Parterre: Olympic Wrestling, National Identities, and the Theatre of Agonism

Abstract

This chapter uses the example of Olympic wrestling to consider questions of national identity and agonism at a time when the European project, and the ideal of a post-national identity, is in crisis. As the political philosopher, Chantal Mouffe notes, while national identities ‘might appear as something natural, they are always contingent constructions made possible through a variety of practices, discourses, and language games’ (Mouffe, 2013, Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically). Despite its contingent and ultimately illusory character, national identity is regularly transformed into powerful affects and feelings, from national mourning to xenophobic violence, because national identity itself is always constructed through antagonism. Established on the distinction between insider and outsider, friend and enemy, any relation between communal identities must transform antagonism into agonism, in other words, an adversarial relation that recognises the legitimacy of the opponent. Focusing on what I call the ‘Plastic Brits narrative’ in Olympic wrestling, in this chapter I explore Olympic sport as a theatre in which struggle over the meaning, value, and identity of the nation is staged.

In Greco-Roman wrestling, parterre means ‘ground wrestling’ (literally ‘by-earth’ in French). In the parterre position, one wrestler assumes a position on top of the other wrestler. These positions are determined, randomly, by the colour of their singlets. The wrestler on top will try to flip and pin the wrestler on the bottom, so it is to the advantage of the wrestler on the bottom to stay as close to the mats as possible. For me, this struggle over who ‘holds the ground’ is an appropriate metonym for the way wrestling as a whole performs agonism, and nation.