Fighting words: Trauma and re-covery in/and the discourses of Pugilism.

Abstract

This thesis applies trauma theory to three boxing genres: autobiography, fiction, and film, respectively. I examine boxing, a sport that puts the male body on display, as being constitutionally split between sadism and masochism, masculinity and femininity. I argue that boxing culture, as well as the culture beyond the ring, attempts to overcome the fragmentation, the trauma, that results from this division by identifying with the winning, not the losing, boxer, thereby reintrenching the myth of male presence; however, by examining David Savran's and Kaja Silverman's theories of male subjectivity as well as Joyce Carol Oates's On Boxing, I demonstrate that what we call "male presence" is really a cover for "male absence." In the conclusion, therefore, I argue that Muhammad Ali, rather than asserting a re-covery from trauma, attests to the trauma at the heart of male subjectivity, thereby undermining male presence, what Kaja Silverman calls the "dominant fiction."