Academic Instincts

THE AMATEUR PROFESSIONAL
AND
THE PROFESSIONAL AMATEUR
Criticism, is, I take it, the formal discourse of an amateur. --R. P. BLACKMUR
THE ELECTION of Jesse ("The Body") Ventura, a former professional wrestler and radio talk-show host, as governor of Minnesota was described by the New York Times as an example of "the lure of inspired amateurism."1 But of course American politicians have often tried to present themselves as amateurs, from George Washington to Ronald Reagan. Politics is a dirty business, and a professional politician an object of suspicion. Better to have a background in something, almost anything, else.
Like sports, for example. Former Senator Bill Bradley was a professional basketball player. Jack Kemp, a former housing secretary and candidate for vice president, was an NFL quarterback. Representative Steve Largent, the top draw for Republican fund-raisers in 1998, was a Hall of Fame wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks. J. C. (Julius Caesar) Watts II was a college football star. "Let's hear it for the athlete as president!" said tennis player John McEnroe at a fund-raising rally in Madison Square Garden for candidate Bradley.2 Or consider, at least in the state of California, politicians from the world of entertainment. Not only Ronald Reagan but Sonny Bono, Clint Eastwood, George Murphy--and even, briefly, Warren Beatty. Or business. Think of the campaigns of Steve Forbes and Ross Perot, and even the trial balloon sent up by Donald Trump--all candidates who presented themselves as can-do men untainted by politics, bringing the power of their success in the marketplace to bear on national problems.
Disinterestedness seems to be an implied corollary of inexperience--or at least, inexperience in the particular profession to which the candidate aspired. Inexperience is just the experience the electorate often values most in its politicians. Amateur status, at least on the surface, seems to be a guarantor of virtue. Leave the rough stuff behind the scenes to the political operatives and the media consultants.
Still, it might be said, and quite properly, that politics is an unfair example. We don't so much value amateur surgeons, for example, or amateur lawyers. We live in a world of professionals and professionalization, from big league sports to massage therapy. Even something apparently impossible to professionalize, like "motivational speaking," is a high-paying job, performed by migrating professionals from other fields: Colin Powell, a retired army general and former chief of staff; Naomi Judd, a country-and-western singer; Terry Bradshaw, the former quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers; Mary Lou Retton, a gold-medal Olympic gymnast.
What I want to try to establish at the outset, though, is that, like the terms of any binary opposition, amateur and professional (1) are never fully equal, and (2) are always in each other's pockets. They produce each other and they define each other by mutual affinities and exclusions. One is always preferred to the other ("it's better to be an amateur"; "it's better to be a professional"), but the preference is not consistent over time. Indeed, what is most fascinating is the way in which these terms circulate to make the fortunes of the one rise higher than the fortunes of the other, while determinedly resisting the sense that one is always the necessary condition for the other.
Not only are they mutually interconnected. Part of their power comes from the disavowal of the close affinity between them.
Playing for Love
The apparent opposition of the terms "professional" and "amateur" is perhaps most familiar to us from the culture of sports, where until fairly recently "amateur" had a certain cachet and a certain association with the upper classes. The amateur was idealized as playing for "love"--love of the game, love of country, love of school. The professional, by contrast, played for advancement and for money.
In sport after sport, from football to boxing, the amateur/ professional distinction was once built in as part of the class structure of the sport. Amateurs were gentlemen; professionals were upstarts, class jumpers, and roughnecks. Aristocrats and gentry engaged in sporting events with the assistance of servants. Hunters had "gillies" or "beaters" to flush the game they shot, as well as gamekeepers to prevent poaching. Golfers were accompanied by "caddies," paid attendants who carried their clubs.
Here are a few examples of how this divide has been negotiated:
� Rugby associations at the end of the nineteenth century took steps to root out the "veiled professional," by which was meant the working-class player. "The Rugby name, as its name implies, sprang from our public schools," remarked one amateur rugby player and cricketer.