A conversation with AFrench ‘ pret i Cte ghey bored vere Ming pos Che te the ring— and returns to tell the tale. 24 CALIFORNIA MONTHLYiy Russell Schoch erkeley sociologist Loic Wacquant led a double life while in graduate school at the Uni- versity of Chicago in the late 1980s: He was a boxer by day and a social scientist by night. Even asa grad student, he had enough clout to invite French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, one of the 20th century’s leading intellectuals, to take part in a seminar he had organized; this led to their joint authorship of An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (1992), a book translated into 17 languages and widely considered the best entry into Bourdieu’s think- ing. While writing that book, Wacquant was also learning to box as the only white member ofa gym in a lack ghetto of Chicago. “Busy Louie,” as he was known in the gym, got knocked around and bruised—he suffered a few broken ribs and a broken nose; but he learned the “sweet science” well enough to fight in the 1990 Chicago Golden Gloves. His descriptive analysis has just been published as Body and Soul: Notebooks ofan Apprentice Boxer (Oxford University Press). “1'm afraid some people will think, ‘Ob, thisis the story ofa wacky French- man, a 137-pound weakling, who got beat up in Chicago,” Wacquant says. But Body and Soulis much more amt tious than that. In a book sprinkled ith his field notes, interviews, and photographs, Wacquant combines three genres: ethnography—which he alls “a fine-grained depiction of the nays of feeling, thinking, and acting of 4 particular people in a particular milieu"; sociology—an_ analysis of focal structure and relations in the back ghetto; and literature—the first- Person narration of his Golden Gloves ight reads like a short story. “Contrary to what is taught in graduate school,” ays Wacquant, “I believe that anthropologists should go native.’ he trick, however, is to do so with all your analytical tools and then return and not only tel the tale but explain and interpret hat has happened.” Body and Soulis the first of two books that Wacquant will write Hout his boxing experience. He callsita “gateway into the worka- tay world of boxers.” “Passion of the Pugilist,” the second book, il draw out the broader theoretical implications of what he calls Flbis experiment in incarnation.” Wacquant was born in a small village in southern France in 4960. Today, he splits his time between the sociology department it Berkeley and the Center for European Sociology at the College France in Paris. He is a winner of the MacArthur Foundation, I"genius”) prize and the author of numerous works on urban pPecuality, racial domination, the penal state, and social theory. It as a chance meeting with Bourdieu, in 1980, that shifted Wac- reat eet _ 5 | ee i quant from a career in corporate man- agement (he has an MBA and was the top student in his class in industrial economics at the Ecole des hautes tudes commerciales) to sociology. In graduate school, Wacquant lived at the edge of Hyde Park, just inside of ‘Woodlawn, a black neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. Seeking an entry into the ghetto to explore the life strategies of “urban outcasts” (the sub- ject ofhis dissertation), he wound up at the Woodlawn Boys Club, a renowned boxing gym overseen by Hall of Fame boxing coach Herman “DeeDee” 8] Armour, to whom Body and Soul is dedicated. For three and a half years, Wac- quant learned the ropes under DeeDee's tutelage, He even had thoughts of giving up the academic world to turn pro. Instead, in 1990, he accepted an appointment at Harvard as a Junior Fellow. His arrival at Berkeley, in 1994, came only after a year-long battle involving a contentious and well-publicized struggle led by stu- dents who wanted a person of color in the position, Published in France in 2001 and already translated into sixlan- guages, Body and Soul is the first of many Wacquant books to appear in English. In other works, he has written about the rise in America over the last thirty years of what he calls the “liberal/ paternalist state,” in which those at the top are treated with free- dom and laissez-faire, while those at the bottom, victims of neo- liberal economics, are increasingly disciplined by either prison or welfare/workfare, He has argued that not one but four “peculiar institutions” have served to “define, confine, and control” African ‘Americans in the United States: slavery, Jim Crow, the ghetto, and en ces CALIFORNIA MONTHLY : DECEMBER 2003 25III ELT OOOeo Ee ee now prison, He backed into his study of prisons, he says, during his daysin the gym, where he discovered that nearly al ofthe box- crs had served time. (“How many guys in the gym have been to prison?” he once asked DeeDee. “What do you mean?” came the reply. “All ofthem, Louie. You mean, you ain’t done time?”") Aspart ofhisglobe-trotting activities, Wacquantis finishingan anthology of the works of classic French sociologist Marcel Mauss and a volume of collected essays entitled “Rethinking the United States: For a Sociology of Hyperpower,” diagnosing American society on the eve of September L1 which will appear in five lan- guages. He is committed to bringing his intellectual and political passions to bear on world issues. Buthehasn’t forgotten his time in Chicago's South Side. Atthe close of Ant Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Wacquant thanks his friends from the gym, and quotesone of them: “‘Hey, Louie, man, ‘what you be talkin’ bout: reflexive sociology, what's tha” In the following interview, “Busy Louie” turns reflexive on his double lifeas a sociologist in the ring. Where does the name “Busy Louie” come from? thas two origins. The boxing one is that in the ring had no defense, You would have thought—I would have thought—that, as an intellectual I would bea technician, good on strategy, using the mind, being what fight people calla “boxer” as opposed toa “brawler.” Notatall. I was more of a brawler. I wanted to get iton, even though I didn’t have the body build for it. ‘And when you haveno defense, the only defense isto attack, so I had to throw punches ll the time, which in the ring is called being “busy.” The guys in the gym also couldn’t handle “Loic,” Which they made into “Lou-ie.” “Busy Louie” comes from that. ‘And the name was reinforced by the fact that sometimes couldn't go to the gym or, when there, I couldn't stay longer because I had my research and writing to do. It was a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde lifes it gave me a very strange sort of balance. twas certainly the most enjoyable period of my life, thus far. You say in your new book that the ghetto, where the boxing gym ‘was, and the university were like two different planets, Different galaxies even! Ilived right on the border, on 6ist Street. When I went north I entered the universe of knowledge, of texts, of academia—which was overwhelmingly white, rich, and safe. All the people there knew they had a bright future, and were working toward that future. And then, when T went south, it felt ike a completely different world—poor, black, and dangerous—with a different sense of time, different kinds of social relations, a truncated social hori- zon, where other things mattered. A “text,” for example, didn't ‘matter, The first article I wrote on boxing, published in 1989, took up 40 pages ina journal, including pictures from the gym. I brought the issue to the gym, thinking the guys would be mes- ‘merized by it. Butall they did with it was to use the margins of the article to take down telephone messages! You've said you had to develop a diferent body language in the ghetto, even before you got to the gym. My coach, DeeDee, taught me how to hold and use my body 26 CALIFORNIA MONTHLY properly inside but also outside the gym, Take something as sin ple as getting out of a parked car and walking to the club: You don't come out ofa car on 63rd Street in the ghetto the way you would on 61st Street in Hyde Park. You have to signal with your body language that you know where you are, that you're confi~ dent, that you have no fear. For this, you occupy as much space as possible: You walk with your shoulders stretched out, witha kind of “bop” in your sty your territory, that you're at home, you are scared of no one, anf you are willing to meet a physical challenge with a physical response, For this, you hold a closed fst thrust in your jacket, pocket, to suggest that pethaps you are armed. projecting outward that the street i Can you still walk that way, more than a decade later? Yes, Such learning becomes deeply inscribed in your body. I's like learning to ride a bike when you're ten; you'l till know how to ride decades later. I'm sure I walk slightly differently today, hold my body slightly differently than before I went tothe ghetto, I remember one time, fairly recently, going to a club. We were dancing, and a guy kept bouncing into me—and I was ready to take him out! We know from studies in phenomenology that you actually project your body forward—physically as well as mentally—that youalways picture yourself ahead of where you are. This is one of the reasons we feel it's such an offense when we are cut off by other people, including when we drive Why did you enter the gym, originally? My intention was to use the gym asa window into everyday lifein the ghetto for my urban research, and it became that window. But soon another challenge arose: Can I withstand the rigors of tain ing, learn the craft, and become a half-way decent boxer? Then another: Can L explain to outsiders, as a sociologist, what makes the boxers tick and thrive, what their inner world sll about? What did the other boxers think of you when you first came int My closest sparring partner, Ashante, later told me: “When you first came in, you looked so bad, you looked like Mister Magoo!” ‘He used to ask, "When is the Frenchie coming?” so he could get there before I did, get through his own training, and sit back and laugh for an hour watching me. But, after I had improved ' enough to “rumble” with him in the ring, he said: “Louie, I never thought P'd get to the point where I'd have to smack you to keep you off me.” Iwouldn’t have thought that either. What wast likein the ring? First you have to picture yourself amidst the sounds, smells, and sights that isthe gym, which I try to capture in the book by giving long, near-raw field notes of sparring sessions. Getting into the Fing isa slow process whereby you progressively learn to tame and reorganize the stimuli all around you and imbibe the bodily skills to handle them. You don’t see what's outside the ring. All your sensory and motor organs are working in overdrive, You're instantly drenched in sweat. Even though you're being barraged by punches, and it seems at times you're losing control, your body learns to process all this information very quickly and to respond intelligently, with the_ right moveat the right time. This is why seasoned fighers say that when they step into the ring, they're “at home,” or “atthe office.” hey have learned to be cool and collected, and to control them- elves under extreme duress, Whats it like to get hit? For most punches, especially shots to the face, it’s more irritating and nagging than anything else. You learn to take punches, and to roll with them, Punches to the head make you feel hot sudden iy. Your face is all tingling, you can feel the blood and swelling in your lips, your cheeks, your ears, or around the eye sockets. And body punches? Solid body shots can stop you. A good blow to the solar plexus will top you cold because it takes the ar right out of you. Shots tothe sides hamper your breathing and your blood circulation, and eventually cut your ability to recuperate, slow you down, and force you to lower your guard. Thus, the boxing adage is, “ill the body and the head will de.” One of the most important and most difficult things in the vingis to know how to breathe properly, ina serene fashion—asif the guy in front of you wasn't trying to take your head off! You have to breathe ona regularand rhythmic pace through your nose to keep your mouth shut, let the tension flow out of you, oF dls you use up all ofyour emotional and mental energy just dealing with the fax of stimuli coming at you. Itsounds likea real high, tobe sparring in the ring. Itis definitely a high. Boxers common- ¥ compare it to having sex or doing drugs. Ifthey could spar every day, hey would—except that they then would use up their bodies and destroy hernselves. Iwas & sparring maniac. Assoon as arrived atthe gym each ay, Lwould ask: “Can I spar today?” My coach would slow me down and ‘y, “You sparred yesterday and the day before; today you take a dey of et your body recuperate.” You had one official fight, in the 1990 Golden Gloves in Chicago, What was that like? When I stepped into that ring, it felt like I was walking into a nmovie~a 1950s movie, in black and white, with an enormous lamp hanging over the ring, with the announcer saying: “And in the red corner, weighing 137 pounds, we have. "eal. had to wonder: “Is that really me?” And then there was this tense of being at home: “Yes. Thisis what I trained and suffered for, finally, Let’s get it on!" What was your goal in that fight? My chief concern was not to hurt the reputation of my gym, because Woodlawn had a great reputation and DeeDee was the Sity’s most esteemed trainer. So walking into that ringas a Trwas so sur- Pe a ad ‘opponent Larry Gordon in their Golden Gloves bout. ‘Woodlawn fighter, as one of DeeDee’s boys, meanta lot to me, but also to them. All the guys from the gym were massed near the ring, whooping and hollering, { remember to this day the thrill of hearing all the different voices from my buddies— You could hear individual voices during your fight? Oh, yes. “Go, Busy!” “Both handst” *Work underneath!” You hear all of that because after the first rush of stress and emo- tions—and after I had been knocked on my butt [in the first round] and got back up and into action—things slowed down and I got down to business. After the fight, the guys were all around me, saying: “Louie, you fought likea lion!” “You made us proud.” So, for me, 100 percent, [had fulfilled my mission, After that, when I was on the floor [of the gyml, shadow-box- ing, working the bags, and so on, DeeDee would say: “You look likea million-dollar fighter.” And several times, when outsiders were visiting the gym, he would tell them Iwasa French fighter who had a 23-0 record and was going to fight professional on the next card—and they'd believe it! So longas they didn’t see me with an opponent. Because I had learned the craft ‘When I stepped into that ring, it felt like I was walking intoa 1950s movie, in black and white. I had to wonder: “Is that really Most outsiders see boxing simply asa brutal sport. ‘Towhich boxers retort: That’sa sign of their ignorance. Boxing isabodily craft, a technique that gives them pride and thrusts them into a different moral, aesthetic, and sensual landscape. It isalso a ‘quintessentially masculine universe. That's why, forme, the real testis fora woman reader to close my bookand say: “I used to think of boxers as some sort of sado-masochistic monsters, but now understand why they go into this and what they get out oft.” Itturns out that what drives and attracts boxers to their profes- sion is no different from what attracts people to the world of si- ence, law, politics, and the arts. It'sentering a high-stakes game in ‘which the institution demands that you give yourself over to it, that you sacrifice yourselfin order to be reborn asa different, higher being. I's being caught in a relationship of passion, CALIFORNIA MONTHLY : DECEMBER 2003 27 OeLLL Passion? A term from 13th-century Latin, patio, which means sinful desire, love, and suffering, And that perfectly captures what ties boxers to their craft—but also, think of it: politicians, painters, and professors on this campus who work mad schedules trying to write books, on top of teachingand doing committee work. In this sense, Body anid Sous not so much a book about box- et8as about that relation of passion that binds people to the “greedy institutions” to which they devote their lives, sometimes to the point of self-destruction. There's little difference between ‘Van Gogh cutting offhis ear and Muhammad Ali losing his sens es taking dreadful beatings long after his prime, because he sim ply could not step out of the squared circle. It had nothing to do with the money, and everything to do with a vicious kind of love. Howis the world of art like that of boxing? I saw the Kirov Ballet at Zellerbach this fall, and my companion, who used to be a dancer, told me what you don’t see backstage: the dancers bent over in pain, sweating, bleeding, vomiting, Bal- letisa bodily performance, and arguably one that’s just as destructive as boxing. The one is high class, light skinned, and feminine; while the other is low class, dark skinned, and masculine. But there is passion and suffering and devotion in both worlds. Contrary to the publicimage of the trade, my argument is that there is nothing exotic or peculiar about boxing, You can itby showing that the same social ‘mechanisms inscribe themselves into the body to lead boxers to become boxers, bal- lerinas to become ballerinas, and top corpo- rate lawyers to become lawyers. What exactly do you mean by this? Inall these cases, it’s a matter of producing and then rewardinga libido suited toa par- ticular universe. People who go to law school artive there with a particular bundle of interests and skills, and they are gradually transformed by the institution to acquite another bundle suited tothe type of aw they will exercise. The initial libido that directed them to law school becomes aggran- ized, channeled, and shaped in particular forms such that after- wards they cannot see and feel the world but through theeyes— or the body, rathet—ofa lawyer. They are nowa living and breathing incamation of legal values. ‘This is what interests me: how social agents endowed with certain skills and desires are attracted to a particular universe, and how that universe in turn changes them to suit them to its ‘own purposes. ‘And you've seen this in the academic world as well? Certainly, What drives academics to wreck their personal lives and sometimes their families, to fight the petty battles and be consumed by the grand ideals of their profession, to work over time to make sure their department is Number One? Exactly what drives boxers to be in the gym. It'sa passion, They're in a sense possessed by their profession, eaten alive and remade by it, 28 caLiFoRNiA MONTHLY ‘What attracts boxers to thei profession is no different from what attracts people to the world of science, law, politics, and the arts.’ and at the same time they make that very universe by devoting themselves to it. Do academics havea “body”? Like everyone else! The professional illusion of intellectuals is that they do not havea body, they live wholly in the mind. But that’s only because they have acquired a particular kind of bod sense, its reduction to an invisible and passive support of ment activity. But that does not make the body go away or become a mere text to play with—as some of my postmodern colleagues would haveit. ‘Academics definitely have a particular form of embodiment, which actively negates the body. But itcan be countered. This is something that fighting taught me, When I give a public lecture, for instance, Lam aware that I speak not only with my voice or head but also with my chest and whole upper body—and to use the upper body, you have to project by using your legs. So, befon | go in to give big talk, I take a few minutes to breathe and pre- pate for what i really a physical performance, Your “libido” was changed from the academic world to the boxing world and then back again. What was that process like? For three and a half years, Iived a double life—boxer by day and sociologist by night. 1 taught mea lot about myselfand about how you get taken in—seduced, absorbed—by a social universe. I developed a libido pugilistca, that is, an appetite for things pugilistic: to be there, in the gym, to box, to hear the sounds and the stories ofthe trade, to be immersed to the point where that universe nearly engulfed me, Because, as you fill up a particular libido, you dry out or kill the others you have for other worlds. In my case, the libido scientifia During my happy yearsin the gym, remember going back to campus at the Uni- versity of Chicago to pick up my mail, and) couldn't fathom why people there would goto lectures or talks or conferences. My reaction was: “Why are they wasting their lives? That’s not life, that’s death!” ‘When [left Chicago and the gym and migrated to Harvard, ‘went through a long period of withdrawal and a deep depression My libido pugilistica was no longer nurtured, but my libido scen= tificawas totally moribund, I was stuck midway between the tw0/ universes, It took @ long time for me to extricate myself emotion” ally from the extraordinary relationships of friendship and trust and love—for that isthe right word—with my buddies in the «gym and to be able to rejoin fully the planet of researchers. You have, then, recaptured your passion for sociology. Yes! Sociology isan extraordinary craft in that it gives you a unique point of view on the social world: the ability to dissect is inner workings as well a to appreciate the stupendous feats of collective coordination that lie behind the most mundane of activities, I consider ita genuine blessing to have learned it from some of the greatest social scientists of our era, much like I learned boxing from a great coach. And sociology is ike box- ing—once you have it in your blood, you can never let it go. ©