Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness

by Walter J. Ong

What accounts for the continued popularity of the macho image, the fanaticism of sports enthusiasts, the perennial appeal of Don Quixote's ineffectual struggles? Walter J. Ong addresses these and related questions as he offers new insights into the complex ways in which human life is affected by contest. Ong argues that the struggle for dominance, which he feels is crucial among higher animal species, is more immediately critical for males than for females, helping males to manage persistent insecurity and to establish sexual identity. The male agonistic drive finds an outlet in contests as diverse as football, cockfighting, and chess-the last, the ultimate intellectualization of formalized territorial combat. Demonstrating the importance of contest in biological evolution and in the growth of consciousness out of the unconscious, Ong shows how adversarial today's shifting patterns of contest in such arenas as spectator sports, politics, business, religion, academe, and the history of rhetoric. Human internalization of agonistic drives, he concludes, can foster the deeper discovery of the self and of distinctively human freedom.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Nonfiction, Gender, Sociology, History

232 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1981

Reviews

[Fred · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished this book again. I re-read it because I got thinking about contest, games, and Marshall McLuhan. Provocative & thoughtful, seems as on point today as when it was published in 1983. The strength of this book is the perspective Ong brings to the shift from renaissance to modernity in the educational system. In the West, the inherently human adversarial relationship was institutionalized: the disputational, dialectical structure of philosophy, theology, even the whole academic enterprise. An example of the shift is that Aquinas (not unlike Plato) expressed his thought in a polemic, adversarial way: a dialogue with questions, answers, criticism of answers, etc. Whereas the modern textbook is remarkably univocal. Teachers and students collaborate instead of battling each other in disputes over petty infractions. The conflict is still part of human thought but it has become internalized.

[Rory Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was incredible. My college’s campus minister gave it to me, and like you I raised an eyebrow at the Freudian title, but it blew me away. Ong compellingly argues that “contest” - struggling against someone or something - is central to human consciousness but especially masculinity.

Males are intimately connected with their mother from birth, and much of their environment is feminine - the home, “Mother Nature,” “Mother Church.” To become a man, then, the male must differentiate himself from his environment, from females, and even from other men. The primary way males do this is via contest - hence the intensity of anything from football to chess to fraternity pledgeship. Ong demonstrates this in the animal kingdom and probes into fascinating applications of this on the individual and societal scale: everything from our endless thirst for spectator sports to the role of contest in the formation of Western logic and education.

Ong doesn’t say much about whether we should promote contest among males - he merely presents its prominence in the male psyche and argues that it has a biological base. I understand myself far better after reading this, and I think his findings are highly useful for understanding masculinity and engaging with our cultural institutions.

[Joe Cavazos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great resource for anyone who sometimes wonders why women/men be like that.

[Christian Raab, OSB · Rating 5 out of 5]

5th time i read it and i always get something new