Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment

Drawing on the theories of Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Luc Nancy, this study develops a body-centered epistemology as the grounding for a participant-observer ethnography of "ultimate fighting" or "mixed martial arts." It explores the gendered and racialized forms that embodiment takes in this context, considering how the co-mingling of male bodies transgresses the cultural scripts of masculinity in popular culture, and examining how the rigors of mixed martial arts reveal the potentialities of bodies.