Hollin, G. orcid.org/0000-0003-4348-8272 (2024) The wrestler and his world: Precarious workers, post-truth politics, and inauthentic activism. Cultural anthropology, 39 (4). pp. 485-506. ISSN 0886-7356
Abstract
In this article, I explore attempts to organize a precarious workforce in a setting that is always-already post-truth: professional wrestling. I focus in particular on a nascent, bottom-up unionization effort in the UK that foregrounds the rights of wrestlers who perform for low wages, in unsafe environments, and in the absence of both the state and traditional trade unions. I show that while many wrestlers agree with this movement’s diagnosis of problematic working conditions, there is also widespread skepticism about activists’ motivations, with many wrestlers suggesting that the organization may be telling a self-interested story about work, rather than engaging in a form of work. I argue that wrestlers’ permanent questioning emerges at the intersection of the self-appreciating, entrepreneurial subject and the post-truth, zany situation and conclude that wrestling affords insight into labor organization under employment conditions emblematic of a contemporary post-truth neoliberalism.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 Gregory Hollin. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) |
Keywords: | activism; carnivalesque; neoliberalism; post-truth; precarity; professional wrestling; trade unions; United Kingdom |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Sociological Studies (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 08 May 2024 10:58 |
Last Modified: | 02 Dec 2024 11:42 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Anthropological Association |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.14506/ca39.4.01 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:212211 |
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