Neate-Hiclanan bout, the tableau in the coach serves to situate the 1 821
fight within the history of a discursive community, and more importantly,
within a history ofprize-fighting that is perpetually under revision. While
the actual stuggles in the ring metoryrmically condense (and figuatively, if
tenuously, answer) cultural anxieties over national identification and masculine decline, it is the subsequent need to re-present these encounters
anecdotally that at once underwrites the sport and reaffrms the structure
ofmale bonds in the period. Each outlaw match, unspeakable within the
official discourse ofthe state, becomes a part of a vernacular history of
modern English masculinity, told and retold in the makeshift fratemities
that emerge when men seek out a common idiom. Hazlitt's melding of
conversation and boxing reflects the interconnections between strategies
of discourse that foster consensus and a sport that unfolds like a system of
signs. The event that possesses such a lurid fascination for the men who
crowd the ring also provides a model of etiquette for the raucous business
of the emergent "public sphere." Ironically, it is as if Hazlitt sees in the
bloody physical match ofmen an originary moment for the proper construction of civil society, an origin that, as he reminds us, reverberates
through the best conversation: "ffie talked ofthis and that with amicable
difference, roving and sipping ofmany subjects, but still invariablywe
retumed to the fight" (17: 78).
Scott J. Juengel
Department of English
20l MorrillHall
Michigan State University
East Lansing,
MI
48824
25.j April 2003
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