Affective mythology and 'The Notorious' Conor McGregor: monomyth, mysticism, and mixed martial arts

Abstract

There are many ways in which we can interpret the sporting, commercial and personal success of Conor McGregor whose stories, fights and social appearances are analysed in this paper. There are archetypal traits of the hero and the trickster in McGregor's journey, persona, legacy, and the semiosis that surrounds him through the myth of the fighting Irish, all of which I consider as affective mythologies in their psycho-discursive forms. Prior to this analysis, I revisit the discourse-mythological approach (DMA) whilst accounting for the psycho-discursive framework I developed to analyse affective mythologies. However, I found recurring mystical qualities which called for the expansion of this analytical framework. By analysing the myth of the law of attraction, I argue that a non-reductive materialist approach to mind and consciousness is necessary due to the role of mysticism and ideology in popular culture. Since the study of martial arts requires attention to cultural, political, economic, commercial, psychological, biological and transpersonal phenomena, this paper encourages more radical interdisciplinarity between cultural studies and biological sciences to develop innovative theorisations of culture, ideology and consciousness. archetypal traits of the hero and the trickster in McGregor's journey, rhetoric, embodiment, persona, cultural and personal legacies, and the semiosis that surrounds him. These elements form part of the stories he has told and the stories that have been told about him. Those stories are theorised in this paper through an analysis of affective mythology.Prior to the analysis, I outline the theoretical and analytical position I adopt in the McGregor case study. I recap the discourse-mythological approach (DMA) whilst accounting for the psycho-discursive framework I developed to analyse affective mythologies [Kelsey 2017]. However, amongst the semiotic and archetypal material in this analysis, I found recurring mythical and mystical qualities (such as visualisation and the law of attraction), which called for the expansion of my analytical framework. Hence, I introduce non-reductive materialism as a philosophical position to understand how the psycho-discursive mechanisms of metaphor and externalisation operate through affective mythologies. By taking a non-reductive materialist approach, this paper will enhance the scope of the analytical framework I adopt in my research on affective mythologies. In conclusion, I will argue that a non-reductive materialist approach to mind and consciousness is necessary due to the manner in which forms of mysticism and ideology recurrently operate through forms of popular culture. But before I cover the analytical framework that is adopted in the case study, I will discuss visualisation and the law of attraction in relation to McGregor. Visualisation and the Law of AttractionThe Secret [see Byrne 2006] is a film and book claiming to point to a force that exists in the universe through which visualisation and positive thinking will attract (magnetise) ...

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