The “dividual” person and the self-made wrestling star in Senegalese làmb (wrestling with punches)

Abstract

In Senegal, làmb (wrestling with punches) is both a national sport and a popular passion. Since the 1990s, a neoliberal ethos has emerged within làmb, with an increasing number of wrestlers conceiving the sport as an individual business venture and embodying self-entrepreneurial attitudes. Yet, a fighter’s self is a composite relational formation: each wrestler embodies not only the collective formed around his persona but also the “invisible” forces and resources mobilized by this coalition. Through ethnographic episodes that highlight the articulation and tensions between individualized and “dividual” modes of self-making, I examine how the neoliberalization of làmb has produced multiple, indeterminate and often conflicting socio-cultural outcomes. From this perspective, competing evaluations of relationships, agency and the production of economic value come to the fore. This approach complicates existing scholarly accounts of the neoliberalization of sport by revealing how neoliberal logics are both reproduced and deflected through their interaction with different socio-historical forces and values.