Mika LaVaque-Manty argues that “dueling is a form of proof, a signaling practice.  … When someone successfully challenges your claim to [human] dignity, you must somehow demonstrate that you do indeed have it.  Not to do so would mean forfeiting it.” But in addition, she claims that by making of dueling a manly virtue, “it becomes easier for social inferior to issue successful challenges to social superiors … A social superior may try to insist on formal hierarchies [and refuse to duel with an inferior] but that refusal may leave a nagging doubt…”  To Mika LaVaque then dueling is a way of signaling one’s courage (or manliness) as well as a way of redistributing honor.  Every time a social superior accepts an inferior’s challenge (thereby signaling his respect for the inferior) the challenger’s reputation and hence social status is enhanced.

Thomas Gallant makes many of the same points while examining the ritualized knife fighting among peasant or plebeian Ionian men.  Since these ritualized duels were generally between social equals, Thomas Gallant is not concerned with whether they were a means to improve one’s social standing.  He does however demonstrate that these duels were a way of maintaining one’s status.  The final act of these ritualized combats occurred in the courtroom where the villagers’ were able to judge the quality of the duel as well as the seriousness of the provocation that occasioned it.  And it could happen that both the winner and the loser were judged to be “fools.”

In “Honor and ‘Faking Honorability” Dov Cohen and Joseph Vandello maintain that an honor culture (such as the one described by Thomas Gallant) “tends to develop in places where there is a weak state that is unable to enforce the law.  In such environment… people need to establish reputations that they are not to be messed with” (Cohen & Vandello in Nesse, p.164).  To make their point, they emphasize the different attitudes towards dueling in today’s American South and inner cities.  In the latter, duels are a frequent occurrence; in the former, although Antebellum South is famous for its honor culture, they are not. 

All three writers also postulate when the signal of the duel will outlive its utility.  Interestingly enough, all three have different endpoints.  Mika LaVaque postulates that dueling ceased to be an effective signal when pistols became too accurate and the point became to simply show up and not to kill the other party.  In other words, duels started becoming obsolete in this reading when life and limb were no longer at stake.  The carnage of World War I, she adds completed the process.  To Thomas Gallant (who studies duels whose aim by and large was to scar, not kill the opponent) duels ended when the courts became closed and the ritual of the court-room (where the duels were judged) was no longer available.  According to Cohen and Vandello duels cease once law and order are established.  Perhaps they are all right.  However, what struck me as I was reading these three articles was how responsive I (not an Ionian peasant, nor someone living in the inner city, and not even someone who is trying to win social prestige) was to the argument Captain Macnamara gave in his defense at a trial.  He was charged with murder after killing Colonel Montgomery in a duel in 1803.  Captain Macnamara told the jury: “Gentlemen, I am a captain in the British navy.  My character you can only hear from others; but to maintain my character and my station, I must be respected.  When called upon to lead others into honorable danger, I must not be supposed to be a man who sought safety by submitting to what custom has taught others to consider a disgrace.”

According to all three writers, I live in an environment where dueling as a signal is obsolete.  And yet, when I read that statement I very much understood it.

2. We believe that stupidity is the apex of humor. And that Jackass is the finest movie ever made.

3. We are secretly corny. We will never admit that we painstakingly repeatedly doodle your name in our math notebooks. Yes–on every square.

4. We never lift the toilet seat. Because it just takes too much darned work.

5. There’s really no male code of honor. Enough said.