Fighting for Life

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Description: 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. Endorsements: "This literary and intellectual tour de force is rich food for thought for graduate students and faculty." Choice "A provocative attempt to find new clues to the relationships between men and women. It will be useful for collateral reading in advance college courses in psychology, sociology, and human sexuality." Science Books and Films "A convincing and very often brilliant explication of ritually aggressive attitudes as the translation of ancient instinct into a modern idiom." America About the Contributor(s): Walter J. Ong, SJ, (1912 -2003) was Emeritus University Professor of Humanities, William E. Haren Professor of English, and Professor of Humanities in Psychiatry at St. Louis University. His major interest was in exploring how the transition from orality to literacy influenced culture and changed human consciousness. In 1978 Ong served as elected president of the Modern Language Association of America.