عنوان

Radical Acts:

Number

TLpq2414439343

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

Radical Acts:

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Heo, Banseok

Title Proper by Another Author

Pugilistic Ontology and the Politics of Identity in the Rise of Muhammad Ali

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Bradley, Adam

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Colorado at Boulder

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2020

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

61

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

M.A.

Body granting the degree

University of Colorado at Boulder

Text preceding or following the note

2020

Text of Note

A chronological consideration of the countless voices evaluating the life of Muhammad Ali reveals a troubling parallel between institutional noise and authorial silence. The more Ali's verbal and physical abilities deteriorated under Parkinson's disease, the more eager financially interested parties became in speaking on his behalf. Thus narrativized for nearly five decades, the name "Ali" has become disarmed and commonplace. In reaction to this cacophony of biography, I assert a need to restore the international and postcolonial significance back into the construction of Ali's past through a rigorous study of the boxing ring and its histories. This thesis begins by situating the sport of boxing as a performance tradition that cultivates a uniquely combative and improvisational form of intelligence, or what I call a "pugilistic ontology". Though erstwhile scholarship presents Ali as an unprecedently talented pugilist and vernacular voice of black American resistance, this thesis contextualizes Ali by framing his quick pugilistic wit as the inevitable product of professional boxing's selective and unforgiving system of competition. Moving from classical antiquity into the 20th century, I construct a chronotopic model of the American boxing ring as a socially and historically contingent space where hegemonic narratives of the racialized body are made vulnerable to pugilistic critique. By allying with the Nation of Islam and condemning U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War despite threats of government intervention, Ali calls into question the subjectifying power of the state and renegotiates the limitations of what minoritarian people can and cannot achieve within a white supremacist America.

African American studies

British & Irish literature

History

Bradley, Adam

Heo, Banseok

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y