ABSTRACT
Introduction: culture, criminology, and brawling in Tucson ‘How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?’, Tyler Durden ponders in the movie Fight Club. Persistent, real life fighters also ask themselves this question. From their perspective fights are contexts for deep selfrevelation. Two complementary thrills of revelation reward a successful fighter. The first thrill is to discover a charismatic primal self through physical and emotional urgency: fundamentally acute, courageous, and of ‘strong character’ (Goffman 1967). The second thrill is to realise a storied self: a self that will become publicly and enduringly admired, immortalised in epic fight stories told for years to come. In fact, fighters fantasise as much about telling stories as actually fighting. For example, one of my research subjects, Rick, once told me about a new post in the military: ‘Sometimes I want to get in a fight on my new ship ... Like, I think about how it would be cool if I got in a fight with some really big guy and I won. So that people would like talk about me and stuff.’
