A Million Dollar Wacquant

"In a half-coma, I keep hitting and breathing in synch, throwing a punch with every gulp of air I expel. I have the sensation of being mounted on a machinery of which I'm both the engine and a piece" (66).

"Theoretical mastery is of little help so long as the move is not inscribed within one's bodily schema; and it is only after it has been assimilated by the body in and through endless physical drills repeated ad nauseam that it becomes in turn fully intelligible to the intellect. There is indeed a comprehension of the body that goes beyond—and comes prior to—full visual and mental cognizance. Only the permanent carnal experimentation that is training, as a coherent complexus of 'incorporating practices,' can enable one to acquire this practical mastery of the practical rules of pugilism, which precisely satisfies the condition of dispensing with the need to constitute them as such in consciousness" (69).