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Article
Lennox Lewis and Black Atlantic Politics: The Hard Sell
Journal of Sport and Social Issues (2009)
  • Daniel McNeil
Abstract
Very little has been written about Lennox Lewis, an athlete who won the Olympic gold medal for Canada in 1988 but who was widely hailed as Britain’s boxing savior when he unified various world titles in 1999. This article begins to address some of the gaps in our knowledge by placing Lewis alongside intellectual debates arising from Paul Gilroy’s work on a Black Atlantic. It argues that some of the major themes of Gilroy’s work—nationalism, double (or poly) consciousness, Americocentricity, and Black masculinity—are extremely useful tools for us to plot Lewis’s career and to contend that a brief description of his career reminds us of the Canadian gaps in Gilroy’s attempt to chart Black identities that are not just African, American, British, or Caribbean
Keywords
  • Lennox Lewis,
  • Paul Gilroy,
  • Black Atlantic,
  • Boxing,
  • Canadian Studies
Publication Date
2009
Citation Information
Daniel McNeil. "Lennox Lewis and Black Atlantic Politics: The Hard Sell" Journal of Sport and Social Issues Vol. 33 Iss. 1 (2009) p. 25 - 38
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/danielmcneil/19/