Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:18:40.241Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Ali Even Motivates the Dead”: The Pursuit of Sovereignty in Norman Mailer's The Fight

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Michael Collins
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Norman Mailer was haunted by the specter of social death—a specter created for him by living as a Jew between the parentheses created by the Holocaust and the prospect of nuclear Armageddon. As an antidote to social death, Mailer sought its opposite—sovereignty within and beyond his writer's sphere. In the boxer Muhammad Ali, Mailer found an exemplar of the seizure of sovereignty within and beyond a sphere. The Fight chronicles the heavyweight championship battle between Ali and George Foreman in Zaire, a country treated like a private bank account by its dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. I argue that Mailer regrettably failed to emphasize fully the fact that Zaire was exhibit B (the Vietnam War being the writer's inevitable exhibit A) in the case Mailer passionately made that the Cold War brutalized the American psyche.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 128 , Issue 2 , March 2013 , pp. 322 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Collins, Michael. “Politics as the Art of Equivalent Say: Reflections on Derek Walcott and W. Arthur Lewis, China and St. Lucia.” Callaloo 31.4 (2008): 1000–10. Print.Google Scholar
Dennis, Everette E., and Rivers, William L. Other Voices: The New Journalism in America. New Brunswick: Transaction, 2011. Print.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. The Beast and the Sovereign. Ed. Lisse, Michel, Mallet, Marie-Louise, and Michaud, Ginette. Trans. Bennington, Geoffrey. Vol. 2. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2011. Print.Google Scholar
Dunn, Kevin C. Imagining the Congo: The International Relations of Identity. New York: Palgrave, 2003. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. “Truth and Power.” Power. By Foucault. Ed. James D. Faubion. Trans. Robert Hurley et al. New York: New, 2000. 111–33. Print.Google Scholar
Hauser, Thomas. Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times. New York: Simon, 1991. Print.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Oxford: Pan, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
Hollowell, John. Fact and Fiction: The New Journalism and the Nonfiction Novel. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1977. Print.Google Scholar
Hountondji, Paulin J. African Philosophy: Myth and Reality. Trans. Evans, Henri. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Kalb, Madeleine G. The Congo Cables: The Cold War in Africa—from Eisenhower to Kennedy. New York: Macmillan, 1982. Print.Google Scholar
Kanfer, Stefano. “Two Myths Converge: NM Discovers MM.” Time 16 July 1973: 60-64. Print.Google Scholar
Mailer, Norman. Cannibals and Christians. New York: Dell, 1966. Print.Google Scholar
Mailer, Norman. The Fight. New York: Vintage, 1975. Print.Google Scholar
Mailer, Norman. “From a Debate with William Buckley Titled ‘The Real Meaning of the Right Wing in America.‘” The Time of Our Time. New York: Random, 1998. 529–39. Print.Google Scholar
Mailer, Norman. “King of the Hill.” Existential Errands. Boston: Little, 1972. 3–36. Print.Google Scholar
Mailer, Norman. “Looking for the Meat and Potatoes—Thoughts on Black Power.” Existential Errands. Boston: Little, 1972. 287–304. Print.Google Scholar
Mailer, Norman. Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968. New York: Signet, 1968. Print.Google Scholar
Mailer, Norman. “Norman Mailer: Letters to Jack Abbott.” New York Review of Books 12 Mar. 2009: 26-28. Print.Google Scholar
Mailer, Norman. Some Honorable Men: Political Conventions, 1960-1972. Boston: Little, 1976. Print.Google Scholar
Mailer, Norman. “Ten Thousand Words a Minute.” The Time of Our Time. New York: Random, 1998. 456–69. Print.Google Scholar
Mailer, Norman. “The White Man Unburdened.” New York Review of Books 17 July 2003: 4-6. Print.Google Scholar
Mailer, Norman. “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster.” Advertisements for Myself. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992. 337–58. Print.Google Scholar
Mailer, Norman. “Writing Courses.” The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing. New York: Random, 2003. 9–27. Print.Google Scholar
Mailer, Norman, and Gordimer, Nadine. “”The Writer's Imagination and the Imagination of the State': Two Views.“ New York Review of Books 13 Feb. 1986: 23-25. Print.Google Scholar
Markowitz, Harry M. Portfolio Selection: Efficient Diversification of Investments. New Haven: Yale UP, 1976. Print.Google Scholar
Newfield, Jack. Only in America: The Life and Crimes of Don King. New York: Morrow, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Nzongola-Ntalaja, Georges. The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History. London: Zed, 2002. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1982. Print.Google Scholar
Prunier, Gérard. Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.Google Scholar
Ray, Benjamin C. African Religions: Symbol, Ritual, and Community. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1976. Print.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Turner, Thomas. The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality. London: Zed, 2007. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. New York: Doubleday, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Tom. The New Journalism. New York: Harper, 1973. Print.Google Scholar