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Civilizing fighting masculinity: the rationalization of the duel
| The paper, which belongs to the area of relational disposition sociology, is about how masculine dispositions changed in Hungary in the 19th century. The inquiries are based on two mutually adaptive “great narratives”: Norbert Elias’ civilization theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology. The overriding thesis is that masculine behavioural patterns are channelled into new directions: the drive to fight, to kill the enemy is gradually built upon by competitive and, later, by co-operative dispositions. Accepting that various existential conditions produce different habituses, which can be transferred to diverse areas of practice, sports and leisure-time activities might be regarded as indicators that show the changing behavioural patterns of different social groups. Two activities, namely duelling and fencing will be analysed in more detail. It will be argued that the major function of the duel is to ensure the balance in a nobleman’s honour-household. In historical terms, this function is to offer a “side door” for the archaic masculine drives to fight in an increasingly more civilized and rationalized world through which these urging drives can still be satisfied for some time, thus promoting the harmonious transformation of the dispositions as much as possible. Fencing, by offering the illusion of a duel, is a prosthesis, expressing both gentlemanly conduct and elevated virility. In this activity masculine honour becomes civilized into masculine posture, indicating that an inheritable, traditional, morally embedded activity gradually transforms into a self-controlled modern social institution. While duelling is aimed to take satisfaction for a stain on masculine pride via the annihilation or wounding of the adversary, revenge is replaced by an almost wholly stylised presentation in fencing. The fencing schools, founded during the first part of the 19th century, are already public, autonomous, independent and legitimate organizations providing a suitable frame and form for the acquisition and routine practise of a repeated and rationally carried on activity.
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