ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the diversity within the Fighters Class and the egalitarian/meritocratic nature of the sport create conditions for the production of “carnal convivial connections”, as fighters forge intimate bonds that defy the logic of ethnic absolutism. Using this as a framing, it elucidates how fighters can construct sameness by rejecting their taken-for-granted knowledge about race, or in Bourdesian terms, their racial doxa. However, it complicates the implications of this assertion by arguing that fighters’ ability to overcome racism is limited, or more limited than many people suggest.
The chapter then turns its attention to the production of hybridised cultures, which supports fighters’ attempts to construct one another as the same, as they attempt to break down cultural boundaries. It then explores the related ways in which fighters draw upon and embrace “Black” cultural forms, whilst demonstrating how the circulation of said “Black” cultural forms also allows White members to re-inscribe race through recreating colonial notions of respectability. Before concluding, it draws out how Katarina, a White-Slovakian fighter, attempts to vacate Whiteness as an active expression of anti-racism, but in doing so draws upon reified conceptualisations of “Blackness”. Ultimately, this chapter highlights the complex ways fighters grapple with and against dominant understandings of race in constructing collective and individual modes of identification.
