"Foreword by Maestro Mimmo Repetto"

Saul Fletcher, "Untitled #224" (2010)

       Everything I can't stand has a name.

I can't stand old people. Their drool. Their complaints. Their uselessness. 

Even worse when they try to be useful. Their dependency.

Their noises. Numerous, repetitive. Their exasperating anecdotes.   

The centrality of their stories. Their scorn for successive generations. 

But I can't stand the successive generations either. 

I can't stand old people when they start shouting and demand a seat on the bus. 

I can't stand young people. Their arrogance. The way they show off their strength and youth. 

The saga of the heroic invincibility of young people is just pathetic. 

I can't stand the impertinent young people who refuse to give up their seat for an old person on the bus. 

I can't stand hoodlums and hooligans. Their sudden laughter, shameless and useless. 

Their scorn for their fellow man, for anyone who's different. Even more intolerable are respectful, responsible, generous young people. They're all volunteerism and group prayers. Such goo manners, such a smell of death. In their hearts and in their hands. 

I can't stand wilful self-referential children and the obsessive parents, referential only toward their children. I can't stand children who shout and who cry. Silent children make me nervous, so I can't stand them either. I can't stand workers and the unemployed and the mellifluous and reckless ostentatious display of their divine misfortune. 

Which isn't divine. Just a lack of determination. 

How can you put up with all those who are dedicated t the struggle, the revindication of claims, the facile political speech, and the sweat under the armpits? No, it's impossible to put up with them. 

I can't stand executives. There's no reason even to explain why. I can't stand the petite bourgeoisie, closed up in the shell of their shitty world. Their lives are guided by fear. The fear of everything won't fit into that tiny shell. And they're snobs, without even knowing the meaning of the word. 

I can't stand boyfriends, because they get in the way.

I can't stand girlfriends, because they intervene. 

I can't stand people who are broad-minded, tolerant, and unbiased. 

Always correct. Always perfect. Always impeccable. 

Everything's allowed, except murder. 

You criticize them, and they thank you for your criticism. You scorn them and they cheerfully express their appreciation. In other words, they're always tripping you up.    

Because they boycott viciousness. 

So, they're intolerable. 

They ask you: "How are you?" and they actually want to know. A shock. But deep down, under the disinterested interest, somewhere, there's a stab in the back lurking. 

But I also can't stand those who never put you in a quandary. Always obedient and reassuring. Loyal and duplicitous.

I can't stand pool players, nicknames, the indecisive, non-smokers, smog and fresh air, traveling salesmen, pizza by the slice, pat phrases, chocolate crunch cones, bonfires, stockbrokers, flowered wallpaper, fair-trade products, disorder, environmentalists, the sense of civility, cats, mice, soft drinks, unexpected doorbells, long phone calls, people who say that drinking a glass of wine every day is good for you, people who pretend to forget your name, people who say that they're professionals to defend themselves, former classmates who meet you thirty years late and call you by your last name, old people who never miss an opportunity to remind you that they fought in the Resistance, grownup children at loose ends who have nothing to do so they decide to open an art gallery, former Communists who go crazy over Brazilian music, airheads who say "how intriguing," fashion hounds who say "that's hot" and related terms, the sugar-sweet ones who say things like "cute," "lovely," and "stupendous," ecumenical types who call everyone "sweetheart," certain beauties who tell you they "adore" you, the lucky ones who can play an instrument by ear, the supposedly distracted types who just don't listen when you speak, the superior types who judge, feminists, commuters, artificial sweeteners, fashion designers, film directors, car radios, make dancers, politicians, ski boots, adolescents, undersecretaries for this or that, rhymes, aging rock singers with skin-tight jeans, stuck-up over-serious writers, relatives, flowers, blondes, bows, mantelpieces, intellectuals, sidewalk artists, jellyfish, magicians, VIPs, rapists, child molesters, anyone who works in a circus, cultural impresarios, social workers, amusements, animal lovers, ties, fake laughter, provincials, hydrofoils, all collectors of anything, especially watch collectors, all hobbies, doctors, patients, jazz, advertising, builders, mothers, people who watch basketball, all actors, all actresses, video art, amusement parks, experimentalists of any kind, soups, contemporary painting, elderly craftsmen in their workshops, amateur guitarists, statues in the main square, people who kiss hands, beauty farms, good-looking philosophers, over-chlorinated swimming pools, algae, thieves, anorexics, vacations, love letters, priests and altar boys, suppositories, ethnic music, fake revolutionaries, bivalves, pandas, acne, percussionists, showers with shower curtains, birthmarks, calluses, knickknacks, moles, vegetarians, view painters, cosmetics, opera singers, Parisians, high-neck pullovers, music in restaurants, parties, meetings, houses with views, Englishisms, neologisms, momma's boys, chips off the old block, wealthy heirs, other people's children in general, museums, town mayors, commissioners, protesters, poetry, people who run delicatessens, jewellers, car alarms, thin chains made of yellow gold, leaders, followers, prostitutes, people who are too short or too tall, funerals, body hair, cell phones, bureaucracy, art installations, automobiles of all engine sizes, keychains, singer-songwriters, the Japanese, high officials, racists and the tolerant, the blind, formica, copper, brass, bamboo, chefs on television, crowds, suntan creams, lobbyists, slang, stains, kept women, cornucopias, stammerers, stutterers, youthful old people and elderly young people, snobs, the radical chic, plastic surgery, ring highways and bypasses, plants and trees, loafers, sectarians, television personalities, aristocrats, cords that get tangled, showgirls, comedians, golfers, science fiction, veterinarians, fashion models, political refugees, the obtuse, blinding white beaches, made-up religions and their followers, factory reject floor tiles, the stubborn, professional critics, couples where he's a lot younger than she is and vice-versa, people who are mature, everyone with a hat, everyone with sunglasses, tanning lamps, forest fires, bracelets, nepotists and protégés, people in the armed forces, dissolute tennis players, sectarians and fans and supporters, perfume that was purchased from a tobacconist, weddings, jokes, first commons, freemasons, Mass, people who whistle, people who burst into song, burps and belches, junkies, Lions Clubs, cokeheads, Rotary Clubs, sexual tourism, tourism, people who detest tourism and say that they're "travelers," people who speak "from experience," people who have no experience but want to have their say all the same, people who know how the world works, elementary-school teachers, people who are obsessed with meetings, people who are obsessed in general, nurses who wear clogs, but why do they have to wear clogs? 

I can't stand the timid, the overtalkative, the fake mysterious, the awkward, the awkward, the airheads, the whimsically inspired, the charmingly affected, the crazy ones, the geniuses, the heroes, the self-confident, the silent, the valourous, the pensive, the conceited, the rude, the conscientious, the unpredictable, the comprehensive, the attentive ones, the humble, the experts, the passionate, the bombastic, the eternally astonished, the equitable, the futile, the enigmatic, the wisecrackers, the cynical, the fearful, the arrogant, the quarrelsome, the proud, the phlegmatic, the con artists, the too precious by half, the vigorous, the tragic, the listless, the insecure, the dubious, the disenchanted, the awestruck, the winners, the miserly, the meek, the slovenly, the saccharine, the plaintive, the grumbles, the capricious, the spoiled, the noisy ones, the unctuous, the brusque, and everyone who interacts socially with relative facility. 

I can't stand nostalgia, normalcy, cruelty, hyperactivity, bulimia, courtesy, melancholy, poignancy, intelligence and stupidity, haughtiness, resignation, shame, arrogance, amiability, two-facedness, cavalier attitudes, athleticism, goodheartedness, religious convictions, ostentatiousness, curiosity and indifference, reenactments, reality, guilt, minimalism, the sober and the excessive, the generic, falsehood, responsibility, carelessness, excitement, wisdom, determination, self-complacency, irresponsibility, correctness, aridity, seriousness and frivolity, pomposity, necessariness, human misery, compassion, gloom, predictability, recklessness, captiousness, rapidity, obscurity, negligence, slowness, mediety, velocity, ineluctability, exhibitionism, enthusiasm, slovenliness, virtuosity, amateurishness, professionalism, decisiveness, self-sufficiency, autonomy, dependency, elegance, and happiness. 

I can't stand anything or anyone. 

Not even myself. Especially not myself. 

There's only one thing I can stand.

Nuance. 

--Paolo Sorrentino, "Foreword by Maestro Mimmo Repetto" in Everybody's Right (2011) 

Quotes from “Habitus as Topic and Tool: Reflections on Becoming a Prizefighter.”

"The Mike Tyson of sociology"!

—"While I was carrying out my investigations on boxing and on the ghetto, I was in permanent contact with Pierre Bourdieu, who encouraged and guided me. Upon learning that I had signed up to learn how to box at the Woodlawn Boys Club, he had written me a note that said essentially, “Stick it out, you will learn more about the ghetto in this gym than you can from all the surveys in the world.” (Later on, as I got deeper into my immersion, he got a bit scared and tried to get me to pull back. When I signed up to fight in the Chicago Golden Gloves, he first threatened to disown me as he feared that I would get hurt, before realizing that there was no need to panick: I was well prepared for this trial by fire.) Bourdieu came to Chicago several times, visited the gym, and met DeeDee [Wacquant's boxing coach] and my boxer friends (I introduced him to them as “the Mike Tyson of sociology"). During one of these visits, we hatched the project of a book that would explicate the theoretical core of his work, aimed at the Anglo-American readership, since it was on this front that there were the strongest distortions and obstacles to a fertile grasp of his models. We devoted three years to writing this book across the Atlantic (by fax, phone, letters and meetings every few months), entitled An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992), in which we disentangle the nexus of habitus, capital, and field. During those years, I led a sort of Dr.-Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde existence, boxing by day and writing social theory by night. In the afternoon, I would go to the gym, train, hang out with my buddies, and “conversate” on end with our coach DeeDee before driving him home at closing time. And, later that evening, after having typed my fieldnotes, I would switch to the book manuscript with Bourdieu. It was in turns intoxicating, invigorating, and exhausting. But the daytime sessions as a student of pugilism offered both a respite from theoretical cogitation and powerful stimuli for thinking through the abstract issues tackled in the book in very mundane empirical terms. The sociology of the ghetto (which I had extended to encompass a comparison with the postindustrial transformation of the French urban periphery), the carnal ethnography of the skilled body, and theoretical work with Bourdieu: all of these strands were elaborated together and at the same time, and they are all woven together" (86-7).

—"The idea that guided me here was to push the logic of participant observation to the point where it becomes inverted and turns into observant participation. In the Anglo- American tradition, when anthropology students first go into the field, they are cautioned, “Don’t go native.” In the French tradition, radical immersion is admissible—think of Jeanne Favret-Saada’s ([1978] 1980) Deadly Words—but only on condition that it be coupled with a subjectivist epistemology which gets us lost in the inner depths of the anthropologist-subject. My position on the contrary, is to say, “go native” but “go native armed,” that is, equipped with your theoretical and methodological tools, with the full store of problematics inherited from your discipline, with your capacity for reflexivity and analysis, and guided by a constant effort, once you have passed the ordeal of initiation, to objectivize this experience and construct the object, instead of allowing yourself to be naively embraced and constructed by it. Go ahead, go native, but come back a sociologist! In my case, the concept of habitus served both as a bridge to enter into the factory of pugilistic know-how and methodically parse the texture of the work(ing) world of the pugilist, and as a shield against the lure of the subjectivist rollover of social analysis into narcissistic story telling" (87-8).

—"Apprenticeship is here the means of acquiring a practical mastery, a visceral knowledge of the universe under scrutiny, a way of elucidating the praxeology of the agents under examination . . . it relies on the most intimate experience, that of the desiring and suffering body, to grasp in vivo the collective manufacturing of the schemata of pugilistic perception, appreciation, and action that are shared, to varying degrees, by all boxers, whatever their origins, their trajectory, and their standing in the sporting hierarchy (Wacquant 2005a)" (88).

—Loïc Wacquant, “Habitus as Topic and Tool: Reflections on Becoming a Prizefighter.”