The Martial Arts Studies Reader [1 ed.] 178660549X, 9781786605498

The first authoritative overview of martial arts studies, written by pioneers of this dynamic and rapidly expanding new

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Table of contents :
The Martial Arts Studies Reader
Contents
1 Introduction: What, Where and Why is Martial Arts Studies?
2 Early Chinese Works on Martial Arts
3 The Battlefield and the Bedroom: Chinese Martial Arts and Art of the Bedchamber
4 Martial Arts by the Book: Late Medieval and Early Modern European Martial Arts
5 The Phone Book Project: Tracing the Diffusion of Asian Martial Arts in America through the Yellow Pages
6 Martial Arts, Media and (Material) Religion
7 Liminoid Longings and Liminal Belonging: Hyper-reality, History and the Search for Meaning in the Modern Martial Arts
8 ‘He’s an Animal’: Naturalizing the Hyper-real in Modern Combat Sport
9 Martial Arts as a Coping Strategy for Violence
10 Performance Ethnography
11 Martial Arts Studies and the Sociology of Gender: Theory, Research and Pedagogical Application
12 Masculinities, Bodies and Martial Arts
13 Martial Arts as Embodied, Discursive and Aesthetic Practice
14 Carnival of the Drunken Master: The Politics of the Kung Fu Comedic Body
15 Learning from Martial Arts
Index
Notes on the Contributors
Recommend Papers

The Martial Arts Studies Reader [1 ed.]
 178660549X, 9781786605498

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The Martial Arts Studies Reader

Martial Arts Studies The Martial Arts Studies book series aims to foster cross-disciplinary dialogue and generate new knowledge in the interdisciplinary fields of martial arts studies. Series Editor Paul Bowman, Professor, Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff University, UK; Director of the Martial Arts Studies Research Network, and co-editor of the open-access journal Martial Arts Studies (Cardiff University Press). Editorial Board Alex Channon (University of Brighton) DS Farrer (University of Guam) TJ Hinrichs (Cornell University) Benjamin N. Judkins (chinesemartialstudies.com) Gina Marchetti (Hong Kong University) Michael A. Molasky (Waseda University) Meaghan Morris (University of Sydney) Benjamin Spatz (Huddersfield University) Sixt Wetzler (German Blade Museum, Solingen) Luke White (Middlesex University) Douglas Wile (CUNY) Gehao Zhang (Macau University of Science and Technology) Titles in the Series The Virtual Ninja Manifesto: Gamic Orientalism and the Digital Dojo, Chris Goto-Jones Mythologies of Martial Arts, Paul Bowman Chinese Martial Arts and Media Culture: Global Perspectives, edited by Tim Trausch The Martial Arts Studies Reader, edited by Paul Bowman

The Martial Arts Studies Reader Edited by Paul Bowman

Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26–34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB www.rowmaninternational.com Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada) and Plymouth (UK) www.rowman.com Selection and editorial matter © 2018 Paul Bowman Copyright in individual chapters is held by the respective chapter authors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN:

HB 978-1-78660-548-1 PB 978-1-78660-549-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN ISBN ISBN

978-1-78660-548-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 978-1-78660-549-8 (paperback : alk. paper) 978-1-78660-550-4 (electronic)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

 1 Introduction: What, Where and Why is Martial Arts Studies? Paul Bowman  2 Early Chinese Works on Martial Arts Peter Lorge

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 3 The Battlefield and the Bedroom: Chinese Martial Arts and Art of the Bedchamber Douglas Wile

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 4 Martial Arts by the Book: Late Medieval and Early Modern European Martial Arts Daniel Jaquet

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 5 The Phone Book Project: Tracing the Diffusion of Asian Martial Arts in America through the Yellow Pages Michael Molasky

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 6 Martial Arts, Media and (Material) Religion Esther Berg-Chan  7 Liminoid Longings and Liminal Belonging: Hyper-reality, History and the Search for Meaning in the Modern Martial Arts Benjamin N. Judkins  8 ‘He’s an Animal’: Naturalizing the Hyper-real in Modern Combat Sport Janet O’Shea v

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Contents

 9 Martial Arts as a Coping Strategy for Violence Sixt Wetzler

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10 Performance Ethnography DS Farrer

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11 Martial Arts Studies and the Sociology of Gender: Theory, Research and Pedagogical Application Alex Channon

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12 Masculinities, Bodies and Martial Arts Dale C. Spencer

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13 Martial Arts as Embodied, Discursive and Aesthetic Practice Tim Trausch

187

14 Carnival of the Drunken Master: The Politics of the Kung Fu Comedic Body Luke White 15 Learning from Martial Arts Meaghan Morris and Paul Bowman

199 213

Index227 Notes on the Contributors233

Chapter 1

Introduction What, Where and Why is Martial Arts Studies? Paul Bowman

The Martial Arts Studies Reader heralds the arrival of a dynamic multidisciplinary research area and offers the best way into this exciting new field for students and researchers of martial arts from both inside and outside the university. It showcases the work of established and emergent scholars from many different areas and sets out many of the key questions in the academic study of martial arts. Such a collection is a significant achievement for martial arts studies. This is because the question of whether martial arts could ever become a serious object of academic attention is one that vexed many people, in many contexts, for many years. Many who pondered this question in the past tended to assume that the answer would always be no, that martial arts cannot, could not, will not and would not gain a foothold or be taken seriously within the academic world. It is certainly true to say (and important to remember) that only ten years ago – maybe even only five years ago – the idea of publishing a Martial Arts Studies Reader such as this would have seemed implausible. There was no ‘martial arts studies’, as such, and no clear sign of its emergence. But there certainly is now. Indeed, what we have witnessed in terms of the formulation, development and spread of martial arts studies in the past five years is truly remarkable. Of course, it was not born out of nothing: it is important to be aware that for a long time before anyone had proposed ‘martial arts studies’ as a possible research field, it was nonetheless true that academic studies of martial arts had long been appearing, in all kinds of different disciplines and fields. Studies of martial arts had for many years been appearing in fields as diverse as anthropology, cultural studies, film studies, 1

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law, management, philosophy, psychology, sociology, sports science, history, medicine and more. Nonetheless, the question whether martial arts could ever become a serious field of academic study in its own right is a very different matter (Bowman 2015). Establishing a field is very different to choosing a case study within a pre-existing field. In fact, it is easy to imagine academic studies of just about anything. It is quite another matter, however, to propose that such a topic could or should mutate from being a specific object of study within a discipline, and morph into a disciplinary field in its own right. There need to be pressing reasons for the development of a discrete new field – reasons based on answering some kind of demand, filling a lack or redressing an inadequacy or limitation. Answering a demand or responding to a perceived lack has led to the emergence of many ‘suffix-studies’ subjects in recent decades: cultural studies, media studies, gender studies, African American and other ethnic identity studies, film studies, sports studies, management studies, postcolonial studies and so on. The rationale for the development of a new subject always involves answering a need or a demand, by redressing a perceived lack or limitation in the current configuration of the disciplines. Researchers may find that a specific topic that they find important has inadequate space to develop within current disciplinary demarcations, or that current approaches to that topic are inadequate or even stifling. Alternatively, a topic may simply be entirely absent, unrepresented, overlooked; and the development of ways to study it may well not fit into any established disciplinary space. All of the aforementioned ‘suffix-studies’ subjects emerged in recent decades to fill a perceived gap. The driving forces for their development came from both the inside and the outside of the university. Such fields endure, and research proliferates under their umbrellas, for as long as and to the extent that they adequately accommodate the direction of research questions. Taught courses in universities and colleges continue for as long as students turn up to take them and as long as they are deemed legitimate by the powers that be. So, the question is: To what extent is there a demand or a need for an enduring field of martial arts studies? Can it really be something tangible and enduring? Is work that is currently being done under this title actually doing something unique, new or different, or are we really only ever dealing with discrete studies of martial arts organized by established disciplinary concerns? On the one hand, it is certain that there will always be studies of martial arts that can be straightforwardly positioned as fitting comfortably into established academic fields. There will be straightforward ‘case studies’ of martial arts that are written in film studies, literary studies, anthropology, psychology, area studies, history, sports studies and so on. But, on the other



Introduction 3

hand, there are questions whose exploration entails breaking out of and moving beyond conventional disciplinary parameters. This kind of work can be difficult, particularly for scholars working in isolation. In the academic world, it is always safer and easier to stick to the established questions, methods, points of reference and protocols of discussion within a pre-established disciplinary field than to explore things differently, to explore different things or to explore different things differently. Fortunately, many academics and scholars from many disciplines are now being drawn together under the banner of ‘martial arts studies’, attending conferences and publishing in newly emergent journals and book series, such as the journal Martial Arts Studies and the martial arts studies conferences that have taken place annually at Cardiff University since 2015. The immediate effect of this is that people researching questions in and around martial arts are coming to feel less isolated and more able to locate or express their interests in terms of an emerging discourse. The importance of developing a collectivity cannot be overstated. It is absolutely vital for researchers. On the one hand, it produces not just affiliations and supportive conversations but also informed disagreement and focused criticisms, even rifts, all of which stimulate both circumspect and precise questions, argumentation, analysis and methods. On the other hand, it must be remembered that, in the university, if you cannot demonstrate what your research contributes to, then you cannot easily justify your activities. And if you cannot justify your activities, then you will sooner or later encounter innumerable pressures to change your priorities. There are certainly no funding opportunities available for projects that cannot relate their point, purpose and value to existing discourses. So, the establishment of a discourse is essential to the production of meaningful work. As the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan put it, the first signifier (the ‘unary signifier’) is always essentially meaningless or unintelligible. It is only when there is more than one – when there are binaries, iterations, reiterations, responses, differences, positions and ultimately constellations – that meanings and values can start to be formed. Without a discourse, individual utterances will be taken to be nothing other than odd, eccentric, isolated, unintelligible and therefore meaningless or irrelevant follies. A context of reception needs to be established. Fortunately, in recent years, researchers have been attracted to martial arts studies conferences and to reading and publishing in self-consciously martial arts studies publications. This cross-disciplinary attraction to martial arts studies events and publications has enabled many kinds of discussions and interactions to take place across disciplinary divides, where before they would have been unlikely. Inevitably, this cross-fertilization has begun to

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produce thought, questions, research and work that exceeds the confines of any one discipline. The net result is that different work is happening and completely new discussions are under way, organized by new questions, in new debates, generating all kinds of new knowledge. In this sense, ‘martial arts studies’ is the term for an interdisciplinary research nexus. A shared interest in the organizing terms – everything that is conjured up by the term ‘martial arts’ – is what holds the field together. It is tempting to think that a shared interest in martial arts is the ‘glue’ that binds the field together, but this is not quite correct. For, we may not even agree on what the term ‘martial arts’ designates or evokes. We may not agree on an approach to the object or field. Yet ‘martial arts’ provide the magnetism that draws researchers together. People are attracted to the field because of a shared interest in what is perceived to be a shared object. People care about martial arts for multiple reasons in myriad different ways. Whether people stay within the field depends on whether they are stimulated by what they find in it (Bowman and Judkins 2017). What can be found in the young field (or fields) of martial arts studies is surprisingly diverse. This diversity made the question of what The Martial Arts Studies Reader should include and exclude very hard to answer. Space was the ultimate issue. The hope was always for a single volume publication that could both give a good sense of the range of work being published in martial arts studies and offer unique and new contributions to it while also being of a manageable and affordable size. Not everything could be included. Only a selection of established and emergent scholars could be approached to contribute, covering some key areas from across the spectrum of concerns and research areas in martial arts studies. Unfortunately, not every field and area of research in martial arts studies is included here. Nor could they have been, given the inevitable limitations of space. In any case, this collection certainly does not seek to be the final word on the subject. Its orientation may be foundational, but its aim is not to be canonical, in the sense of presenting positions to be revered, claiming timelessness, or the universality of a small set of issues to be respected in perpetuity. Rather, the hope is to capture and convey something of the emerging constellation of martial arts studies, in its first full emergence in the Anglophone academic world. Given both the historical and contemporary importance of China in many discourses on martial arts, it seemed reasonable to start with a focus on Chinese martial arts. Peter Lorge therefore opens the volume, with ‘Early Chinese Works on Martial Arts’. This chapter traces the appearance, the contents and the categorizations used in the earliest Chinese texts on martial arts, beginning from the Bibliography section of the Hanshu, written by the historian Ban Gu (32–92 CE) and continuing up to the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) (see Ban Gu 1998). Lorge argues that the meaning of martial arts works



Introduction 5

changed as the categories of intellectual inquiry with respect to martial matters evolved. Staying with China, Douglas Wile then shows the intimate connection between martial and bedroom arts in China, in ‘The Battlefield and the Bedroom: Chinese Martial Arts and Art of the Bedchamber’. Wile’s chapter explores the rhetorical, theoretical and practical intersections between the Chinese martial arts and bedroom arts. On the rhetorical level, both bedroom arts (fangzhongshu) and martial arts (wushu) are referred to as arts (shu) because they require trained skill. Knowledge in these arts is encoded in canonical writings (jing), featuring mnemonic aphorisms (jue) and specialized vocabulary unique to the separate arts. Wile shows how they borrow language from the common metaphysical stock and from each other. Next, Daniel Jaquet’s chapter ‘Martial Arts by the Book: Late Medieval and Early Modern European Martial Arts’ provides an overview of the primary sources used in studying European martial arts – the corpus of texts known as the ‘fight books’. Here, Jaquet focuses on texts written between the fourteenth century and the Industrial Revolution. He argues that even though this technical literature was mainly produced by and for what we today call martial artists, the knowledge recorded by the words and images often remains cryptic. This is because books are an imperfect and incomplete way to pass down embodied knowledge such as fighting. Nonetheless, Jaquet offers a compelling methodology and means of approach for use in the analysis of such material, which boils down to his threefold categorization of authorial intent: inscription, description and encryption. After illustrating this, Jaquet then reviews the development of academic studies of fight books and clarifies some of the key caveats, problems and possibilities for researchers working with such source material, especially when trying to access technical knowledge about historical fighting. In so doing, the chapter also reveals the perhapsunexpected centrality of the field of historical European martial arts studies for researchers engaging not only with problems specific to martial arts studies but also key issues in a range of subjects, including history, cross-cultural studies, ethnography, anthropology, dance, theatre and performance studies. After this focus on the development of historical European martial arts studies, Michael Molasky offers insights into the development of Asian martial arts in the United States, in his chapter, ‘The Phone Book Project: Tracing the Diffusion of Asian Martial Arts in America through the Yellow Pages’. Molasky begins by acknowledging the inherent challenges in documenting any process of cultural reception. He then considers the particular difficulties in tracing the culturally diverse 150-year history of Asian martial arts in the United States. On the one hand, the American martial arts scene is distinguished by broad geographic variation rooted in local demographic and immigration patterns. On the other hand, as in other countries,

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the diffusion of martial arts was shaped by modes of transmission that range from personal instruction in martial arts classes to staged, simulated fighting in film, television and video games. In the case of post–Second World War America, however, returning soldiers from the nation’s wars and ongoing military presence in the Asia-Pacific have played a critical role in spreading – and domesticating – East Asian martial arts, especially those from Japan (including Okinawa) and Korea. Despite the challenges in providing a thorough account of this complex history, Molasky argues that it is possible to trace the rough contours of this history; and he offers one approach, by focusing on adverts and information in the ‘Yellow Pages’ (or business directories of telephone books) from four American cities, between the years 1945 and 2000. By drawing attention to the central role played by these seemingly mundane sources, Molasky enriches our understanding of the changing ways Asian martial arts have been represented and understood over time. In ‘Martial Arts, Media and (Material) Religion’, Esther Berg-Chan then turns our attention to the changing representations and understandings of martial arts, religion and their relation to each other, which she investigates from a religious studies perspective. As Berg-Chan notes, claiming martial arts as an object of religious studies and in turn claiming that religious studies has the potential to produce valuable insights for the field of martial arts studies might raise some eyebrows. The relation and (maybe not coincidentally) also the definition of both martial arts and religion are an issue of debate among both outside observers and practitioners. Consequently, she makes this very relation the object of her investigation, drawing on both a discourse theoretical approach and the perspective of material religion. Her objective is twofold: investigating different representations of kung fu and of the nineteenth-/twentieth-century Boxers’ martial practices from a ‘material religion’ perspective, she draws our attention to the role martial arts may play in religious practices as ‘mediators’ (Latour) of religious and therapeutic aspirations. She further highlights the profound importance of popular media discourses and practices for the study of religions and martial arts past and present. At the same time, she argues that the particular understandings of martial arts, religion and their relation to each other articulated in the examples investigated are contingent but not arbitrary; that is, they each constitute one possible actualization amid multiple discursive potentialities that have been enabled and gained plausibility in specific historical and sociocultural processes and contexts. Such a discourse theoretical approach, she argues, has methodological consequences for the way in which the relation of martial arts and religion should be approached as an object of research within both religious and martial arts studies alike. Moving clearly into the (ostensibly) secular, modern, consumerist domain, Benjamin N. Judkins explores themes that emerge around a new



Introduction 7

postmodern or hyper-real martial art. In ‘Liminoid Longings and Liminal Belonging: Hyper-reality, History and the Search for Meaning in the Modern Martial Arts’, Judkins explores the question of the relationship of contemporary ‘lightsaber combat’, and how it relates to the traditional Asian hand combat systems that have become a common fixture of modern life. After a brief comparative study, the chapter argues that the invention of ‘hyper-real’ martial arts might help us to better understand the processes by which all martial arts are created, as well as the varieties of social functions that they fulfil in Western societies. That, in turn, suggests some important hypotheses about who takes up different sorts of martial arts training and what the future of these fighting systems might hold. The chapter proposes a framework for thinking about the varieties of martial arts in the modern world and the motivations that fuel them. Janet O’Shea’s chapter, ‘ “He’s an Animal”: Naturalizing the Hyper-real in Modern Combat Sport’, addresses the twin problems of violence and ‘the real’ in hybrid, competitive martial arts. Through the associations layered on combat sport via cage names – monikers that indicate the status of fight sports as both performances and games – this piece untangles the simultaneous distance from and recourse to violence that forms part of competitive combat sport. O’Shea addresses the recognized status of mixed martial arts as a hyper-real spectacle, an event in which realism is crucially important and, yet, for which there is no stable referent. All martial arts contend with violence as their arena of investigation. Martial arts differentiate themselves from violence most crucially not only via consent but also via parameters for and rules of engagement. However, modern combat sport is unique in its striving towards replicating the realism of violence at the very same time that its structure – timed rounds, weight classes, matted floors, the presence of a referee, coach and on-site orthopaedic surgeon – differentiates it from violence beyond the cage. If human violence is the realism that this sport approximates, how, then, is violence imagined through its practice? O’Shea suggests that cage names, particularly those that reference animals and the natural world, reveal more about how we think about humans, nonhumans and violence than about why we fight for fun. Appealing to animals as a way of constructing a ‘reality’ for sport fighting maps conflict and control onto non-human animals and, in the process, naturalizes such elements in human society. Drawing on cultural, philosophical and scientific studies of play as well as on critical animal studies and retheorizations of evolution, this chapter unpacks primordial narratives of sport fighting and replaces them with a consideration of sport fighting as risk play, as performative games and as the product of collective labour. Following on from O’Shea’s study of the rhetoric of ‘animalistic’ violence in combat sports, Sixt Wetzler engages ‘Martial Arts as a Coping Strategy for

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Violence’. As his title indicates, Wetzler’s proposal is that martial arts might be approached as coping strategies adopted in the face of the perceived threat of violence. The chapter therefore addresses some points that are centrally relevant to the question of where and when violence and martial arts merge, converge and diverge. Specifically, Wetzler draws on Wolfgang Sofsky’s dichotomy of active Körper (the body exerting violence) and passive Leib (the body suffering violence), and on Randall Collins’s micro-sociological theory of violence, to discuss different narratives, myths and ‘levels’ in terms of which martial arts can be interpreted as coping strategies for the often equally terrifying and fascinating fact that one person risks suffering violence at the hands of another. Appropriately, the following chapter, ‘Performance Ethnography’, by DS Farrer considers multiple competing definitions of ‘performance’ in anthropology, theatre and performance studies, which, in tandem with the broad interdisciplinary adoption of ‘ethnography’, means that various competing and flexible ways of doing performance ethnography now exist. Farrer’s chapter is not simply another rehearsal of ethnographic research methods in ‘mapping people’. Instead, Farrer suggests an innovative theoretical turn in performance ethnography, towards ‘emergence’. Bridging perspectives from social anthropology, visual anthropology, observational cinema, sociological ethnography, cultural studies, theatre and performance studies, Farrer reformulates performance ethnography as a theory and method relevant to martial arts studies and further afield. Beyond ‘transcendent dialogical research’, prioritizing talk, Farrer claims, performance ethnography emerges from participant observation to offer unique opportunities as embodied method, in the primacy of doing. Developing a new theorization of performance ethnography, Farrer combines formative insights from Victor Turner and Richard Schechner, enriched via the criticisms of Dwight Conquergood, to introduce Spinoza’s concepts of ‘immanence’ and ‘emergence’ into the method, read through Deleuze and Guattari, Ben Spatz and Antonio Negri. In Farrer’s formulation, taking an immanent approach in performance ethnography means joining in with the group, training and learning from experience to analyse, combine and apply knowledge as it emerges, to question the capabilities and wisdom of the body. From his extensive application of performance ethnography in long-term studies of diverse Malay, Chinese and other martial arts ranging through Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Guam, Farrer contends that putting the body on the line in performance ethnography is to move through interpretive, performative and embodied lines of inquiry, analysis and action, to embrace alternative ontologies and epistemologies. Next, Alex Channon explores crucial questions in ‘Martial Arts Studies and the Sociology of Gender: Theory, Research and Pedagogical Application’. This is widely relevant to martial arts studies, especially as the social-scientific



Introduction 9

study of physical culture should take great interest in issues of gender. In the social science literature, scholars have argued that competitive sports, physical education, fitness training, various forms of dance and many related phenomena besides are typically performed in ways that reflect and reinforce binary and hierarchal gendered ideals. Such practices most often work to centralize and normalize heterosexuality, while shoring up specific visions of gender that recreate male privilege via the reification of embodied symbols of male superiority. However, alongside efforts to articulate these problems, scholars have similarly explored ways in which such socially constructed gender hierarchies might also be challenged within these same settings, either with respect to individuals’ unorthodox, embodied experiences or with the symbolic value of their representation in mediated formats. Channon’s chapter explores how these theoretical problems manifest within martial arts and combat sports in contemporary Western settings. In many respects, these activities share much in common with other forms of physical culture in that they are embodied practices engaged in through various forms of consumption, within a cultural context historically shaped by heterosexist gender logic. But they also differ in several important ways, particularly regarding their complex relation to ‘violence’, and the specific engagement with gender politics that can be observed in certain training practices. Channon’s chapter outlines how these specific features of fighting disciplines provide for compelling case studies for students of gender, and also the ways in which the study of gender should be considered an integral aspect of martial arts studies itself. Also focusing on gender is Dale C. Spencer’s ‘Masculinities, Bodies and Martial Arts’. Spencer begins by pointing out that while historically martial arts may have been supposed (erroneously) to be an exclusively or predominantly male arena, the twentieth century saw the definitive and highly visible proliferation of women within martial arts. A question remains as to whether both male and female participation automatically translates into ascriptions to and performance of dominant masculinities. Drawing on body studies and masculinity studies literature, Spencer explores how masculinities may be practised through martial arts, examining the relationship between the embodied practice of martial arts and the representations of martial arts, and the ambiguities and paradoxes that accompany this relationship. Specifically, Spencer notes that while masculinities are enacted through violence associated with martial arts both in martial arts participation and in representations of martial arts in television and film, martial arts are simultaneously often marked by homosociality and homoeroticism. In addition, he emphasizes that martial arts practice is marked by continuous failure, especially as bodies age and break down. It is in this space of disjuncture between the representations of martial arts and masculinities and their practice in the everyday life of

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martial artists that Spencer’s chapter seeks to work as a corrective to certain contemporary approaches of martial art studies and the understanding of men, masculinities and martial arts. Lurking in the shadows or at the foundations of this discussion are questions of aesthetics. Tim Trausch engages many of these matters in his chapter, ‘Martial Arts as Embodied, Discursive and Aesthetic Practice’, which evolves around alleged divides of martial arts (practice) and media representation, world and image, body and mind. As Trausch proposes, not only has finding a fixed definition of the term ‘martial arts’ proven to be a problematic endeavour, it is perhaps not even called for in light of the myriad cultural practices that have come to be associated with it. As an alternative, he argues in favour of approaching martial arts (studies) as a processual, dynamic, polysemic and multicentric network, accessible via associations and relations. Following this rationale, his chapter seeks to combine and reassemble some of the manifold approaches to making sense of martial arts. Trausch considers the 2012 computer game production Sleeping Dogs and director Stephen Fung’s Tai Chi films of the same year to explore how the martial arts have come to be signified by a dynamic complex of images in and through the media. At the same time, he (re)connects the field of media-produced ‘key visuals’ with martial arts as bodily/embodied practices, the forms and movements of which in turn become part of a discursive knowledge of martial arts, and themselves enter the realm of key visuals in their constant (re)mediation. Texts like Sleeping Dogs and Tai Chi are shown as templates for a notion of martial arts as a dynamic network of associations, and thus as something we can take back to martial arts studies. These associations move across and assemble references to martial arts as embodied, aesthetic and discursive practice. They give us an idea of how the alleged divide of practice and representation is negotiated in the aesthetic practices of a media culture in which the lines between image, medium, dispositif and user have been redrawn and partially disappeared. After this argument about the central place of ‘key visuals’ in martial arts culture, Luke White picks up the baton and takes our focus firmly into the crucial realm of film. His chapter, ‘Carnival of the Drunken Master: The Politics of the Kung Fu Comedic Body’, focuses on films that are now regarded as classics of the transnational ‘popular cultural formations’ of martial arts. As he notes, the shift from the primarily heroic kung fu films of the early 1970s to the kung fu comedies of the end of the decade (typified by the ‘Drunken Master’ cycle that launched the careers of Jackie Chan and Yuen Woo-ping) has often been understood as marking a depoliticization of the genre. However, seeking to refute such readings, White reads Hong Kong kung fu comedy through the changing motif of the body, in relation to wider twentieth-century histories of physical culture in greater China. He



Introduction 11

argues that the heroic kung fu body continues nationalist narratives of identity, promulgated in the fitness movements of the Nationalist and Communist periods, which saw the individual’s health and strength as an instrument for the construction of a competitive body politic, a viable modern state and the means to resist foreign imperialism. Conversely, emerging at a moment when Hong Kong identity was becoming increasingly ambivalent towards the Chinese mainland, the comedic kung fu body – carnivalesque, materialist and disordered in contrast to the idealism of the sculpted, muscular nationalist body – is significant precisely in its refusal of nationalist narratives, offering a different image of the ‘popular’ body, moving beyond the nation-state as an object of identification (or even what Stephen Teo has termed ‘abstract nationalism’) and addressing instead what Petrus Liu might call ‘stateless subjects’. As such, White proposes that, far from a depoliticization, this marks a shift in the ground of the politics of representation away from the modes most familiar to cultural analysis (as articulated in film studies and martial arts history alike). White reads the kung fu comedic body through Bakhtin’s ‘grotesque realism’ and DaMatta’s colonial carnival, as offering alternative means through which experiences of (post-)coloniality, diaspora and rapidly globalizing capitalism, as experienced in a rapidly transforming Hong Kong, are registered and contested. Finally, reflecting on its emergence, constitution, consolidation and directions of development, Paul Bowman discusses martial arts studies with cultural studies pioneer and martial arts film and popular culture researcher, Meaghan Morris. This discussion is entitled ‘Learning from Martial Arts’, and considers issues, problems and possibilities related to the development of the field of martial arts studies. The title of the chapter alludes to Morris’s influential 2001 essay ‘Learning from Bruce Lee’, an essay that has inspired and informed many researchers and writers in this new field, forcing them to grasp the complexity of the relations between film, TV, image, media, narrative fiction, ideology, cultural fantasy and lived embodied practice. Bowman’s opening proposal is that although the best work in the current development of martial arts studies demonstrates an awareness of the multinational, multimedia and multicultural complexity of any attempt to study martial arts, it is still the case that work in the new field sometimes struggles to handle or tackle such complexity and can revert to less circumspect approaches. He asks Morris whether she agrees with this proposition and what the stakes are when it comes to the future elaboration and development of martial arts studies. From this starting point, the conversation opens out to cover many issues relevant to all who are concerned with the development of martial arts studies. No such discussion – indeed, no collection such as this – can be encyclopaedic. Rather, the concluding conversation, like The Martial Arts Studies Reader itself, seeks to indicate some of the range and scope, and the types

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of questions being asked and issues being addressed, in the emergent field of martial arts studies. The conversation, like the collection as a whole and each of the contributions within it, seeks to ground, orientate, acclimatize and stimulate both ongoing and new research on martial arts in culture and society across the disciplines and beyond. In other words, The Martial Arts Studies Reader hopes to help generate new ways of reading martial arts, and indeed to help produce a new generation of martial arts studies readers. REFERENCES Bowman, Paul. 2015. Martial Arts Studies: Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. Bowman, Paul and Benjamin N. Judkins. 2017. ‘Editorial: Is Martial Arts Studies Trivial?’ Martial Arts Studies, no. 4: 1. https://doi.org/10.18573/j.2017.10183.

Chapter 2

Early Chinese Works on Martial Arts Peter Lorge

China has a long tradition of writing about martial arts. In addition to discussions of fighting and hunting contained in oracle bone inscriptions, the earliest extant works that describe social and political rituals emphasize the importance of wrestling and archery as distinct and widespread practices in Chinese society. Archery and chariot driving, for example, were two of the six Confucian arts that all gentlemen were expected to know. All of these early mentions of martial arts were integrated parts of broader discussions. Like many other topics of study, at some point, someone wrote a dedicated study of combat skills. Who that first author was and what he wrote are lost to us. Most people were illiterate, and physical skills like martial arts were transmitted through direct, personal teaching. The relatively small group of literate men (and even smaller group of women) in pre-imperial (before 221 BCE) China would all have been of a class that received some training in archery, and possibly other martial arts as well. It is difficult to discern the motive for writing martial arts texts based on the titles of the earliest works, and the contents of the later extant manuals. Archery manuals were the most frequently produced works by far, perhaps reflecting both its classical Confucian association and its practical applications. Manuals were written by the martially interested literate for the martially interested literate. Some of those readers were interested for reasons of training, whether for themselves or for groups of men under their control, and some may have consumed martial arts manuals as a form of connoisseurship. Archery texts seemed, based upon Míng dynasty (1368–1644) manuals, to have lent themselves to detailed discussions of fine distinctions in technique. Oddly, there was no tradition of writing martial arts training manuals for officials charged with the regular military drill of the militia. 13

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The earliest-known Chinese texts on martial arts are listed in the bibliography section of The History of the Han Dynasty (漢書 Hanshu), written by the historian Bān Gù 班固 (32–92 CE). None of the works are extant, nor were any of the martial arts texts mentioned evident in any of the bibliography sections of later dynastic histories. Martial arts texts continued to be written, and to appear in the bibliography sections of several subsequent dynastic histories, but by The Old History of the Tang Dynasty (舊唐書 Jiu Tangshu), they moved out of the ‘Military Books’ (兵書 bingshu) section and into the ‘Various Arts and Techniques’ (雜藝術 zayishu) section. The meaning of martial arts works also changed as the categories of intellectual inquiry with respect to martial matters evolved. The earliest extant work, The Wrestling Record (角力記 Jiaoli Ji), is a tenth-century work that collected accounts of wrestling from classical works. The intent of the author appears to be justifying wrestling as a classically attested practice, though the lack of an explanatory introduction makes this interpretation speculative. The first extant works containing martial arts techniques are the ‘Boxing Classic’, archery and weapon techniques chapters of Qī Jìguāng’s 戚繼光 (1528–1588) 1560 work Jixiao Xinshu 紀效新書. Curiously, those five chapters were excised from his 1584 revision of the book, replaced by a new emphasis on guns. The ‘Boxing Classic’ chapter has become a touchstone of recent scholarship on martial arts, and the transition between Qī Jìguāng’s initial and revised training manual marks a natural break point for early works on martial arts and post-gunpowder military training. There are two groups of Chinese works on martial arts, books about martial arts history or martial arts practice, and manuals, or books explaining martial arts techniques. Out of the many books in circulation, some portions of them entered the imperial library and were catalogued, categorized and stored. Unfortunately, there is no way to know what percentage of books made it into the imperial collection, or why some were included and others not. Very few books from early times are known outside of the imperial collections assembled or reassembled by successive dynasties. It is also worth noting that The Wrestling Record, while a tenth-century work, had the good fortune to appear just as printing began to come into widespread use during the Sòng dynasty (960–1279). A brief survey of the imperial book collections will lay the groundwork for understanding the place of early martial arts works in the larger context of military writing. Catalogues of the imperial collections appeared in six of the standard dynastic histories beginning with The History of the Han Dynasty. The Wrestling Record must be seen in the context of that tradition of writing about martial arts and collecting books on the subject. More than two dozen martial arts works in The History of the Song Dynasty (宋史 Songshi)



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bibliography are, like all earlier books on techniques, no longer extant. Qī Jìguāng’s 1560 manual currently holds the position as the earliest work explaining martial arts techniques. Ironically, General Qī’s elimination of the sections on martial arts techniques demonstrated a curious ambivalence for that technical training. IMPERIAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES The History of the Han Dynasty was completed in 111 CE and recorded the events of the Former or Western Hàn dynasty, from 206 BCE to 23 CE. The dynasty was overthrown in 23 CE by Wáng Mǎng 王莽 (45 BCE–23 CE), a former prime minister, who then founded his own Xīn dynasty 新朝. The History of the Han Dynasty was begun by Bān Biāo 班彪 (3–54), but he died before completing it. His eldest son Bān Gù, a government official, rewrote most, if not all, of what Bān Biāo had assembled, before dying with the work uncompleted. Bān Zhāo 班昭 (45–c. 116), Bān Gù’s younger sister, then completed the history. The final work contained annals of the emperors, chronological tables of important people, treatises and biographies. One of the treatises, chapter 30, is a review of the literature or texts available in the imperial collection. This bibliographic treatise not only listed the books in the imperial collection but also placed them into categories. The ‘Military Books’ section of The History of the Han Dynasty bibliography treatise lists works by fifty-three writers, totalling 790 chapters including forty-three scrolls of diagrams. There are four divisions within the Military Books category, only one of which, ‘Artful skills’, contains martial arts works. Of the thirteen writers and 199 chapters, six books either are military strategy books or appear to be works on military strategy. There are nine books that unequivocally concern martial arts: Féng Mén’s Archery Method 逢門射法, two chapters; Yīn Tōng’s Complete Archery Method 陰通成射法, eleven chapters; General Lǐ’s Archery Method 李將軍射法, three chapters; Mr. Wèi’s Archery Method 魏氏射法, six chapters; Strong Crossbow General Wáng Wéi’s Archery Method 彊弩將軍王圍射法, five chapters; Gazing Far Continuous Crossbow Archery Sketch 望遠連弩射法具, fifteen chapters; Guarding the Army Archery Master Wáng Hè’s Archery Book 護軍射師王賀 射書, five chapters; Way of the Sword 劍道, thirty-eight chapters; and Boxing 手搏, six chapters. Some forty-seven chapters are on archery, with the bow and crossbow, thirty-eight on fencing in one large book, and six chapters on boxing. The relative importance of archery and fencing books suggests that, at least for the literate fan, or practitioner, of martial arts, these were the areas requiring or amenable to written description. The absence of manuals on wrestling

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is curious, since wrestling was a very important martial art, widely practised, and frequently publicly used in competitions. Unfortunately, not only do we lack an explanation of why only works on archery, fencing and boxing were in the imperial collection, but also it is not clear from their titles if the Way of the Sword and Boxing were manuals of techniques or histories of practice. It is only because they are included in the section on artful skills, and that the titles of the archery manuals strongly suggest that those works are manuals of techniques, that it seems reasonable to believe that the fencing and boxing works are also manuals of techniques. Of course, several works of military thought are in the same section, raising some insoluble questions of ontology. The next dynastic history to have a military books section is The History of the Sui Dynasty (隋書 Suishu). It lists only one book on hand-to-hand fighting techniques, The Cavalry Spear List 馬槊譜 with a single scroll or chapter. The bibliography also notes that there were two chapters to the book during the Liang dynasty (502–587), and that the Liang also had three works, Standards for Horse Riding Units 騎馬都格 in one chapter, Charts for Horse Riding Changes 騎馬變圖 in one chapter, and The Horse Archery List 馬射 譜 in one chapter, that were all lost (Wei 1973, 34.2736). While the military books section is primarily devoted to works on strategy, it also included quite a few manuscripts on chess, pitch pot (tuohu) and games, none of which had been in The History of the Han Dynasty in that category. Given that games entailed a similar process of strategic thinking, the inclusion of them alongside strategic works made some sense. The editors clearly felt that manuals concerned with hand-to-hand fighting did belong in the ‘Military Books’ section, as demonstrated by the single citation and the accompanying note listing lost works. Unfortunately, we don’t know why there were so few martial arts works in the Sui imperial collection. There were fewer works than were available during the Liang dynasty, but it was recent enough that the editors knew what had been lost. They offer no comments on any other martial arts texts that were lost or unavailable. On the other hand, they include, for the first time, books on games in the military books category, showing a shift in thinking about what that category encompassed. The Suí dynasty was succeeded by the Táng dynasty (618–907). There are two standard histories of the Táng dynasty, The Old History of the Tang Dynasty and The New History of the Tang Dynasty. The Old History was compiled by Liú Xù 劉昫 (888–947) and Zhāng Zhāoyuǎn 張昭遠 (jinshi 877) during the Later Jìn dynasty 後晉 (936–946) based upon an earlier history (now lost). It was originally called The History of the Tang Dynasty (唐書 Tangshu), until Sòng Qí 宋祁 (998–1061) and Ōuyáng Xiū’s 歐陽脩 (1007–1072) history of the Táng began to be called The New History of the Tang Dynasty. The Old History was never very well regarded, and fell so



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much out of favour that it had to be reconstructed during the Qīng dynasty (1644–1911). The New History was submitted to the throne in 1060, after a team of scholars worked on it for seventeen years. It was better written than The Old History as well as being better edited and provided superior coverage of later Táng history than The Old History. For those reasons, as well as the association of Ōuyáng Xiū, a famous statesman and literatus, with the work, it soon displaced what became known as The Old History. All of the works listed under military books in The Old History of the Tang Dynasty are military thought texts (Liu and Zhang 1975, 47.2039–41). The ‘Military Books’ section of The New History of the Tang Dynasty also only contains works on military thought (Song and Ouyang 1975, 59.1509). In the ‘Various Arts and Techniques’ (雜藝術 zayishu) section of The New Tang History, there are four works on archery: Xuánzōng’s Horse Archery Diagram 玄宗馬射圖; Wáng Jū’s Archery Classic 王琚射經, one chapter; Zhāng Shǒuzhōng’s Archery Record 張守忠射記, one chapter; and Rèn Quán’s Bow and Arrow Discourse, one chapter, along with at least one book on polo and a few on horses. The Old Tang History has no works on martial arts anywhere in its bibliography. Given the similarities in the contents of the section on military books between the two histories, the editors of The New History either were able to obtain further information about the Táng imperial collection or chose, for some reason, to include the martial arts works, when Liú Xù and Zhāng Zhāoyuǎn, the editors of The Old History, did not. The next standard dynastic history to have a bibliographic treatise was for the Sòng dynasty. The History of the Song Dynasty was compiled very rapidly during the Mongol Yuán dynasty (1279–1368). In The History of the Song Dynasty bibliography, there are no martial arts manuals in the ‘Military Books’ section, and all of the martial arts manuals are in the section on various arts and techniques, which includes games like Wéiqí 圍棋 (Go), pitch pot and calligraphy, among other arts. (The only possible exception to this is Li Pu’s Archery and Horse [Toqto’a 1995, 207.5283].) All of the martial arts manuals are archery manuals or records; there are no unarmed fighting manuals or sword manuals. There are 27 archery manuals in the ‘Various Arts and Techniques’ section out of a total of 116 works (Toqto’a 1995, 207.5289–92). This is the most extensive collection of martial arts manuals of any of the imperial collections, though it might be more precise to say that it is the most extensive collection of archery manuals in any of the imperial collections. It is possible that the proliferation of archery manuals was a consequence of the spread of printing during the Sòng dynasty. This is not to say that more manuals were produced, though that is possible, but that more survived. Printing, and the circulation of works in the expanded book market, may also have brought those manuals to the attention of the men responsible for the imperial collection. Given the extraordinary number of works collected,

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however, it does appear as if there was a concerted effort to gather those manuals. The fact that only archery manuals were collected supports the idea that the large number of works in the collection was the result of a very specific effort. The Sòng government created a military exam system during the eleventh century, along with a military academy. Archery was the primary physical skills tested, and since the exam was aimed at creating military officials and officers, both mounted and dismounted archeries were tested. Some other combat skills were intermittently tested, but archery was the only constant skill. At the same time, there was a long-running debate about which military texts to test, and whether the physical or mental part of the exam should come first. Eventually, this process led to the creation of The Seven Military Classics in 1084, which then became the official exam and academy curriculum and established the canon of Chinese military thought thereafter. This debate was ongoing while Sòng Qí and Ōuyáng Xiū were writing The New History of the Tang Dynasty, and it may have influenced Ōuyáng to include some works on archery in his history, as opposed to the earlier Old History of the Tang Dynasty. Archery was always a classically attested Confucian practice, particularly the village archery ceremony. Pitch pot, which was now in the ‘Various Arts and Techniques’ section, was considered by some literati to be a sort of substitute for actual archery. A player threw a dull, weighted arrow at the mouth of an upright bronze pot with a narrow mouth, trying to get the arrow into the hole. Like the village archery ceremony, a considerable amount of wine drinking was involved in the game. Lacking any direct discussion of why so many archery works were collected, or even knowledge of what the contents of the many manuals contained, the only thing that is certain is that they were important to someone connected to the imperial library. The bibliography of Sòng martial arts (archery) manuals: Lǐ Guǎng’s Archery Evaluation Record (李廣射評要錄\卷) Wéi Yùn’s Nine Lenses Archery Classic, one chapter (韋蘊九鏡射經一卷) Wáng Jū’s Archery Classic, one chapter (王琚射經一卷) Wáng Jiāndào’s Archery Secrets, one chapter (王堅道射訣一卷) Records of the True and Broad Bow Classic, one chapter (紀亶廣弓經一卷) Wáng Déyòng’s Divine Archery System, one chapter (王德用神射式一卷) Liú Huáidé’s Archery Method, one chapter (劉懷德射法一卷) Rén Quán’s Bow and Arrow Instructions for the Very Young, one chapter (任權弓箭啟蒙一卷) Zhāng Zhòngshāng’s Archery Instruction, one chapter (張仲商射訓一卷) Mǎ Sīyǒng’s Archery Secrets, one chapter (馬思永射訣一卷) Wáng Yuèshí’s Archery Discussion, one chapter (王越石射議一卷)



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Hé Guī’s Discussion of Important Points in Archery, one chapter (何珪射義 提要一卷) The Archery Classic, three chapters (射經三卷) Zhāng Zhòngsù’s Archery Classic, three chapters (張仲素射經三卷) Tián Yì’s Archery Classic, four chapters (田逸射經四卷) Wáng Jū’s Archery Classic, two chapters (王琚射經二卷) Nine Mirror’s Archery Diagrams, one chapter (九鑑射圖一卷) Xú Kǎi’s Archery Book, fifteen chapters (徐鍇射書十五卷) Wéi Yùn’s Archery Secrets, one chapter (韋蘊射訣一卷) Lǐ Zhāng’s Archery Secrets, three chapters (李章射訣三卷) Zhāng Zǐxiāo’s Divine Archery Secrets, one chapter (張子霄神射訣一卷) Lǐ Jìng’s Bow Secrets, one chapter (李靖弓訣一卷) Pointing to the Secrets of Methods for Archery, one chapter (法射指訣一卷) Huáng Sǔn’s Archery Method, one chapter (黃損射法一卷) Zhāng Shǒuzhõng’s Archery Record, one chapter (張守忠射記一卷) Bow Secrets, one chapter (弓訣一卷) Lǔ Huìqīng’s Bow Test, one section (chapter lost) (呂惠卿弓試一部卷亡) After the Sòng dynasty, the next dynastic history to have a bibliography treatise was that of the Míng dynasty. The History of the Ming Dynasty’s ‘Military Books’ section almost exclusively lists works on military thought, army administration and, perhaps, castrametation. It does include the later edition of Qī Jìguāng’s Jixiao Xinshu, in fourteen chapters as well as Yú Dàyóu’s 俞大猷 (1503–1579) Sword Classic (劍經). The later edition of Jixiao Xinshu did not contain the five martial arts chapters, as discussed further, leaving only Yú Dàyóu’s volume as a true martial arts manual in the ‘Military Books’ section. None of the more than two dozen Sòng archery texts made it into The History of the Ming Dynasty, and there were no martial arts books in the ‘Various Arts and Techniques’ section. There were, however, four archery texts listed under the ‘Ritual’ section: Chén Fèngwú’s Collected Essentials on Archery Rituals (陳鳳梧射禮集要), one chapter; Diagrams and Notes on the Village Archery Ritual (鄉射禮圖注), one chapter; Diagrams and Explanations for Questioners Commenting on Drinking and Archery (聞人詮飲射圖 解), one chapter; and Zhū Jìn’s Collected Explanations of the Archery Ritual (朱縉射禮集解), one chapter (Zhang 1995, 96.2358–9). Some Míng dynasty martial arts manuals that were not recorded in the imperial bibliographies are extant, though all but one, Wáng Jū’s Archery Classic (王琚射經), definitely postdate Qī Jìguāng’s Jixiao Xinshu. Wáng Jū’s Archery Classic purports to be a Táng dynasty work, attributed to Wáng Jū and transmitted into the Míng dynasty via a Yuán dynasty recension done by Táo Zōngyí (陶宗儀) (1329–1410). (It was also called The Teaching Archery Classic [教射經].) Stephen Selby has pointed to the obvious

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anachronisms of the work, linguistic problems and the simply tenuous transmission of the material until it was finally written down. He suggests that the ‘mnemonics in verse’ may well date from the Táng, with the rest later elaboration (Selby 2000, 210–11). If the work were certifiably Táng, it would take pride of place as the earliest martial arts manuals. Given the profound uncertainties of the text, in both filiation and transmission, however, there seems to be no reliable way to date it earlier than the Míng. A one-chapter version of the work is recorded in The New Tang History (see earlier) as well as the military institutions section of Dù Yòu’s 杜佑 (735–812) Tongdian 通典. Two versions of a text by that name are recorded in the Sòng bibliography, one with one chapter and one with two chapters. Whether those were root texts edited by Táo Zōngyí or whether Táo created a new work using an established name is unclear. It is also unclear if the received Míng text was Táo’s text. The final problem in accepting the extant work as a received Táng manual is that, despite its listing in both The New Tang History and The Song History, it was not included in The Ming History. Two other Míng texts should be mentioned: Yú Dàyóu’s Zheng Qi Tangj 正氣堂集 and Gāo Yǐng’s 高穎 1637 archery manual (Gao 2015). Only one part of Yú Dàyóu’s larger military manual, Zheng Qi Tangji (The Sword Classic), concerned martial arts techniques, with the rest focused on other military topics. As we have seen, The Sword Classic circulated separately and was listed in the Míng imperial bibliography. Yú Dàyóu’s archery technique was used by Qī Jìguāng in his manual, as both men had worked together in the pirate suppression campaigns on China’s southeast coast. Most subsequent Chinese archers followed Yú’s technique. Gāo Yǐng was a significant exception, though his work was influential only in Japan, not China. The Wrestling Record The Wrestling Record is listed in The Song Dynasty History under the ‘Essays and Minor Works’ (小說 xiaoshuo) category of books, and is currently extant (Toqto’a 1995, 206.5222). It appears to be the only work about martial arts as a historical subject in the Song dynasty imperial bibliography. There is no other information about its author, Diào Lùzi or Lòuzi (調露子). He was clearly a man of some education but was neither prominent nor fortunate enough to have been mentioned in any history or text. The Wrestling Record is the only work solely focused on wrestling mentioned anywhere in all of Chinese history, despite wrestling’s recognized place in performances, ceremonies and classical texts. Wrestling was an ordinary part of Chinese culture, perhaps so ordinary that it never became a standard subject for scholarship.



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The work begins with a quote from Confucius: ‘The Master did not discuss prodigies, feats of strength, disorderly conduct, or the supernatural’ (Confucius [Slingerland trans.], The Analects, 71). Diào Lùzi thus immediately addresses the basic problem of discussing martial arts that it is inappropriate for an educated person to study. With appropriate polite language, however, he points out that despite Confucius’s avoidance of these topics, a number of works on precisely those topics had been compiled. Moreover, wrestling performances in the marketplace were frequent and common. Diào’s main justifications, then, are that people write about this sort of thing and it’s happening anyway. Diào goes on to cite The Cavalry Spear List (馬槊譜), recorded in The History of the Sui Dynasty, and informs us that it was the work of Liang emperor Jianwen (503–551). The History of the Sui Dynasty’s bibliography did not record this rather important point, which makes the attribution highly suspect. If a bibliographer much closer in time to the Liang dynasty was unaware that an emperor was responsible in some way for the creation of a text, it seems much less likely, though not impossible, that someone writing several centuries later would have that information. Diào’s point, however, is clear. An emperor, and one known as an important poet while crown prince, felt it appropriate to create a work on martial arts or martial matters. The Wrestling Record does collect together stories of past instances of wrestling, as well as define certain wrestling terms, but its stories are confined to episodes from well-known texts. Diào’s definitions of wrestling terms are more unique, not only providing for the antiquarian needs of the scholar but also clarifying the shifting terminology and practice over time. Effectively, Diào enables an interested reader to understand the place of wrestling. He in no way attempts to explain actual techniques, or to suggest that the reader of his work would be physically involved in wrestling. Diào also gives no indication that he, himself, wrestled. The Wrestling Record was a work by a literatus for men of a similar background and culture. It was not a training manual. Qī Jìguāng and the Jixiao Xinshu The earliest extant martial arts training manual, rather than one focused on group tactics, was that of Qī Jìguāng. General Qī Jìguāng produced his first edition of the Jixiao Xinshu in 1560 as part of his programme to improve military training. General Qī was a member of a hereditary military family and had already established a good reputation as a trainer of troops when he was sent to the southeast coast of China in 1555 to suppress incursions by the Wokou pirates.

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His use of newly drafted men forced him not only to train them in the basics of fighting but also to articulate that training into a written programme that would regularize practice among all the new units he raised. Immediately after the chapters on tactical formations, General Qī set out five chapters on martial arts, ‘Long Weapons’ (長兵 chángbīng), ‘Shields and Polearms’ (牌 筅 páixiǎn), ‘Short Weapons’ (短兵 duǎnbīng), ‘Archery’ (射法) and ‘The Boxing Classic’ (拳經), chapters 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14, respectively. In the introduction to the first chapter, ‘Long Weapons’, he argues that without ‘arts’ 藝 yi, soldiers will be ineffective. They must be unified, respond to orders by drums and gongs, but also be able to fight. By ‘arts’ he clearly means martial arts, and these skills are divided among the five chapters. Combining long and short weapons was a long-standing shorthand for proper military training for troop units. Chapter 10 on long weapons begins by discussing ‘long weapons for short use’. This sets up the idea that the mix of contact weapons allows soldiers to use one kind of weapon to defeat another kind. Chapter 11, on shields and polearms, also includes the use of sword (curved, single-edged) and shield. Chapter 12, on short weapons, begins by discussing ‘short weapons for long use’, following the lead of chapter 10, and reflecting the opposite side of long-short weapon use. Short weapons included the staff, which chapter 12 argues is the central weapon: ‘Using the staff is like reading The Four Books.1 The hook, sword, spear, is like each of the classics’ (Qi 1995, vol. 18, 371). In ‘The Boxing Classic’, he looked at a number of schools of unarmed combat and found them all wanting. Most, he felt, were effective in one respect, but not in others. Taken together they would form a complete system. Faced with this reality, he developed his own system to teach his troops. The introduction to ‘The Boxing Classic’ is the only justification in a Chinese military manual for training soldiers in unarmed combat extant from before the sixteenth century. Its focus on unarmed combat makes it important for modern martial arts studies.2 The subsequent removal of all of the martial arts chapters from General Qī’s manual suggests that they were less significant during the sixteenth century. General Qī begins: From ancient times until the present, among boxers, Song Taizu had 32 position Long Fist. There were also the named positions that Six Paces boxing, Monkey boxing, and Transformation boxing each called what they did; the similarities are great, the differences small. At present [there are] the Wen Family SeventyTwo Movements boxing, Thirty-Six Interlocking, Twenty-Four Dispelling Reconnaissance, Eight Lightning Changes, and Twenty-Four Short. These also are the best of the best. Currently, Lü Hóng’s eight takedowns although hard do not reach the limit of Zhāng’s short striking, Shāndōng Lǐ Half the Sky’s kicks, Hawk Talon Wang’s grasp, Thousand Fall Zhāng’s Falls, Zhāng Bójìng’s strikes,



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Shaolin Temple’s staff and Qīngtián’s staff techniques, together with Yáng family spear technique and Bāzi boxing’s staff are all famous. Although each has choice aspects, one has the top but not the bottom, or the bottom but not the top, so one can achieve victory over someone without this surpassing the bias of one viewpoint. If each school’s boxing techniques could be taken together and practiced, then it would be like the true Mount Cháng snake technique: strike the head then the tail will respond, strike the tail then the head will respond, strike the body and the head and tail will mutually respond. (Qi 1995, vol. 18, 449–52)

Qī Jìguāng did not discuss martial arts ‘styles’ but rather schools, or people following a teacher. He used the term ‘jiā’ 家, which means a house, family, home or relatives. It can also mean, as a suffix, one who does something. He therefore discussed boxers or pugilists (拳家), the first term quán 拳 means ‘fist’, and here referring to those who use the fist. More broadly this can also mean unarmed combat, and sometimes martial arts including weapons. Usually, however, in traditional Chinese sources, unarmed striking combat is distinguished from wrestling and the various forms of armed combat. The terminology of traditional Chinese martial arts separated particular skills, striking, wrestling, fencing, archery and so forth. This introduction remains our first written record of different schools within those skills groups. Qī Jìguāng spent just as much space in his 1560 manual discussing archery as he did unarmed fighting. Archery required no introduction or explanation for its place in his manual, though it would suffer the same fate as the unarmed combat chapter in his later revision. As the examples from the Song imperial bibliography show, writing about archery was a time-honoured tradition. The removal of archery for the revised manual shows just how much of a mental shift General Qī made because of guns. A second work recording General Qī’s lectures to his troops on the northern border, facing the Mongols, also made it clear that guns were the only real advantage that Míng troops had over the Mongols. The Mongols were fundamentally superior in archery as well as horse riding, rendering any attempt to compete with them on those grounds useless. Unarmed combat was even more impractical. It is possible that this intermediate volume, and General Qī’s posting to the northern border, was partly responsible for his shift in thinking about military training. But the three chapters on weapon use were also removed, and weapon use subordinated to guns, in the 1584 edition. These three chapters, ‘Long Weapons’ (長兵 chángbīng), ‘Shields and Polearms’ (牌筅 páixiǎn) and ‘Short Weapons’ (短兵 duǎnbīng), chapters 10, 11 and 12, respectively, immediately preceded the chapter on archery, chapter 13, and unarmed combat, chapter 14. The weapon chapters have not attracted much attention from martial arts historians or from archery studies historians (usually two distinct

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groups), though their association with these two aspects of martial arts is obvious. CONCLUSION The genre of martial arts manual or even studies of martial arts like The Wrestling Record has a very long history in China. Earlier Chinese writers, however, had very different interests than modern martial artists, and this was reflected in the sorts of books that were written, read and collected. From the available evidence, archery was the most important subject for writers, almost to the exclusion of any other martial art. The lack of works on unarmed combat, whether wrestling or striking, and the similarly limited number of works on contact weapon skills, makes Qī Jìguāng’s 1560 coverage of all of these skills particularly noteworthy, even anomalous. Qī Jìguāng’s close connection with Yú Dàyóu, a renown martial artist, whose own martial arts manual made it into the Míng imperial collection and whose archery technique General Qī used in his manual, suggests that it was precisely that relationship that led him to include that material. By 1584, however, General Qī reduced or eliminated not only unarmed combat but contact weapons and archery as well from his manual. This was a road not taken and a return to the more usual course of works on martial arts. Archery manuals were similar to The Wrestling Record in their intended audience. Unlike The Wrestling Record, however, archery manuals did not have to be justified to the educated reader. Educated men wrote about archery because there was a history of writing about archery and because it was an appropriate topic for Confucianized intellectuals. They did not write about other aspects of martial arts because there was no history of doing so, and it was not an appropriate topic. Both Qī Jìguāng and Yú Dàyóu were educated men, and likely strongly influenced by Confucian culture, but they were military officials, not civil officials, and held military exam degrees. Later Chinese literati who wrote about martial arts other than archery were idiosyncratic outliers. The Wrestling Record was a rare book that somehow found its way into the Sòng imperial collection but was categorized in ‘Essays and Minor Works’. In total, this survey has covered a bit less than four dozen Chinese texts on martial arts written in the sixteenth century or before. A handful of those works are extant and necessarily form much of the basis of our understanding of pre-modern martial arts practice in China. Consequently, what we don’t know far exceeds what we do. The modern perspective on martial arts, fundamentally biased by late imperial and early twentieth-century interpretations, has no basis in early texts. The possibilities for the early history of martial arts



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remain vast but not the reconstruction of actual techniques. It is only in the late Míng dynasty that a heavy layer of martial arts myths began to overlay what was actually known, and obscure the very different landscape of martial arts practice that is knowable from the extant texts. NOTES 1. The Four Books was the core of Confucian education, and thus all education. Compiled by the great Neo-Confucian thinker Zhu Xi in the twelfth century, it was made up of Confucius’s Analects, Mencius, The Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean. 2. Zheng Ruoceng (鄭若曾) (1503–1570) Jiangnan Jinglue (江南經略), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji chubanshe, 1990, 426–7, also contains a brief discussion of different practitioners of martial arts. First produced in 1568, it shows that Zheng, who also took part in the campaign against the Wokou pirates, shared General Qī’s interest in martial arts.

REFERENCES Ban Gu. 1998. Hanshu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Confucius (Edward Slingerland trans.). 2003. The Analects. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing. Gao Ying (Jie Tian and Justin Ma trans.). 2015. The Way of Archery: A 1637 Chinese Military Training Manual. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing. Liu Xu and Zhang Zhaoyuan. 1975. Jiu Tangshu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Qi Jiguang. 1995. ‘Jixiao Xinshu’. In Zhongguo Bingshu Jicheng. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe. Selby, Stephen. 2000. Chinese Archery. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Song Qi and Ouyang Xiu. 1975. Xin Tangshu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Toqto’a Liaoshi. 1995. Songshi. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Wei Zheng. 1973. Suishu. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Zhang Tingyu. 1973. Mingshi. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Zheng Ruoceng. 1990. Jiangnan Jinglue. Shanghai: Shanghai Guji chubanshe.

Chapter 3

The Battlefield and the Bedroom Chinese Martial Arts and Art of the Bedchamber Douglas Wile INTRODUCTION This chapter explores the rhetorical, theoretical and practical intersections of the Chinese martial arts and bedroom arts. Under Zhuangzi’s dictum, ‘Through art we approach the dao’, there is much interpenetration of all the Chinese arts, sciences and self-cultivation practices, whether they are called dao, fa, shu or ji. Knowledge in these arts is encoded in canonical writings (jing, lun), featuring mnemonic aphorisms (jue), and specialized vocabulary (shuyu) unique to each art. Both describe their methods and goals in terms of self-defence, sharing such terms as ‘battle’, ‘enemy’, ‘victory’ and ‘defeat’, and both show a penchant for zoomorphic posture (shi) names. Luo Han’s ‘Gudai fangzhongshu jiemi’ (Revealing the secrets of the art of the bedchamber) highlights the rhetorical reciprocity of the martial arts and bedroom arts when it says: ‘Absorbing the sexual essence of many partners is the method for increasing one’s own, just like the heroes of martial arts novels who vanquish a multitude of foes’ (Luo 2011). The folk genealogy of the two arts and their shared origin can be seen in a recent article entitled ‘Pengzu yangsheng fangzhongshu’ (Pengzu’s art of the bedchamber for health), which declares: ‘Peng Zu was the father of health practices, and the patron saint of culinary arts, martial arts, and bedroom arts’ (‘Pengzu’ 2012). The juxtaposition of martial arts and bedroom arts in the curriculum of ‘China’s Methuselah’ underlines their close association in the Chinese doxa and their efficacy in promoting longevity. Similarly, the ritual playbook of Daoist priests has historically included the bedroom arts, used for therapy and the collective ‘expiation of sins’ (shizui), as well as sword dance, used in purification and exorcism ceremonies. 27

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On the theoretical level, both martial arts and bedroom arts use principles derived from Chinese cosmology, medicine, meditation and military science. As somatic arts, the body itself is the medium of experience, often described in terms of metaphysical binaries: yin-yang, hard-soft and full-empty. Softstyle Asian martial arts share with the bedroom arts the strategy of playing the defensive role, enticing the ‘enemy’ to overextend, while maintaining one’s own centre, conserving and borrowing energy. Both martial arts and bedroom arts show a diachronic arc from the narrow instrumentality of procreation and self-defence to aesthetics, health and transcendence. The inner alchemy formula, ‘Refine the sexual essence (jing) into vital energy (qi), and the vital energy into spirit (shen); revert to emptiness and unite with the dao’, has been adopted as the ultimate goal and method of the bedroom arts and martial arts. Both the martial arts and bedroom arts often couch their theoretical principles in terms of metaphor and paradox. Taking their inspiration from the Daodejing and Art of War, both use water, for example, as an objective correlative: the Daodejing says, ‘Nothing is weaker than water, but in overcoming the strong, nothing compares’. Echoing this, the Art of War states, ‘An army is like water, which avoids high ground and seeks the low, avoids the full and attacks the empty’. Taijiquan master Zheng Manqing says, ‘In moving be like water; in stillness be like a mirror’, and he compares taijiquan to ‘swimming on dry land’ (Zheng 1982, 22). In the bedroom arts, woman is water – slow to heat up, but sustainable – man is fire – quickly aroused, but quickly extinguished, especially by water. Fire and water are used as metaphors for the heart/mind and kidneys (urogenital system), thus the admonition in both arts to ‘hold the mind in the dantian’ (fire under water, as in the hexagram After Completion), which results in body-mind integration and a controlled state of psychosomatic invigoration. The Art of War’s ‘strike second and defeat the enemy’ echoes the Daodejing’s, ‘stay behind and be the first’. Allowing the opponent to strike first is central to the strategy of the martial arts, and the bedroom arts consistently counsel the male to allow the woman to be the aggressor. Again, the Daodejing’s ‘what the world considers beautiful is ugly’ and the Art of War’s ‘everyone applauds military victory, but this is not the highest good’ express this paradox. In martial arts, this takes the form of emphasizing defence, listening, sensing and blending, while allowing the opponent to strike first and neutralizing with softness, or, in Zheng Manqing’s words, ‘investing in loss’. In the art of the bedchamber, the man arouses his partner’s passion, even as he remains emotionally detached and waits for the ‘enemy’ to surrender her energetic treasure. On the practical level, both martial arts and bedroom arts are embodied practices, habitus or technique du corps, addressing aspects of life considered vital to survival. The Yangxing yanming lu (‘Record of nurturing health and lengthening life’) says: ‘Sex can kill a man and it can also give life’, and the



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Quanjing (Classic of pugilism) says: ‘Not knowing the martial arts is like a sudden clap of thunder that arrives before we can cover our ears’ (Wile 1992, 122; 1999, 18). Thus, from ancient times, sex and self-defence have been considered existential concerns for the individual and the state. The survival of the ancient bedroom arts teachings in modern Asian martial arts circles is attested in the following news item: ‘Japanese Olympic gold medalist in judo Masato Uchishiba believes that the “art of stealing sexual essence to supplement your own” can revive one’s strength, and as a coach at Kumamoto University had sex with countless coeds and fans. . . . This corresponds to the Japanese saying: “It takes many flowers to make the honey sweet” ’ (‘Riben’ 2013). Unlike so much of classical Chinese thought that focuses on social roles and statecraft, the martial arts and bedroom arts involve interpersonal relationships: the self in relation to an adversary, and the self in relation to a master. The search for training partners and for a master involves elaborate negotiations, and the master-disciple relationship requires rites of initiation, the transmission of ‘secrets’ and the preservation of lineage. The code of secrecy operates on two levels in each of the arts: secrecy in transmission and secrecy from the ‘enemy’. The secrecy of transmission is the cultural capital that masters use to secure the loyalty and devotion of their disciples and also prevents dangerous information from falling into the ‘wrong’ hands. In the bedroom arts, practitioners are warned not to reveal the secret of coitus reservatus so as not to alarm their partners or give them ideas about turning the tables. In the martial arts, too, masters are said to ‘withhold one technique’ (liu yi shou), which acts as a hedge against senior students’ challenges. When dealing with an opponent, it is also important not to telegraph intentions and to remain empty and spontaneous, free of programmed responses. The Wang Zongyue taijiquan lun (Wang Zongyue’s treatise on taijiquan) says, ‘The opponent does not understand me, but I understand him’ (Wile 1983, 124). In classical philosophy, this subtle form of secrecy is called ‘keeping the people ignorant’ (yumin). The Daodejing says, ‘The reason why the people are difficult to rule is because they are too smart’, and Sunzi’s Art of War warns, ‘Keep the soldiers deaf and blind and cause them to be ignorant’. Thus, secrecy in the Chinese martial and bedroom arts explicitly instantiates the coincidence of knowledge and power. A TALE OF TWO TEXTS: MARTIAL METAPHORS IN THE BEDROOM ARTS, SEXUAL METAPHORS IN THE MARTIAL ARTS The rhetorical relationship between the martial arts and bedroom arts is epitomized by two texts, both attributed to legendary immortal Zhang Sanfeng,

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whose name is associated with alchemy, inner alchemy, the dual cultivation school and martial arts. A work attributed to Zhang entitled ‘Secret Principles of Gathering the True Essence’ (Caizhen jiyao) admonishes the would-be adept: ‘In doing battle, one must make the opponent furious. Though the opponent is furious, I do not play the hero. If I do not renounce heroism, there will be contention’. The commentary adds: ‘This expresses the idea that, when having intercourse, you must allow your partner to move freely, while refraining from movement yourself. If I were to move but once, I would lose my precious treasure’ (Wile 1992, 179). Similarly, the ‘All-Merciful Savior Lord Chunyang’s True Classic of Perfect Union’ (Chunyang yanzheng fuyu dijun jiji zhenjing) counsels: ‘When lances are crossed, I do not contend, but enter a state of mental abstraction. I will now occupy the low ground, while she takes the high ground’ (Wile 1992, 134–35). As in the Art of War, woman in the art of the bedchamber is an enemy that cannot be subdued by superior force, but by stratagem. She must be made ‘furious’ (fully aroused) by allowing her to ‘move freely’ (satisfy herself), to ‘occupy the high ground’ (female superior position), and to become complacent (drop her guard). All of this is achieved by the male’s renouncing ‘heroism’: emotional detachment, non-contention and willingness to occupy the low ground. Ultimately, these tactics are intended to induce her to surrender her sexual essence as the spoils of war. For a cognate text in the martial arts tradition, we have the rare and remarkable ‘Oral Transmission of Master Zhang Sanfeng’ (Koushou Zhang Sanfeng laoshi zhi yan). Under the yin-yang meta-binary, it uses male-female, civilmartial, mind-body; as well as inner alchemy dyads: mercury-lead, secluded maiden-baby boy; and trigram pairs: qian-kun, kan-li and dui-zhen. In the age-old debate over whether to cultivate the body first, the mind first, or both simultaneously, it takes the side of the body, attempting to deconstruct the hierarchy of civil over martial, mind over body, and valorize the martial arts as a spiritual path by stealing the theoretical thunder of inner and sexual alchemy. Over the long course of self-cultivation regimens in China, the inner alchemy school has challenged the outer alchemy school for legitimacy, and the sexual alchemy school, in turn, challenged the inner alchemy school. Here, the author of ‘The Oral Transmission of Master Zhang Sanfeng’ issues a manifesto for martial alchemy, claiming its superiority to all other practices. It combines the method of dual cultivation from the sexual school with the inner ‘marriage’, or ‘battle’, of yin and yang from the solo cultivation school. Relevant excerpts from the text include: Human intelligence and skill naturally express themselves in the realms of the civil and martial. The vision of the eyes and hearing of the ears are natural civil faculties; gestures of the hands and dancing of the feet are natural martial



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faculties. . . . The body’s yang is male, and the body’s yin is female, but both are located within the body. The male body possesses only one yang, and the rest is female yin. Because this one yang engages in the battle of essences with the whole body’s yin female, it is said, ‘The one yang returns to the beginning’. . . . In this way, the male body belongs to yin, and in harvesting the yin in one’s own body, that is, engaging in the battle of essences with the female in one’s own body, it is not as good as the interaction of yin and yang between two males, as this is a quicker method of self-cultivation. . . . Now, the battle of essences between two males is precisely the same principle as the battle of essences within one’s own body. (Wile 1996, 85)

The text proceeds to relate the trigrams kan, li, dui and zhen with the ‘four sides’ techniques (peng, lü, ji an) in push-hands sparring and to the process of yang doing battle with yin; the trigrams qian, kun, gen and xun relate to the ‘four corners’ techniques (cai, lie, zhou kao) and the process of harvesting. ‘Harvesting’ (cai) refers to capturing and refining yang energy, either internally or from a partner. From the point of view of the five phases, advancing with yang is doing battle, while retreating with yin is harvesting; gazing left with yang is harvesting, and looking right with yin is doing battle. The text is not explicit about whether this esoteric sparring practice is mutually beneficial to both partners, but the assumption of energy exchange and restoration of pure yang is implicit. MARTIAL ARTISTS MAKE BETTER LOVERS Mixing of the sexes in the modern training hall has created a whole new discursive space for martial arts and sex. Although much of the news in this area is dominated by preparing women to defend themselves against sexual assault and the sexual improprieties of male martial arts instructors, our focus here is exclusively on analogies between the martial arts and bedroom arts and their mutual influence on performance. Thus, we examine martial arts skill as a predictor of sexual performance, parallels between sex and martial arts, sensitivity and respect for boundaries, the breakdown of stereotypical gender roles and formation of new identities and the physical development that leads to enhanced sexual performance. Beyond the scope of this study is the subculture of martial homoeroticism, which takes the act of training and developing ‘hard’ bodies as a kind of foreplay to genital contact. The ‘science’ of physiognomy has a long history in China, and many of the sexology classics devote a section to divining a woman’s sexual characteristics from her general appearance and demeanour (xiangnü). The modern version of this traditional practice can be seen in Kiyoshi Suzaki’s observation: ‘A simple katatedori grab should allow us to perceive everything about

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our partner: the Aikido rank, tensions if any, issues, being shy or not, an open mind or not, and, who knows, how he/she makes love without even sleeping together’ (Suzaki 2012). Romantic first impressions in the training hall allow one to go beyond the senses of sight, sound, smell and even ‘body language’, to the tactile communication of touch. Many in the martial arts community wonder about the link between martial and sexual performance, and especially whether martial artists make good lovers or good lovers make good martial artists. In a post entitled ‘Aikido and Sexual Connection’, Sugar Britches muses: I’ve only had a few lovers who were also aikidoka, but they were as talented in bed as on the mat, and it leads me to wonder if being a dedicated and receptive training partner in Aikido translates into being a more sensitive and responsive sexual partner as well? Think about it: both activities require energy, stamina, breath control, timing, and sensitivity to your partner’s body and the way s/he responds to you. (Sugar Britches 2005)

There is universal acknowledgement that martial arts involve a kind of physical intimacy, requiring great sensitivity and mutual respect in order to maintain a safe space for participants. A poster calling herself Sam B explores the feminist implications of women training in the dojo: ‘It’s a terrific chance for younger women and men to learn about consent and bodily autonomy. You, the person on whom the technique is being performed, get to say when enough is enough. . . . Personally I find that pretty empowering’ (Sam 2014). She notes how rare it is, outside of medical contexts, for adults to touch, and how even rarer for the sexes to touch in a non-sexual way. Beyond sexual selfdefence, she suggests that men and women training together is a preventive measure that teaches both sexes communication and boundaries. Channon and Jennings propose that entirely new gender identities and relationships are incubated in the training hall: ‘Within a social-constructionist, feminist framework, heteronormative, patriarchal and paternalistic gender structures can potentially be challenged through sustained mixed-sex practice’ (Channon and Jennings 2013). Communication between two autonomous and equal subjects contrasts sharply with the subtle but one-sided signalling in the classic sexology texts, where the male subject observes the female object, secretly gathering intelligence on the ‘enemy’s’ arousal level in order to defeat her in the ‘battle of stealing essences’. Many feel that martial arts training can promote sexual fitness. As Katalin Ogren says: Sex can be thought of as an act of endurance, or hopefully that is the way you experience it. In many cases the arms and shoulders tend to get fatigued and therefore exercises that improve the muscular endurance of the limbs that hold



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you up can also improve your sexual experiences. But truth be told, there is an area referred to as the sex muscles which are rarely utilized in the course of an average person’s day that happen to be integrated in so much of the martial arts and MMA training. (Ogren 2010)

She goes on to describe how martial arts training can supplement Kegel exercises, which strengthen the pelvic floor, making it easier for women to orgasm and men to delay ejaculation. Jennifer Lawler, the author of Dojo Wisdom, adds: ‘Martial arts are based on principles of movement and leverage, and you can use those principles in the bedroom’ (Lawler 2003). She goes on to outline four aspects of martial arts practice that improve performance in bed, two physical and two psychological: vocalization (kia), hip rotation, non-goal orientation and mindfulness. Although public discussion of sexual relations among martial artists is more common in the West, let us give the last word to a Chinese practitioner. Zhang Fang, the author of ‘Wushu xiulian yu fangzhongshu’ (Martial arts training and the art of the bedchamber), notes that both the ‘school of secret dalliance’ (mixi) and the ‘school of essence theft’ (caizhan) emphasize ejaculation control in accordance with traditional medical thinking. However, he rejects the sexual elixir school as unethical and ineffective, insisting it is inherently exploitative of women and not a real path to immortality. He also argues against the ‘superstition’ held by many martial artists that celibacy is a sine qua non, noting that the majority of high-level masters were married and that contact with women actually stimulates anti-aging hormones. Dismissing the traditional theory of ‘returning the jing to nourish the brain’, he argues that semen is a post-natal substance and irrelevant for cultivating the rarified ‘prenatal elixir’ (Zhang 2009). Zhang praises dual cultivation in rhapsodic terms, saying, ‘For men, the internal organs become cool . . . and for women, their saliva becomes clear and sweet as ice’. Comparing the bedroom arts and martial arts, he says that both require training of the sex organ: ‘iron crotch’ for the martial arts and ‘casting the sword’ for the bedroom arts. However, advancing a kind of sexual fengshui, he suggests that it is inspiring to choose auspicious environments, such as mountains for their fresh air or seaside resorts for the undulating movement of the waves. This sets the scene for exhilarating sexual cultivation, but no less for martial artists, citing ancient swordsmen, who trained in mountains noted for their bitter cold and metal ore deposits to cultivate the qualities of fierceness and hardness (Zhang 2009). In response to Zhang Fang’s article, Weng Xincheng acknowledges that many martial artists mistakenly believe that abstinence is essential for progress, but he calls it ‘unnatural and unnecessary’. He says, ‘It is necessary for martial artists to regulate their sex lives, and practicing martial arts, in turn,

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may improve the experience of sex; emphasizing the art of the bedchamber is an extension of the practice of martial arts’. Summoning all the lyrical resources of the Chinese language, he describes the sex act as bringing out the greatest beauty in both partners, banishing all cares, and leading to ecstasy (xiaohun). He concludes that martial artists are the best qualified to enjoy this transcendent experience because they are the most physically and psychologically refined, and lovemaking between two martial artists is ideal (Weng 2009). Another characteristic shared by martial arts and bedroom arts is improvisation. Sparring and sex, like improvisation in the fine arts, such as music, dance and theatre, involve the spontaneous flow of creativity. Contact improvisation in dance is probably the closest analogue of martial arts sparring and shares the same intimacy, immediacy and experimentation. In both cases, the body itself is the medium, rather than colours, tones or spoken word. As unstructured as performance may be, sparring and contact improvisation are not without their vocabulary and ground rules. Dancer Carolyn Stuart says: ‘I happened to have had some background of martial arts before I learned ballet and modern . . . and as far as I’m concerned, contact improvisation could be called “safe sex”, the safest sex of all’ (Stuart 2001). Sparring in the martial arts may be highly formalized or relatively free form, and the same is true for the bedroom arts. In the Western romantic tradition, the bedroom telos is conception or simultaneous orgasm, whereas in the Chinese art of the bedchamber, it is likely to be male offspring, coitus reservatus, or essence theft. GENITAL TRAINING IN THE MARTIAL ARTS Genital training in the martial arts goes under many names: ‘boy power’ (tongzigong), ‘testicle retracting technique’ (tunyinshu), ‘iron crotch’ (tiedanggong), ‘horse hides testicles’ (macangyin), ‘genital strengthening technique’ (gushengong, doushengong), ‘iron man exercise’ (yinghancao), ‘kidney yangqigong’ (shenzi yangqigong), and ‘post-pubescent exercise’ (pohancao), all of which promise immunity to low blows, resistance to masturbation, curing premature ejaculation, impotence, nocturnal emissions and polyuria, and winning the battle in the bedroom. The same menu of methods is found in the bedroom arts manuals, though the emphasis is more on coitus reservatus than surviving blows. The female equivalent is ‘cutting down the red dragon’ (kan chilong), which, like male practice, is aimed at reverting to pre-­ pubescent purity and wholeness. ‘Horse hides testicles’ was one of the thirtytwo signs of the Buddha, signifying his imperviousness to sexual temptation, and no less an authority than contemporary meditation master Nan Huaijin attests: ‘After a long period, when the sexual essence is replete and has been transformed, the testicles of male practitioners retract upward’ (Nan 2012).



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Pre-pubescent males are idolized in both traditions: beginning martial arts training as a young boy is considered an advantage, and sexual alchemy is aimed at replacing the sexual essence lost through puberty. Truly, the testicles are the Achilles heel of both martial arts and bedroom arts and have long been the target of training to prevent injury and loss. The ultimate goal of the martial arts is invincibility – to never suffer the trauma and humiliation of defeat; invincibility, too, is the goal of the bedroom arts – to gain full control over ejaculation and never show weakness to the ‘enemy’. What invincibility is to the martial arts, immortality is to inner and sexual alchemy. The martial arts have their hard and soft styles, and the bedroom arts, too, have a range from continence to abstinence. Abstinence in the Buddhist context, however, means celibacy; whereas in the Daoist context, abstinence means only minimizing seminal emissions, while maximizing the number of partners. The Shaolin warrior-monk is the iconic symbol of the synthesis of celibacy and martial arts, under the slogan ‘the unity of Zen and martial arts’ (chanwu heyi). Both strains display a yearning for transcendence, to escape the mundane and the mortal, and both acknowledge the transformative power of sublimated sexuality. Both pursue versions of mind over matter and confer prestige on those who perform heroic feats of dietary fasting or sexual abstinence. Whether aimed at improving performance for the martial artist or sexual adept, training begins with abstinence or moderation, and progresses to oral and topical herbal formulas, breath control, saliva swallowing, visualization, pubococcygeal isometrics, penile percussion, dantian, testicle and perineum massage and genital weightlifting (guadang, shuyin). Wan Laisheng (1903–1995), one of twentieth-century China’s most famous martial artists, prescribed a regimen including many of the above techniques and summarized the benefits in traditional terms: ‘When the semen is replete, it seeks to escape the body, but if you follow this practice, you can transform the original sexual essence into original qi and return the sexual essence to nourish the brain’ (Wan 1984). Thus, self-cultivation in the martial and meditative traditions, whether minimizing or maximizing sexual contact, takes sexual energy as foundational. MARTIAL ARTS FANTASY FICTION: ESSENCE DUELING AND SADOMASOCHISM There are two subgenres of martial arts fantasy fiction that bring together the martial arts and bedroom arts. The first involves male and female martial heroes, who engage in the battle of stealing essences in order to gain immortality, and the second features ingénue swordswomen, who experience sexual initiation at the hands of fiendish foes.

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One example of a novel that merges the tropes of martial prowess, the search for immortality and the bedroom arts is the Ming dynasty Intriguing Tale of Zhaoyang (Zhaoyang qushi), written under the pseudonym Yanyan Sheng. It tells the colourful story of a nine-tailed fox fairy named Wuzhen, who dwells in a mountain cave, cultivating the inner elixir for a thousand years. Still trapped in a mortal body, however, she lusts after the missing alchemical ingredient: yang essence from a male adept. Assuming the form of a beautiful maiden, she solicits a swordsman named Yanjing (Swallow Essence), and the two agree to a liaison. After engaging in the battle of stealing essences, the victorious fox fairy emerges with ‘a radiant completion, exuberant spirit, and boundless immortal energy’. When Yanjing learns that Wuzhen is gloating over her victory and, moreover, granted an audience with the Jade Emperor in Heaven, he orders his minions of sparrow spirits to prepare for battle with her: ‘Wielding a double-crescent halberd and suited in golden armor and helmet, he sallies forth to do battle’ (Yanyan 2012). The characters are all warriors, with tongues as sharp as their swords, and much of the story’s vitality comes from the jarring juxtaposition of poetic descriptions of exotic settings and coarse colloquial dialogue. Fox fairy succubi, of course, are fixtures of the Chinese popular imagination and represent the mythologization of male anxiety over loss of sexual potency, while the swallow is associated with spring and renewal through the return of the yang/ solar energy. The narrative illustrates the battle of the sexes played out across the bedroom and the battlefield. The second category of sexual fantasy martial arts fiction centres on swordswomen, who in spite of vaunted martial skills are bested by the superior strength of brutish antagonists and, under torture and rape, discover their latent sexuality. This heady mix of knight-errant fantasy with sadomasochistic sexuality reflects the enduring appeal of the swordswoman archetype on the one hand and current experimentation with transgressive sexual themes on the other. Making a mockery of Marxism, these tales are a hybrid of De Sade’s sexualization of torture and The Song of Youth and Red Detachment of Women’s politicization of torture. More Justine than Juliette, these heroines retain an adherence to the code of chivalry and loyalty to the masses, even as they awaken to new erotic sensations. Since this genre of sado-sexual swordsman/woman tales has not been previously introduced in translation, a few representative examples are presented in synopsis that follows. An author who writes under the pseudonym Fei Yinger (Untalented Son) publishes a series of female knight-errant short stories he calls ‘sexual fantasies’. In an eponymous tale, a young swordswoman Ziyun Feiyan (Purple Clouds Flying Swallow) tests her mettle against a peasant bully, who in the course of their wrestling manages to touch her privates, resulting in a sexual awakening for both of them. In the end, her martial skill cannot overcome his



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brute strength, and after continuing her quixotic knight-errant career for three years, she returns to the village and marries the young peasant (Fei Yinger 2005). While the characters’ clumsy groping is worlds apart from the refined ‘art of the bedchamber’ foreplay, it nevertheless represents a novel intersection of sex and martial arts. In a similar vein, an anonymously authored story entitled ‘The Dishonoring of Swordswoman Wenrou by the Flower-Plucking Bandit’ (Wenrou nüxia canzao caihua dadao lingru shishen) also depicts the defeat and sexual humiliation of a female knight-errant. Wenrou is on the trail of the Flower Plucking Bandit, who has committed a string of rapes, when she has her sword snatched by his whip, is snared in his net and drugged by a needle thrust into her neck. Regaining consciousness and finding herself naked, she realizes she has become the latest victim of the rapacious bandit. Another episode in the ‘Flower-Plucking Bandit’ series pits our fiend against Swordswoman Yin, who is overpowered first by his force of arms and then by his seductive charms and amusing sex toys (‘Wenrou’ 2015). In Xiao Fei’s novella Unofficial History of Lascivious Bandits (Yinzei waishi), Fat Mountain Bandit expresses a preference for robbing swordswomen because, ‘They are a pushover, and even if they have no money, you can rape them and sell them to a brothel’. Fat Mountain mocks swordswoman Blue Wind by attributing her victories to luck and attacking men while they are relieving themselves. Just on the point of being overpowered by the Mountain gang, she is rescued by a handsome villain in white, Lecherous Bandit Song Yu, who whisks her away to a hostel, where he has negotiated a bargain room rate for allowing the voyeuristic staff to spy on them through a peep hole. Among the onlookers are two female bailiffs, who realize the handsome villain is on the most wanted list. The story now shifts to the female bailiffs, and finally to a female general and her ongoing love affair with Lecherous Bandit. The narrative style is deliberately fractured, with the author frequently breaking into the action to offer first-person observations on alternative plot possibilities, character analysis and the predicament of the storyteller. Identification or sympathy with the characters is out of the question, but sex and violence ensure a steady flow of adrenaline, and the author’s self-conscious and satirical intrusions maintain a degree of suspense (Xiao Fei 2005). A final example of this genre is Li Jiali’s ‘The Capture of Swordswoman Sister Thirteen’ (Kunbang xianü Shisanmei). This is a salacious adaptation of a traditional tale from Wen Kang’s Qing dynasty collection Ernü yingxiong zhuan, and the perverted parody follows the general story arc of the original. Swordswoman Sister Thirteen performs a series of interventions on behalf of peasants preyed upon by a gang of extortionist bandit-monks. To avenge the loss of their comrades and set a trap for Sister Thirteen, the monks kidnap

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one hundred village women and threaten to sell them into prostitution. When Sister Thirteen attempts a bold rescue, she is bound and sexually assaulted by the libertine abbot. She is then dragged off to the Golden Buddha Temple, where, tied to a column, she becomes the plaything of four lustful monks, who enact a scene part strip search, part Cultural Revolution struggle session. In a bizarre turn of events, the Golden Monk contrives to adjust her bonds so that the cords pass over her breasts and pubis, causing her to swoon with a strange new pleasure. After subjecting her to more rounds of agony and ecstasy, the monks hold a banquet to celebrate her capture, during which they imbibe large quantities of wine poisoned by their peasant victims. She gives up her innocence but not her politics, and in the end, our heroine is liberated by the deus ex machina of the revolutionary masses. Stepping over the dead bodies of the monks, she secretly reflects on the erotic pleasure unleashed through the experience, mounts her black steed and gallops off into the night (Li n.d.). Roland Altenberger, in his The Sword or the Needle, identifies three classes of female protagonists in Chinese knight-errant fiction: the social justice assassin, the personal avenger and the bandit (Altenberger 2009). Our heroines go beyond these categories, adding the elements of sex and sadism. Thus, to situate these tales in the context of social and literary history, we must look at the trinity of socially transgressive women – femmes fatales, shrews and swordswomen – and three subgenres of fiction – erotic novels, swordswomen tales and knight-errant parodies. What makes these contemporary sado-sexual tales unique is the hybridization of knight-errant satire, such as Li Ruzhen’s 1828 Jinghua yuan (Fate of flowers in the mirror), Republican era Xu Zhuodai’s Nüxia hong kuzi (The swordswoman’s red pants) and early twentieth-century Gu Mingdao’s Huangjiang nüxia (Huang River swordswoman) with the classic pornographic novels, such as Rou putuan (Prayer mat of flesh) and Jin Ping Mei (The plum in the golden vase). What are we to make of these lurid tales of sex and violence, torture and titillation? Both sex and swordswomen resurfaced in the 1980s after decades of suppression. Is the Party saying pornography to the people, and power to the Party? Are they the misogynist revenge of the ‘bare branches’ (guanggun), men with insufficient ‘qualifications’ (tiaojian) to attract a wife, or the illusion that women are asking for rape and secretly enjoying it? Our swordswomen present a challenge to male dominance, but are brought to heel first as martial artists and then as women, overcome by superior strength and dependent on men for sexual awakening and satisfaction. The authors subvert the stereotype of the beautiful and chaste woman warrior by explicitly appealing to the male readers’ literary gaze and interest in these fantasy femmes as sexual objects.



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CONCLUSION There is a fearful symmetry between phobia of depletion and faith in the power of sexual energy. Truly a two-edged sword, for the martial arts and bedroom arts, sex could be death and destruction or invincibility and immortality. Management of sexual energy was the foundation of medicine, meditation and martial arts. Thus, sex is not a moral issue but one of somatic health and personal power. Power means control, and the two greatest threats to male control are another more powerful male and a demanding female. Martial arts and bedroom arts attempt to arm the male with strategies to meet these two existential challenges. REFERENCES Note to reader: Citing of Chinese Internet sources is complicated by censorship, plagiarism, anonymity and pseudonymity. Every effort has been made to provide the latest details, but experience teaches that content migrates from site to site, cite to cite and even search engine to search engine, disappearing, only to reappear under different authors and titles. In general, titles tend to be more stable than authors’ names or URLs. Attenberger, Roland. 2009. The Sword or the Needle: The Female Knight-Errant in Traditional Chinese Narrative. Bern: Peter Lang. Channon, Alex and George Jennings. 2013. ‘The Rules of Engagement: Negotiating Painful and Intimate Touch in Mixed-Sex Martial Arts’. Sociology of Sport Journal, 30 (4): 487–503. doi:10.1123/ssj.30.4.487. Fei Yinger. 2005. ‘Ziyun Feiyan’ (Purple Clouds Flying Swallow), Tianya Shequ Wuwen Nongmo. www.tianya.cn. Lawler, Jennifer. 2003. Dojo Wisdom. New York: Penguin. Li Jiali. n.d. ‘Kunbang xianu shisanmei’ (The Capture of Swordswoman Sister Thirteen). http://chinakbc.fc2web.com/story/ljl.htm. Luo Han. 2011. ‘Gudai fangzhongshu jiemi’ (Revealing the Secrets of the Art of the Bedchamber). Jiazaizhong. http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_62bd1b240100v3ql. html. Nan Huaijin. 2012. ‘Nan Huaijin jiangshu ‘huanjing bunao mayin cangxiang fojia xiuxing’ (Nan Huaijin explains the Buddhist practices of ‘returning the sexual essence to nourish the brain’ and ‘horse hides testicles’). http://www.360doc.com/ content/16/0101/10/17954047_524576644.shtml. Ogren, Katalin Rodriguez. 2010. ‘Improve Sexual Pleasure with Martial Arts and MMA’. www.chicagonow.com/martialarts. ‘Pengzu yangsheng fangzhongshu’ (Pengzu’s Art of the Bedchamber for Health). 2012. Wushu jianshen. http://blog.sina.com.cn/wsyujs.

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‘Riben qianaoyun roudao guanjun shexian xingsaorao’ (Japanese Olympic Gold Medalist in Judo Suspected of Sexual Harassment). 2013. Qiluwang. iqilu.com. Sam, B. 2014. ‘Touch Me/Don’t Touch Me: Bodies, Boundaries, and Non-Sexual Physical Intimacy’. Fit Is a Feminist Issue. https://fitisafeministissue.com/2014/12/30/ touch-medont-touch-me-bodies-boundaries-and-non-sexual-physical-intimacy. Stuart, Carolyn. 2001. ‘An Unfinished Dialog about Contact Improvisation’. Tom Giebink’s Forum. https://www.contactimprov.net/stuart-dialog.html. Sugar Britches. 2005. ‘Aikido and Sexual Connection’. http://budobabes.tribe.net/ thread/0c94ca3d-524e-4297-9a4e-02bd895f5e87. (No longer available: see ‘Note to Reader’, above.) Suzaki, Kiyoshi. 2012. ‘Sex, Meditation and Aikido’. http://newherosjourney.blogspot. com/2012/05/sex-meditation-and-aikido.html Wan Laisheng. 1984. ‘Tongzigong – Gengzheng’ (Pre-pubescent training – corrected). blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog.87 b0403c0100xr61.html Weng Xincheng. 2009. ‘Du Zhang Fang xiansheng “Wushu xiulian yu fangzhongshu” suo xiangdao de’ (Thoughts on Reading Mr. Zhang Fang’s ‘Martial Arts Training and the Art of the Bedchamber’). http://www.21wulin.com/wulin/wuxue/ tanwulundao/4503.html. ‘Wenrou nüxia canzao caihua dadao lingru shishen’ (The dishonoring of the swordswoman Wenrou by the Flower-Plucking Bandit). 2015. http://big.sunyet.com/ woman/a/n714631.html. Wile, Douglas. 1983. T’ai-chi Touchstones: Yang Family Secret Transmissions. Brooklyn, NY: Sweet Ch’i Press. ———. 1992. Art of the Bedchamber: The Chinese Sexual Yoga Classics, Including Women’s Solo Meditation Texts. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 1996. Lost T’ai-chi Classics from the Late Ch’ing Dynasty. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 1999. T’ai-chi’s Ancestors. Brooklyn, NY: Sweet Ch’i Press. Xiao Fei. 2005. ‘Yinzei waishi’ (Unofficial History of Lascivious Bandits). https:// www.xxbiquge.com/18_18777/. Yanyan Sheng. 2012. ‘Zhaoyang qushi’ (The Intriguing Tales of Zhaoyang). www.360doc.com. Zhang Fang. 2009. ‘Wuxue xiulian yu fangzhongshu’ (Martial Arts Training and the Art of the Bedchamber). Jingwu, 8 (246): 40–41. Zheng Manqing. 1982. Master Cheng’s Thirteen Chapters on T’ai-chi ch’üan, translated by Douglas Wile. Brooklyn, NY: Sweet Ch’i Press.

Chapter 4

Martial Arts by the Book Late Medieval and Early Modern European Martial Arts Daniel Jaquet INTRODUCTION Today, the term ‘martial arts’ is broadly associated with hand-to-hand combat traditions from Asia, traditions that are often presumed to be old or even ancient, knowledge of which has been handed down orally from generation to generation. Martial arts, however, is a construct shaped by popular culture and saturated in myth. Through the images and mythologies of the films of such iconic figures as Bruce Lee in the 1970s (Bowman 2013, 2017), the movie industry contributed to the production and moulding of today’s familiar ideas about martial arts. In more recent decades, martial arts have also become common within globally circulating digital media. The classical orientalism of the late nineteenth century evolved into the more specific ‘gamic orientalism’ (Goto-Jones 2016) by spreading to computer screens and video game devices. In other words, martial arts are frequently accessed by forms of mediation. They do simply or solely circulate not only between bodies (as lived practices) but also in discourses, texts, institutions and within all kinds of media, from print to TV to film to digital media (Berg and Prohl 2014). All of these mediation types have to be taken into account and taken apart before the martial arts in question can be analysed. This endeavour demands a strong interdisciplinary perspective and reveals the necessary complexity of the field of martial arts studies. Bearing all of this in mind, this chapter will not focus on the most familiar field of martial arts today – Asian martial arts. Instead, the chapter will focus on discourses that have arisen through and around a large body of European primary sources known as ‘the fight books’ (Jaquet, Verelst and Dawson 2016). The analysis of this corpus and the discourse 41

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around it provides insights into a very different martial arts discourse, one that develops from the fourteenth century onwards in Europe. However, the aim of counterbalancing the widespread idea that Asia is the ultimate, original or only cradle of martial arts is only tangential to this chapter. The main intention here is to provide an overview of this field of study and to guide the reader through some of its core material. Following the theoretical framework proposed by Wetzler (2015), it will also, along the way, point out some of the fertile directions for the development of the field that have started to emerge in recent years. FIGHT BOOKS: A TECHNICAL LITERATURE ABOUT FIGHTING The technical literature – or ‘pragmatic literature’ (Pragmatische Schrifftlichkeit) (Haage and Wegner 2006, 256–65) – of these books focuses on the recording of personal fighting techniques through words and images. It deals with various disciplines, from wrestling to fighting in armour on horseback, via a large panoply of weapons for use on foot and with or without armour. The first preserved example dates from 1305,1 and fight books are still being written today. However, this chapter will only discuss fight books that were produced before the Industrial Revolution. This is because the Industrial Revolution brought major changes to European societies, including the institutionalization of modern armies and the eventual emergence of the Olympic movement; and these changes deeply affected the discourses of what we today call ‘martial arts’. These changes also affected the production of fight books. So, although the Industrial Revolution era is highly interesting for martial arts studies, nineteenth- and twentieth-century fight books lie outside of the scope of this chapter. As is often the case with so-called martial arts, both East and West, the term ‘martial arts’ is actually something of a misnomer for what is being discussed. For, the fighting techniques recorded in the fight books are mostly associated with ritualized forms of combat, specific to either the realm of leisure (public competition, public display of skills) or more serious interpersonal matters (duels of honour, judicial combat, self-defence), but they are not directly specific to military (martial) contexts (Jaquet 2017, 48–54). Indeed, there are other sources – military treatises – that address military matters (Lawrence 2009; Leng 2002). Specialized types of competition such as chivalric tournament and shooting festivals also have a dedicated literature, in the form of tournament books (Krause 2017) and archery treatises (Wilson 1976). However, none of the latter actually address the personal fighting techniques that we today associate with martial arts practice. It is the category



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of text known as the fight books that focus on this, which is why they are so often singled out for attention in martial arts studies today. From 1305 to the turn of the eighteenth century, this heterogeneous corpus is composed of more than 300 sources (manuscripts and prints), in all of the main European languages. In fact, this corpus has yet to be fully organized and standardized bibliographically, or even comprehensively (and conveniently) listed. All of the major bibliographies and catalogues of it are non-exhaustive and have major flaws (as discussed below), and less than 10 per cent of the manuscript corpus has been published in an edition that could be said to meet rigorous scholarly standards. Almost half of the texts of the corpus contain illustrations. From crude drawings and diagrams to work of arts by renowned artists (e.g. Albrecht Dürer),2 the fight book corpus is highly heterogeneous in this regard as well. Given this heterogeneity and diversity, Anglo (2012) has argued that the study of the relation between the author and the artist and the understanding the process of production of the book are of paramount importance to researchers attempting to access the knowledge behind words and images – if such ‘access’ is even possible. Indeed, the hermeneutical relation between text and image in fight books forms a field in itself, just as European fight books are a treasure trove for art historians and historians of science and technology studying the circulation of technical knowledge. For instance, fifteenthcentury fight books contain important early examples of nature drawing;3 and sixteenth-century fight books offer early examples of the codification of movement in terms of mathematics and geometry. Many of these illustrations were not rivalled in quality until the development of photography and the invention of techniques for the visual capture of movement in the late nineteenth century, as in Eadweard Muybridge’s experimental photography (Welle 2014, 108–26). INSCRIPTION, DESCRIPTION, CODIFICATION Technology and the medium is a crucial consideration. Paper itself is an imperfect medium for the communication of embodied practices such as fighting. For, arguably, martial arts or fighting skills are best transmitted in face-to-face situations, by demonstration, imitation and correction (Müller 1992). In this sense, the embodied knowledge of martial arts and combat skills is communicated through bodies in practice. When it comes to transmitting knowledge, the written word or the drawn image quickly reach their limits. Moreover, it is often the case that written traditions amount to little other than the simple transposition of an oral tradition. In this regard, lacking the mediation of practice, writing may seem to be incapable of passing down

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embodied knowledge. Of course, the written word and static image on the page can be invaluable as mnemonic devices, where other forms and structures of learning, knowledge and experience are already present. But without these extra dimensions, the question of whether the full knowledge depicted on the page can ever be retrieved endures. Some authors have argued that there are ways to overcome the limits of text-based archives, while others emphasize the complexity of this issue. However, almost all recognize the importance of the written word and visual image as crucial (supplementary or central) mnemonic devices. Interestingly, most of the fight books seem to have been produced by people we would now call martial artists. Certainly, this is a common claim found in surviving prologues and dedications. However, the intended audience and use vary greatly in the corpus. Some of the books are the personal notes of martial arts practitioners with no intention of ever being read or understood by someone else. Others are large compilations of previous materials used as teaching or publishing endeavours. Some are manuals for beginners, meant to offer mnemonic devices to be referred to after actual face-to-face lessons with the master. Others are expensive gifts for elites, outlining chosen elements of a martial arts curriculum. Still others are copies made by printers to be sold to the many, often in cities where printing activities sprang up around martial arts activities, such as competitions. Given this diversity, one of the most critical elements for the scholar studying texts in this corpus is to attempt to establish the author’s or producer’s intent. The same issue has been faced in other fields, such as historical dance studies, for example, where different types of authorial intent appear to have been lost or hidden within cryptic pages. And, of course, challenging the belief that a reader has immediate access to an author’s ‘true intent’ or ‘intended meaning’ was one of the first and most enduring targets of the ‘post-structuralist’ theory and criticism of writers such as Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida (Bowman 2015; Spatz 2015). Nonetheless, despite (and in the wake of) the validity of the post-structuralist critique of naïve approaches to texts, it remains the case that in order to analyse such heterogeneous texts as the fight books, the researcher must of necessity strives to produce evidence-based interpretations of intentions, based on such elements as different forms of textual evidence, knowledge of contexts of production, reception and circulation and so on. I myself have approached these books in terms of the following threefold categorization: inscription, or the documenting of practice without evident didactic intent; description, or the documenting of practice with evidence of didactic intent; and codification, or the documenting of practice with encryption. The following three examples illustrate each category and allow insights into the source material. I have deliberately chosen examples from different



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centuries, different material (parchment, paper), different media (text and images), and different type of support (book, compilation, miscellany),4 to convey a taste of the variety of the source material. 1. Inscription: Latin verses about fighting transposed in the vademecum of a medieval scribe. Anonymous, s.t., 1423–1424 (Toronto, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, 01020*) The manuscript is small in size (11 × 8 cm). It contains twenty quires of parchment (156 folia) wrapped in a preserved hard-leather cover. Two main hands wrote most of the content. The second hand bound the manuscript in its current states, since it is the one realizing a detailed index and foliating the whole manuscript. The professional script and the regularity of the quires as well as the overall finishes are all factors indicating the production of the manuscript in an urban workshop by professionals. The content of this miscellany also points in this direction. Indeed, the main part is a continued series of religious textual excerpts, sorted out by political occasions (asking for the release of a hostage, announcing a princely entry in a town, etc.). Along with some minor texts gathered together, it also contains a so-called perpetual calendar, enabling calculation of the day of the week according to a given year – and it is this that provides the main evidence used in dating the manuscript itself.5 Both the content and the material evidence point towards a working tool for a professional scribe in the service of the urban authorities. It enabled writing letters and adding already prepared excerpts for each occasion, as well as providing the correct day of the week for the dating of the letters that were written. The two main hands are presumably those of a father-son or master-apprentice, the younger one finishing the manuscript and using it as a vademecum. Of interest is a single leaf (fol. 105r) featuring the transposition of an oral martial arts tradition. It consists of a title (Hec sunt guardiae in dimicatione – ‘Here are the guards for combat’) and eight couplets (verses). The poem is left unfinished. The verses all have the same structure: a description of the guard (fighting posture) of a master (magister) facing a disciple (dissipulus). Written in Latin, the text is full of unexplained, cryptic, technical terms, some borrowed from Italian vernacular (Tuscan dialect). For instance: Si magister in cauda longa, dissipulus in cruce Si magister in alto, dissipulus in stoccho/[. . .]

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If the master is in long tail, the disciple is in cross if the master is in high [guard], the disciple is in thrust/[. . .]

The martial art practice hidden behind these words is today essentially inaccessible. This is not least because we do not know which weapon, system or fighting discipline these words refer to. If some of the technical terms are to be found in other fight books, no surviving source can be identified. This is evidently, then, an example of an inscription, that is, the documentation of a practice for personal use, without any didactic intent. Indeed, fencing activities are attested in Tuscany around 1420s. Several masters-at-arms (schermidores) are listed in the castato (administrative list) of Florence in the 1420s (Klapisch-Zuber, Marin and Veysset et al. 2016). Our Tuscanian scribe was perhaps therefore a student or a teacher, and would have written down verses learned in order to remember a lesson. Alternatively, someone else in the workshop possibly started a project, left it unfinished, and the parchment was re-used by the scribe to protect the quire while unbound. 2. Description: An illustrated print of the late seventeenth century for longsword competitors Theodori Verolini, New Kůnstliches Fechter, Würzburg, Joann Bencard, 1679 (See Figure 3.1) This print has 132 pages. It features 116 copperplate engravings, full page, printed one-sided. The text distributed in two columns usually precedes the series of illustrations in each of the four sections (books). The text describing the fighting techniques refers to the images and is written in a descriptive manner. The intent is clearly didactic and both media (text and images) are conceived together. The fighting system is built brick by brick, each one being concisely described and illustrated. Fighting techniques, postures or cuts are referred to with their technical terms, previously described: Mittel- oder Überzwerchhauw. Der Mittel- oder Überzwerchhaw kan fast allerding wie der Zornhauw gemacht werden. Allein ist diß der Underschied, daß wie der Zornhauw schlims über Ort, also dieser aber überzwerch vollbracht wird, wie in den FIguren C und G verzeichnet. Middle- or Across-cut: The Middle- or Across-cut can almost completely be performed as the Wrath-cut; only this is the difference that the Wrath-cut is performed diagonally over the point, but this one across, as recorded in the Figures C. and G.6

Little is known about the author or the artist, and the book is rarely mentioned in scholarly publications, aside from short notices in bibliographies.



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Figure 3.1 Theodor Verolini, The Artful Fencer, 1679. Plate G, artist unknown. Courtesy of Herzog August Bibliothek (hn 35 4f), Wolfenbüttel.

The whole title clearly describes the author, the content and the intended audience of the book: Der Künstliche Fechter: oder Deß Weyland wohl-geübten und berühmten Fecht-Meisters Theodori Verolini, Kurtze jedoch klare Beschreibung und Außweisung der Freyen, Ritterlichen und Adelichen Kunst des Fechtens im Rappier, Düsacken, und Schwerdt: Wie dann auch mit angehängter Ring-Kunst; wie sich bei vorfallenden Gelegenheiten in allerley gebräuchlichen Wehren die angenehme Schüler zur Behendigkeit künstlich mögen abgericht. The Artful Fencer or the well-practised and famous Fencing Master of Old Theodori Verolini, short though clear description and demonstration of the Free, Knightly and Noble Art of Fencing with rapier, dussack and sword, from which then, along with the appended art of grappling, can be learned how in all kinds of occurring situations, with various usual weapons, the favourable student can be trained to agility, and can encounter his opponent dexterously.

Theodor Verolini identifies himself as a Freifechter (free fencer), that is, a member of a fencing guild. This status allows him to legally teach sword fighting in urban space and organize fencing competitions (the so-called Fechtschulen – fighting schools). Most of the members of these guilds, which have roots in the late middle ages, do have another main profession, usually unrelated to martial activities. Most of these privileged leisure master-at-arms are craftsmen or merchants, so are their students (Tlusty 2011, 2017). Although one can see fight book bestsellers, with several re-editions over the years (even centuries), most of them have minimal reach. The Artful Fencer is a good example of a book made from a master for his (potential)

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students, often published at the author’s own expense with a very low print run. These are usually compilations of older fight books, reworked and expanded. Anglo (2000) rightfully characterizes them as ‘bibliographical snowballs’. The identification of source material is complex, especially when the documentation of practice shifts from images to texts and back, where every step in the process over time involves significant re-inventions. In this case, the lineage spans over 300 years! Indeed, the technical lexis comes from the authoritative Johannes Liechtenauer, which first documented verses dated from 1389 (Burkart 2016b). The Artful Fencer is, however, the last witness bearing the teachings of the longsword, a medieval weapon which fell from grace in battlefields during the second quarter of the sixteenth century. The practice survived only in fencing grounds, as a sport. Most of the text (and images) of The Artful Fencer are inspired by the 1570 fight book of Joachim Meyer (1570. Gründtliche Beschreibung der Kunst des Fechtens. Strasbourg: Thiebolt Berger).7 This is already a compilation of late medieval texts, but re-organized and re-worked. The fighting techniques of the longsword, dussack (a short, curved wooden or leather sword) and rapier (a side-sword) are directly taken from an already reworked compilation of the latter, published by Jakob Sutor von Baden (also a Freifechter) in 1612 (New Kůnstliches Fechtbuch, Frankfurt am Mayn, Johann Bringen). There, the rapier section was expanded with another source, specialized in the use of rapier, by Michael Hundt in 1611 (Kůnstliches Fechtbuch im Rappier, Leipzig, Nickol Nerlich). Lastly, the fourth section of Theodor Verolini’s fight book, as outlined in the title, is dedicated to wrestling techniques. This part consists of a German translation of the Dutch fight book of Nicolaes Petter, Klare Onderrichtinge der Voortreffelijcke Worstel-Konst, first published in Amsterdam in 1674. Needless to say, none of these previous texts or authors are credited in the fight book of Theodor Verolini. 3. Codification: An encrypted vellum roll of an early Modern English fighter. Anonymous, [exercises in the use of the two-handed sword], first half of 16th c. (London, British Library, Add 39564) The last example is a standalone item, not an element of a collection or of a miscellany. It is composed on a single vellum roll of 15 × 61 cm, an expensive material.8 It bears no illustrations, only text. A name is spelled in the same handwriting as the text (‘I. Ledall’) between two lines in the upper part of the backside of the roll and may refer to the author or the scribe. There is a John Ledall (Ledale) a merchant born in York, son of a glover (1515–1582). Without further research, however, it is not possible at this point to attribute the text to that merchant.



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This fight book documents fighting techniques for the two-handed sword. It is divided into different types of solo-drills, named flourysh (solo forms), chace or poynt (set of attacks), cowntyr (counter-attack) (Heslop and Bradak 2010, 1–2). It also gives a few indication on how to defend against an attack. It uses a similar technical lexis as two other texts from the same era (London, British Library, Harley 3542 and Cottonian Titus A. xxv.). Several researchers and martial arts practitioners have attempted a comparative analysis (Heslop and Bradak 2010; Hester 2014; Wagner 2016). Interestingly enough this way of documenting practice in solo-drill forms matches several living (re-invented) martial traditions coming from Asia, taught worldwide. The solo-drills (kata) are didactic tools for motor learning enabling the building of complex motor skills before setting them up in antagonistic situations. Whereas paired techniques are described in most of the fight books, a handful document solo forms. Such is the case for all three English fight books quoted earlier. The syntax is fragmentary and the technical terms are left unexplained. It bears no paratext allowing us to better understand the intended use of the text or to identify the intended audience. However, by delving into the text, one can see that there is at least some effort made to describe the movements. It is, however, inaccessible to readers who do not possess the specific knowledge necessary to break the code. This type of encryption may have been deliberate (in order to restrict information to trained readers), or a less-intentional effect of custom among expert circles. Nonetheless, it remains a form of codification. The fact that the material support is expensive suggests a lot about the importance of the project for the author. As it is near to impossible to translate such a text, the following excerpt is only modernized (Steve Thurston). For an interpretation, see Bradak and Heslop (2010, 84–89). The Eghte Chace callyde ye Fpryng A full stroke a for foyne ſettyng forthe ye lyffte fote wt the lyffte hande ſmyte a ſpryng voydyng bake ye ſame fote wt a full ſtroke then pley a bake foyne wt an other ſpryng voydyng bake the lyffte fote wt a ffull ſtroke then voyde bake the ryght fote and play a doble foyne wt a ſpryng voydyng back ye left fote wythe a ffull Stroke pleyng an other Doble foyne wt a ſpryng voydyng bake ye lyffte fote wyth a full stroke and a bake foyne. The Eighth Chase called ‘The Spring’ A full-stroke, a for-thrust, setting forth the left foot with the left hand smite a spring, voiding back the same foot with a full-stroke then play a Back-thrust with another spring. Voiding back the left foot with a full-stroke then void back the right foot and play a double-thrust with a spring, voiding back the left foot

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with a full-stroke, playing another double-thrust with a spring, voiding back the left foot with a full-stroke and a back-thrust.

If we can only speculate about the intended purpose of this text, it certainly appears likely that it is not meant to be openly read by untrained readers. It is, however, a testimonial of the will to memorize, collect or preserve fighting techniques. Compared to the description attempts, both the inscription and codification attempts are even more complex to access for twenty-first-century scholars or modern martial arts practitioners. This observation alone justifies the use of the threefold categorization proposed. It enables working around the limitation or the lack of information about the authorial intent and the context of production in order to study the circulation of martial knowledge (conception, reception). Moreover, it is of great help when navigating such a large and heterogeneous corpus, composed of different supports (manuscript, incunabula, print or even more ephemeral supports), physical containers (miscellany, collection and standalone item) and media (text or image).

ANTIQUARIANS, MARTIAL ARTS PRACTITIONERS AND SCHOLARS Fight books have received a lot of academic attention recently. At the same time, a large international community of martial arts practitioners has shown a renewed interest in ancient martial practices, and hence in these books. The same development can be witnessed in patrimonial institutions (Jaquet 2018). This modern trend actually sits on the shoulder of giants, as significant and thoroughgoing academic attention was given to these texts as early as the nineteenth century. The first such contributions came from librarians in institutions that held some of these curious manuscripts about the art of combat – such as the K. K. Ambras collection, the Oettingen-Wallerstein collection and the ducal library of Gotha.9 Johann Carl Heinrich Dreyer had already studied the manuscript of Hans Talhoffer in 1754 and two facsimiles were produced for display by Nathanael Schlichtegroll in 1820. These predate the printed editions that appeared at the end of the nineteenth century by Gustav Hergsell. The first major contributions on the corpus of fight books were made in the second half of the nineteenth century by Karl Wassmannsdorff (1821–1906), a pioneer of the history of sport (Kusudo 2000). Around the same time, fencers, collectors and antiquarians produced the first bibliographies, while a revival trend emerged from England (Wolf 2012), moving across the Channel to France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria and



Martial Arts by the Book 51

Germany, counterbalancing the move to modern fencing in the wake of the Olympic movement. The first fencing historians published their books, again starting in England with the productive Egerton Castle (1858–1920) and Alfred Hutton (1839–1910), followed notably by Jacopo Gelli (1858–1935) in Italy. The next major contributions were not made by historians, but by linguists. Novati (1902) edited the Italian fight book of Fiore de’i Liberi. Wierschin (1965), followed by Hils (1985), built the first significant corpus, including German fight books, which represents the majority of the manuscript and prints for the late Medieval and early Modern period. By then, the field of ‘fight books studies’ was growing in Germany and major contributions followed, with historians of literature, notably by Jan-Dirk Müller in the 1990s. The studies exceeded German borders with the milestone monograph in English by Sydney Anglo (2000). Since then, studies have flourished. The community of martial arts practitioners itself has produced, for the past fifteen years, countless contributions of heterogeneous quality. These include transcriptions, translations, interpretations, historical studies and even martial arts manuals. Facing this storm and attempting to shape the field, some scholars have failed to take account of the complexity of this production, often led either by hasty post-structuralist ideas or marred by lack of academic standards. With the circulation of reproductions of primary sources boosted by the Internet, many transcriptions and translations have appeared. However, while most of the corpus has received some kind of attention online today, only 10 per cent of the late medieval and early modern fight books has currently been edited and treated with the due care and attention of rigorous, sensitive and circumspect scholarly standards.10 So, as mentioned earlier, the field still lacks a proper reliable and comprehensive bibliography, and existing catalogues are either outdated, non-exhaustive or contain major flaws.11 In order to address this situation, a collection of scholars have recently combined their efforts, notably founding the journal Acta Periodica Duellatorum in 2013. This is an attempt to both shape and develop the field academically while still offering a platform for studies carried out by the community of practitioners. Debates and disputes are wide-ranging, as there are so many interests and approaches in the field. Some hold that the textual evidence of the fight books combined with ‘authentic’ weapons, equipment, clothing and other material enables the reliable reconstruction of embodied knowledge and fighting skills and styles. Others, often informed by all of the precautions and caveats of post-structuralist theory, insist on the complexity and uncertainty of interpretation. For the latter, even the existence of the texts and authentic materials does little to reduce uncertainty and can actually amplify and increase the number, range and types of possible interpretations (see Burkart 2016a).12

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So, the field is contentious, to say the least. However, it is heartening to observe the extent to which these often-passionate disputes are stimulating many kinds of innovative experimental, theoretical and methodological approaches to the challenges of establishing knowledge of historical European martial arts. Moreover, these debates are no longer niche. The discourse of the study of historical European martial arts is no longer consigned to specialist publications. Studies now appear more frequently in general martial arts studies books, journals and publications, as well as in mainstream journals. Significantly, these are not only journals in the field of history: the issues that arise in the study of historical European martial arts are showing themselves to be central also to core concerns of research into embodied knowledge in cross-cultural studies, anthropology, dance, ethnography, drama, theatre and performance studies. In fact, the study of historical European martial arts is currently contributing not just to the development of martial arts studies in general but also to central concerns of multiple disciplines. Because of this, it is clear that, in the study of historical European martial arts, it is not just the past but also the future that is bright. NOTES  1. Anonymous, Liber de arte dimicatoria, 1305 (see Forgeng 2013; Cinato and Surprenant 2009).   2. Wien, Albertina, MS 26–232. See Dörnhöffer (1909) and Widauer (2017).   3. An example in the works of Hans Talhoffer, see Burkart (2014).   4. About this typology, see my dissertation (Jaquet 2013, 74–84) and my introduction co-written with Verelst (2016, 7–25). I also gave another set of examples, with more details in my last monograph (2017, 55–101).   5. See Palma (1980, 21–22). A notice with codicological description is available online by collective authors from IRHT (2015). The manuscript had been put forward by Brian Stokes in 2012 on online forums for martial arts practitioners. The author studied the manuscript in 2015 and has included the study in a forthcoming monograph.   6. English translation by Reiner van Noort.   7. This one has an English translation; see Forgeng (2006).   8. I thank Jacob Deacon (University of Leeds) for providing me with information regarding this manuscript.   9. The K. K. Ambras collection (now kept in Wien, Kunsthistorisches Museum); Oettingen Wallerstein collection (now kept in Augsburg, Universitätsbibliothek); the collection kept in Gotha (several of the fight books of this collection now kept in München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek). For more details, see Jaquet (2018). 10. Exemplary editions have been produced by German scholars during the past ten years, notably Rainer Welle and Matthias Johannes Bauer. See, for example, Welle (2014).



Martial Arts by the Book 53

11. For example, see the critical views of Welle (2009) and Bauer (2011) on the latest catalogue of German fight books published by Leng. 12. My own position on this matter is that while research and experimentation about material culture can inform us about tacit knowing (Jaquet et al. 2016; Jaquet and Deluz 2018), they cannot, however, provide direct access into lost embodied knowledge.]

REFERENCES Anglo, Sydney. 2000. The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ———. 2012. ‘Sword and Pen: Fencing Masters and Artists’. In The Noble Art of the Sword: Fashion and Fencing in Renaissance Europe 1520–1630, edited by Tobias Capwell, 151–63. London: Paul Holberton Publishing. Bauer, Matthias Johannes. 2011. ‘Katalog der deutschsprachigen illustrierten Handschriften des Mittelalters, begonnen v. Hella Frühmorgen-Voss, fortgeführt v. Norbert H. Ott zusammen mit Ulrike Bodemann, Band 4/2 Lieferung 1/2, 38. Fechtund Ringbücher, bearb. v. Rainer Leng’. Book recension. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur (PBB) 133 (3–4). Berg, Esther and Inken Prohl. 2014. ‘ “Become Your Best”: On the Construction of Martial Arts as Means of Self-Actualization and Self-Improvement’. JOMEC Journal, 5: 1–19. Bowman, Paul. 2013. Beyond Bruce Lee: Chasing the Dragon through Film, Philosophy, and Popular Culture. New York: Wallflower Press. ———. 2015. Martial Arts Studies: Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield International. ———. 2017. Mythologies of Martial Arts. Martial Arts Studies. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield International. Burkart, Eric. 2014. ‘Die Aufzeichnung des Nicht-Sagbaren. Annäherung an die kommunikative Funktion der Bilder in den Fechtbüchern des Hans Talhofer’. Das Mittelalter, 19 (2): 253–301. ———. 2016a. ‘Limits of Understanding in the Study of Lost Martial Arts: Epistemological Reflections on the Mediality of Historical Records of Technique and the Status of Modern (Re-)Constructions’. Acta Periodica Duellatorum, 4 (2): 5–30. ———. 2016b. ‘The Autograph of an Erudite Martial Artist: A Close Reading of Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Hs. 3227a’. In Late Medieval and Early Modern Fight Books, edited by Daniel Jaquet, Karin Verelst and Timothy Dawson, 449–80. Leyden: Brill. Cinato, Franck and André Surprenant. 2009. Le livre de l’art du combat (Liber De Arte Dimicatoria): Édition critique du Royal Armouries MS. I.33. Sources d’histoire médiévale 39. Paris: CNRS-éd. Dörnhöffer, Friedrich. 1909. ‘Albrecht Dürers Fechtbuch’. Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaisershauses, XXVII (2): 1–81.

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Forgeng, Jeffrey L. (ed.). 2006. The Art of Combat: A German Martial Arts Treatise of 1570. London and New York: Greenhill Books; Palgrave Macmillan. Forgeng, Jeffrey L. 2013. The Illuminated Fightbook: Royal Armouries Manuscript I.33. Companion Volume: Transcription, Translation and Introduction. Dorset: Royal Armouries and Extraordinary Editions. Geldof, Mark. 2011. ‘Strokez off Ii Hand Swerde: A Brief Instruction in the Use of Personal Arms’. Opuscula: Short Texts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 1 (2): 1–9. Goto-Jones, Christopher S. 2016. The Virtual Ninja Manifesto: Fighting Games, Martial Arts and Gamic Orientalism. Martial Arts Studies. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield International. Haage, Bernhard Dietrich and Wolfgang Wegner. (eds.). 2006. Deutsche Fachliteratur der Artes in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Grundlagen der Germanistik 43. Berlin: E. Schmidt. Heslop, Brandon P. and Benjamin G. Bradak. 2010. Lessons on the English Longsword. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press. Hester, James. 2014. ‘The Terminology of Medieval English Fight Texts: A Brief Overview’. In Can These Bones Come to Life?: Insights from Reconstruction, Reenactment, and Re-Creation. Volume I: Historical European Martial Arts, edited by Ken Mondschein, 30–37. Wheaton: Freelance Academy Press. Hils, Hans-Peter. 1985. Meister Johann Liechtenauers Kunst des langen Schwertes. Frankfurt am Main and New York: P. Lang. IRHT, collective authors. 2015. ‘Notice T 354’, Les Enluminures. http://www. textmanuscripts.com/medieval/bibliae-tuscany-60637, accessed 3 May 2015. Jaquet, Daniel. 2017. Combattre au Moyen Âge: une histoire des arts martiaux en Occident, XIVe–XVIe. Paris: Arkhê. ———. 2018. ‘The Art of Fighting under Glass: Review of Museum Exhibitions Displaying Fight Books, 1968–2017’. Acta Periodica Duellatorum, 6(1): 47–62. Jaquet, Daniel, Alice Bonnefoy Mazure, Stéphane Armand, Caecilia Charbonnier, Jean-Luc Ziltener and Bengt Kayser. 2016. ‘Range of Motion and Energy Cost of Locomotion of the Late Medieval Armoured Fighter: A Proof of Concept of Confronting the Medieval Technical Literature with Modern Movement Analysis’. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 49 (3): 169–86. Jaquet, Daniel and Vincent Deluz. 2018. ‘Moving in Late Medieval Harness: Exploration of a Lost Embodied Knowledge’. Journal of Embodied Research, 1(1): X. Jaquet, Daniel, Karin Verelst and Timothy Dawson. (eds.). 2016. Late Medieval and Early Modern Fight Books: Transmission and Tradition of Martial Arts in Europe (14th–17th Centuries). History of Warfare, 112. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane and Béatrice Marin and Nicolas Veysset. 2016. ‘Le catasto florentin de 1427–1430: présentation générale de l’enquête, du code et des données’. L’Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques. https://journals.openedition.org/ acrh/7458. Krause, Stefan. 2017. ‘Turnierbücher des späten Mittelalters und der Renaissance’. In Turnier: 1000 Jahre Ritterspiele, edited by Stefan Krause and Matthias Pfaffenbichler, 181–202. München: Hirmer.



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Kusudo, Kazuhiko. 2000. ‘Karl Wassmannsdorffs Beiträge zur Geschichte der Leibesübungen des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit’. In Aus Biographien Sportgeschichte lernen. Festschrift zum 90. Geburtstag von Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Henze, edited by Arnd Krüger and Bernd Wedemeyer-Kolwe. Hoya: Institut für Sportgeschichte. Lawrence, David R. 2009. The Complete Soldier: Military Books and Military Culture in Early Stuart England, 1603–1645. History of Warfare 53. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Leng, Rainer. 2002. Ars Belli: Deutsche taktische und kriegstechnische Bilderhandschriften und Traktate im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert. Imagines Medii Aevi, Bd. 12. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Müller, Jan-Dirk. 1992. ‘Bild – Vers – Prosakommentar am Beispiel von Fechtbüchern. Probleme der Verschriftlichung einer schriftlosen Praxis’. In Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit im Mittelalter: Erscheinungsformen und Entwicklungsstufen: (Akten des Internationalen Kolloquiums, 17–19 Mai 1989), edited by Hagen Keller, Klaus Grubmüller and Nikolaus Staubach, 251–82. München: W. Fink. Novati, Francesco. (ed.). 1902. Flos duellatorum in armis, sine armis, equester, pedester: il fior di battaglia di maestro fiore dei liberi da Premariacco. Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche. Palma, Marco. 1980. Sessoriana: Materiali per la storia dei manoscritti appartenuti alla biblioteca romana di S. Croce in Gerusalemme. Sussidi Eruditi 32. Rome: Viella. Spatz, Ben. 2015. What a Body Can Do: Technique as Knowledge, Practice as Research. London and New York: Routledge. Tlusty, B. Ann. 2011. The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany: Civic Duty and the Right of Arms. Basingstoke: Palgrave. ———. 2017. Masculine and Political Identity in German Martial Sports. In Sports and Physical Exercise in Early Modern Europe: New Perspectives on the History of Sports and Motion, edited by Rebekka von Mallinckrodt and Angela Schattner. Surrey and Burlington: Ashgate. Verlest, Karin and Daniel Jaquet. 2016. ‘Introduction’. In Late Medieval and Early Modern Fight Books, edited by Daniel Jaquet, Karin Verelst and Timothy Dawson, 7–30. Leyden: Brill. Wagner, Paul. 2016. ‘Common Themes in the Fighting Tradition of the British Isles’. In Late Medieval and Early Modern Fight Books, edited by Daniel Jaquet, Karin Verelst and Timothy Dawson, 410–48. Leyden: Brill. Welle, Rainer. 2009. ‘Ordnung als Prinzip’. Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 59: 37–49. ———. 2014. . . . vnd mit der rechten faust ein mordstuck – Baumanns Fecht- und Ringkampfhandschrift: Edition und Kommentierung der anonymen Fecht- und Ringkampfhandschrift. München: Herbert Utz. Wetzler, Sixt. 2015. ‘Martial Arts Studies as Kulturwissenschaft: A Possible Theoretical Framework’. Martial Arts Studies, 1: 20–33. Widauer, Heinz.2017. ‘Das Ring- und Fechtbuch der Albertina. Eine Handschrift mit vielen Rätseln’. In Die Kunst des Fechtens. Forschungsstand und -perspektiven frühneuhochdeutscher Ring- und Fechtlehren edited by Elisabeth Vavra and

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Matthias Johannes Bauer, 235–50. Interdisziplinäre Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit 7. Heidelberg: Winter. Wierschin, Martin. 1965. Meister Johann Liechtenauers Kunst des Fechtens. Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, Bd. 13. München: C. H. Beck. Wilson, K. J. 1976. “Ascham’s Toxophilus and the Rules of Art”. Renaissance Quarterly, 29 (1): 30–51. Wolf, Tony. 2012. Ancient Swordplay: The Revival of Elizabethan Fencing in Victorian London. Wheaton: Freelance Academy Press.

Chapter 5

The Phone Book Project Tracing the Diffusion of Asian Martial Arts in America through the Yellow Pages Michael Molasky

OKINAWAN KARATE Karate for Men Women & Children Karate Birthday Parties Child Abduction Seminar Self Defense for Women MAKE IT HAPPEN – CALL TODAY – Advertisement from the 1998–1999 combined edition of the St. Louis Business Phone Directory

Any attempt to document how a foreign cultural practice takes root in domestic soil is destined to be imprecise and incomplete. The difficulty is compounded when considering the diffusion of Asian martial arts in the United States because that history spans over 150 years, encompasses multiple cultural traditions that emerged in different eras, includes broad geographic variation based on local demography and immigration patterns, was heavily influenced by America’s wars and military presence in the Asia-Pacific and involves modes of transmission that range from personal instruction in martial arts classes to staged, simulated fighting in film, television and video games – not to mention the plethora of martial arts–related material available on the Internet. Further complicating matters is that the category ‘Asian’ itself is extraordinarily broad and imprecise, and the term ‘martial arts’ is nearly as vague, making it difficult to clearly circumscribe the object of study. Providing a thorough account of this multifaceted history is thus an impossible undertaking, akin to tackling a constantly expanding jigsaw puzzle, where each piece that is added reveals several new blank spaces. Nonetheless, 57

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we do have some sense of the rough contours of this history, and the present chapter aims to add a few small pieces to the puzzle. My material consists of the ‘Yellow Pages’, or business directories of telephone books, from four mid-sized American cities between the years 1945 and 2000. This was the period in which martial arts instruction gradually extended beyond specific Asian ethnic communities, law enforcement and the military to include the general population. In the late 1940s through the 1950s, most American cities might have a single judo school or a ‘jiujitsu’ (jujutsu) class at the local YMCA, but martial arts instruction remained rare. Karate schools began appearing in the 1960s, and in the wake of Bruce Lee’s movies and the television series Kung Fu (1972–1975), the 1970s saw a nationwide explosion in the number and type of martial arts classes being offered, with Chinese martial arts entering the public consciousness for the first time. Still, for most Americans during the 1970s, any Asian martial art seemed exotic. By the 1990s, however, martial arts had become thoroughly integrated into America’s cultural and commercial landscape, with a diversity of schools dotting suburban strip malls as well as urban centres. Children’s classes in karate or taekwondo now seemed no more unusual in suburbia than piano lessons or soccer practice, and an activity that had seemed exotic only two decades earlier became thoroughly domesticated and commercialized. The Yellow Pages not only bolster our understanding of the diffusion of individual martial arts in particular locales, but they also shed light on this process of cultural domestication, which began in earnest when large numbers of American military personnel returned home after being stationed in Japan, Okinawa or Korea in the late 1940s and 1950s. Some of these returning servicemen had achieved proficiency in judo or karate; far fewer had studied Korean martial arts such as hapkido and taekwondo (the latter was still being codified during this time). Although commercial martial arts schools remained rare in the United States throughout the 1950s, classes in judo or jiu-jitsu were beginning to appear – even if only at the local community centre or in the instructor’s garage. These less institutionalized martial arts classes were unlikely to be advertised in the Yellow Pages. This was also true of those classes confined to particular immigrant communities where the main source of publicity tended to be word of mouth or hand-written fliers posted locally. These classes were often taught in Japanese or Chinese (in Chinatowns, most likely in Cantonese), further ensuring a limited group of students. Research into these local pedagogical contexts is needed for us to gain a fuller picture of the history of martial arts in the United States, but in the present project, I have confined my inquiry to the realm of public advertisements in the Yellow Pages. I have chosen two cities from the West Coast – San Francisco and Seattle – each of which has long been home to a relatively large and diverse Asian

The Phone Book Project 59



(including Asian-American) population, and two from the Midwest – St. Louis and Minneapolis – in which Asians have historically constituted a much smaller portion of the overall population.1 Table 4.1 gives population data for each city, based on the U.S. census data collected every decade between 1950 and 2000. It should be noted that each city draws its municipal boundaries differently, but when including the population from surrounding counties or adjacent cities, these metropolitan areas are roughly comparable in size, with a total population of between one and two million people, depending on where one

Table 4.1  Census Data

Census Year San Francisco 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 Seattle 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 St. Louis 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 Minneapolis 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

Total Population

Asian and Pacific Islander

Japanese

Chinese

Korean

775,357 740,316 715,674 678,974 723,959 776,733

30,392 58,236 95,095 147,426 210,876 239,565

5,579 9,464 11,705 12,461 11,591 11,410

24,813 36,445 58,696 82,244 130,753 152,620

N/A N/A N/A 3,442 6,538 7,679

467,591 557,087 530,831 493,846 516,259 563,374

8,428 17,182 22,077 36,613 60,819 73,910

5,778 9,351 9,986 10,427 9,837 8,979

2,650 4,076 6,261 9,430 15,248 19,415

N/A N/A N/A 2,305 3,587 4,863

856,796 750,026 622,236 453,085 396,685 348,189

474 934 1,386 1,696 3,733 6,891

189 275 359 241 274 217

285 448 511 562 752 1,038

N/A N/A N/A 162 192 289

521,718 482,872 434,400 370,951 368,383 382,618

1,037 1,330 1,927 4,104 15,723 23,455

670 558 686 610 821 662

367 516 855 739 1,585 2,447

N/A N/A N/A 770 1,374 1,637

U.S. Census Bureau. (1950–2000). Census of Population: General Population Characteristics. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/decade/decennial-publications.html.

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draws the municipal boundaries.2 Also note that the Census Bureau uses the terms ‘Asian and Pacific Islander’, ‘Chinese’, ‘Japanese’ and ‘Korean’ as ethnic categories; these terms do not distinguish between U.S. citizens and non-citizens, and my use of these terms follows this practice. Finally, I should add that the sudden spike in the Asian population of Minneapolis beginning in the 1990s is due to a refugee resettlement programme that brought large numbers of Hmong refugees to the Twin Cities area. Unlike immigrants from China, Japan and Korea, the Hmong (and the smaller population of Vietnamese immigrants that arrived around the same time) did not tend to open martial arts schools and exerted less influence on the local martial arts scene than did immigrant populations from East Asia. I chose these four cities because I have some first-hand experience studying martial arts in St. Louis (where I was raised) and in the Twin Cities area (where I spent nine years as an adult), and although I was only able to make brief research trips to San Francisco and Seattle, it seemed essential to include two comparable-sized cities from the West Coast, where the martial arts have a much richer history. Fortunately, there exist informative published studies of the history of Asian martial arts in both the San Francisco Bay Area and the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area, and these provide valuable contextual knowledge when examining local phone book listings.3 I will leave it to U.S.-based researchers to explore similar materials from other cities. Large metropolitan areas with a history of diverse martial arts schools, such as Los Angeles and New York, are certainly worthy of attention, as are smaller cities in other parts of the country, including Honolulu, which exerted a disproportionate influence on the development of martial arts in the continental United States during its formative phase from the late 1950s through the 1970s. But why even bother with such a mundane, generic source as the Yellow Pages? Notwithstanding their obvious limitations, I found that they offer surprisingly valuable insights into the history, representation and reception of martial arts in the United States, while at the same time highlighting local differences that are easily overlooked in broader historical overviews. These phone directories were distributed free of charge to every local residence and were the first source the average consumer would consult when seeking a particular product or service – be it a plumber, optometrist, shoe store or karate instructor. Of course, the notoriously thick and heavy paper directories have since been replaced by Internet listings, and even when they were the primary source for consumers, not all martial arts schools advertised in the Yellow Pages. This is evident from the glaring absence of Chinese martial arts schools among the listings in the San Francisco phone book through the 1960s, even though the city was home to the largest Chinese population outside Asia. We must therefore take care not to assume that the listings accurately reflect the number and variety of martial arts classes in that city. But



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they do provide a rough sense of the number and type of classes offered to the general public. Furthermore, by devoting attention to the terminology used in phone book headings (in other words, the categories under which the listings are organized), we can acquire a better understanding of the general state of contemporary knowledge of the martial arts among the general public. HEADINGS: FROM ‘GYMNASIUMS’ TO ‘MARTIAL ARTS INSTRUCTION’ Precisely because the Yellow Pages are organized for easy use by consumers with no specialized knowledge of the topic, the words used in listings of a given topic such as ‘martial arts instruction’ are chosen because they are perceived to be the most obvious choice for such consumers. The terminology used in headings is thus closely tied to contemporary levels of knowledge about, and widespread perception of, the given subject: a homeowner having problems with the kitchen sink would naturally look under the category ‘Plumber’, but where would a karate school be listed? In fact, the answer varies with the city and era, but chances are that until the 1960s, none would be listed at all; for even in the diverse martial arts culture of San Francisco, no listing for ‘karate’ could be found until 1961, when ‘Karate School of Oyama’ appeared in the city’s Yellow Pages.4 Even after karate schools began spreading throughout the United States during the 1960s, for several years, they were more likely than not to be listed under the category ‘Judo and Jiu-jitsu Instruction’, which itself didn’t appear in the San Francisco Yellow Pages until 1963. This meant that someone seeking classes in judo or jiu-jitsu before that time would have had to look under either the heading ‘Gymnasiums’ or ‘Physical Culture’. (I should point out that jujutsu was spelled in various ways, with ‘jiu-jitsu’ and ‘ju-jitsu’ being the most common. Here, I will use today’s most popular spelling, ‘jiu-jitsu’.) Although it was almost always paired with judo in the headings, schools advertising classes solely in jiu-jitsu were rare until the emergence of ‘Brazilian jiu-jitsu’ in the 1990s. And although 1964 was the year when judo was admitted to the Olympics, ads for judo schools were outnumbered by ads for karate schools by nearly 3:1 in the San Francisco phone book that year. In the following year, ‘Karate Instruction’ appears as a separate heading, although in 1967, the two headings were combined under the rubric ‘Judo, Karate & Jiu Jitsu Instruction’. It is apparent from these headings that the Japanese arts dominated the world of commercial martial arts instruction offered to the general public in San Francisco throughout the 1960s. In fact, the first kung fu school advertised in the city’s Yellow Pages, Cheuk’s Kung Fu Studio, did not appear until 1967, and a second, George Long’s Chinese Gung Fu Studio, appeared in

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1969. Thus, even with its enormous Chinese population, it was only after the emergence of Bruce Lee and the kung fu boom of the 1970s that instruction in Chinese martial arts was extended to the public sphere. Stated differently, as late as 1969, only two Chinese martial arts schools – the same number as schools advertising hapkido that year – appeared among the eighteen listings under ‘Judo, Karate & Jiu Jitsu Instruction’. The rest are mainly Japanese or Okinawan arts. Only five years later, however, over fifty listings appear, nearly a third of which purport to teach some form of kung fu (including dubious advertisements for ‘karate kung fu’ or ‘kenpo kung fu’). The late 1970s witnessed a further diversification of offerings, with taekwondo becoming more prominent and even a couple of schools offering instruction in Filipino arts such as kali (arnis). Surprisingly, it was not until 1981 that the heading ‘Martial Arts Instruction’ appeared in the San Francisco Yellow Pages, and it was not until the late 1980s when the term ‘martial arts’ began to be commonly used in the names of schools, some of which were changed from names that featured the words ‘karate’, ‘kung fu’, or ‘taekwondo’ to the more generic ‘Martial Arts Academy’. This change may have been partly due to the increasing tendency for a single school to offer instruction in several different martial arts, but it clearly attests to the growing prominence of the expression ‘martial arts’ in the public sphere. In this way, we can trace public awareness of a particular martial art through the headings used in the Yellow Pages, and while the headings and number of listings vary from city to city, there is a surprising degree of consistency among the headings themselves, which suggests that despite local variation, public awareness did not vary significantly from one city to the next. This is no doubt true because public awareness of the martial arts in the second half of the twentieth century was largely shaped by representation in the mass media (especially film and television), which reached a national audience. The most prominent exception would appear to be taekwondo, which spread less through mass media than by word of mouth, organizational savvy and its image of being a martial art especially suitable to children and teenagers (not to be overlooked in taekwondo’s rise is that powerful umbrella associations were supported by either the South or North Korean government, or, in some instances, both).5 The terminology used in the headings of Yellow Pages from all four cities suggests that the word ‘karate’ was just beginning to enter the vocabulary of the general public in the 1960s, and the words ‘kung fu’ and ‘taekwondo’ were still largely unknown. This is not to claim that judo and jiu-jitsu were the only martial arts taught in these four cities through the 1950s (this may well have been the case in most American cities with a small Asian population), but they were the only martial arts with sufficient cultural capital to justify advertising in the Yellow Pages at the time. We know, for example,



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that in addition to judo and jiu-jitsu, which had been taught to American police and the military as well as to President Theodore Roosevelt in the early twentieth century, kendo had been taught within Japanese communities on the West Coast nearly as long and there were quite a few Kodokan judo clubs in universities and community centres preceding the Second World War.6 We can also assume that the history of Chinese martial arts in the United States can be traced back at least as far as the mid-twentieth century, when the first wave of Chinese immigrants arrived on the West Coast in conjunction with the 1848 Gold Rush and the expansion of railroad lines to the Pacific Ocean. But little is known about this early history of Chinese martial arts in the United States, nor do we know very much about which Chinese martial arts could be found in San Francisco’s populous Chinatown during the twentieth century: surely some styles of kung fu were practised, at least among the ‘Tong’ gang subculture. These are topics richly deserving of study but would require reading ability in Chinese, and reliable written documents are likely to be elusive. As noted earlier, Japanese martial arts have a relatively long history of being used in American military and police training, and the large number of U.S. servicemen stationed in Japan and Okinawa since the Second World War provided further opportunities for Americans who were not of Japanese descent to acquire proficiency in judo, karate, aikido and so forth. In contrast, instruction in Chinese martial arts remained almost solely confined to the Chinese ethnic community and through the 1960s was generally limited to the small number of cities with ‘Chinatowns’ (in addition to San Francisco and Seattle, these include Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Boston). Considering that Seattle’s Chinese population was significantly less than that of San Francisco, it is surprising to learn that a kung fu school appeared in the Seattle Yellow Pages three years before the first was advertised in the San Francisco phone book. In 1964, a modest listing by the name of ‘Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute’ appeared under the category ‘Gymnasiums’ in the Seattle phone book (the category ‘Judo & Ju-jitsu Instruction’ did not appear in Seattle’s Yellow Pages until 1967). Since there were only four other listings for Asian martial arts in Seattle that year – two offering karate instruction and one each in judo and jiu-jitsu – even the bare-bones listing for Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute managed to stand out. Still, few of its students could have imagined that ‘Lee Jun Fan’, the school’s twenty-four-year-old instructor, would soon change the world of martial arts forever when he began making movies under the name ‘Bruce Lee’. Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute was only listed for the year 1964, but thanks largely to the impact of Lee’s movies, public instruction in Chinese martial arts gradually increased in Seattle, and by 1974, the heading in the local Yellow Pages was expanded to ‘Judo, Karate, Kung-Fu & Jiu-Jitsu Instruction’,

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indicating that the word ‘kung fu’ was now firmly established in the public’s vocabulary. In spite of this growing awareness, schools teaching kung fu remained rare throughout the 1970s in cities with smaller Chinese populations. For example, the first appearance of a kung fu school in the Minneapolis Yellow Pages was not until 1976, and offerings in Chinese martial arts instruction remained limited for several years, even though the new category ‘Karate, Judo, Jiu-Jitsu & Kung Fu Etc. Instruction’ appeared in the 1979 edition of the city’s phone book. And in St. Louis during the 1970s, although several karate schools claimed to teach kung fu, the first school that purported to specialize in ‘traditional kung fu’ was not listed in the local phone book until 1981. Interestingly, this was founded not by a Chinese immigrant but by an African American. Whereas nearly all of the early kung fu schools on the West Coast appear to have been taught by ethnic Chinese, it was not unusual in other parts of the country to find instructors of various ethnic backgrounds, and in cities such as St. Louis, with especially large African American populations (over two-thirds in the city itself), it was by no means uncommon to find African American instructors of kung fu and other Asian martial arts. Neither knowledge nor ability, of course, is determined by race, ethnicity or nationality, but because students interested in the martial arts often equate ‘authenticity’ with Asian heritage, some non-Asian instructors have adopted strategies designed to bolster an image of cultural mastery. In the case of Chinese martial arts, for example, the instructor might insist on being called ‘Sifu’ by students and use Chinese terminology even if he or she does not speak the language, and although uniforms are not required in many Chinese martial arts schools, non-Asian instructors can sometimes be found dressed in the manner of those ancient masters featured in kung fu movies. Judging from the Yellow Pages of these four cities, public awareness of words such as judo, jiu-jitsu, karate and kung fu developed at roughly the same time in each, but the availability of actual instruction in particular martial arts varied considerably based on local demographic patterns. Nonetheless, broad trends (or fads) in martial arts instruction can be identified after the boom years of the 1970s: taekwondo gradually increases in prominence during the decade and, together with karate, has remained a stable presence in the American martial arts scene ever since; aikido schools begin flourishing in the 1980s and early 1990s before losing popularity; schools purporting to teach ninjutsu appear out of nowhere in the 1980s, only to vanish as suddenly as a ninja into the darkness of night; Muay Thai, Gracie jiu-jitsu, Filipino Kali/Arnis, Indonesian Silat and countless original hybrids have all attracted their share of enthusiasts, a small percentage of whom become dedicated long-term students of these arts, changing the landscape of the American martial arts world over time. The extent to which these changes are reflected at the local level can be partially detected through careful examination of that community’s Yellow

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Table 4.2  African American Population by City Geographic Area St. Louis Minneapolis San Francisco Seattle

African American Population (1980) 206,386 28,433 86,414 46,755

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Census 1980

Pages, enabling us to identify national trends on the one hand and idiosyncrasies in the local cultural marketplace on the other (See Table 4.2). THE DOMESTICATION OF ASIAN MARTIAL ARTS (OR THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ‘CHOPSTICK WRITING’) Finally, I wish to examine a few examples of large advertisements taken from the St. Louis Yellow Pages between 1976 and 1995. One could easily devote an entire chapter to an analysis of such advertisements, since they raise a host of issues, including orientalism and self-orientalism, the commodification of culture, the ‘sportification’ of martial arts, local permutations of national cultural trends, the perpetual American quest for an ‘ancient tradition’ and essentialist assumptions that link authenticity with ethnic heritage and cultural purity. I will touch on some of these issues briefly, but in the limited space remaining, I wish to focus on how the combination of text and image typically found in these advertisements changes over time in a way that reflects what might be labelled the ‘de-exoticization of Asian martial arts’. By this I refer to the process of cultural domestication where what once seemed foreign and exotic gradually becomes familiar and Americanized, without completely losing the aura – and attendant cultural authority – derived from its claim to being rooted in an ancient Asian tradition. In Yellow Pages ads for martial arts schools, this process of cultural domestication is most clearly reflected in the shifting styles of writing or printing words such as ‘karate’. Consider, for example, the following section of a page taken from the 1976 edition of the St. Louis Yellow Pages. It is unclear whether these ads were designed by the same person or were commissioned by each school separately and designed by different people. In either case, notice how the names of the featured martial arts are rendered. This is what I refer to as ‘chopstick writing’ because it was widely used on the signs of local Chinese restaurants at the time and is clearly intended to evoke the image of Chinese characters (kanji in Japanese) for consumers unable to read them. It is, in other words, a visual appeal to East Asian otherness and exoticism while simultaneously asserting authenticity, as if to say, ‘We teach real Oriental martial arts at

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our school’. The inherent tension in such claims is evident in the school names ‘National Karate’, ‘International Karate’ and ‘American Karate Studios’. On the one hand, the advertisements emphasize authenticity derived from Asian cultural roots, yet they attempt to offset any sense of alienation that potential consumers might feel by ‘nationalizing’ (or globalizing) these exotic practices. Other details, including spelling and grammatical errors, catch the eye as well (i.e. ‘Okinawin’ for ‘Okinawan’, ‘karate champions . . . was trained here’ and ‘Tatekwondo’) that might lead certain readers to question either the authenticity of that school’s offerings or the quality of instruction. In the ads for schools run by Korean instructors, assertions of martial expertise are underscored by not only noting years of experience and competitive achievements but also through appeals of cultural authenticity rooted in ethnic heritage (‘Oriental Champion’ and ‘Korean Champ’). Compare the prolific use of ‘chopstick writing’ in the aforementioned ads from the 1976 St. Louis Yellow Pages to the utterly un-exotic fonts used in ads from the city’s phone books by the early 1990s. This is no mere coincidence but is a clear trend that can be seen, to varying degrees, throughout the United States from the 1970s through the 1990s, and it attests to the growing familiarity of Asian martial arts in the domestic cultural landscape (Figures 4.1–4.4). As is apparent from the aforementioned ads, karate and taekwondo remained the dominant martial arts advertised in St. Louis during this period, although another characteristic of the modern American martial arts world is

Figure 4.1  From the 1976 St. Louis Yellow Pages.



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also evident, especially in the ads from the 1976 phone book: what we might refer to as ‘cultural syncretism’, or the mixing of cultural traditions in a manner that is unusual in the ‘original’ cultures. Of course, even in the context of East Asia, many martial arts commonly thought to have a single national origin are, in fact, cultural hybrids: Japanese karate is largely derived from the Ryukyu Islands (present-day Okinawa Prefecture), which had long been a separate political and cultural entity from Japan.7 Indeed, the word ‘karate’ was often written in Okinawa with the characters that meant ‘Chinese hand’ until the character for ‘Chinese’ was replaced with that for ‘empty’. And

Figure 4.2  From the 1992–1993 combined edition of the St. Louis Yellow Pages.

Figure 4.3  Also from the 1992–1993 combined edition of the St. Louis Yellow Pages.

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notwithstanding Korean nationalist assertions to the contrary, certain strains of taekwondo are closely derived from Shotokan karate, which was codified by an Okinawan and became among the most representative styles of ‘Japanese karate’. The resemblance between Shotokan and taekwondo is evident from even a cursory comparison of their respective forms (kata in Japanese, hyung, tul, poomse, or poomsae in Korean, depending on the era and style of taekwondo). Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do was a far more self-conscious and strategic type of cultural syncretism, and while his technical foundation was the wing chun system learned during his youth in Hong Kong, his adamantly antiinstitutional approach to the martial arts was largely forged during his time on the West Coast of the United States (specifically in Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles).8 Notwithstanding the cultural nationalist pronouncements of some of the fictional characters he embodied on screen, Bruce Lee’s valorization of individual over institution, and the unabashed cultural syncretism of Jeet Kune Do arguably makes him the prototypical American martial artist.

Figure 4.4  From the 1984–1985 combined edition of the St. Louis Yellow Pages.



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The gradual proliferation and diversification of martial arts in post-1960s America can be seen not only in the growing number of schools and media images but also in the number of shops specializing in martial arts supplies. In 1976, for example, over a dozen stores selling martial arts uniforms and supplies advertised in San Francisco’s Yellow Pages, and the majority of these shops (and others throughout the country) are distinguished by the ‘pan-Asian’ nature of their merchandise: nunchaku and other weapons from Okinawa are placed beside Chinese spears and taiji swords, satiny colourful kung fu uniforms as well as thick white judo-gi are sold, and both taekwondo and karate uniforms are for sale in addition to belts found in every colour of the rainbow. By the 1980s, ninja-related goods were a hot item, even at Chinese-run shops such as the one advertised above. Comparing advertisements in the Yellow Pages of different cities leads to a deeper understanding of both local and national developments in the sphere where culture intersects with commerce. Consider the

Figure 4.5  From the 1994–1995 combined edition of the St. Louis Yellow Pages.

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advertisement (Figure 4.5) from the 1994–1995 combined edition of the St. Louis Yellow Pages. St. Louis straddles the geographical and cultural border between South and North (or, at least, between the South and Midwest), and there appears to be enough evangelical Christians in the area to support a martial arts school that proclaims it to be ‘Christian owned and operated’. One is much less likely to find similar advertisements in cities on the East or West coasts of the United States than in the South or Midwest, and indeed I did not encounter a comparable ad in any of the phone books from the other three cities that I examined for the same time span. I would hazard a guess that in the South, such ads are even more common than in border cities such as St. Louis. Setting aside the religious reference, however, one is left to ponder the intent behind the expression ‘The Original American Karate Studio’: Are they simply implying that this was the first in a local chain of karate schools to serve the district of North County? Or are they claiming to be the first truly American (as in ‘Christian’) karate school? Regardless, it is clear from the Yellow Pages of the four cities discussed in this chapter that between the 1960s and the 1990s, karate and other Asian martial arts were gradually transformed from alien, exotic practices to emerge as a more familiar site within the domestic cultural landscape. It would be an exaggeration to claim that they have been thoroughly Americanized, for that would detract from the authority they derive through their affiliation with Asia and the attendant images of esoteric mastery and unbroken tradition. But the transition from appearing so alien as to be rendered in ‘chopstick writing’ to the emergence of a uniquely American ‘Christian karate’ is a process that unfolded over time in cities throughout the United States. As we have seen, that process is partially revealed in advertisements found among the pages of that most mundane and now antiquated source, the Yellow Pages. _______________ ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Generous financial support for this project was provided by the following: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research #16K13280), Suntory Foundation (Grant for Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research in Humanities and Social Sciences) and Waseda University (Grant for Special Research Projects). I would like to express my gratitude to Mr Joseph Svinth, who generously shared with me his wealth of knowledge about the history of martial arts in the United States; Mr Scott Park Phillips, who provided valuable introductions to martial arts schools in the San Francisco Bay Area; my co-researcher, Professor Yasuhiro Sakaue



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of Hitotsubashi University, who assisted with collection of materials in San Francisco and Seattle; and my research assistant at Waseda University, Ms Zhuo Li, who provided invaluable assistance in collating and processing this material for publication. Finally, I wish to thank Professor Paul Bowman for agreeing to include such a topic in the present volume. NOTES 1. Phone books from San Francisco, St. Louis, and Minneapolis were obtained at the central public library of each city. The Seattle Yellow Pages were obtained at the University of Washington Library’s Pacific Northwest Collection. I would like to express my appreciation to the librarians at each institution for their assistance in gathering these materials. 2. For example, the city of Oakland sits across the bay from San Francisco; Tacoma is distinct from Seattle but is considered part of the greater metropolitan area; and the cities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis constitute the ‘Twin Cities’, although they maintain separate identities and municipal governance. In the case of St. Louis, the city broke off from the county before falling into economic decline, and the city’s population has since dropped precipitously, whereas the population (and average income) of the county now far exceeds that of the city. A thorough study of each region would thus include local phone books from these surrounding cities and counties as well, but I have confined my study to the major municipality in each area. 3. See Russo (2016) and Svinth (2000). Svinth has done the most extensive research on the history of martial arts in the United States. In addition to the aforementioned study, see his many entries in Thomas A. Greene and Joseph R. Svinth (2010). 4. The San Francisco Yellow Pages for the year 1960 was missing from the city’s central library when this research was undertaken, so it is possible that a karate school was listed beginning that year, but none appeared in the listings for the period 1945–1959. 5. On the history and diffusion of taekwondo, see Gillis (2015). 6. I am relying largely on Joseph Svinth (2000) and his numerous entries in Greene and Svinth (2010). On the spread of Karate in the United States, Gary J. Krug has made some provocative assertions, but they need to be confirmed by further research, including interviews in Okinawa and archival research using Japanese sources (see Krug 2001, 395–410). Benjamin Judkins and Jon Neilson provide an incisive treatment of the globalization of wing chun kung fu in particular and Chinese martial arts more broadly in their book, The Creation of Wing Chun: A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts (2015). 7. For nearly 300 years, the Ryukyu Kingdom had maintained a dual tributary relationship with China and the Satsuma Province of Japan until it was annexed by the Meiji government in 1872 and made a Japanese prefecture in 1879. On

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Ryukyuan history through 1879, see Smits (2017). For a critical perspective on Okinawa’s relationship with both mainland Japan and the United States in the modern era, see Hein and Selden (2003). On postwar Okinawa’s ambivalent relationship with the United States, see Molasky (2001). 8. Needless to say, there are countless books about Bruce Lee, but many are little more than hagiographies or self-aggrandizing accounts of Jeet Kune Do. For a thoughtful academic inquiry into Lee’s contributions and cultural significance, see Bowman (2013). For more personal memoirs that nonetheless offer provocative perspectives on Lee as a martial artist and cultural figure, see Miller (2001) and Bolelli (2003).

REFERENCES Bolelli, Danielle. 2003. On the Warrior’s Path: Philosophy, Fighting, and Martial Arts Mythology. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. Bowman, Paul. 2013. Beyond Bruce Lee: Chasing the Dragon Through Film, Philosophy, and Popular Culture. London: Wallflower Press. Gillis, Alex. 2015. A Killing Art: The Untold Story of Tae Kwon Do. Ontario: ECW Press. Greene, Thomas A. and Joseph R. Svinth. 2010. Martial Arts of the World: An Encyclopedia of History and Innovation. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc. Hein, Laura and Mark Selden. (eds.). 2003. Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. Judkins, Benjamin and Jon Neilson. 2015. The Creation of Wing Chun: A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts. New York: State University of New York Press. Krug, Gary J. 2001. ‘At the Feet of the Master: Three Stages in the Appropriation of Okinawan Karate into Anglo-American Culture’. Cultural Studies: Critical Methodologies, 1 (4): 395–410. Miller, Davis. 2001. The Tao of Bruce Lee. London: Vintage. Molasky, Michael S. 2001. The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa: Literature and Memory. New York: Routledge. Russo, Charles. 2016. Striking Distance: Bruce Lee and the Dawn of Martial Arts in America. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. Smits, Gregory. 2017. Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology in Early-Modern Thought and Politics. University of Hawaii Press. Svinth, Joseph. 2000. Getting a Grip: Judo in the Japanese American Communities of Washington and Oregon, 1900–1950. J. R. Svinth.

Chapter 6

Martial Arts, Media and (Material) Religion Esther Berg-Chan

INTRODUCTION In 2011, the anthropologist DS Farrer and the scholar of English literature John Whalen-Bridge announced the advent of ‘martial arts studies’ as a new field of academic inquiry (Farrer and Whalen-Bridge 2011, 1). A few years later, with the launching of the ‘Martial Arts Studies Research Network’ (MASRN) at Cardiff University, United Kingdom, accompanied by international conferences and new publications, such a field seems to have taken much clearer shape.1 From the already existing research on ‘martial arts’2 produced within different disciplinary contexts, an interdisciplinary conversation on martial arts has emerged. From the different disciplinary backgrounds of the scholars involved arises the necessarily interdisciplinary nature of this new academic field, from which in turn a multitude of different (disciplinary) perspectives on martial arts arise. This chapter sets out to explore martial arts from a religious studies perspective. Claiming martial arts as an object for religious studies and in turn claiming that religious studies has the potential to produce valuable insights for the field of martial arts studies might raise some eyebrows. The relation and, maybe not coincidentally, also the definition of both martial arts and religion are an issue of debate among both outside observers and practitioners (Bergunder 2014; Bowman 2017). It is this relation that is under investigation in this chapter. Its objective is twofold: Drawing on the perspective of material religion (Meyer et al. 2010; Morgan 2010; Prohl 2012; Bräunlein 2015), this chapter seeks to analytically unpack martial arts from a religious studies point of view as ‘mediators’ (Latour 2005, 39–40); shedding light on the entanglement of martial arts practices, media, and the embodiment/ performance of religious and/or therapeutic aspirations in concrete historical3 73

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settings, this chapter seeks to highlight the potential of religious studies to contribute valuable insights for the field of martial arts studies. At the same time, this chapter argues that the particular understandings of martial arts, religion and their relation to each other articulated in the historical examples investigated are contingent but not arbitrary; that is, they each constitute one possible actualization amid multiple discursive potentialities that have been enabled and gained plausibility in specific historical and sociocultural processes and contexts. Such a discourse theoretical perspective, I will argue, has methodological consequences for the way in which the relation of martial arts and religion should be approached as an object of research within both religious and martial arts studies alike. Before I proceed, however, it is necessary to briefly outline where I am speaking from in both disciplinary and theoretical terms. RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND MATERIAL RELIGION Since its formation in the late nineteenth century, the academic study of religions has been marked by a variety of approaches and research agendas (Hinnells 2005; Orsi 2011).4 Since the many ‘cultural turns’ (Bachmann-Medick 2016) and their ensuing theoretical reorientations within the humanities and social sciences from the 1960s onwards, many scholars of religions draw a clear line between the study of religions as a theological endeavour and religious studies as a field of critical inquiry founded on a principle often referred to as ‘methodological agnosticism’.5 This chapter, too, stems from an understanding of religious studies as critical inquiry and is equally based on the idea of a ‘methodological agnosticism’. Accordingly, in this chapter, I am not concerned with the question of whether the religious practitioners we encounter on the following pages are right or wrong about the truth claims they make (by whatever standard one might actually decide this is another question). What I do acknowledge, however, as pointed out elsewhere is that the truth claims made ‘serve as important reference points in the social practices and imaginative horizons of the religious actors involved’ (Berg and Rakow 2016, 181). I also acknowledge ‘that these truth claims, and the religious realities that stem from them, engender actual experience and become a social reality, with consequences not only for the actors who share a belief in them, but also for those who remain undecided or actively deny them’ (Berg and Rakow 2016, 181). In studying religion and its relation to martial arts (as well as vice versa), this chapter further adopts what has been called a ‘constructivist and/or historicist understanding’ (King 2013, 138) of culture (including martial arts) in general and religion in particular. Proceeding from such a perspective,



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this chapter maintains that whatever theories or methods we use will always ‘shape the object we study and the knowledge we produce about it’ (Berg and Rakow 2016, 182). As a matter of fact, the emergence of the category ‘religion’ itself ‘coincided with the development of Religionswissenschaft (religious studies [E.B.-C.]) which both defined its object and explicated it’ as Peter Harrison writes (Harrison 1990, 14). Against this background, investigating how discourses on religion produced in various settings (including academia) ‘construct the very object they seek to explain’ (King 2013, 145) becomes one of the central objectives of the study of religion.6 Accordingly, I describe my perspective adopted in this chapter as discourse theoretical. The early academic study of religions evolved in many respects from the field of comparative philology and for a long time scholars of religions continued to focus their attention on the study of assumed sacred texts and their meaning (e.g. as opposed to the materiality and performativity of texts and textual practices) (Kippenberg 1997). What often disappeared from the view of these scholars was the material, sensuous and embodied dimension of religion as something people do and experience as they act on themselves and their bodies, and interact with artefacts of all kinds, their fellow human beings as well as natural and built environments. Against the backdrop of a multifaceted turn to matters of materiality, performativity, objects and practices in the humanities and social sciences in the second half of the twentieth century, in religious studies, too, new approaches have been developed to address these blind spots in the study of religions (Bräunlein 2015; Meyer et al. 2010; Morgan 2010; Prohl 2012). In the Anglophone context, such approaches came to be summarized under the label material religion. ‘How does religion happen materially? [. . .] In what manner are material things constitutive of religion?’ ask the scholars of religion David Morgen and Sally M. Promey (Morgan and Promey 2001, 16). Yet, material religion as a guiding research perspective within the study of religions is not limited to the study of material culture in the stricter sense (objects and artefacts), nor is it dedicated exclusively to the study of religious art as in fine arts and high culture (cf. McDannell 1995). The perspective of material religion more generally foregrounds all kinds of media and questions of mediation building on the assumption that religious ideas are always only accessible in terms of the ways they are mediated – through bodies and the senses, artefacts, practices, discourses and institutions (Meyer 2013). Accordingly, from a material religion perspective, it seems appropriate to conceptualize religion in general as a form of mediation, ‘where processes of mediation and media practices become the constitutive condition as well as visible performance’ (Berg and Prohl 2014, 2) of religious practices in general (Stolow 2005, 125; cf. Meyer 2011). With the advent of digital media technologies, a new dynamic has emerged within such processes of mediation. Not only do we currently witness the

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proliferation and differentiation of a rapidly growing number of more and more interconnected digital media technologies in all areas of society and everyday life. These technologies are also increasingly dependent on ‘computerized data’ (Hepp and Hasebrink 2018, 19). As a result, within highly mediatized environments, constructions of social reality are increasingly predicated on digital representations (Hepp and Hasebrink 2018, 19). More than ever before, we find digital and physical environments and representations constitutively entangled, constantly shaping and remaking each other – changing the way we perceive and make sense of the world and ourselves (Iwamura 2011, 8). It is against this background that this chapter sets out to analytically unpack martial arts from a material religion and discourse theoretical perspective through a focus on the entanglement of martial arts practices, media and the embodiment/performance of religious and/or therapeutic aspirations in two concrete historical settings: First, I will unpack the representations of kung fu as ‘mediator’ of religious knowledge and therapeutic aspirations on the website of the Shaolin Temple Germany; secondly, I will turn to the representations of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Boxers’ ‘martial magic’ (Judkins 2014) as ‘mediators’ of religious and/or therapeutic aspirations in oral testimonies. CASE 1: KUNG FU AS ‘MEDIATOR’ OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE AND/OR THERAPEUTIC ASPIRATIONS7 In 1982, the Shaolin Temple in Henan, China, suddenly found itself at the centre of public interest. Having been destroyed in the aftermath of the overthrow of China’s last imperial dynasty in 1928, the temple had lain deserted for several decades (Filipiak 2000, 49). In 1982, the success of the Hong Kong film production Shaolin Temple, the first movie featuring the temple filmed at the actual historical site in mainland China, brought the temple back into the public eye which ultimately led to its re-opening (Hunt 2003, 73; Shahar 2008, 44–45). Since then, the temple has been rebuilt and turned into a major heritage site as well as global enterprise; the name ‘Shaolin’ has officially been registered as trademark, the temple’s show team tours worldwide, and official branch-temples are established all around the globe in order to promote both the Shaolin Temple itself and its religious and martial practices (Jacobs 2015). In 2001, the temple opened its first official overseas branch-temple in Berlin, Germany (Lüdde 2008, 28). Located in the innercity district of Wilmersdorf, the branch-temple offers a variety of services, some free, others for the payment of a fee. The class schedule from July 2017 presents a total of sixty-nine hours per week dedicated to such pay-for-service classes and two hours of religious services (‘Buddhist ceremonies’) and



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education (‘Buddhist teaching and sutra recitation’) free of charge. The major part of the pay-for-service classes is dedicated to qigong (fifteen hours), taiji/ tai chi (nineteen hours) and kung fu (twenty-nine hours), making kung fu the temple’s main product. On the branch-temple’s website, kung fu is introduced as the best-known ‘martial art [Kampfkunst, in German] of China’ and juxtaposed with religious images and narratives from the field of Buddhism as well as the more diffuse field of Asian spirituality.8 Within this (discursive) context, the current abbot of the Shaolin Temple in Germany describes kung fu as Buddhist (and hence religious) practices ‘in motion’, as opposed to Buddhist/religious practices ‘at rest’ (e.g. the recitation of sutras or the playing of ritual instruments).9 Though the abbot emphasizes that to undergo martial arts training at the temple one does not need to profess Buddhist beliefs, martial arts and ‘Buddhist knowledge’ are nevertheless considered to be mutually constitutive; they not only mutually shape but also explicate each other as encapsulated in aphorisms such as ‘the aim of practicing Shaolin Kung Fu is not fighting but realizing the Buddhist principle of compassion’.10 Accordingly, within this narrative, kung fu is represented as ‘mediator’ for the embodiment/performance of a particular kind of knowledge that we may call religious in light of the discursive connection drawn to the wider discourse on religions (in particular Buddhism, see above) and (Asian) spirituality. In the same way, I consider this representation of kung fu to be part and parcel of the contemporary discourse on martial arts in light of the way in which the website’s text itself locates kung fu within the wider field of discourses and practices subsumed under the name ‘martial arts’ (see above: kung fu is the best-known ‘martial art’ of China, to give just one example). This does not mean, however, that this particular articulation of martial arts as ‘mediators’ of religious knowledge is the only possible articulation of the relation between martial arts and religion there is; nor does this mean that this particular reading of Shaolin Kung Fu as religious practices in motion is the only understanding of Shaolin Kung Fu. On the contrary, on the same website, we find another representation of Shaolin Kung Fu: through constant ‘work on the self’, we read here, a practitioner of kung fu is able to form and shape the self and to improve one’s bodily and mental qualities so as to step by step become ‘the best we can be’. Within this narrative, kung fu is described less as mediator of religious knowledge, and more as a collection of therapeutic ‘technologies of the self’ (Foucault 1988) that enable practitioners to transform their selves so as to achieve and realize an ideal state of self-actualization (Berg and Prohl 2014, 3–5). On the website, we find both readings of kung fu, the therapeutic and the religious, standing side by side without any direct connection being made. Again, this does not mean that no such connection is possible. Just as the rise of therapeutic discourses and

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practices in general has not replaced religious cultures, but brought forth new ‘intricate interconnection and entanglements’ (Rakow 2013, 485), we find therapeutic readings of kung fu entangled with images and narratives from the field of religion and (Asian) spirituality as encapsulated, for example, in Bruce Lee’s (1997) The Tao of Kung Fu. What we find on the website of the Shaolin Temple in Germany then is one articulation (among multiple discursive potentialities) of the relationship between martial arts, religion and/or therapy and self-improvement. As such, this articulation emerges at and is made possible through the conjuncture of three particular discursive formations: the contemporary discourses on (Asian) religions and spirituality, on martial arts, and on therapy and selfimprovement. This conjuncture in turn has emerged and gained plausibility in concrete historical and sociocultural processes and contexts from the 1970s onwards. Before the 1970s, Chinese martial arts in general and kung fu in particular were virtually invisible and unknown outside Chinese-speaking contexts. During the 1970s, however, through the mediatization and worldwide circulation of martial arts television and film productions most prominently those featuring the martial artist and actor Bruce Lee (1940–1973), kung fu became omnipresent: ‘it was the name of a television show, a genre, a pedagogic industry, the subject of comics, magazines and other merchandising’ (Hunt 2003, 1). It is virtually impossible to overestimate the role that Bruce Lee himself, his media products and public persona played in this process. Through his TV appearances and movies, Paul Bowman argues, Lee served as nothing less than a ‘founder of discursivity’ (Bowman 2013, 34). ‘Into Western popular consciousness [he] punched a paradigm, a whole new aesthetic vocabulary, a whole new perceptual-aesthetic field’ (Bowman 2013, 174). Among the new vocabulary, Lee introduced, was his understanding of martial arts as ‘practice of self-expression’ and of ‘becoming yourself’ (Berg and Prohl 2014, 14–16). References to this specific understanding of kung fu are found across Lee’s various media productions and publications, mostly collected, edited and published posthumously by others. Although the idea to ‘become’ and ‘express’ one’s ‘true self’ through bodily practices such as martial arts might seem commonplace today, such has not been the case in the early 1970s, when Bruce Lee found himself at the peak of his career. At that time, Davis Miller reminds us, ‘the concept of self-actualization’, and I would like to add, its connection to martial arts in general and kung fu in particular, ‘seemed shining and new’ (Miller 2000, 116). What we find as a result of Bruce Lee’s public impact in conjunction with parallel historical and sociocultural processes and phenomena such as the 1960s and 1970s counterculture is a reconfiguration of martial arts discourses and practices: ‘Violence’, Bill Brown remarks, ‘has been evacuated from the martial arts aesthetic, and, characteristic of the growing appreciation of kung fu in the



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1980s [. . .] has been transcoded into a search for the self. By 1980, one could learn on the pages of the Atlantic Monthly that the ‘ “real value lies in what martial arts tell us about ourselves: that we can be much more than we are now” ’ (Brown 1997, 37). Thus, as a result of these historical shifts within ‘popular consciousness’ (Iwamura 2011, 6), we find kung fu introduced and transformed at the same time into a ‘mediator’ for the embodiment/performance of therapeutic and/or religious aspirations within the multifaceted mediatized universe revolving around the popular icon of Bruce Lee. To unpack another discursive potentiality of the relation between martial arts and religion articulated in discursive formations past and present, the next section will turn to the ‘martial magic’ of the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Boxers. CASE 2: THE BOXERS’ ‘MARTIAL MAGIC’ AS MEDIATOR OF RELIGIOUS AND/OR THERAPEUTIC ASPIRATIONS11 At the end of the nineteenth century in northern China, a region thrown into turmoil by natural disaster, banditry, aggressive German missionary ambitions and a weakened imperial government, a heterogeneous movement formed under the name Yihequan, variously translated as ‘Society for Justice and Harmony’, ‘Boxers United in Righteousness’ or simply the ‘Boxers’, as they came to be known in Euro-American popular discourse (Esherick 1987; Cohen 1997; Xiang 2003; Bickers and Tiedemann 2007; Clark 2015). The historian Paul A. Cohen provides us with several oral history accounts of the practices popular among the Boxers. In 1965, a former Boxer by the name of Xie Jiagui states in an interview: When we took up Spirit Boxing [Shenquan], we were first told . . . to write down on a piece of red paper our names, home villages, and how many we were. The six of us then kneeled down and burned incense; we didn’t burn white paper. We requested teachers. I requested Sun Bin. They requested Liu Bei, Zhang Fei, and such people. We requested the gods to attach themselves to our bodies [qiushen futi]. When they had done so, we became Spirit Boxers, after which we were invulnerable to swords and spears, our courage was enhanced, and in fighting we were unafraid to die and dared to charge straight ahead. (Cited in Cohen 1997, 96, omissions, additions, and emphasis in the original)

In a similar manner, in 1959, Jia Xianju, a resident of the city of Taiyuan, recalls the Boxers’ practices as follows: They practiced their boxing in small groups on the streets. One time as I was going from Willow Lane to Xixiao Wall I saw a youngster of fifteen or sixteen

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going through his boxing drills. Facing towards the southeast he performed the koutou and chanted Tangseng, Shaseng, [Zhu] Baijie, [Sun] Wukong, and the like. After this he fell on the ground, scrambled to his feet, and then with greatly increased energy practiced martial arts. (Cited in Cohen 1997, 97–98, additions and emphasis in the original)

What we find in the oral testimonies, I suggest, is a particular set of practices through which the movement’s diverse adherents sought to transform themselves into extraordinary martial artists, ‘spirit boxers’ as it were, whose ‘fighting’ or ‘martial arts’ were enhanced through the embodiment/performance of supernatural agents that, among others, made their bodies impenetrable to weapons in their fight against ‘the foreign’.12 Similar to the first case example, we thus find the Boxers’ practices represented here as a form of ‘mediator’. But what is, in this case, the ‘matter’ being mediated? As pointed out in scholarly works on the Boxer movement, the supernatural agents most commonly invoked within the Boxers’ practices were the same ones that populated the stories of itinerant storytellers and popular operas. In the aforementioned oral testimonies, the former Boxer Xie Jiagui remembers the Monkey King (Sun Wukong), hero of the popular novel Journey to the West, along with his companions, the monk Tangseng (or Xuanzang) and Zhu Baijie, being invoked. Xie Jiagui, the Taiyuan resident, in turn recalls Liu Bei and Zhang Fei being called upon – both deified protagonists of the popular epos Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Cohen 1997, 106; Esherick 1987, 62–63). It was their supernatural powers and martial prowess that the participants of these rituals sought to embody/perform. Yet, stories of Qing dynasty popular culture not only lend to the Boxers’ martial practices particular figures and narratives. As several scholars have noted, the theatrical practices and performances of opera actors became in many respects ‘the constitutive condition as well as visible performance’ (Berg and Prohl 2014, 2) of the Boxers’ martial practices. The Boxers’ swordplay, writes Cohen, was ‘virtually indistinguishable’ (Cohen 1997, 106) from the swordplay performed by actors on stage, just as their manner of speech was emulating ‘the declamatory delivery of opera actors’, a contemporary recalls (cited in Cohen 1997, 106). Consequently, we find the Boxers’ practices here represented as ‘mediators’ of aspirations shaped in more than one way by Qing dynasty popular culture (just as, most likely, the other way around). It is within this particular mediatized context that the representations of the Boxers’ ‘martial magic’ presented in the oral testimonies mentioned earlier have been enabled and gained plausibility. What becomes apparent then is that just as it is impossible to discuss contemporary notions of kung fu without considering the whole universe of mediatized representations centred on the popular icon of Bruce Lee,



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it is equally futile to discuss late Ming and Qing dynasty martial arts without considering the images, stories and practices of Chinese popular culture. Yet, as was the case with the Shaolin Kung Fu representations, the Boxers’ martial practices, too, are open to more than just one reading. In his work on the origins of the Boxer movement, the historian Joseph W. Esherick provides us with another oral testimony by one Ruan Zutang who comments on the martial practices popular among the Boxers offering another possible interpretation: In the middle of the night, they kneel and receive instructions. They light lamps and burn incense, draw fresh water from a well and make offerings of it. They write charms (fu-lu) on white cloth. [. . .] They also teach spells. [. . .] Then he [the teacher, E. B.-C.] beats him [the initiate, E. B.-C.] with a brick or staff. After chanting the spell for three nights, one can withstand swords. It is said that after chanting for a long time, even firearms cannot harm one. It is much like breathing exercises (yuan-qi). Where the ‘breath’ (qi) moves, even a fierce chop cannot penetrate. But if one loses concentration, then the blade will enter. The simple people do not understand, and think it a magical technique. (Cited in Esherick 1987, 105, omissions E.B.-C., unless otherwise marked, additions and emphasis in original)

For Ruan Zutang, attributing the embodiment/performance of enhanced fighting or martial arts skills (in particular the impenetrability of the body) to the embodiment/performance of popular deities (as found in the first two oral testimonies) is a sign of ignorance (‘the simple people do not understand’); it is a ‘misinterpretation’ of the Boxers’ practices as the embodiment/performance of ‘magical’ aspirations. What the Boxers really embody and perform though, according to Ruan Zutang, are not magical aspirations (the power and martial prowess of popular deities) but aspirations that we might call therapeutic in the light of Ruan Zutang’s rejection of narratives and images centred on popular deities (i.e. the power of enhanced qi-movement or circulation). What we find in the oral testimonies presented here are then yet again two different articulations of the relation between martial arts practices, religion (or its delegitimized flipside magic/superstition) and self-improvement or therapy (in the widest sense). And just as the particular understandings of Shaolin Kung Fu discussed earlier, these articulations, too, have emerged and gained plausibility in concrete historical and sociocultural processes and contexts, in this case from the late Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) dynasties onwards. As the scholar of East Asian studies Meir Shahar observes, the Ming and later Qing dynasties witnessed a peculiar popularity of barehanded fighting techniques at a time when more effective and lethal fighting techniques had already eclipsed the importance of bare hands in actual combat (Shahar 2008,

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137).13 Parsing through martial arts treaties and manuals of that time, he also finds the result of training in barehanded fighting techniques being described in new and unusual terms, that is, in vocabulary traditionally used to describe the results of undergoing religious and therapeutic self-cultivation. For Shahar, part of the explanation why barehanded fighting became so popular during that time is to be found in exactly this newly forged ‘synthesis’ of fighting techniques with religious and therapeutic aspirations (Shahar 2008, 181). ‘Practitioners’, writes Shahar, ‘were no longer interested in fighting only. They were motivated instead by considerations of health, at the same time that they sought spiritual realization’ (Shahar 2008, 137). As a result, we find Qing dynasty fighting manuals ‘steeped in the vocabulary of qi circulation’ (Shahar 2008, 149) – a vocabulary open to both health-and therapy-related and religious readings. Thus, as a result of these shifts within Ming and Qing dynasty martial arts discourses, ‘martial arts practices were transformed into techniques that made accessible to the practitioner a specific (bodily) knowledge generally assumed to be inaccessible to human experience’ (Berg and Prohl 2014, 11) – be it the powers of divine heroes and gods known to everyone from itinerant storytellers and opera performances or the powers of qi harnessed through therapeutic practices of self-improvement. The different articulations of possible relations between martial arts practices, religion/ magic/superstition and therapy/self-improvement organizing the oral testimonies investigated earlier, I suggest, are the product of this new discursive conjuncture forged in Ming and Qing dynasty martial arts texts and practices. CONCLUDING REMARKS Investigating different representations of Shaolin Kung Fu and the Boxers’ martial practices from a material religion and discourse theoretical perspective, as attempted in this chapter, throws into sharp relief some of the key issues at stake in the study of martial arts, religion and their relation to each other. Directing our attention to the often overlooked material, sensuous and performative dimension of religion ‘and/as’ (material) mediations (Stolow 2005; Meyer 2013), a material religion perspective on the examples investigated has sharpened our eye for the roles martial arts may play as ‘mediators’ in religious practices, and for their relation to other ‘mediators’ and processes of mediation. Zooming in on the repercussions of an increasingly mediatized Bruce Lee within contemporary martial arts discourses and practices, and on the constitutive relationship between the Boxers’ martial practices and Qing dynasty popular culture, further pointed us to the profound importance of such popular media discourses and practices in the study of religion and martial arts past and present.



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Studying martial arts, media and (material) religion from a discourse theoretical perspective has in turn inevitably pointed us to the provenance of the modern discourses at stake here. It has sharpened our eye for the historical and sociocultural processes and contexts that enabled and produced the discursive formations from which in turn the particular understandings of martial arts, religion and their relation to each other emerged that we encountered in the case examples investigated. The distinction drawn in the oral testimony by Ruan Zutang from the second case example between a supposedly ignorant/magical understanding of the Boxers’ martial practices and a supposedly non-ignorant/therapeutic one echoes many similar such attempts from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century onwards to locate martial arts within the increasingly differentiated modern discourses of sports, therapy/medicine and religion/magic/ superstition. Such distinctions or boundary work seem to constitute the very foundation of both the modern discourse on religion(s) (Hermann 2015; Bergunder 2016) and on martial arts alike – just as they seem to structure many articulations of the relation between both phenomena up until today. When in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Chinese government and engaged citizens sought ways to modernize and strengthen China – so as to withstand foreign imperial ambitions and instead join the ranks of the perceived modern nations of the world – actors like the Jingwu Association (or, Pure Martial Physical Culture Association) stepped up, too. Setting out to ‘scientize martial arts, and spread them to the millions’ (Morris 2004, 192), they sought to contribute in their own way to the disciplining and strengthening of the ‘national body’. This task required, first and foremost, ‘purging the martial arts of superstitious relics’, as Andrew Morris remarks (Morris 2004, 192). What seems to have taken place in late Qing and early Republican China – as one of the key sites within the genealogy of the modern discourse on martial arts and religions – was thus a profound reconfiguration of martial arts discourses and practices within the ‘glocal’ dynamics of the ‘the modern ways’ – from sports to medicine or the way movements were taught through simplified terminologies and easy-to-follow routines (Morris 2004). Around the same time, the expression ‘martial arts’ entered the English language most likely as a translation from the Japanese (Oxford English Dictionary Online 2000) – the language of the one Asian nation that set out to modernize itself following ‘Western’ examples already in the second half of the nineteenth century. Among others, Japan incorporated ‘spiritual education’ (seishin kyoiku, in Japanese) into the school curricula; that is, martial arts training reformed in the light of modern sports to ‘strengthen’ the minds and bodies of the nation’s children (Bodiford 2010, 383–84). This ‘global history’ (Bayly 2004; Osterhammel 2014; Conrad 2016;), however, of the modern discourse

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on martial arts and its relation to and distinction from, among others, the modern discourse on religion/magic/superstition is still poorly understood and holds much potential for future research. To reconstruct this history presents one of the major tasks for the future of martial arts studies ahead and will significantly increase our understanding of both the modern global history of religions and martial arts alike. NOTES 1. The MASRN website is available at www.mastudiesrn.org, last accessed 21 March 2018. The publications include Paul Bowman’s programmatic Martial Arts Studies. Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries (2015), the newly established Martial Arts Studies journal (published with Cardiff University Press) and book series (published with Rowman & Littlefield International). 2. As will be elaborated further, this chapter proceeds from a ‘constructivist and/ or historicist understanding’ (King 2013, 138) of culture in general and martial arts, religion and their relation to each other in particular. As such this chapter maintains that the meaning of each of these terms (and others, e.g. therapy, self, self-improvement, etc.) as well as their relations to each other is arbitrary but not contingent (i.e. has been enabled, negotiated and gained plausibility in concrete historical and sociocultural processes and contexts while at the same time remaining – at least theoretically – open for contestation, re-negotiation and change) and varies depending on context, speaker and so forth. To point to these complexities, I have been using quotation marks. For the sake of smooth readability, however, in the following, I will forgo such highlighting measures, albeit remaining mindful of what I have just pointed out. 3. I use the term ‘historical’ here following Michael Bergunder, not only in the sense of ‘things past’. Instead, ‘historical’ here means ‘a concrete and unique phenomenon in space and time’ (Bergunder 2014, 17–18, translation E.B.-C.). 4. For the following discussion of religious studies, see also Berg and Rakow (2016, 181–82). 5. For a discussion of ‘methodological agnosticism’ in religious studies, see Russell T. McCutcheon (2005, 213–85). 6. The same, I argue in this chapter, should also apply for the study of martial arts. 7. As indicated earlier, the term ‘mediator’ is borrowed from Bruno Latour (2005, 39–40). 8. See: http://www.shaolin-tempel.eu/shaolin/index.php/de/die-kuenste-dershaolin/36-shaolin-kungfu, last accessed 20 March 2018. Buddhism we find characterized on the website as both a ‘world religion’ (Weltreligion, in German) and a ‘philosophy of life’ (Lebensphilosophie, in German) that may be practised independent of one’s personal religious affiliation. Here the website’s text is structured around the ‘spiritual, but not religious’– narrative organizing contemporary discourses on religion(s) and spirituality especially in the Global North (Baker 2004; Heelas and Woodhead 2005).



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  9. I refer to these practices as religious in light of the text’s own characterization of Buddhism (among others) as a religion (see above). 10. See: http://www.shaolin-tempel.eu/shaolin/index.php/de/die-kuenste-der-shaolin/ 36-shaolin-kungfu, last accessed 20 March 2018. 11. As indicated earlier, the term ‘martial magic’ is borrowed from Ben Judkins (2014). 12. One of the popular Boxer slogans read ‘support the Qing, destroy the foreign’ (Esherick 1987, xiv). 13. For the following see also Berg and Prohl (2014, 10–12).

REFERENCES Bachmann-Medick, Doris. 2016. Cultural Turns: New Orientations in the Study of Culture. Berlin: De Gruyter. Baker, Eileen. 2004. ‘The Church Without and the God Within. Religiosity and/or Spirituality’. In Religion and Patterns of Social Transformation, edited by Dinka M. Jerolimov, Siniša Zrinščak and Irena Borowick, 23–47. Zagreb: Institute for Social Research in Zagreb. Bayly, Christopher A. 2004. The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Berg, Esther, and Inken Prohl. 2014. ‘ “Become Your Best”: On the Construction of Martial Arts as Means of Self-Actualization and Self-Improvement’. JOMEC Journal, 5 (June): 1–19. Berg, Esther and Katja Rakow. 2016. ‘Religious Studies and Transcultural Studies: Revealing a Cosmos Not Known Before?’. Transcultural Studies, 2: 180–203. https://doi.org/doi: 10.17885/heiup.ts.2016.2.23603. Bergunder, Michael. 2014. ‘What is Religion?: The Unexplained Subject Matter of Religious Studies’. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 26 (3): 246–86. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341320. ———. 2016. ‘ “Religion” and “Science” within a Global Religious History’. Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism, 16 (1): 86–141. https://doi. org/10.1163/15700593-01601004. Bickers, Robert A. and R. G. Tiedemann. (eds.). 2007. The Boxers, China, and the World. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield International. Bodiford, William M. 2010. ‘Belief Systems: Japanese Martial Arts and Religion since 1868’. In Martial Arts of the World: An Encyclopedia of History and Innovation, edited by Thomas A. Green and Joseph R. Svinth, 382–94. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Bowman, Paul. 2013. Beyond Bruce Lee: Chasing the Dragon through Film, Philosophy and Popular Culture. London and New York: Wallflower Press. ———. 2015. Martial Arts Studies: Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries. Disruptions. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. ———. 2017. ‘The Definition of Martial Arts Studies’. Martial Arts Studies, 3: 6–23. https://doi.org/10.18573/j.2017.10092.

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Bräunlein, Peter J. 2015. ‘Thinking Religion through Things: Reflections on the Material Turn in the Scientific Study of Religion\s’. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 28 (4–5): 365–99. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341364. Brown, Bill. 1997. ‘Global Bodies/Postnationalities: Charles Johnson’s Consumer Culture’. Representations, 58 (April): 24–48. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928822. Clark, Anthony E. 2015. Heaven in Conflict: Franciscans and the Boxer Uprising in Shanxi. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. Cohen, Paul A. 1997. History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth. New York: Columbia University Press. Conrad, Sebastian. 2016. What is Global History? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Esherick, Joseph W. 1987. The Origins of the Boxer Uprising. Berkeley: University of California Press. Farrer, DS and John Whalen-Bridge. 2011. ‘Introduction’. In Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World, edited by DS Farrer and John Whalen-Bridge, 1–23. Albany: State University of New York Press. Filipiak, Kai. 2000. ‘Das Shaolin-Kloster und seine Kampftradition aus Historischer Sicht’. Zeitschrift für Qigong Yangsheng, 41–53. Foucault, Michel. 1988. ‘Technologies of the Self’. In Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, edited by Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton, 16–49. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Harrison, Peter. 1990. ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment. Cambridge (England) and New York: Cambridge University Press. Heelas, Paul and Linda Woodhead. (eds.). 2005. The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality. Religion and Spirituality in the Modern World. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Hepp, Andreas and Uwe Hasebrink. 2018. ‘Researching Transforming Communications in Times of Deep Mediatization: A Figurational Approach’. In Communicative Figurations, edited by Andreas Hepp, Andreas Breiter and Uwe Hasebrink, 15–48. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65584-0_2. Hermann, Adrian. 2015. Unterscheidungen der Religion: Analysen zum Globalen Religionsdiskurs und dem Problem der Differenzierung von ‘Religion’ in Buddhistischen Kontexten des 19. und Frühen 20. Jahrhunderts. Critical Studies in Religion, Religionswissenschaft (CSRRW), Band 10. Göttingen and Bristol: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Hinnells, John R. (ed.). 2005. The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Hunt, Leon. 2003. Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger. London and New York: Wallflower Press. Iwamura, Jane Naomi. 2011. Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popular Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Jacobs, Andrew. 2015. ‘Money, Lust and Kung Fu: China’s “C.E.O. Monk” Is under Fire’. New York Times, 8 June 2015, sec. Asia Pacific. Judkins, Benjamin N. 2014. ‘From Battle Magic to Self-Actualization: Understanding the Traditional Chinese Martial Arts’. Kung Fu Tea. https://chinesemartialstudies.



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com/2014/06/27/from-battle-magic-to-self-actualization-understanding-thetraditional-chinese-martial-arts/. King, Richard. 2013. ‘The Copernican Turn in the Study of Religion’. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 25 (2): 137–59. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341280. Kippenberg, Hans G. 1997. Die Entdeckung der Religionsgeschichte: Religionswissenschaft und Moderne. München: Verlag C.H. Beck. Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-NetworkTheory. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Lee, Bruce. 1997. The Tao of Gung Fu: A Study in the Way of Chinese Martial Art, edited by John R. Little. Tokyo, Rutland, VT, and Singapore: Tuttle Publishing. Lüdde, Johanna. 2008. ‘Die Akkulturation des Chan-Buddhismus im Shaolin Tempel Deutschland’. Transformierte Buddhismen, 1: 28–53. McCutcheon, Russell T. (ed.). 2005. The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader. Controversies in the Study of Religion. London: Continuum. McDannell, Colleen. 1995. Material Christianity. Religion and Popular Culture in America. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press. Meyer, Birgit. 2011. ‘Mediation and Immediacy: Sensational Forms, Semiotic Ideologies and the Question of the Medium’. Social Anthropology, 19 (1): 23–39. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8676.2010.00137.x. ———. 2013. ‘Material Mediations and Religious Practices of World-Making’. In Religion Across Media: From Early Antiquity to Late Modernity, edited by Knut Lundby, 1–19. New York: Peter Lang. Meyer, Birgit, David Morgan, Crispin Paine and S. Brent Plate. 2010. ‘The Origin and Mission of Material Religion’. Religion, 40 (3): 207–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. religion.2010.01.010. Miller, Davis. 2000. The Tao of Bruce Lee. London: Vintage. Morgan, David. (ed.). 2010. Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief. London and New York: Routledge. Morgan, David and Sally M. Promey. (eds.). 2001. The Visual Culture of American Religions. Berkeley: University of California Press. Morris, Andrew D. 2004. Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China. Asia – Local Studies/Global Themes 10. Berkeley: University of California Press. Orsi, Robert A. (ed.). 2011. The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies. Cambridge Companions to Religion. New York: Cambridge University Press. Osterhammel, Jürgen. 2016. Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. 2. Auflage der Sonderausgabe. Historische Bibliothek der GerdaHenkel-Stiftung. München: Verlag C. H. Beck. Oxford English Dictionary Online. 2000. Martial Art, N. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com.ubproxy.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/view/Entry/247535?redirected From=Martial+arts&. Prohl, Inken. 2012. ‘Materiale Religion’. In Religionswissenschaft, edited by Michael Stausberg, 379–92. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Rakow, Katja. 2013. “Therapeutic Culture and Religion in America.” Religion Compass, 7 (11): 485–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec3.12074.

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Shahar, Meir. 2008. The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Stolow, Jeremy. 2005. ‘Religion and/as Media’. Theory, Culture & Society, 22 (4): 119–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276405054993. Xiang, Lanxin. 2003. The Origins of the Boxer War: A Multinational Study. London and New York: Routledge.

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Liminoid Longings and Liminal Belonging Hyper-reality, History and the Search for Meaning in the Modern Martial Arts Benjamin N. Judkins INTRODUCTION You can learn a lot about a martial arts class by the ways in which it begins and ends. They all have their own small rituals and verbal incantations. Consider the closing of a typical class at the Central Lightsaber Academy (CLA). Sweating, in a not sufficiently air-conditioned space, the fourteen of us gathered, saluted the instructor, deactivated our weapons and received a few parting words of advice on the drills we had run for the better part of an hour. After which our leader, Darth Nihilus,1 said, ‘Your basic combat applications are looking better, and next week we will be working on our choreography again. Lastly, anyone wanting to spar should use the set of mats at the back of the gym. And remember, this is all just for fun!’ This is, give or take a few details, how every class ends. Unrelentingly upbeat and supportive, it is not the parting benediction that one might expect from a self-styled ‘Dark Lord of the Sith’. The students standing around me broke into groups as the class dispersed. Four of them grabbed fencing masks and armoured gloves so that they could get in a few last rounds of sparring. Others exchanged contact information and planned times to get together to practice their choreography, or just hang out, during the week. And one martial arts studies researcher stood in the middle of it wondering, ‘Why does someone as intense as Darth Nihilus repeatedly, multiple times a class, insist that this is all just for fun?’ 89

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The students who dedicate a chunk of their weekend to meet at the CLA certainly have a lot of fun. You can see it on the expressions on their faces, and in the intensity of their engagement with the curriculum. The atmosphere of the class is inevitably relaxed but focused. There is not a lot of talking, as letting your focus slip might very well mean getting smacked in the head with a heavy polycarbonate blade emitting a cool blue, green or a more sinister red glow. Weapons work always requires a high degree of mental focus, even when the blades in question do not actually exist. For an activity that is simply ‘just for fun’, the students of the CLA show a surprising degree of dedication. Half of them practice daily. Everyone in the room has purchased his or her own stunt sabers, even though the school always has plenty of loaners. Most of these are economical models, costing less than $100. But some individuals have paid up to $500 for a replica weapon that is personally meaningful. When asked about the reasons for coming, they provide a wide variety of responses. Perhaps the most common is a desire to find a fun way to get in shape and stay active. For the self-identified martial artists in the room, the lightsaber is an irresistible thought experiment and a release from the stresses, constraints and ‘politics’ of the traditional Asian combat systems. And for about half of the students, the lightsaber class is an extension of their Star Wars fandom. As one of my classmates, a self-styled ‘Gray Jedi’, declared, ‘The CLA is where bad-ass nerds are made!’ Yet, after a few weeks, what almost everyone focuses on in interviews is the community. As another class member noted: When I heard about a lightsaber class, I thought that it was so dorky that I was totally in. I thought that we were just going to be goofing off and hitting each other with lightsabers. I totally did not expect what it has come to be, which is a new group of friends unlike anything that I have encountered before.

In her comments, Darth Zannah goes on to describe the degree of personal empowerment and confidence that she discovered as she became a more competent duellist over the past several months. She now competes in open tournaments against much more experienced swordsmen from a variety of backgrounds. Darth Zannah’s sentiments seem to be widely shared and probably account for the Central Lightsaber Academy’s excellent student retention. Between the fast-paced classes, wide variety of activities and the general social dynamic, there can be no doubt that these students are objectively ‘having fun’. Yet I found the frequency of Darth Nihilus’s refrain puzzling. While I have always enjoyed my martial arts training, I suspect that ‘just for fun’ is not a turn of phrase that most practitioners of the traditional arts would be willing to embrace. What we do in the ‘real martial arts’ is almost



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always couched in a rhetorical framework that at once justifies and apologizes for the resources spent on training. Taekwondo claims to build ‘character’ in American school children. Kendo claims to teach other children what it means to be Japanese. Styles as diverse as mixed martial arts and wing chun claim to teach vitally important ‘real-world self-defence skills’. While many individuals enjoy martial arts training, very few would admit that we spend our means on a hobby that is ‘just for fun’. We almost always shift our discussion into the realm of ‘investment’ and ‘hard work’. In this regard, Darth Nihilus is no exception. When not moonlighting as a Darth Lord of the Sith, he is a professional martial arts instructor. The CLA is housed within a cavernous 4,000-square-foot commercial space in an enclosed suburban shopping mall which, for most of the week, is the home of the ‘Central Martial Arts Academy’. Nihilus and a business partner offer classes in the traditional Chinese and Filipino martial arts. The mall itself is in a more affluent suburb of a medium sized rust-belt city. The atmosphere in his other, more traditional, classes is notably different. Social interactions are inflected by vertical hierarchies marked by an explicit arrangement of coloured sashes layered over the more traditional system of ‘senior students’. What had been a generally relaxed atmosphere is tenser, and that tension appears in the posture and body language of the students. It reads in the way they automatically form hierarchically graded straight lines at the end of their classes. This is something you never see in the CLA which manages, at best, a lazy semi-circle. The rhetoric of the traditional martial arts classes is grimmer, featuring frequent outburst like ‘Really hit him!’; ‘Remember he could have a knife!’ and the ever-present warning ‘If you get lazy, it won’t work on the street!’ Students do not come to these classes for fun. Their motivations are those that we would generally expect in a martial arts school. Some are interested primarily in self-defence, others are looking for a challenging route to self-improvement and a few are drawn to the school’s successful kickboxing team. No matter what goals brought them in, everyone in the Central Martial Arts Academy is engaged in ‘hard work’. The code switching that Darth Nihilus exhibits when his discussion shifts between the two realms is, at times, remarkable. When talking about kung fu he is serious, adamant in his views, historically informed and visibly frustrated by the state of lineage politics within his art. He speaks as a martial artist. A tension enters his body language and facial expressions. When the conversation turns to lightsaber combat he relaxes, adopts a remarkably ecumenical view of the world and is eager to explore a vast range of activities (from kata practice, to competitive tournaments to cosplay). Here he favours horizontal forms of cooperation and association between a wide range of groups with very different sorts of goals. It is all, as he frequently reminds us, ‘just for fun’.

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In strictly empirical terms, this sort of ‘fun’ is essentially a part-time job for Nihilus, occupying many hours a week. The CLA also brings a notable number of new paying students to his classes who, in many cases, have never set foot in a gym or martial arts school before. In the world of small, and often struggling, suburban martial arts schools, it is an economic reality that simply cannot be ignored. Elsewhere I have examined the history and basic characteristics of lightsaber combat and argued that while it is a hyper-real practice – meaning that it draws much of its inspiration from a set of fictional texts, universally acknowledged as such – it nevertheless fulfils all of the basic criteria of a martial art.2 I further suggested that the invention of hyper-real martial arts might help us to better understand the processes by which all martial arts are created, as well as the varieties of social functions that they fulfil in modern societies. That, in turn, might suggest some important hypotheses about who takes up different sorts of martial arts training, and what the future of these fighting systems might hold.3 This chapter suggests a possible framework for thinking about the varieties of martial arts in the modern world and the motivations that fuel them. It begins with two basic questions. First, what sort of martial art is lightsaber combat? Second, why would someone choose to practice it, given the many other, better established, combat systems that already exist? To address these puzzles, we must explore a few additional details about the CLA. We then turn to the work of the anthropologist Victor Turner for insights into the ways that voluntary associations that are focused on transformative play might create meaning in the lives of their members. IS LIGHTSABER COMBAT AN AMERICAN MARTIAL ART? What is lightsaber combat? At the most basic level, it is a collection of loosely associated combat and performance practices that began to coalesce in the wake of the release of the prequel Star Wars movies in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As part of the marketing effort surrounding these films, replica lightsabers with realistic metal hilts, motion-driven sound and lighting effects and coloured polycarbonate blades were released in 2002. Other elements of Lucas’s media empire then began to develop an invented history for lightsaber training, selling it to a public eager for the ‘relics’ of that far away galaxy (Judkins 2016a). The creators of this new mythology had a surprisingly free hand as the actual Star Wars films say very little about this iconic weapon. Much of this



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invented history was organized around the idea that within the Jedi Order there had been ‘seven classic forms of lightsaber combat’ which had evolved over thousands of years (Reynolds 2002: 28–37). Each of these seven forms was described as having a unique combat philosophy as well as specific strengths and weaknesses, essentially making them distinct fencing systems. From the start, a clear equation was made between the fictional fighting systems of the Jedi and their real-world Asian counterparts. Each lightsaber form was given a vaguely Eastern sounding name (form I is ‘shii-cho’) and an orientalist animal association (again, shii-cho is ‘the way of the sarlacc’) (Wallace 2011). Popular notions of what a ‘proper’ martial art should be seem to have shaped much of what the seven forms became. We know that lightsaber combat is a hyper-real martial art. It is a fairly new, and also a market driven, creation. What else is it? Is it an American martial art? In the current era, many martial arts have come to be seen as indicators of national and regional identity. In some places, the practice of these systems has even become a mechanism for producing a certain sort of citizen, typically ones dedicated to the nation, embodying certain identities and capable of carrying out the state’s demands. In Japan, the Budo arts are positioned as revealing the essence of Japanese identity, and they have been closely associated with the state since the late Meiji period (Gainty 2013). In China, the Jingwu Association rose to prominence during the 1920s by promising to create a rationalized, modern, middle-class martial art that would increase the physical and spiritual strength of the people, ensuring ‘national salvation’ (Morris 2004: 185–229). With some variation of emphasis, this same mission was carried on by the later Guoshu and Wushu movements. This interest in uncovering the ‘national essence’ and ‘cultural heritage’ of an art can still be seen in popular discussions of ‘Israeli’ krav maga, ‘Korean’ taekwondo, ‘Thai’ kickboxing and ‘Brazilian’ capoeira. The rise of martial arts as tools that states adopt to define their identity and promote their values is one of the most striking trends of the twentieth century. This strongly ethno-nationalist turn has become a means by which the martial arts do social and political work. They first labour in the production of mature and strong citizens, and then in the promotion of certain identities both at home and abroad. What sort of ‘social work’ does lightsaber combat do? Is it an American martial art projecting American cultural values and identities within the global marketplace? Or is it something else? The Star Wars franchise has already attracted the attention of critical theorists and academic students of cultural studies (Lee 2016; McDowell 2014, 2016; Silvio and Vinci 2007). Some have looked at the project with

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ambivalence. They have seen reflected in these films some of the most questionable elements of American society.4 One could certainly see the export of these films as a clear case of the global spread of American popular culture. Without denying those basic facts, it is nevertheless fascinating to see how resistant the global lightsaber community has been to such labels. Lightsaber combat has been culturally translated and localized with surprising ease. Indeed, one of the most striking things about this movement has been its nearuniversal popularity, from South East Asia to Western Europe, in Russia and, of course, in the Americas. How has this been possible? Through a wide variety of books, DVD special features, documentaries and interviews, the Star Wars mythos actively presents itself to audiences as culturally universal. The creators of these products explain the ongoing appeal of their story lines by invoking the structuralism of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung.5 While these theories are not universally accepted by scholars today, they have become an important element of how many of the more thoughtful Star Wars fans around the world understand their own engagement with the franchise.6 The end result is to partially obscure the national and ideological origins of the story’s core value systems in favour of a more psychological and universal discourse. The students of the CLA have sought to construct lightsaber combat in ways that escape the ethno-nationalist pull that surrounds many other martial arts. Again, these are not ideas that they are ignorant of. Their classes take place in a space that prominently advertises training in ‘Chinese’ kung fu and ‘Filipino’ kali. Surrounding mall storefronts offer taekwondo, karate, hung gar, boxing and Olympic fencing (among other options). Anyone coming to a lightsaber class must make a conscious choice to physically pass by several competing alternatives, most of which are culturally associated with a specific national or regional identity. The question is why? Some of the more experienced martial artists in the class have drawn explicit connections between the ‘culturally neutral’ aspect of their practice (as they see it) and the possibility of pursuing more creative types of martial play and research. Multiple of them noted that Western, Chinese, Japanese and Filipino styles could be brought together and tested under the guise of lightsaber sparring in ways that would not normally be possible in a traditional instructional environment. When discussing his lightsaber class, Darth Nihilus notes the sense of autonomy he enjoys in leaving behind the lineage politics that dominates the more traditional Chinese martial arts. For him, this has translated into a greater technical freedom to combine multiple approaches free from the sorts of social surveillance that would normally inhibit this type of hybridization. It also manifests in an ability to engage in performance-based activities like



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cosplay, choreography and hero building. Such activities were actually the origin of Darth Nihilus’s memorable name and in-universe identity. Lightsaber combat is not seen as an ‘American martial art’ precisely because those who adopt its practice are seeking a specific type of freedom. This manifests in a self-conscious turning away from the constraints of historically grounded and ethno-nationalist martial arts. Many individuals are drawn to an activity that is like the martial arts on a technical level, but one that does different sorts of work. In lightsaber combat, we see a rejection of constructed nationalist histories and a move towards a system of forwardlooking, and open-ended, mythic play. LIMINAL HISTORY AND LIMINOID MYTHOLOGY Turner is particularly helpful in the present case as much of his writing touched on the question of how meaning is generated through ritual and drama. His ethnographic research expanded on the ideas of Van Gennep to better understand the ways that symbols and rituals function during ‘rites of passage’, or those instances in which people move from one social status (e.g. that of being a child, single individual, or uneducated person) to another (that of being an adult, married person, or university graduate) (Gennep 1960/1909). Anthropologists had noted that through rites of passages, such transitions could be made both socially legible and personally meaningful. Following Van Gennep, this transition has often been described as a three-part process. Transformative ritual starts with a period of separation, in which the individual is removed from her normal community, a liminal period in which the previous identity is stripped away, leaving the initiate in Turner’s famous term ‘betwixt and between’. Lastly, the transformed individual is reincorporated back into a society that will now support them in playing their newly constructed role. Much of Turner’s writing and thinking focused on the middle (or liminal) stage. What exactly happens when an individual enters a threshold state but has not yet passed beyond it? How is social meaning created and social knowledge bestowed through ritual and symbolism? According to Turner, this often happens in very creative ways. Through a rich combination of rituals, myths, rites of reversals and other modes of symbolic teaching, Turner found that individuals can engage in a period of cosmic play in which they themselves rearranged the symbolic building blocks of the social order, often in ways that seem chaotic or disordered. In so doing, they confront fundamental truths about the community that were not previously accessible. Going through this process, initiates learn something about both their own identity and the nature of society.

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Turner’s critics would note that there was a certain strain of universalism and cultural essentialism in his work that may have led him (and Van Gennep) to project these basic patterns onto other non-Western cultures inappropriately. Nor did Turner spend enough time exploring the ‘borderlands’, or those areas of society having individuals who either refused to integrate through totalizing social processes, or who found creative ways to subvert this process and use similar structures to create counter-systemic identities (e.g. see Weber 1995, 525–36). Nevertheless, it is not difficult to find striking similarities between the ritual and initiatory processes described in classic ethnographic accounts of rites of passage and current practices in Western society. Indeed, there may be too many parallels for comfort. The rites associated with fraternity initiations on college campuses, religious baptisms in neighbourhood churches or a traditional marriage ceremony all exhibit something very much like the three-part structure of separation, liminality and reintegration. Nor would we be the first to note that martial art training is full of rituals, both large and small. They can be seen in the wearing of special clothing (the white karate gi symbolizing burial clothing) and the gruelling public ordeals endured in some rank tests or tournaments. All of this fulfils two functions. First, it elevates an individual’s status within the community, transforming them from novice to expert. Second, it creates a sense of social meaning and fulfilment by passing on a specific set of embodied practices or cultural philosophies which (we are constantly reminded) have their truest applications beyond the confines of the training hall. Is it surprising that in the current era, Western consumers have come to see the martial arts as vehicles of personal transformation (Berg and Prohl 2014)? In an increasingly secular society, they appear to be taking on essential social and psychological roles that might previously have been fulfilled by other sorts of community rituals (Jennings 2010, 533–57). Nor are individuals the only ones to have taken note of the transformative powers and liminal potential of the martial arts. States such as Japan, China and Korea, to name a few of the better-known examples, determined during the twentieth century that martial practices could be adapted not just to improve civilian fitness and public health but also to create institutions through which individuals would be inducted into a new, specifically curated, vision of the nation and society. Martial arts reformers in all three countries, eager for government patronage, designed specific programmes, and lobbied to have them included in school curriculums, to do just that (Gainty 2013, Ch.4; Judkins and Nielson 2015, 148–54; Judkins 2016b). The emergence of a close association between some Asian martial arts and ethno-nationalism was neither a coincidence nor a reflection of the essential nature of these practices. Both martial arts modernizers and government reformers worked



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hard to make this connection happen and then to promote their new creations on the international stage. So, on the one hand, individuals adopt these processes as a means of personal improvement, or just recreation. Yet on the other, powerful social and political forces have attempted to co-opt them as modern rites of passage, ones that could do the social work of producing certain kinds of citizens and favoured (often masculine) identities. There is no necessary reason why these two goals must contradict each other. Yet sometimes they might. To grasp what this implies for our theoretical understanding of the nature of lightsaber combat, we must return to one of Victor Turner’s fundamental questions about ritual. What, exactly, is transformed in a rite of passage? Is it the initiate? Or should we instead be focused on the community? Turner suggested that the intended subject of transformation in a classic rite of passage was actually the community. While the individual was affected, the fundamental issue was how the group processed this change. Turner noted that his students were mistaken when they described their own initiatory experiences as ‘rites of passage’. He cautioned in his 1974 essay that true examples could only be found in small-scale societies characterized by primary social interactions (Turner 1974). Given the obvious similarities, what exactly separates the two scenarios? The fact that these rites were often compulsory in small-scale communities betrays the fundamentally social nature of the exercise. These rituals were events through which society understood itself. Even seemingly riotous rites of reversal and bacchanalia were, for Turner, examples of social work that demanded the participation of the entire community. Such activities are socially mandated and therefore a type of labour, no matter how much ‘fun’ the participants might be having. None of them fall into the category of ‘leisure’ as we typically use the term in the modern West. Turner argued that this slightly different category is really a by-product of the commodification of labour that occurred during the period of economic and social transformation that Karl Polanyi called the ‘Great Transformation’. An individual who joins a modern church, fraternity or martial arts class is in a very different position. These are activities that, within modern Western society, explicitly occupy our leisure time. They cannot be compelled. Individuals participate in these activities or rites because they themselves feel drawn to them. This takes what was once social work and makes it a much more personal experience. Nor are all of these experiences exactly the same. Turner concluded that at least two distinct types of institutions structure modern voluntary activities. The first category was still referred to as ‘liminal’, as they most closely resemble the rituals of previous eras that they may have, in some cases, grown out of. These include things like formal initiations into religious groups, seasonal celebrations or a traditional wedding ceremony.

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Yet while they resembled older rites of passage, he noted that they are still voluntary. Simply put, no one can force you to join the Rotary Club. As such, he noted that his continued use of the term ‘liminal’ must be understood as somewhat metaphorical. Turner then identified another group of activities which were even less socially focused in nature, and more oriented to individual play, experimentation and self-expression. These could still induce a process of personally meaningful transformation, but they were less likely to be focused on conforming one’s life to a hegemonic social pattern. At times, they could even take on anti-systemic qualities. Turner termed this second group of practices ‘liminoid’ (see table 6.1). By Turner’s own admission, his exploration of these categories was partial and experimental in nature. As a first cut, he found that liminal practices tend to be community oriented. They emerge out of larger social patterns and are comprised of symbols that are universally intelligible. They are fundamentally ‘eufunctional’, meaning that they reinforce widely held social, economic and political identities. A baptism or religious wedding ceremony fits this pattern. In contrast, liminoid activities tended to arise later in history and are more focused on individual attainment. They are often distributed via economic markets and develop at the margins of society. Such movements

Table 6.1  Summary of Turner on Liminal and Liminoid (Turner 1974, 84–86) Liminal Social structure

Small communities ‘Mechanical Solidarity’ Fundamentally social in orientation Seasonal rituals or rites of passage Emerge as an expression of a total social hole The lens by which society sees itself Universally intelligible to all in society

Liminoid

Post-industrial revolution ‘Social Capital’ Fundamentally individual Type of event and optional Market-driven arts, sports and other leisure activities Develops at the margins Origin of social processes Plural, fragmentary and experimental in nature Type of symbolism Idiosyncratic and creative The product of schools or individuals Dysfunctional – often Relationship to other social Eufunctional – reinforces stands outside hegemonic structures social, cultural, economic discourses and can even and political norms critique them



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are fragmentary and experimental in nature. Liminoid activities can rearrange symbols in highly idiosyncratic (even monstrous) ways and have the potential to critique dominant social discourses. Common examples include the creation of art and literature or the development of many sports and games. In terms of our present concerns, the liminal and liminoid distinction may help us begin to make sense of what is going on with Darth Nihilus’s two seemingly contradictory martial arts institutions. They may also suggest something about the variety of social work that martial arts are called on to perform in the modern global system. FROM LIMINAL WORK TO LIMINOID PLAY IN THE MARTIAL ARTS It is not difficult to discern a liminal aspect within the Chinese martial arts. While students of martial arts studies tend to classify wushu as a voluntary activity, one suspects that many of the young children that fill the wushu-based technical schools of Henan and Shandong province were not full consenting participants in the decision-making process that sent them to these gruelling boarding schools.7 Instead, their guardians made the decision that this was a better environment for their children as it would give them the technical and cultural foundation to become a certain sort of adult. Specifically, one who could get a job with the police or military. The martial arts have come to be an accepted aspect of childhood education in the West as well. What do we hope that our children gain from these exercises? To listen to the rhetoric surrounding these practices, confidence and compliance are the actual goals of our efforts. Regardless of what is actually accomplished, these classes are often framed as a means to create certain sorts of adults, ones that will succeed within society’s dominant cultural and economic paradigms. Many of these same more liminal tendencies are evident in adult martial arts classes as well. As Jon Nielson and I reported in our book, The Creation of Wing Chun: A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts, Ip Man’s notable martial arts abilities were not the only thing that attracted teenage and young adult students to him in the early 1950s. After all, in the aftermath of the 1949 liberation of the Mainland, Hong Kong was quite literally overrun with talented martial artists. So, what set him apart? Ip Man had grown up as a member of the ‘new gentry’ in Guangdong. As such he received a dual Confucian and Western education. He had deep cultural knowledge of a past that young adults in the crown colony of Hong Kong felt isolated from. He was an individual who had synthesized the lessons of two worlds and could

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model the value of an unapologetically Chinese identity in a modern, globally connected, metropolis. Many of his younger students idolized the Confucian glamor that he radiated (Judkins and Nielson 2014, 228–9). Contemporary government–sponsored wushu and the wing chun community that existed in Hong Kong during the 1950s and 1960s are very different types of institutions. Yet both were engaged in the social work of producing certain sorts of citizens. In the first case, this takes on a more statist cast, while Ip Man’s project was more social and cultural in nature. Yet in both instances, we see that martial arts training might attempt to produce a certain sort of student, one accepting of important social values, through a process of physical transformation. A traditional martial arts class is characterized by a type of liminal play. We set aside our mundane professional identity when we enter the training space and submit ourselves to a new social hierarchy. We reverse and rearrange many of the most basic cultural values that we brought with us as we suddenly find ourselves punching, throwing and choking our fellow initiates. Yet all of this happens within limits and is subordinated to a single, unified, transformative vision. This conforms to Turner’s expectations for a more traditional liminal experience in the modern world. Creative play is possible, but only up to a point, and only in the service of certain externally defined goals. Consider the question of folk history in a typical wing chun class. While one may encounter individuals expressing admiration for Ng Moy and Yim Wing Chun, or in other cases doubting their existence, you will never hear anyone declaring his or her allegiance to the villains of that particular creation myth. From an etic perspective, that might seem paradoxical. After all, the Manchu banner troops succeed in burning the Shaolin Temple to the ground and butchering most of the monks. That must say something about their martial prowess! Why not adopt their methods? Yet that is exactly the sort of opinion that is expressed multiple times a day at the Central Lightsaber Academy. At first glance, one might think the biggest difference between it and a traditional martial arts class is the non-reality of their chosen weapon. It is easy to become fixated on the glowing, buzzing blades. Much more important is the open-ended and free-wheeling way in which symbol can be manipulated, reversed and hybridized in one environment, but not the other. We have already noted that such extended play exists on the technical level. Yet this ability to creatively rearrange symbols is not limited to the act of fencing. Consider the fact that the CLA is led by a figure who has adopted the title Darth Nihilus (meaning Dark Lord of Hunger) as his public persona for interacting with the lightsaber combat community.



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For those who may be unfamiliar with the Star Wars lore, we should note that individuals who go by the title ‘Darth’ are not the heroes of this story. Instead they are the masters of a malignant political and metaphysical philosophy that is said to have been responsible for billions of deaths during their age-old war against the Jedi. The specific storylines behind the various ‘Darths’ are interesting to consider, though a full account would take us too far afield. At the most basic level, many of these Dark Lords have, through a process of corruption, become something less than human. In many cases, their loss of emotional empathy is mirrored by physical damage or decay. The Sith do not call on the healing and life-sustaining energy of the force. Many have become monstrous human-machine hybrids. Sith characters are always sociopathic, and often psychotic. That makes them an interesting foil for storytelling. And when not teaching either kung fu or lightsaber classes, Darth Nihilus spends time on what might be called ‘hero building’ (or in his case, ‘villain construction’). This includes crafting back stories, engaging in cosplay and producing fan films in which his alter ego kills large numbers of Jedi knights (played by his students) along with the requisite innocent bystanders. Not all of the CLA students follow this left-handed path. Others have invested considerable time and resources in the creation of more traditionally heroic Jedi persona. A third group, turned off by the psychotic nature of the Sith and the overly disciplined lives of traditional Jedi, craft ‘Grey Jedi’ characters. These are becoming quite popular as they allow students to mix and match symbols and mythic histories in ways that better fit their personalities. Occasionally characters from outside of the Star Wars universe are remixed into the world of lightsaber combat (a trend pioneered by the creators of NY Jedi). Yet well over half of the students ignore these exercises all together. They might instead focus on Star Wars trivia or collecting lightsabers. Other students see themselves primarily as martial artists and arrive at class wearing martial art themed T-shirts. This last contingent reminds us of an important, somewhat paradoxical, fact. Not all members of the CLA identify themselves as Star Wars fans. While almost everyone has seen the movies, a fair number of students have never attempted to explore the expanded universe of video games, novels or television shows. So, while some students may understand lightsaber combat as an aspect of their fandom, other participants see it primarily as a way to stay in shape with the help of a supportive community of likeminded friends. While everyone views their practice as important and transformative, the goals that they seek are strikingly personal in nature. There is no single pathway to an agreed-upon goal that all lightsaber students share.

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CONCLUSION Lightsaber combat presents us with a powerful example of Turner’s concept of the liminoid. In comparison, the traditional martial arts classes of the Central Martial Arts Academy are vertically structured and designed to advance a very specific skillset. Their curriculum is meant to have a transformative effect on students, one that will see them replicate a eufunctional set of behaviours outside of the school. That is the very definition of the liminal. In contrast, the Central Lightsaber Academy exists to cooperatively fulfil individual desires for highly creative, fractured, idiosyncratic and, sometimes monstrous, play. Students are free to focus on sparring and practical lightsaber combat, or to skip that in favour of forms training and choreography. They can engage in cosplay and hero building, trying on villainous or heroic alter egos. The individuals in this community are not socioeconomically marginal compared to similar martial arts groups in the area. Yet they actively choose to play at the social margins. This cacophony of goals and purposes coexists within both the CLA and the broader lightsaber combat community as a whole. We should be cautious about reifying these two categories, liminal and liminoid, as binary opposites. Certain students of the anthropology of athletics have noted that Turner’s categories sometimes have trouble sorting specific activities. Sharon Rowe has argued that while an amateur basketball league at the local YMCA is liminoid in character, much as Turner expects, professional sports often exhibit a much more liminal nature, in terms of both their social function and the discourses that surround them. She has even questioned whether sports should ever be classified as liminoid (Rowe 2008, 127–48). Our current case suggests instead that the liminal and the liminoid may exist as ideal points within a continuous field of tension.8 While Darth Nihilus’s kung fu class appears to be liminal compared to the lightsaber group, the degree to which it is ‘upholding dominant social discourses’ pales in comparison to the previously discussed wushu boarding schools in China. They are literally indoctrinating and training thousands of children for future careers in a vast state-security apparatus. We must consider matters of degree as well as kind when evaluating the nature of martial arts institutions. Still, Turner’s basic distinction between the liminal and the liminoid is helpful to students of martial arts studies precisely because it suggests that totalizing statements about the role of these combat systems in modern society are bound to miss the mark. Rather than being just one thing, Turner suggests that there are different types of social work that we can expect to see within the martial arts. The success of hyper-real arts, divorced from the myths of nationalism and focused on enjoyment, rather than the ‘hard work’ of producing even more



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ideal citizens, should force us to think deeply about the future of the martial arts in the current era. Lightsaber combat demonstrates a world in which the plural, fragmentary and horizontal can succeed despite the existence of the universal, disciplined and hierarchically organized. It may be that Darth Nihilus’s frequent refrain that this is ‘all just for fun’ is as much a warning as a reassurance. Accepting his statement might signal the disruption of our understanding of what the martial arts can be, as well as the basic desires that motivate their students. But what else would we expect form a Dark Lord of the Sith?

NOTES 1. Following ethnographic procedures, all research sites and the names of participants (as well as their ‘in-universe’ personas) have been altered to protect the anonymity of the individuals who have generously agreed to assist this research. 2. The idea of a ‘hyper-real martial art’ is built off the concept of a ‘hyper-real religion’ (a system of worship or spiritual observance based in large part on elements drawn from popular culture) as developed within the religious studies literature. Readers interested in investigating these systems (including Jediism) should see Possamai (2012). This chapter’s approach to hyper-reality is also indebted to the work of Umberto Eco, which defines the phenomenon as a strong desire for the experience of reality that leads to the construction of an artificial system of signs that is then consumed in the place of reality (Eco 1986, 7, 16, 41–48). I use the hyphenated word ‘hyper-real/ity’ to signal that I am following Eco’s usage, rather than Jean Baudrillard’s, which I would render as ‘hyperreal/ity’, without a hyphen. 3. For a detailed discussion of this process, see Judkins (2016a, 6–22). 4. For an early discussion of these anxieties, see Leo (1999, 14). More developed critiques of the film’s treatment of gender and race can be found in Dominguez (2007, 109–133) and Deis (in Silvio and Vinci 2007, 77–108). Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. has offered a theory-based, and often critical, reading of these films in his 2005 volume The Empire Triumphant: Race, Religion and Rebellion in the Star Wars Films (Wetmore 2005). 5. See, for instance, The Mythology of Star Wars, with George Lucas and Bill Moyers. 1999. Distributed by Films for the Humanities and Sciences. 6. While my argument tends to approach Star Wars from a cultural studies perspective, it should be noted that there is also a long-running academic literature focusing on the theories of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jungian. Within a year of the first film’s release, Andrew Gordon published a seminal paper titled ‘Star Wars: A Myth for Our Time’ in the Literature and Film Quarterly (6, 314–326). See also McDonald (2013). As such, one must approach discussions of Star Wars’s ‘mythology’ with caution. In some contexts, it may refer to universal patterns of

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psychology that transcend history and culture, much as Campbell argued. Other scholars, following in the footsteps of Roland Barthes’s 1957 classic Mythologies, instead highlight the degree to which ‘myths’ not only reflect the time and circumstances of their creation but also explain, justify and uphold dominant social discourses. 7. The injuries, severe discipline and sometimes bleak conditions within these schools have been well documented. Consider Inigo Westmeier’s 2012 documentary ‘Dragon Girls’, or ‘The Dark Side of China’s Kung Fu schools’, Deutsche Welle, 28 February 2013. http://www.dw.com/en/the-dark-side-of-chinas-kungfu-schools/a-16635298. 8. This same point has also been argued, in a different context, by Andrew Spiegel (2011, 11–20).

REFERENCES Bowman, Paul. 2017. Mythologies of Martial Arts. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. Berg, Esther and Inken Prohl. 2014. ‘ “Become Your Best”: On the Construction of Martial Arts as Means of Self-Actualization and Self-Improvement’. JOMEC Journal 5: 1–19. Deis, Christopher. 2007. ‘May the Force (Not) Be With You: “Race Critical” Readings and the Star Wars Universe’. In Culture, Identities and Technology in the Star Wars Films: Essays on the Two Trilogies, edited by Carl Silvio and Tony M. Vinci, 77–108. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. Dominguez, Diana. 2007. ‘Feminism and the Force: Empowerment and Disillusionment in a Galaxy Far, Far Away’. In Culture, Identities and Technology in the Star Wars Films: Essays on the Two Trilogies, edited by Carl Silvio and Tony M. Vinci, 109–33. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. Eco, Umberto. 1986. Travels in Hyperreality: Essays. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company. Gainty, Denis. 2013. Martial Arts and the Body Politic in Meiji Japan. London and New York: Routledge. Gennep, Arnold Van. 1960. Rites of Passage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. First published 1909. Gordon, Andrew. 1978. ‘Star Wars: A Myth for Our Time’. Literature and Film Quarterly, 6: 314–26. Green, Thomas A. 2003. ‘Sense in Nonsense: The Role of Folk History in the Martial Arts’. In Martial Arts in the Modern World, edited by Thomas A. Green and Joseph R. Svinth, 1–12. Westport, CT: Praeger. Jennings, George. 2010. ‘ “It Can Be a Religion If You Want”: Wing Chun Kung Fu as a secular religion’. Ethnography, 11 (4): 533–57. Judkins, Benjamin N. 2016a. ‘The Seven Forms of Lightsaber Combat: Hyper-reality and the Invention of the Martial arts’. Martial Arts Studies, 2: 6–22.



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———. 2016b. ‘Lives of Chinese Martial Artists (17): Chu Minyi – Physician, Politician and Taijiquan Addict’. Kung Fu Tea. https://chinesemartialstudies.com Judkins, Benjamin N. and Jon Nielson. 2015. The Creation of Wing Chun: A Social History of Southern Chinese Martial Arts. Albany: State University of New York Press. Kaminiski, Michael. 2012. ‘Under the Influence of Akira Kurosawa: The Visual Style of George Lucas’. In Myth, Media and Culture in Star Wars: An Anthology, edited by Douglas Brode, Leah Deyneka, 83–101 Toronto: The Scarecrow Press. Kato, M. T. 2007. From Kung Fu to Hip Hop: Globalization, Revolution and Popular Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press. Lee, Peter W. 2016. A Galaxy Here and Now: Historical and Cultural Readings from Star Wars. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. Leo, John. 1999. ‘Fu Manchu on Naboo’. US News and World Reports. 12 July, p. 14. McDowell, John C. 2014. The Politics of Big Fantasy: The Ideologies of Star Wars, the Matrix and the Avengers. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. ———. 2016. Identity Politics in George Lucas’ Star Wars. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. Morris, Andrew. 2004. Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sports and Physical Culture in Republic China. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Possamai, Adam. (ed.). 2012. Handbook of Hyper-real Religions. Leiden, Boston & Koln: Brill. Reynolds, David West. 2002. ‘Fightsaber: Jedi Lightsaber Combat’. Star Wars Insider, 62: 28–37. Rowe, Sharon. 2008. ‘Liminal Ritual or Liminoid Leisure’. In Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance, edited by Graham St John, 127–48. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Silvio, Carl and Tony M. Vinci. 2007. Culture, Identities and Technology in the Star Wars Films: Essays on the Two Trilogies. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. Smart, Alan and Wing-Shing Tang. 2014. ‘On the Threshold of Urban Hong Kong: Liminal Territoriality in New Kowloon’. In Negotiating Territoriality: Spatial Dialogues between State and Tradition, edited by Allan Charles Dawson, Laura Zanotti and Ismael Vaccaro, 230–48. New York: Routledge. Spiegel, Andrew. 2011. ‘Categorical Difference versus Continuum: Rethinking Turner’s Liminal-Liminoid Distinction’. Anthropology Southern Africa (Anthropology Southern Africa), 34 (1/2): 11–20. Szakolczai, Arpad. 2000. Reflexive Historical Sociology. London: Routledge. Thomassen, Bjorn. 2009. ‘The Uses and Meanings of Liminality’. International Political Anthropology, 2 (1): 5–27. Turner, Victor. 1974. ‘Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology’. Rice Institute Pamphlet – Rice University Studies, 60 (3). Rice University: http://hdl.handle.net/1911/63159. Wallace, Daniel. 2011. Star Wars: The Jedi Path. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books. Weber, Donald. 1995. ‘From Limen to Border: A Meditation on the Legacy of Victor Turner for American Cultural Studies’. American Quarterly, 47 (3) (September): 525–36.

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Wetmore, Kevin J. 2005. Empire Triumphant: Race, Religion and Rebellion in the Star Wars Films. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. ———. 2007. ‘ “Your Father’s Lightsaber”: The Fetishization of Objects between the Trilogies’. In Culture, Identities and Technology in the Star Wars Films: Essays on the Two Trilogies, edited by Carl Silvio and Tony M. Vinci. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Cos.

Chapter 8

‘He’s an Animal’ Naturalizing the Hyper-real in Modern Combat Sport Janet O’Shea

‘Animal’, and, its close synonym, ‘The Beast’, are popular monikers for sport fighters, especially in mixed martial arts (MMA). Bestial cage names, attached to UFC fighters Patrick Williams, Luke Taylor, Scott Heckman, Enoch Wilson, Andrew Whitney and Derrick Lewis, promise danger, excitement and unpredictability in a fighter’s game. Alongside ‘Monster’, the animal appellation amplifies and naturalizes a contender’s abilities, implying his fight skills are instinctual and brutal rather than acquired and refined. Recourse to the animal supports the mediation and commercialization of fight sport by amplifying its thrill of danger. Cage names, much like trash talking, pre-fight photos and the fighter’s procession through the arena and into the ring operate as part of the hyper-reality of modern, commercial combat sport. Hyper-reality, in the sense I use it here, is a form of realism for which there is no stable referent and within which the desire for the real remains.1 The realism of competitive MMA is patently material: fighters punch, kick, takedown and submit each other; they sweat and bleed; they experience and acknowledge pain. And, yet, few promoters and fans seem happy to leave MMA as a high-level, risk-based sport. Instead, commentators insist on its status as real as though there were a chance it were not real. This claim usually pertains to its greater ‘reality’ than other martial arts. The proposition that MMA is ‘more real’ than other martial arts signals the constructed nature of this claim: typically, something is either real or not; it can’t be more or less real.2 That UFC competitions now appear in conjunction with a reality television show, arguably the ultimate manifestation of the hyper-real, signals the ways in which the real is a not quite stable ground for MMA competition. 107

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In contrast to martial arts that define themselves as guerrilla warfare (Filipino martial arts, ninjitsu) or as self-defence systems (krav maga), MMA’s claim to realism is based in its status as a sport. A sport, by definition, is both a game and a performance. MMA hinges on competition between two and only two opponents matched for parity,3 and it relies upon rules, etiquette and codes for engagement. In this sense, MMA, like other competitive martial arts such as boxing, muay thai and taekwondo, is absolutely real: it is real sport fighting. When fans and promoters call it real, however, they refer not to athletic competition but to its referent. It seems to go without saying that, when commentators describe MMA as real, they refer to violence in the world beyond the mat or the cage. All martial arts contend with violence as their arena of investigation.4 Martial arts differentiate themselves from violence most crucially via consent – fighting is consensual while violence is not5 – but also via parameters for and rules of engagement. MMA, like other fight sports, uses the components of violence – kicks, strikes and takedowns – but alters their meaning: a punch off the mat is an aggressive rebuke; on the mat, it simply means that a fighter saw an opening.6 In the case of modern fight sport, fans and promoters reverse engineer ‘real’ violence, reimagining it to fit the model of fighting that occurs in the cage. They identify violence not as the manipulative form it usually takes – a partner demeaning a loved one through physical and verbal abuse, an unstable relative lashing out, or a stranger creating a relationship of trust only to violate it through sexual or physical assault. Likewise, violence here does not present itself as the ambush form through which it often occurs: an aggressor knocking a runner to the ground in the interest of physical or property crime, or a group of assailants surrounding a pedestrian who wants to get home at the end of a long day. Instead, the ‘violence’ that operates as the structural referent for MMA’s hyper-real spectacle is what self-defence instructors call the challenge fight, a one-on-one, quasi-structured confrontation between two individuals, in which two people concur as to their disagreement and willingly decide to fight. Challenge fights more often than not operate as a kind of performance, where two aggrieved parties stand off while spectators gather round to watch. Cage fights bear certain choreographic similarities to such confrontations even as they augment and refine its components. That challenge fights operate, frequently, as semi-consensual, and, indeed, as a form of high-risk recreation troubles the very idea of them as a baseline for defining violence.7 Combat sport, if it resembles violence at all, approximates only one subset of actual violence and that too imperfectly. The absence of obstacles, weapons and multiple opponents and the presence of weight classes, mats and an on-site orthopaedic surgeon differentiate cage fighting



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from challenge fights. In addition, challenge fights imitate the sport fighting of their time and place, collapsing the signifier and the referent, thereby adding to, not detracting from, the hyper-reality of fight sport spectacle. Because hyper-reality consists of a longing for an origin, the ‘real’ therein is crucially important.8 It is, therefore, worth examining the referent of hyper-real spectacle. Treating a challenge fight as the baseline for human aggression reveals numerous assumptions about sport, combative play and human nature. Doing so through reference to non-humans tells us more about how we think about humans, non-humans and violence than about why we fight for fun. Appealing to animals as a way of constructing a ‘reality’ for sport fighting maps conflict and control onto non-human animals and, in the process, naturalizes such elements in human society. It also reduces our understanding of the multiple meanings and functions of martial arts practice. WHAT’S IN A (CAGE) NAME? IMAGINING NATURE THROUGH PERFORMANCE MARKERS IN FIGHT SPORT Cage names are part of the self-mythologizing of fight sport. Much like trash talking, cage names intentionally blur the line between sport and violence. They are meant to be fanciful, or at least witty, and they contribute to the carefully constructed notoriety of fight sport stars. They signal the status of commercial fight sport as both athletic competition and performance spectacle. Signalling both a competitor’s fight style and personality traits, as in Iron Mike Tyson and Rowdy Rhonda Rousey, the cage name simultaneously represents who a fighter is and the character that she or he plays. As much as any other outside marker, the cage name signals that commercial combat sport is a performance as well as an athletic competition.9 They evoke a meaning that fighters, promoters and fans attach to what happens in the ring or cage. While descriptions of MMA evoke the challenge fight, cage names go a step further by conflating sport fighting with a wide range of violence, including serial killing, evidenced in monikers such as The Axe Murderer, The Natural Born Killer and American Psycho,10 and terrorism, as in The Fireball Kid and Irish Hand Grenade. Ironic double conflations of national violence with quotidian tasks with sport fighting appear in cage names such as The Polish Experiment, The Janitor and The Filipino Wrecking Machine.11 While names such as War Machine and Jenacide evoke complex forms of uniquely human violence, monikers such as The Animal and The Beast evoke a primal origin for human sport fighting.12 Unlike names that conjure human violence, referring to sport fighters as ‘animals’ paradoxically denies the reference it would create. That is, all

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humans are animals so to refer to any human as such is redundant. The appellation animal denies the status of (all) humans as animals while it suggests that only some (exceptional) humans are animals. While in most instances, animalizing a human is an oppressive gesture, here, animalizing aggrandizes by naturalizing ability.13 Only particular creatures are invoked by the appellation ‘animal’. In its literal sense, the term ‘animal’ spans morphologies ranging from insects to reptiles to water mammals to domesticated fowl. When we refer to a fighter, or other athlete, as an animal, we are not comparing him or her to a warthog, a rabbit or an anglerfish. Nor are we evoking the devotion of a lioness to her cubs or the exchange of labour that constitutes a wolf pack. The moniker ‘animal’ associates animality with instinct, brutality, ruthlessness and individuality, and eschews those that suggest diligence, care and collective effort. Such a selective use of the term ‘animal’ is peculiar in light of the rigorous training and meticulous discipline that constitutes fight sports (Wacquant 2004). Given the daily grind of fight training and the reality that fighters work alongside each other even as only a few rise to the status of successful competitor, a fight gym could easily be compared to a beehive and its fighters to bees. Likewise, given that fight sport training creates a sense of community, inspires devotion to gym-mates and frequently involves care for training partners, a comparison to an elephant herd shouldn’t be extraordinary, and, yet, it seems absurd. Animal sobriquets apply primarily, if not exclusively, to men. Women in commercial MMA carry ironically cute names, like Cupcake, clever ones, such as Lady Killer, or futuristic ones such as Cyborg. Reference to real violence comes across in names such as Jenacide Baldwin and recourse to the non-human in names such as Sarah ‘The Monster’ D’Alelio. Given how sexualized and aestheticized women cage fighters are (Channon 2017), it is not surprising that appellations such as monster and beast, with their suggestion of the grotesque, are rare for women. Although animals seem like they should fit the stereotype of beautiful but deadly that fuels the popularity of women sport fighters, ‘animal’ when applied to a sport fighter implies a rough, undisciplined fight game, a definition that seems to exclude women. Cage names that associate men with nature and women with technology or irony suggest that combat play is natural for men and constructed for women. The term ‘animal’ thus conjures a primordial association with a man’s cage fighting, suggesting, by extension, that women’s cage fighting is something else: acquired, cultured, technological or intellectual. Such a specific use of the term ‘animal’ represents a convenient, if, as we’ll see, largely inaccurate, view of non-humans. As scholars such as Donna Haraway, Judith Halberstam and Cordelia Fine point out, recourse to animals reveals more about what we believe, or want to



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believe, about ourselves than about nature. Much as history serves the needs of the present,14 animal narratives reveal much about what we think about ourselves. For example, present-day humans, as biologist John Bradshaw (2011) points out, map hierarchy onto domestic dogs in spite of little evidence to support the idea of canine interest in questions of power. Similarly, biologist Joan Roughgarden (2004) argues that scientists reveal their own investments in heterosexuality and gender conformity in their interpretations of animal interaction. Likewise, humans map violence onto animals as a way of justifying their own brutality, including, paradoxically, cruelty towards animals and a callous disregard for the environment.15 The primordial narrative for sport fighting doesn’t just come across in cage names, of course. A popular explanation for cage fighting is that it exemplifies a human nature in which men fight for status, competing with one another for dominance. This is the view most obviously (and carelessly) embraced by John Gottschall’s (2015) effort to use evolutionary psychology to frame his memoir of training and competing in MMA.16 Such conflations of sport fighting with masculinity and thus with primordialism appear in other popular accounts as well.17 Here, human nature is essentialized and universalized as part of an overarching, loosely Darwinian narrative of sexual selection. Such an explanation is reductive on multiple levels: it denies the cognitive and physical plasticity that define human beings,18 and it obscures cultural and historical differences in the prevalence of violence and the value given to competition.19 More peculiarly, it exemplifies a circular logic in which commentators only attend to sport fighting by men and then use their own exclusion to support a narrative in which men who fight reveal something of an essential masculine nature by fighting.20 Given the highly spectacularized nature of modern fight sport, it seems unlikely that a naturalizing view would be persuasive. And, yet, it is surprisingly common. For instance, sociologists have debated whether the rise of MMA and similar sports represents a decivilizing process.21 Just as the primordialist narrative conflates sport fighting with violence and violence with the challenge fight, it treats the challenge fight as synonymous with animal combat. In this view, the Palaeolithic human, gendered and spatialized as the caveman, stands between the animal and the mediation of society. Such narratives assume a moment when humans were outside of a societal frame, a questionable claim given that humans, like other social animals, respond to the norms and conditions of their group.22 Such narratives suggest that men have caveman brains improbably dropped into a modern world; women, we are led to believe, have adapted perfectly well to the trappings of modernity. Indeed, despite the many advantages offered (white, cisgender, heterosexual) to men by the modern world, the contemporary world and its technologies are seen as denying men their true nature.23 Such

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stereotypical associations contradict other essentializing narratives, such as those that associate men with technology and scientific advancement. Such narratives position men alongside nature and women with culture, a reversal of a long-standing gendered stereotype in which men align with culture and women with nature (or land). As feminist scholar Martha McCaughey (2007) illustrates, such narratives respond to a set of circumstances in which men have been freed of dependence on women for such basics as prepared food, drinking water and clothing but have lost their traditional avenues for acquiring social status and therefore respect. The caveman narrative for fight sports relies upon a selective, if largely inaccurate, vision of humans’ animality. It associates humans with carnivorous predation, despite the frugivorous nature of our closest non-human relatives and the plant-based diets of most human societies.24 It suggests an association of hunter-gatherer societies with hierarchy despite wide variety of social structure among small-scale societies, including the egalitarian nature of many of them. Such narratives conjure images of men hunting and women tending children to the exclusion of other tasks, although women’s gathering produces the majority of food of most small-scale societies. In addition, we get an association of hunting with individual accomplishment despite its communal qualities in nearly all small-scale societies. The caveman explanation for sport fighting hinges on the idea that violence is an integral part of sociality rather than representing its breakdown. It also positions martial arts as an extension of violence. Just as martial arts practice can’t consistently and reliably be distanced from violence in all cases, martial arts can’t be credibly conflated with violence. The larger effort of differentiating martial arts from violence25 therefore calls out for a challenge to primal narratives of sport fighting. At the same time, a challenge to human exceptionalism also calls out for investigating the continuity between human and non-human actions and experiences. It’s therefore worth looking to how the biological sciences can help us understand the appeal of high-risk play. The conclusions produced in this investigation, however, differ radically from those proposed by primordialist narratives of sport fighting. FROLICSOME TIGERS AND FUN-LOVING MICE: RISK PLAY AND NON-HUMAN SOCIALITY As a recreational sport fighter, I have to admit that the devotion that combat play inspires and the delight it produces call out for inquiry. While most martial arts take great care to differentiate their practice from violence, for some fight sport athletes and viewers, recourse to violence justifies combat sport by giving it a purpose. It adds a sense of gravitas to what is, for many



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participants and fans, a form of recreation. Even professional sport fighters, for whom martial arts sit between work and play, are in the enviable, if compromised, position of playing for work. Seen in this light, there is something disingenuous about treating violence as the fundament of fight sports. As sociologists have clearly indicated, fighting and violence are not the same; indeed, in many ways, they sit in opposition to each other. On an experiential level, this distinction is obvious: sport fighting feels fundamentally different from real-world violence. If we attend to the practice of fight sport, and particularly to the practice of training, we get a radically different view than one that would foreground violence and hierarchy. If the recourse to violence is disingenuous, it is also, as we’ve seen, telling. It comprises an effort to give a meaning to an activity that serves no function in itself. In a material sense, there is no purpose to sport fighting; it produces no product. Its only value, in this sense, is intrinsic. In other words, it is a form of play.26 We sport fight and watch sport fighting because it is enjoyable. ‘Why is it fun?’ is the obvious objection to this statement. Isn’t the experience of fighting as pleasurable an indication of a violent human core? However, fun offers a crucial distinction between fighting and violence; enjoyment relies on consent. Because violence overrides consent, it forms an effort to eradicate the will of another. It sits resolutely at the other end of a spectrum of experience from pleasure.27 Instead of seeing sport fighting as an extension of violence, we can see it as high-risk play. Play, including risk play, is ubiquitous throughout the natural world. Although play serves no outside function, it is not necessarily safe, easy or even consistently pleasant.28 Risk play offers participants an ability to exercise mastery and to control circumstances and conditions outside themselves. Risk play, as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) points out, rarely constitutes courting danger for its own sake; instead it operates as the opportunity to manage subjective dangers and minimize objective dangers, inducing a sense of mastery and accomplishment. If we treat sport fighting as risk play instead of as violence, we get a different view of animals, human recreation and martial arts. Combative and other forms of high-risk play are not anomalous in the natural world. There is nothing startling about dogs frolicking, lion cubs tussling or bear cubs gleefully chasing one another. Animal play, like human recreation, is often high risk. When they’re not play fighting, animals in search of a good time slide down snowy slopes or rooftops and jump off trees, cliffs and buildings into water or snow. Indeed, much animal fun resembles our so-called extreme sports. Combative play does not consistently operate as a steam-valve for violent tendencies among animals. Rough play does, however, decrease aggression

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in some animals. Animals ranging from rats to humans integrate better socially when they participate in rough and tumble play.29 Among dogs, one treatment for leash reactivity – wherein dogs become aggressive towards other dogs while on walks – is to create opportunities for supervised offleash play. Researchers postulate that non-social animals play fight so they can come together to breed without fighting each other for real. Other studies suggest that play is a way of overcoming animal ‘xenophobia’ and integrating strangers into the group (Antonacci, Norscia and Palagi 2010). However, this explanation does not extend to all animals. A study of meerkats, for instance, suggested no relationship between play and the ability to get along with others (Sharpe 2005). Nor does this suggest that animals who play fight reveal a darker, violent core; they may find the same opportunities for cooperation and community in risk play that we do. Instead of seeing animal scraping and tussling as revealing a baseline of violence – since, after all, animals are perfectly capable of fighting for real should they wish to do so – it may be more useful to look at play fighting as part of a larger category of high-risk play among animals. As Gregory Bateson (1985) points out, combative play among animals includes symbolic frames that differentiate between playing and aggression, so that a playful nip symbolizes a bite while not symbolizing what a bite means. Such a distinction between action and referent, for Bateson, constitutes the fundament of play. Admittedly, the prevalence of combative and other high-risk play among humans and non-humans alike poses a conundrum but it is not precisely the one that popular commentators on combat sport suggest. Play appears among all kinds of animal species and at all phases of life. Humans have long accepted that mammals play, taking it for granted that our closest animal relatives have a good time in their youth.30 However, non-mammals play with frequency as ravens slide down snowy rooftops and crocodiles give each other piggyback rides. Even wasps play (Arnold 2015). However, in the terms of natural sciences, play is biologically expensive. It carries the risk of injury and death as well as the social threat of escalation from play into fight. On a more mundane level, play, as biologist Lynda Sharp points out, takes time away from more purposeful activities such as locating food, tending to the young and finding or creating shelter (Sharpe 2011). Central to an evolutionary understanding of life is the assumption that a trait will continue only if it is adaptive, or at least neutral. Sometimes this is taken to mean that every trait exists for a reason and that every trait serves a purpose, which is an inaccurate assumption. A trait carries forward if its host lives long enough to breed and raise young (Zuk 2013). However, if a trait appears over and over across species and through time, there’s a good reason



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to consider its adaptability. That’s especially the case if it brings with it serious risk. Play is arguably one of those traits. The commonplace explanation for play is that it is training for real life, a rehearsal for the set of activities that serve a practical purpose. Puppies roughhouse so that they can learn to fight, so this argument goes. They’ll need these skills if they have to defend their territory, protect their young or come to the rescue of their human companions. Polar bears stalk and pounce so they know how to hunt when they leave their mother’s side. Children play at being doctors, teachers, farmers and structural engineers so they can grow up to be gainfully employed. Play among adults, whether that’s a pick-up game of basketball or wolves amusing themselves by sneaking up on one another, seems to be a pleasant anomaly, a moment of nostalgia for youth shared among humans and nonhumans alike. However, observation of a wide range of animal groups shows us that play, although predominant among the young, is not exclusive to them. Moreover, play is unlikely to be a rehearsal for real life as play doesn’t bear a consistent causal relationship to any particular trait, at least not across species. Scientific research so far has revealed that play is ubiquitous but a consistent functional explanation for play is not. Risk play, like other forms of play, escapes being pinned down. The phenomenon, like its constitutive elements, shifts and circles around, it evades and counters and it slides out of grasp. Play as a concept vacillates between functions and meanings. Play matters precisely because it doesn’t have a set purpose. The effects of play are primary, not secondary: it is the thing itself. Play doesn’t simply teach us how to get along; it is getting along. Play doesn’t just teach us how to disagree respectfully, it enacts disagreement in material form. It is an enactment of negotiation, competition and cooperation. Play teaches us to handle uncertainty because it allows us to experience variables sometimes under safe conditions, sometimes under risky ones. Play isn’t a rehearsal for the real thing and it isn’t a steam valve for real emotions; it is, in itself, real. Play, especially combative play and other forms of risk play, are in this sense, ‘hard problems’. Neuroscientist and philosopher David Chalmers (1996) defines the hard problems of consciousness as pertaining to the why rather than the how of a phenomenon. Chalmers also distinguishes between behaviour and consciousness, suggesting that morphology can more easily explain behaviour than it can experience. Chalmers argues that such questions become, by definition, philosophical and scientific. Play is apparently behavioural, but its core features are experiential: what makes something pleasurable, engaging, and even intrinsically valuable is that it is experienced as such. Play therefore seems to pose a hard question because why we play

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cannot be answered through recourse to the structure of the brain, the ‘natural order’ or to physiology. Indeed, because play escapes a functional explanation, game theorists are critical of attempts to explain play through the natural sciences, suggesting that attention to the function of play conflates the benefits and the cause of play (Rodriguez 2006). The lack of a universal scientific explanation for play supports rather than contradicts this need to view play from within. Game theorists’ critiques align with, rather than undercut, the disagreement within the scientific community as to the function of play. The slipperiness of play is what makes it play. It is both functionless and crucial to social interaction. As an attempt at bridging this gulf between scientific and philosophical discussions of play, I suggest that play brings with it individual and societal benefits not because it serves a particular function but because of its internal, structural elements: its ability to conjure the flow state, to allow its players to experience mastery as well as to negotiate failure, its ability to manage risk, and its opportunities for intersubjective exchange. Following Csikszentmihalyi (1990), we can revisit sport fighting not as a steam valve for violence but as a means through which human and non-humans alike learn to manage conditions beyond our control by managing those within our control. Risk play, including sport fighting, allows us to exercise mastery and to control danger by engaging with it directly. Risk play that involves a confrontation with the will of another living being provides an opportunity to experience competence while also confronting our vulnerability. It also gives us an opportunity to rehearse disagreement and to acknowledge both the skills and the limitations of our peers. When the confrontation with objective and subjective dangers comes through another person’s (or animal’s) body, it provides an opportunity to exercise the intersubjectivity that is so central to sociality. It is possible that, when animals play, they’re doing what we’re doing: exploring their environment and their own capacities, contending with risk and failure, and working out how to interact with others.31 When we replace a narrative of violence with one of pleasure, we can also rethink the paradigm of Darwinian sexual selection on which primordial narratives rest. In its place, we can consider Joan Roughgarden’s idea of social selection. Roughgarden argues that the biological evidence of a wide variety of sexual interaction – same sex, mixed sex, and polyamorous, reproductive and non-reproductive – reveals a predilection in nature not towards the competitive, lone, aggressive organism enacting dominance but towards a biological advantage conferred by sociality and shared labour. Roughgarden thus treats sex and sexuality as fundamentally social. Just as Roughgarden argues that the tendency to see heterosexuality and rigid sex roles throughout nature reveals more about scientists’ biases than about nature itself, so too does she maintain that the tendency to see nature as a brutal competition reflects a



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Western, capitalist worldview that celebrates individual accomplishment and disavows collective effort. Roughgarden acknowledges that violence certainly occurs in nature but as the exception to cooperation; violence occurs when negotiation fails. Her argument can be applied to play, including combat and other forms of risk play. Perhaps humans engage in combat play not to establish dominance or to release their violent tendencies but to form connections through the rough physicality of consensual fighting. Roughgarden’s view of a world characterized by shared effort, continuous negotiation and pleasurable exchange aligns with the fight gym as the site of competitive yet egalitarian exchange, the endless regimen of training and the challenging yet cooperative nature of fight sports.32 The fight gym bears a certain resemblance to the cooperation of the elephant herd and the fierce loyalty of the wolf pack. Seen in this light, perhaps sport fighters are ‘animals’ after all. NOTES  1. I’m blending Jean Baudrillard’s (1994) and Umberto Eco’s (1986) definitions of hyper-reality here. I am also relying on Ben Judkins’s (2016) application of hyper-reality to martial arts, albeit in a different context.   2. As Greg Downey (2016) points out, the claim that MMA is ‘as real as it gets’ comes up against the stylized and telegenic quality of the fights themselves, rendering them ‘hyperviolent’.   3. Parity is not the only consideration in commercial sport fighting. Sport fights are arranged by ‘matchmakers’ (Polly 2011) who make decisions based on the commercial viability of the fight as well as its fairness. In professional boxing, in particular, some fighters act as journeymen in which their job is to lose in order to bolster the fight record of the preferred contender (Tjonndal 2017).   4. Neil Hall (2016) describes this as follows: ‘Violence is the subject of study, not its object’.   5. This is the central claim of the Love Fighting Hate Violence initiative: http://lfhv.org/   6. I address this issue in more detail elsewhere (O’Shea 2019).   7. While most violence obliterates consent, the challenge fight presumes consent. Often, however, its consent is conscripted, as when a teenager needs to fight to avoid bullying or a prisoner fights to demonstrate toughness to escape other forms of violence.   8. This definition of the hyper-real is more in line with Eco’s (1986) definition than with Baudrillard’s (1994).   9. Indeed, even the term ‘cage name’ is a play on ‘stage name’, suggesting the performative nature of such appellations. 10. Two out of these three examples refer to fictional serial killers, in itself, another example of the hyper-real.

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11. These latter names, that conflate violence with quotidian tasks, are part of both large-scale national violence and regimes of torture, and they operate as a way of masking and justifying violence (Scarry 1985). 12. An initial association of MMA with animals both damaged and fuelled commercial fight sport, as when Senator John McCain decried it as ‘cockfighting with humans’. Cage fight promoters struggled to differentiate their fights from real-world violence in the effort to have them recognized as legitimate athletic competition, aligned with other risk sports such as boxing and American football. Recourse to rationality was central to the legitimation of MMA as a sport. At the same time, there remains something alluring about the idea that this sport was so dangerous, so aggressive, so real that it was singled out for this kind of criticism. 13. Referring to any athlete, not just a cage fighter, as a monster, beast or animal tends towards the aggrandizing end of the animalizing scale as it naturalizes ability rather than highlighting effort. Musicians are sometimes referred to as monsters, beasts or animals as well, naturalizing prodigious talent. A classical music conductor was recently referred to as a ‘conducting beast’ on an NPR broadcast. Such conflations of the ability to perform a skilled craft with a primal natural talent are resolutely gendered; it is rare to come across an instance where a female athlete or musician is referred to as a beast in a complimentary way. 14. I am drawing this argument from Felicia Hughes-Freeland (2006). 15. As in the expression, ‘it’s a dog-eat-dog world’. Such an expression maps human ruthlessness onto dogs. This version of the saying contradicts the original Latin phrase: ‘dogs do not eat dogs’. The original makes more sense given that dogs are defined by their sociality and their often-selfless devotion to other dogs and to humans. Such recourse to animality as a justification for human destruction also appears in leaps of logic as justifying the environmental degradation caused by factory farming with the assertion that lions eat zebras. 16. I’m indebted to Ben Judkins for systematically analysing the multiple serious flaws within Gottschall’s (2015) treatment of MMA. 17. Marshal Carper (2010), Matthew Polly (2011) and Sam Sheridan (2006) all treat sport fighting as inherently masculine, generally avoiding or minimizing, reference to female fighters. 18. Human physical plasticity is the point of focus of Greg Downey’s current research project, ‘The Athletic Animal’. 19. As Judkins (2015) points out, a variable cannot explain a constant. Social science studies reveal variability across cultures in terms of both the frequency of violent confrontation and the value given to competition. Martha McCaughey (2007) demonstrates that evolutionary psychology studies that aim to produce meta-narrative explanations for violence, desire and competition reveal far more cultural variation than their popular representations suggest. 20. Treating combat play as contiguous with violence leaves many questions unanswered, including if combat play were identical to violence, why does it feel so profoundly different? Why does combat play forge a sense of community while violence erodes it? If combat play were a ‘steam valve’ for our innate violent tendencies, what draws us toward combat play and away from violence at all? What



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is the moral imperative pushing us in that direction, and where does it come from if not from our nature? If combat play operates as a release for the violent tendencies that reveal our true nature, why does it sometimes fail, leaving participants as violent after training as before? 21. Neil Gong (2015) provides an overview of the sociological literature that addresses the question of whether minimal-rules sport fighting represents a decivilizing process. 22. Primordial narratives also conflate the Palaeolithic caveman with modern-day hunter-gatherers but refuse to acknowledge the diversity of hunter-gatherer societies. 23. Indeed, Gottschall makes the argument that we have entered a ‘feminized’ age, despite the many ways in which men are advantaged in the technological fields that presumably constitute this era. 24. The valorization of meat-eating as primal and therefore essentially human is not only inaccurate but also represents a gendered and racialized world view in which women’s labour, through gathering and horticulture, is erased or at least positioned as non-essential and in which the Western, elite meat-based diet is positioned as normal, while the plant-based diet of colonized countries is treated as aberrant (Adams 1990: 29–32). 25. This effort is exemplified by the Love Fighting Hate Violence project. I take up a more theoretical inquiry into the differences between martial arts and violence elsewhere (O’Shea 2019). 26. In describing these elements of play, I am attending to the commonalities in theories of play, as put forward by Huizinga (1962), Caillois (1962), Ackerman (1999) and Suits (1978). 27. Here, I am making the conscious choice to view violence from the point of view of the victim/defender rather than from that of the perpetrator. This is a central distinction between empowerment approaches to violence and evolutionary psychology ones (McCaughey 1997). However, it’s worth noting that even perpetrators of violence perceive themselves as acting from compulsion, not from choice. 28. I draw this idea from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990) description of the flow state. 29. Potegal and Einon (1989); Peterson and Flanders (2005); Drea, Hawk and Glickman. (1996); Saunders et al. (1999). 30. Among Darwin’s many observations about the diversity and continuities of life is the attention he gave to play, commenting on the joy exhibited by kittens and puppies as they roughhouse. 31. The more we learn about animal sentience, cognition and social structure, the more evident it becomes that animals have sophisticated relationships to their own experience. To suggest otherwise repeats the Cartesian assumption that animals are machines, with no self-awareness and no capacity for intention or decision making, an assumption that a large body of scientific research belies. 32. Wacquant (2004) comments on the competitive yet cooperative and egalitarian nature of the fight gym. This is, of course, an ideal for fight gyms; many of them do not live up to this ideal and are fraught with ill will and are characterized by a lack of restraint.

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REFERENCES Ackerman, Diane. 1999. Deep Play. New York: Random House. Adams, Carol J. 1990. The Sexual Politics of Meat. New York: Continuum. Antonacci, Daniela, Ivan Norscia and Elisabetta Palagi. 2010. ‘Stranger to Familiar: Wild Strepsirhines Manage Xenophobia by Playing’. PLoS One, 5 (10): e13218. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951354/. Arnold, Carrie. 2015. ‘Crocodiles Play, Too, Study Says – Why Do Animals Have Fun?’ National Geographic. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/02/ 150219-crocodiles-playing-animals-science-behavior-fun/. Bateson, Gregory. 1985. ‘A Theory of Play and Fantasy’. In Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology, edited by Robert Innis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulation and Simulacra. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bradshaw, John. 2011. Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet. New York: Basic Books. Caillois, Roger. 1962. Man, Play, and Games. London: Thames and Hudson. Carper, Marshal. 2010. The Cauliflower Chronicles: A Grappler’s Tale of Self-Discovery and Island Living. Las Vegas, NV: Victory Belt Publishing. Chalmers, David John. 1996. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University Press. Channon, Alex. 2017. ‘On the Objectification of Athletes and the Throwing of Metal Buckets at Boxers’ Heads’. Love Fighting, Hate Violence (blog). http:// lfhv.org/2017/02/24/on-the-objectification-of-athletes-and-the-throwing-of-metalbuckets-at-boxers-heads/. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row. Downey, Greg. 2016. ‘ “As Real as It Gets!” Producing Hyperviolence in Mixed Martial Arts’. JOMEC Journal (5): 1–28. Drea, C. M., J. E. Hawk and S. E. Glickman. 1996. ‘Aggression Decreases as Play Emerges in Infant Spotted Hyaenas: Preparation for Joining the Clan. Animal Behaviour, 51: 1323–1336. Eco, Umberto. 1986. Travels in Hyperreality: Essays. San Diego, CA: Harcourt. Gong, Neil. 2015. ‘How to Fight without Rules: On Civilized Violence in “De-Civilized” Spaces’. Social Problems, 62 (4): 605–22. Gottschall, John. 2015. The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch. New York: Penguin. Hall, Neil R. 2016. ‘Being Honest about Martial Arts Violence’. Love Fighting Hate Violence (blog). http://lfhv.org/2016/12/21/being-honest-about-martialarts-and-violence/. Hughes-Freeland, Felicia. 2006. ‘Constructing a Classical Tradition: Javanese Court Dance in Indonesia’. In Dancing from Past to Present: Nation, Culture, Identities, edited by Theresa Buckland, 52–74. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Huizinga, Johan. 1962. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. [Translated from the German edition]. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.



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Judkins, Benjamin N. 2015. ‘ “The Professor in the Cage:” Can Gottschall Bring Science to the Study of Violence?’. Kung Fu Tea (blog). https://chinesemartialstudies. com/2015/08/21/the-professor-in-the-cage-can-gottschall-bring-science-to-thestudy-of-violence/. ———. 2016. ‘The Seven Forms of Lightsaber Combat: Hyper-reality and the Invention of the Martial Arts’. Martial Arts Studies, 2: 6–22. McCaughey, Martha. 1997. Real Knockouts: The Physical Feminism of Women’s Self Defense. New York: New York University Press. ———. 2007. The Caveman Mystique: Pop-Darwinism and the Debates over Sex, Violence, and Science. New York: Routledge. O’Shea, Janet. 2019. Risk, Failure, Play: What Dance Reveals about Martial Arts Training. New York and London: Oxford University Press. Peterson, Jordan B. and Joseph L. Flanders. 2005. ‘Play and the Regulation of Aggression’. In Developmental Origins of Aggression, edited by Rechard E. Tremblay, Willard W. Hartup and John Archer, edited by 133–57. New York: Guilford Press. Polly, Matthew. 2011. Tapped Out: Rear Naked Chokes, the Octagon, and the Last Emperor: An Odyssey in Mixed Martial Arts. New York: Gotham. Potegal, M. and D. Einon. 1989. ‘Aggressive Behaviors in Adult Rats Deprived of Playfighting Experience as Juveniles’. Developmental Psychobiology, 22: 159–72. Rodriguez, Hector. 2006. ‘The Playful and the Serious: An Approximation to Huizinga’s Homo Ludens’. International Journal of Computer Game Research, 6(1): 1–18. Roughgarden, Joan. 2004. Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People. Berkeley: University of California Press. Saunders, I., M. Sayer and A. Goodale. 1999. ‘The Relationship between Playfulness and Coping in Preschool Children: A Pilot Study’. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 53: 221–26. Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The Body in Pain: the Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Sharpe, Lynda L. 2005. ‘Play Fighting Does Not Affect Subsequent Fighting Success in Wild Meerkats’. Animal Behaviour, 69: 1023–1029. ———. 2011. ‘So You Think You Know Why Animals Play. . .’. ­Scientific American (blog). http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/so-you-think-youknow-why-animals-play/. Sheridan, Sam. 2006. A Fighter’s Heart: One Man’s Journey through the World of Fighting. New York: Atlantic Books. Suits, Bernard. 1978. The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Tjonndal, Anne. 2017. Journeymen, Health Risks, and Commercialization in Professional Boxing. Love Fighting, Hate Violence (blog). http://lfhv.org/2017/05/15/ journeymen-health-risks-and-commercialization-in-professional-boxing/. Wacquant, Loïc. 2004. Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Zuk, Marlene. 2013. Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.

Chapter 9

Martial Arts as a Coping Strategy for Violence Sixt Wetzler

In 1989, German news magazine Der Spiegel featured an article on the sociology of German martial arts practitioners, kickboxers, in particular (Der Spiegel 1989, 129–31). It was not so much a piece of well-researched journalism as a polemical attack on full-contact sports. Its title was ‘Nackte Gewalt für den Straßenkampf’ (‘Naked Violence for the Street Fight’). The text did not leave any room for doubt in readers’ minds that full-contact combat sports were unnecessarily aggressive, dangerously antisocial – and plain stupid. Twenty-three years later, the tide had changed. Now, Der Spiegel wrote about how German female kickboxing champion Christine Theiss had earned her place in television entertainment due to her ‘spectacular victories and a hint of eroticism’ (Buschmann 2012, 104). The article’s title was ‘Bussi, Bussi’, Bavarian dialect for ‘kiss, kiss’; and while it pondered the question of how far Theiss’s long legs and short competition skirts played an active role in her semi-stardom in Germany, the question of violence was not even touched upon. The 1989 article catered to the antipathies of its traditionally leftistintellectual readership: it pointed out the inherent racism in the famous martial arts movie Bloodsport but also mentioned that kickboxing had an over-average share of practitioners of non-German descent, and that 85 per cent of karate students came from working-class families. But the text from 2012 described Theiss’s background as a trained doctor, her marriage to a cardiologist and her role as part of a rescue dog team, together with her dog Tiffany. Where the first article spoke of sweat, blood and beatings, the more recent one spoke of glamour. In other words, the magazine’s perspective on full-contact competition and the violence allegedly inherent to the practice had shifted drastically: while in 1989, kickboxing was regarded as 123

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preparation for street fighting for uneducated ruffians, by 2012, it had turned into just another sport, one that could even be ‘erotic’. How and why could this shift happen? Had the rules of kickboxing changed, so that sports journalists found it easier to approach the subject? Did the kickboxers of 2012 hit less hard than their colleagues twenty-three years before, thus inflicting less damage on each other? No such thing is the case. The shift in the perception of the relationship between a certain form of martial arts and violence – shifting perceptions circulated in the press and presumably shared by wider society (and perhaps martial arts practitioners too) – is actually a shift that happened principally in the eyes and minds of the beholders and practitioners, and not in the practice itself. This suggests that the relationship between ‘martial arts’ and ‘violence’ is not a fixed, permanent or stable one, whether for society or for martial artists. Rather, it is a relation that is continuously deconstructed and reconstructed. In the process of transformation indicated by our opening example, an assumed connection between kickboxing and violence has become weakened over time. More generally perhaps, in popular media, ideas of antisocial violence are no longer projected onto kickboxing. Indeed, studies suggest that ideas of violence became displaced from practices like kickboxing and projected onto martial arts such as mixed martial arts (MMA) during this time period (Downey 2014). What we see here is shifts of ascribed meaning are common to behold in what we might call the polysystem martial arts (Wetzler 2015, 29). The polysystem approach tries to address the fact that martial arts, like any cultural phenomenon, are not static entities, allocated to a fixed, non-altering point within a culture at which they remain indefinitely. Originally developed by Itamar Even-Zohar (Even-Zohar 1990) to analyse the shifting roles and meanings literary texts can acquire in a society, polysystem theory aims to ‘make explicit the conception of a system as dynamic and heterogeneous in opposition to the synchronistic approach’ (1990, 12). To Even-Zohar, any system consists of smaller but equally dynamic systems, and can thus be labelled a polysystem. At the same time, a system almost always remains embedded within a larger polysystem itself. It is, in a sense, the focal width of a question that defines the scope of the polysystem to be discussed. Applied to martial arts, polysystem theory helps to identify the position a martial arts phenomenon occupies in a larger polysystem. This might be martial arts ‘in general’ (or a certain subdivision, such as full-contact combat sports, a specific style and even smaller units) in relation to ‘society’, youth culture (however conceived), twentieth-century action cinema and so forth. This perspective enables insights into the impact a phenomenon has on the surrounding polysystem, what roles it plays therein, the meanings that are ascribed to it within the polysystem, and how it is influenced by the latter. All these parameters can only be described for a certain duration of time.



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In a chronological perspective, polysystem theory acknowledges the everchanging nature of all cultural phenomena: Systems are not equal, but hierarchized within the polysystem. It is the permanent struggle between the various strata [. . .] which constitutes the (dynamic) synchronic state of the system. It is the victory of one stratum over another which constitutes the change on the diachronic axis. In this centrifugal vs. centripetal motion, phenomena are driven from the center to the periphery while, conversely, phenomena may push their way into the center and occupy it. However, with a polysystem one must not think in terms of one center and one periphery, since several such positions are hypothesized. A move may take place, for instance, whereby a certain item (element, function) is transferred from the periphery of one system to the periphery of an adjacent system within the same polysystem, and then may or may not move on to the center of the latter. (Even-Zohar 1990, 13–14)1

The change in the perception of kickboxing between the first and second Spiegel articles is an example of the dynamics asserted by Even-Zohar. The position that full-contact combat sports once had in the polysystem, as being associated with violent and antisocial behaviour, has changed. Kickboxing has been driven from the centre of the public or media tendency to make an equation between this or that martial art with violence. The martial art that now occupies this apparently enduring position is MMA. Any discussion of the relationship of martial arts and violence can only highlight certain states of this relationship at given times, in terms of variable cultural categories, and within variously conceptualized polysystems. ‘The’ martial arts, as a unitary and unchanging identity, does not exist; nor does one relationship between martial arts and violence. Nonetheless, this chapter is interested both in the ways in which the relationship(s) between martial arts and violence are imagined, and in the answers that martial arts and martial artists construct to solve the problem that violence poses to the human mind. In order to explore both dimensions, violence here is understood as violentia, not potestas. While questions of structural violence, of dominance, or of how one person or group may impose its will on another person or group, are of course valid and fruitful for a sociological discussion of martial arts, the emphasis is laid here on violence as the act of inflicting non-consensual physical pain or injury to another human being (compare Braun and Herberichs 2005, 15n50). Consequently, to analyse the relationship(s) between martial arts and violence (as violentia), the following theoretical approach shall first be considered: this is the Körper-Leib dichotomy described by Wolfgang Sofsky in his famous ‘Traktat über die Gewalt’ (Sofsky 1996). Here, Sofsky divides a human being’s physical existence into two qualities: the active Körper that exerts violence, and the passive Leib that has to suffer

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it.2 In acts of violence, humans desire to be only Körper, with no Leib at all, and to stand only at the inflicting – never the receiving – end of pain. Hence, the invention of weapons, the development of fighting skills, the application of tactics and strategy. The controlling officer of a combat drone, detached by thousands of kilometres from the war scene, and his unsuspecting victim are the two extremes of this continuum. Martial artists are in between: in close-quarter combat, one necessarily remains (potentially) both Körper and Leib. Martial arts tend to address the Körper-Leib dichotomy on different levels: while the training of physical combat techniques aims to shift the individual practitioner’s Körper-Leib-system towards the Körper end of the scale, psychological conditioning tries to disconnect the martial artist’s self-awareness from the Leib-dimension. In the terms of polysystem theory, this is a ‘dimension of meaning’ available to martial arts practitioners that I have called ‘preparation for violent conflict’ (Wetzler 2015, 26). This dimension of meaning encompasses all training methods that a martial art involves in its efforts to enhance its practitioners’ chances of victory in physical confrontation. The physical aspect of this intended shift from Leib to Körper is probably the most obvious characteristic of the martial arts: by imitation, correction and repetition, certain physical skills are supposed to be ingrained into the practitioner’s body that allow him or her to ‘correctly’ respond to a violent attack. However, in a quasi-mythical perspective, preparation for violent conflict is often imagined as a continuous and complete transformation process: by diligent training, martial arts narratives promise that the beginner’s Leib – at first a helpless target for violent assaults – will be turned into a refined weapon, a pure Körper that can ‘hit without being hit’. Even though the lifetime career of any professional combat sports athlete demonstrates the opposite, martial arts mythology has it that this transformation process is not affected by age, leading ultimately to the invincible skills of the ‘wise old master’. This (imagined) invincibility equals the total of the active Körper from the passive Leib. It is evident that, in reality, this aim cannot be achieved. No matter the amount of training, humans remain vulnerable. Both the physical and the quasi-mythical preparations for violent conflict are at work before actual violence happens. To better understand the mechanics of this, the work of the sociologist of violence, Randall Collins, is helpful. In his 2008 book, Violence: A MicroSociological Theory, Collins scrutinized instances of the occurrence of violence and analysed the intra- and interpersonal dynamics active in the encounters. While the problem of violence in society is surely tied to the general conditions in that society, and while certain macro-sociological patterns may raise the chance of an individual leaning towards violence, Collins’s interest lay in the moment of violence itself. He pointed out that even the



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most violent person is not violent all the time – even someone who routinely uses violence does not get up in the morning and start beating up people until he falls asleep again. That means that for violence to actually occur, certain micro-sociological parameters need to be met. These parameters need to be set in such a way that they allow an aggressor to overcome what Collins calls ‘confrontational tension’ (Collins 2008, 19–20, 25–29). Collins uses this term to denote the reluctance (apparently inbuilt in the human mind) to inflict harm on other people, and to enter combat at all. From a close study of dozens of documented cases of violence, he concludes that there are several common characteristics: 1. Humans – even trained specialists – find it hard to exert violence. 2. The vast majority of humans – even trained specialists – are inadequate at exerting violence. 3. Violence happens in asymmetrical systems, and both aggressor and victim help to stabilize this system. 4. Once violence happens, its typical pattern is ‘overkill’; the longer and the more intense the period of tension before the violence, the worse is the overkill. 5. Violence is chaotic, and therefore extremely hard for the human mind to process, both while it happens and afterwards. These observations are at least partly confirmed by other researchers, for example, by Barry Molloy and Dave Grossmann, who pointed out that, since combat is one of the most stressful situations the human body and mind can experience, people instinctively shy away from it, are unable to cope with it or react in uncoordinated, chaotic fashion (Molloy and Grossmann 2007). Many martial arts promise an answer to an individual’s fear of violence, and his or her inadequacy to deal with it. This is so especially when it comes to those styles of martial arts training that emphasize the preparation for violent conflict. Translated into Collins’s terms, such styles or systems promise to help practitioners overcome confrontational tension. More specifically, they promise the ability: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

to act violently under pressure; to be adequate at the use of violence; to break up or even turn around the hierarchy of aggressor and victim; to be able to control one’s own violent impulses; to cast violence into an intelligible, thus processable form.

The ways in which these promises are made by martial arts styles, systems, discourses, classes or teachers can vary greatly, of course. If we compare a

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more esoteric, ‘internal’ style with a ‘military’ close quarter combat style, the different approaches may look like this: 1. The ‘internal’ art would stress the calm of mind to overcome confrontational tension, while the ‘military’ system would stress aggressivity and forward drive. 2. The ‘internal’ art would promise technical perfection by repetitive training of traditional techniques, while the ‘military’ system would probably claim to use combat-proven methods based on natural reflexes. 3. The ‘internal art’ could promise to balance out the emotional energy between attacker and attacked, while the ‘military’ system would aim to fight fire with fire and turn the hierarchy around. 4. The ‘internal’ art would claim to allow the control of one’s emotions, while the ‘military’ system could integrate overkill as a desired option. 5. The ‘internal’ art would aestheticize violence and maybe dissolve it by ‘only using an attacker’s energy against them’, while the ‘military’ system would use quasi-scientific terms and amateur research to suggest a ‘true’ understanding of ‘real’ violence to its practitioners. Any given martial arts style could be analysed in terms of its approach to these ‘promises’. Doing so here, however, is beyond the scope of this chapter. Here, I propose to follow another line of thought. Namely, the possibility that – as illustrated by fixation on these matters – martial arts training can be seen neither as preparation for violence, nor as standardized of formalized practices of violence. Rather, that they fulfil roles as coping strategies for the psychological problem of violence. As John Donohue argues: The psychic allure of the martial arts is also due to the fact that they are ritual performances which symbolically deal with fundamental questions of human existence – power, the quest for control, the search for identity. These arts then, are not only about human physical potential but about the human struggle to generate a coherent worldview, to invest life with meaning and develop mechanisms for relating to both their fellow human beings and the world they inhabit. (Donohue 2002, 73–74)

Of specific relevance to our present discussion, Donohue writes: The exotic nature of these arts, admittedly a product of their being poorly understood, makes them intensely attractive for individuals searching for a sense of meaning and purpose. The psychic dimension implicit in ritualized combat serves to sooth anxiety. The physical skills acquired lend at least an illusion of control over events in a hostile universe. (Donohue 2002, 76)

In other words, the issue is not so much about whether training in a given martial arts style does actually raise a practitioner’s chances in a self-defence



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situation. The issue is rather whether the training allows practitioners to address, process and potentially overcome a fear of violence, and of the loss of control. In the most extreme cases, martial arts can perceive and promote themselves as saviours, or salvational disciplines, promising deliverance from fear. Crucially, this is not a matter of purely physical training alone. Rather, all martial arts develop various mechanisms, or strategies, to condition practitioners psychologically. Such strategies can be remarkably similar at various times and places. Because of the recurrence of familiar strategies, it is possible to group them into certain categories. The most regularly recurring strategies include the following. MYTHOLOGICAL STRATEGY Quasi-mythic narratives serve several functions in a range of martial arts (Wetzler 2014; Bowman 2017). Perhaps the most common function among them is the legitimation of a system’s teachings. By casting a mythic narrative over its techniques and training methods, a system not only explains them, but also – and much more importantly – reassures its practitioners that what they do is ‘true’, and thus correct and reliable. Familiar examples include narratives of styles’ legendary origins. These may claim that the style was taught by a supernatural being to the first human practitioner; that it was invented by a physically disadvantaged or even handicapped person who overcame his or her enemies due to the superior fighting techniques devised; that the style’s techniques are based on the fighting movements of animals; that the system is based on an esoteric understanding of geometry, and thus true to the very laws of creation; that the style was successfully applied by an oppressed people poorly equipped with inferior weapons against superior invaders and so on (Wetzler 2015, 3–8). In all cases, the strategy of these narratives is to reassure practitioners to trust their respective system, and soothe their innate fear that, regardless of their physical training, they might find themselves helpless in the face of actual violence. As a special case, the ‘neo-myth of non-violence’ can be mentioned (Wetzler 2015, 9–10). This is the idea that martial arts training can root out violence itself, by turning practitioners into pacifist sages who can control their own and others’ violent impulses.3 MAGICAL STRATEGY The shape of a martial art is obviously not only defined by its collections of body techniques but at least as much by systematized symbolic forms

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that connect to these techniques. Myths are just one example of this; others are the supernatural practices that accompany not all but many martial arts. These practices – one could call them ‘battle magic’ – obviously also fulfil the role of coping strategies. As ethnographer Bronislaw Malinowski explained, human cultures develop magical practices in the face of situations which are dangerous and chaotic and which defy the attempts to control them (Malinowski 1948, 69–70). Fighting is, of course, an exemplary case of such situations, and the ritual practices integrated into many martial traditions serve as tools to help cope psychologically with the potential chaos inherent to all violent confrontation. Examples of battle magic are abundant in multiple traditions, from weapon inscriptions to the various practices believed to grant invulnerability, like the ‘iron shirt’ practices developed in some Chinese martial arts (Shahar 2012). Many examples can still be found today. A decade ago, Leo T. Gaje, grandmaster of the Filipino martial art of Pekiti Tirsia Kali, wrote this about anting-anting, the talismans used on the Philippines: How effective is Anting-Anting. There are still hazy perceptions about AntingAnting as a major weapon in the kali practices. The filipino true indigenous traditional filipino system [sic] carries the power extra-ordinary [sic] than the normal practices [. . .] Anting-Anting is just a expression of having the power beyond anything else. But the true anting-anting is the material object or stone or locket or symbols that are sacred blessed by the hands of the spiritual teacher. (Gaje 2007)

Such anting-antings can come in different physical forms, for example, as shirts covered with spells (oracion) that stem from the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Similar methods can be found in very different cultural contexts, like the wrestling magic used in early modern Iceland. Here, magical signs were drawn on paper and combined with oral incantations to achieve the desired effect. Of course, convivial wrestling usually does not pose a threat to one’s life. But with enough social prestige at stake, enough pressure seems to have been put on the wrestlers that the endangerment of their immortal souls seemed justified, if only to try to secure and control the outcome of (playful) combat: Two magical signs named gapaldur and ginfaxi can be used in glimagaldur (wrestling magic). The gapaldur is placed under the heel of the right foot and the ginfaxi is placed under the toe of the left. Then a verse is to be spoken, for which four variants are given. They all begin Gapaldur under my heel ginfaxi under my toe, and conclude: stand by me, fiend now lying upon me!



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[i.e. possessing me] or stand by me, my ogre! (Ice. skratti) or strengthen me now, Adversary! (Ice. andskoti) or Devil, support me! (Flowers 1989, 100)

STRATEGY OF AESTHETICIZATION AND RITUALIZATION As actual violence tends to be chaotic and difficult for the human mind to process, martial arts try to cast it into intelligible forms, forms that can be read and handled. One way to do this is by aestheticizing movements, thus creating ‘grammars of combat’. Aestheticization of movements is of course most obvious in those styles that put emphasis on their performative dimension, such as capoeira, wushu and karate kata (Minarik 2017). However, the aestheticization process also happens in styles that deem themselves ‘reality based’. These almost inevitably develop their own distinctive appearance and norms of how ‘proper’ or ‘good’ combat movements ‘should look’. Though the claim that ‘true fighting does not look elegant’ is a standard maxim, practitioners consciously or subconsciously learn the distinctive aesthetic language of their style and express it in their body practice. They then judge the practicality of a self-defence technique according to the parameters of this aesthetic language, reassuring themselves that a given technique will prevent them from harm if it adheres to these parameters. The strategy of ritualization works on a larger scale, allocating violence to restricted times and places within society. Ritualization is an answer not only to the individual but also to collective fears of violence. By pressing its destructive potential into a fixed structure, society aims to control it. An example is the temporal and spatial demarcation of the combat ground. By giving a fight a stage, a ring, or an arena, and by clearly marking its beginning and end (via the ring bell), a continuum is created in which the usual rules of society do not apply, and which, vice versa, has no effect on the outside world. The ropes are a border not only physically enclosing the fighters but also symbolically keeping violence from spilling over to the bystanders. In the sense of Johan Huizinga, violence thus becomes a play, and creates its own order: Play is distinct from ‘ordinary’ life both as to locality and duration. [. . .] It is ‘played out’ within certain limits of time and place. It contains its own course and meaning. [. . .] More striking even than the limitation as to time is the limitation as to space. All play moves and has its being within a playground marked

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off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course. [Playgrounds] are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart. Inside the play-ground an absolute and peculiar order reigns. Here we come across another, very positive feature of play: it creates order, is order. (Huizinga 1949, 9–10)

It seems that the level of violence tolerated correlates to the level of the playground’s symbolic demarcation: while fights between football hooligans are (of course) forbidden in Italy, the practice of the almost equally violent but publicly ritualized calcio storico (a kind of no-holds-barred rugby match) is celebrated annually by the population of Florence. Of course, any prepared fighting ground also adheres to practical considerations. It is nevertheless interesting to behold that the symbolic value of the various fighting grounds of different modern combat sports seem to follow their (perceived) level of violence: from the plain mats of seemingly gentle judo and wrestling via the ropes of boxing to the cage of ‘gladiatorial’ MMA; the more drastic the violence of the sport appears, the more complex the symbolic boundaries of the fighting ground. Ritual demarcation of the fighting ground is a well-known phenomenon across times and places. Judicial duels of the Middle Ages were fought within barriers; and the hólmgöngulög, the rulesets according to which ritualized duels in medieval Iceland were fought, described the necessary ritual in great detail: These were the roles for the hólmgang: a cloak five ells square was to be laid down, with loops in the corners. Pegs with heads were to be rammed in there which were called tiösnur. He who attended to this was to approach the tiösnur in such fashion that he looked up between his legs while holding onto his earlaps and speaking the spell which later was used in the sacrifice which is called tiösnublót. Three borders (or furrows), each a foot in breadth, were to be around the cloak, and at the edge of these borders must be four posts which are called höslur (hazels). And when all this had been done the spot was called ‘hazelled’ (völlr haslaðr). (Kormáks Saga 1949, 33–4)

NARRATIVE STRATEGY The most important tool individuals and communities have to symbolically integrate violence into their reality is the narrative translation of violence into something meaningful. Usually, this narrative translation follows a double strategy. It condemns ‘wrong’ violence within the community, while at the same time clarifying against whom ‘right’ violence might be exerted. The latter are those who threaten the order of the community, be it from within or without: the murderer must be hanged, the enemy at the gates must be killed



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in warfare. In a martial arts context, the narrative legitimation of violence often occurs in stories of the skilful use of trained fighting techniques to punish the wrongdoer. Typically, such narratives do not only justify but also revel in the harm inflicted on the antagonist by the hero. Countless martial arts movies feature the final scene where the hero, originally peaceful and reluctant to fight, has to use maximum violence against the villain, who represents an ultimate threat. The final fight of the classic 1978 Hong Kong movie The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is a remarkable condensation of this pattern, as it even expresses it verbally: the hero San-Te, a Shaolin monk, faces the villain, the mightiest warrior of the foreign Manchu invaders. The Manchu is surprised: ‘Well now, a monk – and with the rebels?’ San-Te answers: ‘We must put down evil. And you are evil. You have killed too many men’. Black and white cannot be cut any clearer, and in the ensuing fight, the monk indeed shows no mercy. Given the date of the film’s release, it has to be considered quite graphically violent. Towards the end, the Manchu stumbles and spits blood. Finally, he is hurled into the air and (most likely lethally) finished off with a headbutt to the groin. In countless variations, stories following this pattern circulate in many martial arts schools: without his or her own doing, a practitioner of the given style is forced into a fight, and of course remains superior in the confrontation, due to the skills acquired in training. Such stories fulfil the mythological strategy mentioned before – ‘our techniques are correct, the story proves it’ – but just as importantly, they convey an understanding that the use of violence must not necessarily be shunned but can be justified. Interestingly, even though there is a current martial arts notion that ‘every avoided fight is a won fight’, stories about martial artists beating up their attackers are much more numerous than those about successfully avoiding fights. The more narratives of ‘righteous’, successful application of martial arts skills a given style provides, the tighter it weaves an ideological net that divides outsiders and villains from people worthy of protection. And the more clear-cut such blackand-white morals are, the easier the use of violence seems to the insiders of the narrative community. CONCLUSION As indicated at the beginning, the relationship between martial arts and violence is by no means a static one. Different martial arts styles (and, accordingly, different sub-branches, schools, teachers and practitioners) have different attitudes towards violence, which can and frequently do change over time. Similarly, the ideas that different strata of a society entertain about this relationship also undergo significant changes over time. The example of the

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two magazine articles given in the introduction showed how the perception of kickboxing shifted from a practice for violent bullies towards a ‘normal’ competitive sport. Arguably, this shift was also mirrored within the realm of martial arts practice itself, as the appeal of kickboxing changed from ‘hardcore’ to something else, with kickboxing being supplanted by MMA as the (currently) ultimate ‘hardcore’ combat sport. In the terms of both the outsider and the insider perspective, this shift is not surprising. Anything in modern culture can change its reputation over time; and while the public becomes accustomed to a phenomenon, the mass media often seems to be on the lookout for new actors to play certain stock narrative roles. Indeed, some of the social and semiotic roles attributed to martial arts seem to be remarkably constant: social and media discourses seem to have an enduring attachment to the idea of a tough, spectacular, and allegedly violent combat sport, no matter whether that role be played by boxing, kickboxing, MMA or some other practice. Equally, the promise that martial arts can offer the individual redemption from becoming a victim of violence is just as enduring. To the extent that people fear becoming victims of certain types of interpersonal violence, so they seek strategies not only to avoid or defend against it but also, I have argued, to cope psychologically with the existence of violence, before, in case, or after it happens. Many characteristics of the martial arts can be interpreted as such coping strategies, their aim being not so much to prepare their practitioners for the physical dimension of violence but to reassure them that the violence they might encounter will be controllable. To better understand the necessity for such coping strategies, Collins’s micro-sociological theory of violence proves helpful. As discussed, according to Collins, violence is not only disruptive on a larger social scale and often traumatic in its lasting effects but also experienced as chaotic, incomprehensible and uncontrollable while it takes place – even for many of those who are supposed to be proficient in dealing with it. The coping strategies developed by martial arts are attempts to psychologically control the uncontrollable. This chapter has discussed several such coping strategies. This list is by no means exhaustive, and more examples could certainly be found: be it the self-fashioning of martial arts groups as ‘tribes’, ‘brotherhoods’ or ‘secret societies’ promising mutual support and defence in times of conflict; be it the self-assurance a practitioner may draw from climbing up the ladder of belt colours, supposedly becoming ever less Leib and ever more Körper; or be it the martial arts tourism that drives practitioners from one teacher to the next, one style to the next, always hoping they will not miss a single technique or approach necessary to withstand a violent attack. As my discussion attempted to show, the strategies at work can often be remarkably similar throughout time and space. Combat magic and martial arts mythologies can be found



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across eras, times and places. They are enduring to the extent of appearing transcultural and transhistorical and can perhaps be explained as convergent evolutions based on the structure of the human mind. Certainly, people attending self-defence classes often seem less concerned about the very real likelihood of physical damage and injury that can result from violence, and more about their fear that these damages might be inflicted on them by another human being. For them, training is a place to which they can bring – and where they can articulate – these fears. Here, the function as psychological coping strategy becomes a primary characteristic of martial arts, a function from which the attendees might indeed benefit in their personal life. However, the question remains one of how far all the described strategies can truly be of use in the face of real violence if and when it actually happens. Can they work as self-fulfilling prophecies, granting a self-confidence that helps to control a dangerous situation and overcome an attacker? Will the prepared individual stand a better chance? Or will the assumptions about one’s own skills and the nature of violence be shattered once confronted with reality, leaving the practitioner even less efficient? Martial arts training might have an overlap with actual violence, but it is by no means the same, nor can it simulate it. ‘Reality-based’ training remains a fantasy, unless all those involved in training already share exhaustive experience of the kind of violence they are training for. But even then – with or without ‘real experience’ – teachers and students together still create a narrative of ‘what violence is like’ and cannot but become involved in the creation of yet another field of coping strategies. NOTES 1. For a critique of the application of the polysystem theory in martial arts studies, see Bowman (2016: 13–19). 2. Both words translate as ‘body’ in English and could be used synonymously in German; one word, obviously, is Germanic, while the other one is of Latin origin. 3. The question remains why the very same styles that were, for example, used by the Japanese fascist regime to turn young men into soldiers capable of using violence should have an inherent capacity to turn young people of today into peaceful human beings.

REFERENCES Bowman, Paul. 2017. Mythologies of Martial Arts. Martial Arts Studies, 2. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield International. Buschmann, Rafael. 2012. Bussi, Bussi. Der Spiegel. April 2012: 104.

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Braun, Manuel and Cornelia Herberichs. 2005. ‘Gewalt im Mittelalter: Überlegungen zu ihr Erforschung’. In Gewalt im Mittelalter: Realitäten – Imaginationen, edited by Manuel Braun and Cornelia Herberichs, 7:37. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Collins, Randall. 2008. Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press. Der Spiegel. 1989. ‘Nackte Gewalt für den Straßenkampf’. 1: 129–31. Donohue, John J. 2002. ‘Wave People: The Martial Arts and the American Imagination’. In Combat, Ritual, and Performance: Anthropology of the Martial Arts, edited by David E. Jones, 65–80. Westport, CT: Praeger. Downey, Greg. 2014. ‘ “As Real as It Gets!” Producing Hyperviolence in Mixed Martial Arts’. JOMEC Journal, 5 (June): 1–28. http://cf.ac.uk/Jomec/Jomecjournal/5june2014/Downey_MMA.pdf. Even-Zohar, Itamar. Ed. 1990. Polysystem Studies. Poetics Today: International Journal for Theory and Analysis of Literature and Communication, 11 (1). Flowers, Stephen E. (1989). The Gladrabók: An Icelandic Grimoire. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser. Gaje, Leo Tortal. 2007. ‘How Effective Is Anting-Anting’. FMA Talk. http://fmatalk. com/threads/anting-anting-and-the-oracion.2087/. Huizinga, Johan. 1949. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. London, Boston and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Malinowski, Bronislaw, 1948. Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays. Selected, and with an introduction by Robert Refield. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Minarik, Martin. 2017. ‘Ideological Efficacy before Martial Efficacy: On the Relationship between Martial Arts, Theatricality and Society’. Martial Arts Studies, 5: 61–71. Molloy, Barry P. C., and Dave Grossman. 2007. ‘Why Can’t Johnny Kill?: The Psychology and Physiology of Interpersonal Combat’. In The Cutting Edge: Studies in Ancient and Medieval Combat, edited by Barry P. C. Molloy. Stroud: Tempus (History Press). Kormáks saga. 1949. The Sagas of Kormák and the Sworn Brothers, edited and translated by Lee M. Hollander. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Shahar, Meir. 2012. ‘Diamond Body: The Origins of Invulnerability in the Chinese Martial Arts’. In Perfect Bodies: Sports Medicine and Immortality, edited by Vivienne Lo. London: British Museum. Sofsky, Wolfgang. 1996. Traktat über die Gewalt. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Wetzler, Sixt. 2014. ‘Myths of the Martial Arts’. JOMEC Journal, 5 (June): 1–12. http://doi.org/10.18573/j.2014.10276 ———. 2015. ‘Martial Arts Studies as Kulturwissenschaft: A Possible Theoretical Framework’. Martial Arts Studies, 1: 20–33. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/80258/1/ MAS%20Journal%201%20Autumn%202015_Wetzler.pdf.

Chapter 10

Performance Ethnography DS Farrer

The human mind is apt to perceive many things, and more so according as its body can be disposed in more ways. —Spinoza, Ethics IIP14 (1977: 52)

Performance ethnography, where the researcher sets out to learn a martial art, or other skill, is a somatic extension of participant observation where the body may become both subject and object of research.1 This chapter traverses essential features of ‘how to do’ performance ethnography in martial arts research, thereby introducing a methodological toolkit to a new generation of ‘fighting scholars’ (García and Spencer 2013). Performance ethnography itself, however, is an open quarry for further research. Hence, in addition to a discussion of practical, methodological concerns, this chapter aims towards a fresh theoretical understanding of performance ethnography in terms of ‘immanence’ and ‘emergence’, where the method facilitates creative outcomes, knowledge or theory to surface from within a community of martial artists, dancers or other skilled practitioners (Deleuze 1988, 76). Persistent calls to oust ethnography from anthropology have ignited a fierce debate concerning the utility, boundaries and modes of ethnography for generating anthropological knowledge (Ingold 2014, 2017; Miller 2017; Nader 2011). Besides anthropology, there exists a wealth of ethnographic accounts under various guises, as can be seen in performance studies, carnal sociology, martial arts studies, cultural studies, women’s, gender and queer studies, theatre and acting studies, as well as in social psychology and other field experiments (Bowman 2015; Conquergood 2013; Festinger, Riecken and Schachter 1964; Schechner 2006; Wacquant 2004; Zarrilli 1998). The 137

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broad multidisciplinary usefulness of practitioner ethnography has resulted in a profusion of interpretations and applications, for example, in studies of police forces, schools, prisons, courts, politics and in many other realms of the public domain (Fassin 2017). Fieldwork in sociocultural anthropology traditionally consists of participant observation, supplemented by in-depth interviews (Bloch 2017). Fieldwork, or ethnography, requires prolonged periods of full immersion in another culture, to acquire lifeways and competence in a foreign language. Detailed observations, jotted in fieldnotes, alongside in-depth interviews, photographs, film and digital online materials are carefully recorded so the researcher may locate patterns of culture, follow up salient lines of inquiry and generate or test theoretical models. Participant observation provides access to groups that are difficult or otherwise impossible to research with survey or experimental methods, affording opportunities to build rapport and gain unique insider perspectives. Performance ethnography, as articulated in cultural studies or performance studies, is critical of the dated anthropological notion that one must peer over the indigenous shoulder to read and translate culture as text (Geertz 1973). As Dwight Conquergood (2013, 41) pointed out, a focus on performance extends beyond ‘textocentric’ interpretation, to commit instead to performative frames, fuelling creative imagination, pragmatic inquiry and activist intervention. Performance ethnography in martial arts research takes ‘deep hanging out’ to another level. This happens via embodiment, by placing the body on the line, joining in and learning martial arts skills (Boretz 2011; Downey 2005; Farrer 2009, 2015; Frank 2006; Hurston 1990; Spencer 2013; Zarrilli 1998). Such performance ethnography, as an embodied method, facilitates inquiry beyond dialogical participant observation, by gaining somatic knowledge in kinaesthetic cultures (Samudra 2008, 677). Applying Spinoza’s famous question ‘of what is a body capable?’ in performance ethnography provides an alternative to the recurrence of ‘ontology’, or transcendent grand narrative in contemporary social theory, to instead articulate emergent and immanent epistemologies (Descola 2013). In other words, performance ethnography facilitates practical, theoretical and somatic knowledge to be expressed, over time, from within a group, through dialogue, sensory experience and embodied practice. The research goals are not established in advance but emerge from the group studied during the course of the research. This method stands opposed to fixed, transcendent, positivist approaches where the researcher posits the research questions and outcomes in advance. In philosophical terms, embodied research encourages the phenomenological ‘emergence’ (becoming) of knowledge, a procedure that occurs through ‘immanence’, or from within experience (Deleuze 1990, 226; Spatz 2015).



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PERFORMANCE Performance is a contested category, subject to a multiplicity of definitions, whether narrow, broad or flexible. Narrowly, performance pertains to the performing arts, dance and theatre (Cull 2009, 2), a frame that can be expanded to include performance art, body art, live art and action art (Taylor 2016). More broadly, in Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical social psychology, or ‘frame analysis’, performance encompasses ritual behaviour and selfpresentation in everyday life, where even the corpse ‘displays’ death (1959, 1974). Alternatively, in the ‘anthropology of performance’ proposed by Victor Turner (1985, 1988), performance is a processual experience highlighting exceptional moments of liminal crisis in rites de passage and social dramas that reveal the workings of social structures, in stasis and change. This is an approach adopted by Deborah Klens-Bigman (2002) to theorize martial arts as performance arts. For Richard Schechner (credited as co-founder of performance studies along with Victor Turner), performance stretches beyond the performing arts, to include ‘a “broad spectrum” or “continuum” of human actions ranging from ritual, play . . . the enactment of social, professional, gender, race, and class roles, and onto healing (from shamanism to surgery), the media, and the internet’ (Schechner 2006, 2, cited in Cull 2009, 2). As a film director or editor assembles and reconstructs shots of film, the main characteristic of performance, for Schechner, is ‘restored behaviour’ – live action that is re-patterned, or rearranged and reconstructed, examples of which range from an entire film or theatre drama to a single bodily movement in ritual, shamanism, exorcism or trance (Farrer 2015, 43; Schechner 1985, 35–36). Restored behaviour is a relevant frame for martial arts enacted in ritual, religious, national, political, cinematic and theatrical stage performances, and for sequential frames of symbolic violence in patterned sequential movements, martial arts sets or taolu (Mroz 2017). In Hobart and Kapferer’s elaborate formulation, ‘aesthetic performance’ is an example of the Kantian sublime, or an experiential, emergent, symbolic process where the ‘apex of reason is also sensuous, thoroughly embodied’ (2007, 3). Performance, they declare, is like practice and action as articulated in the social sciences, only ‘participants in performance are thoroughly conscious of their action or practice as performance to be witnessed or participated in as such’ (2007, 11). In this reading, aesthetic performance attains dizzy heights as a potent symbolic force, possessing ‘agency’; not merely ‘representative’ of something else, such as a preconfigured text, but as a sorceric dynamic agent sui generis in the construction of social structure, meaning and symbolic realities (2007, 9). Seeking further terms through which to articulate the notion of inherent, emergent potency, we could adapt the

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notion of ‘information bombs’ (Virilio 2004, 204). In this sense, martial arts movements, like cryptic sentences, contain hidden layers of coded meaning: somatic-logic bombs to be set off when the powder is dried and the fuse is lit via daily practice. In Perform or Else, Jon McKenzie (2001) offers a practical theory of performance, where performance occurs across three interconnected sites or spheres: technological, organizational and cultural. ‘Cultural performance’, including theatre and ritual, may be defined as liminal and subversive, transgressive, transformative and possibly revolutionary. Performance may incubate ‘communitas’ (group identification and solidarity) and drive social behaviour, as well as be driven by it (Turner 1982, 45, 48). Hence, martial arts, for example, may be understood (1) as organizations that reflect and produce social structure, including the war machine and the state; (2) as technologies in the implementation of the means of violence, and providing defences against such means, via psychological preparation, self-care and healing; (3) as performative ritual vehicles to create identity, self and nation; and (4) as sites of resistance to the state. PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION/PERFORMANCE ETHNOGRAPHY Performance ethnography is where the researcher joins in and learns a martial art from the ground up as a basis for writing, research, creation and the reflexive transformation of self and others (Farrer 2013; Zarrilli 1998). Wacquant’s (2004) ‘carnal sociology’ of boxing is likewise based on participant observation. In Performance, Diana Taylor (2016) emphasizes that, since the 1960s, artists have placed their bodies ‘FRONT AND CENTER in artistic practice’ to challenge entrenched social norms and regimes of power, the body becoming the subject and not just the object depicted in art and photography. Similarly, performance ethnography emerges from participant observation to craft an embodied, tactile, corporeal method, the researcher risking body, limb and possibly life in the pursuit of knowledge, skill and transformation. At the level of practicalities, martial arts fieldwork may involve a comparatively higher degree of participation when compared to observation in regular anthropology. The ratio of participation to observation is a factor the fieldworker must periodically assess. Too much participation may obscure observation, making it impossible to write detailed in situ notes, and record verbatim conversation. Conversely, observation without participation may leave the fieldworker with scant appreciation for what is going on. In essence, the ethnographer as performer applies the tactile body as research apparatus, and then alternates to sit back and listen, watch and record. In practice,



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however, performance ethnography and participant observation enfold, overlap and shade one into the other from moment to moment. The essential attributes of anthropological fieldwork methods – the ‘who, what, why, when, where, and how’ of participant observation – form the basis of performance ethnography. Just as someone is well advised to seek out an expert to learn a martial art, the novice researcher should find a guide. Based in Singapore, teaching sociology, social psychology and social anthropology from 1998 to 2007, then on Guam teaching cultural anthropology until 2018, provided me with the opportunity to conduct research with martial arts groups in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, England, Hong Kong, China and Guam (Farrer 2009, 2011, 2016a, 2016b, 2018). A bookworm with a black belt, at the outset of my career I met prison anthropologist, Ellis Finkelstein, who said: ‘You don’t become an anthropologist by reading books; someone has to take you under their wing and show you the ropes’. Along with a guide, of course, reading ethnographic monographs is essential to learn the method, and I cut my teeth on Turner (1975), Castaneda (1968), Kapferer (1997), Finkelstein (1993), Malinowski ([1922] 1999) and Geertz ([1960] 1976).2 To set up a research project on Seni Silat Haqq, Dr Finkelstein and I reviewed the essentials of anthropological research methods, commonly referred to interchangeably as ethnography, fieldwork and participant observation. Briefly, and in sum, fieldwork necessitates a literature review, hypothesis (question) formation, securing grants or other funding, language acquisition, decisions on covert or overt approaches, attaining written (possibly foreign government) permissions, gaining access to the field site and locating key informants who agree to participant observation and depth interviews. Additional considerations include addressing issues of subjectivity and objectivity, sampling and reflexivity, the relation of theory to practice, nomothetic versus ideographic approaches, reliability and validity, induction and deduction, emic and etic understandings, informed consent, writing fieldnotes, description and explanation, triangulation, potential dangers and problems in going native, ethical concerns and publication (Farrer 2009). The painful process of ‘extraction’, or leaving the field, should not be underestimated. There are too many specifics to cover everything fully here. For a more comprehensive account of fieldwork concepts in anthropology, see Michael Agar (1996) The Professional Stranger, and Robben and Sluka (2006) Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader. Participant observation and performance ethnography are ideally dialogical consultations, where the researcher listens, records and learns about the community or group under study (Fabian 1990, 18). Undertaking fieldwork towards a doctorate in anthropology at the National University of Singapore, I soon encountered a problem with the dialogical approach. Scowling, my

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guru silat said, ‘Don’t ask questions’, because, ‘I, my, and why are from Shaytan’ (Farrer 2009, 20). Questions being outlawed in silat, at least as filtered through the religious lens of the Haqqani Sufi order, I was compelled to seek other sources, expand my sample of guru silat and triangulate the findings. Ascertaining and accessing a field of secrets (only ever revealed to those already in the know) was facilitated by the ‘foot-in-the-door-tactic’.3 In other words, I would offer a little information to get the ball rolling. In any case, cross-checking findings with multiple informants is necessary to ensure reliability and validity (Babbie 2016). Triangulation was further achieved by in-depth interviews, basically extended conversations with occasional openended rather than closed-ended (yes/no) questions. In the process, I recorded over one hundred hours of research footage on mini-DVD tapes (then the latest technology, now obsolete). The hallmark of anthropology, participant observation is a methodological rite of passage, involving living abroad for an extended period of time, in order to learn about the ‘other’, better understand one’s own culture, and one’s self (Agar 1996; Lévi-Strauss 2011). Profound insights are to be gleaned from observing and identifying different cultural solutions to common human problems. Even the initial faux pas of the novice fieldworker may provide exceptional learning opportunities, where they reveal takenfor-granted assumptions, recipes and scripts in the culture, habitus or social structure (Bourdieu 1977; Carlson 2017). Anthropologists ideally spend eighteen months fully ‘immersed’ in the field, time necessary to learn the language, and the rules associated with another culture and environment (Malinowski 1948). Reports from less than six months continuously spent in the field might previously have been derided as ‘parachute ethnography’. Nowadays, while the emphasis remains on ‘being there’, legitimate anthropological fieldwork may involve travel to multiple locations, be of rapid and repeated duration, and be conducted in the home environment and online (Davis and Konner 2011). Similarity and difference in the ostensible distance between self and other, us and them, local and alien, provide a device to distinguish and contrast different lifeways, worldviews and ontologies. Ontology refers to ways of being, ‘how things are, what is a person, and what sort of a world this is’ (Bateson [1972] 2000, 313). Epistemology refers to, ‘how we know anything, or more specifically, how we know what sort of a world it is and what sort of creatures we are that can know something (or perhaps nothing) of this matter’ (Bateson [1972] 2000, 313). In social research, ontological assumptions concern the ‘subject’, for example, whether societies are fundamentally ‘determined’ by economic structures, or cultural, religious actions. Such assumptions affect whether realist, Marxist, postmodern, phenomenological or ethnomethodological perspectives are advanced. In fieldwork, it is important to recognize that commonly held unconscious beliefs



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affect action and behaviour, just as action and behaviour condition unconscious beliefs, in a process that often self-validates ideas about knowledge and being, epistemology and ontology. In his study of alcoholism, Bateson ([1972] 2000, 314) argued that ontology and epistemology, however, cannot be separated, and so he collapses the awkward dichotomy into the single term, ‘epistemology’. Thus, alcoholics suffer from the ‘erroneous epistemology’ that another drink will get them through a rough patch. More recently, the pendulum of social theory has swung in the other direction, with Descola (2013) discerning four global ontologies or different cultural ‘modes of identification’ (naturalism, animism, totemism and analogism). Here terminological reduction collapses epistemology into ontology. This is important, as studies in social ontology now compete with anthropology, sociology and philosophy to explain sociality, life and the environment. Meanwhile, I would argue that it’s high time for anthropology to shift from the passive study of social relations – how people relate to one another and to their environment – to pursue active interventions in social, economic and political realms. While ‘methodology’ is the study of methods, ‘research methods’ are the actual tools employed, which, for anthropology, largely remain participant observation and in-depth interviews.4 Basically, the researcher joins in with day-to-day activity and keeps an ongoing written record or ‘fieldnotes’. Notes may run into hundreds, if not thousands, of pages. Good notes are written in the first person, record local concepts and use the active voice to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’ (Emerson, Fretz and Shaw 1995). Some ethnographers record as much ‘lifeflow’ (or ‘data’) as possible, recording everything attainable in exacting detail, to provide a snapshot of a culture at a particular time. Others use fieldnotes as an inspirational source of material from which to write anything from monographs to poetry and fiction. Although I commenced with a commitment to performance ethnography in my early research on silat, I had yet to realize the full potential of the method. During my second full-time stint of ethnographic research in Singapore, with jingwu and Hong Sheng Choy Li Fut, my notes became more polished as I handwrote an ethnographic monograph in situ. Unfortunately, this manuscript was subsequently stolen in Guam. Precious fieldnotes should be scanned, saved and duplicated, with hard copies locked in a safe, or better still, stored in a bank safety deposit box. Participant observation provides a ‘primary’ source of data, where the information collected is gathered first-hand by the researcher, supplemented by ‘secondary sources’, including knowledge gained from the existing literature. Participant observation has been considered too subjective for the purposes of objective, positivist data collection in the social sciences, where ‘subjective’ choices, values and preferences supposedly tarnish research findings, confound variables, obscure relations of cause and effect and conjure

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up spurious correlations (Pelto and Pelto 1978). The problems of objectivity and subjectivity in fieldwork were countered by ‘reflexivity’, where the researcher sets out to recognize, take into account and incorporate interactions with the informants (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). Primary data help to ensure ‘validity’ (that what is supposed to be measured is actually being measured), if not always ‘reliability’ (where another researcher may repeat the same measurement). Validity overshadows reliability in (non-digital) ethnographic studies that are by nature bound in time and space to the researcher and her ‘informants’. Nowadays informants are typically referred to as ‘interlocutors’, or, more rarely, as ‘correspondents’. (The term ‘respondents’ is reserved for individuals ticking boxes on surveys.) Gaining access to interlocutors, and a group, may be achieved by serendipity, formal letters of introduction, or by following up a literature review with a written request. A ‘key informant’ may provide an endless stream of valuable material (Whyte [1943] 1993); alternatively they may act as obstructive gatekeepers barring access to vital information (Metcalf 2002). Where one informant introduces another, and so on, an adequate, if not representative, sample may be collected through ‘snowball sampling’. It may be difficult, dangerous and unethical, however, to study two groups simultaneously, or to test a covert hypothesis in a field experiment, where one provides the control group and the other the experimental group (Festinger, Riecken and Schachter 1964). Although field experiments exist in social psychology to test a scientific hypothesis, postmodern anthropologists might regard such procedures as merely generating another form of narrative (Clifford and Marcus 1986). Nevertheless, interesting comparisons and studies of social change become possible when case studies are carried out longitudinally (over extended periods of time), or in diachronic analysis (repeated after a break), and where multiple teams of researchers conduct research in several sites simultaneously. Earlier anthropologists differentiated internal, ‘emic’ notions employed by the informants, from external, ‘etic’ concepts, understandings or theoretical constructs derived from outside the field site (Pelto and Pelto 1978). Dividing emic from etic may not be realistic where the researcher is interviewing up, researching high-status individuals with advanced degrees, or conducting dialogical research in an ongoing conversation, with the anthropologist sharing knowledge and expertise in problem solving (Fabian 2014). Positioned against the colonial past, and the colonized present, visual anthropologists advocate collaborative research, where the community investigates itself and maintains control over eventual research outcomes (Barbash and Taylor 1997). Community participation may be achieved by asking interlocutors to advise at every stage of the research process, from the initiation of the project to the final cut, or report, which helps to produce comprehensive, detailed and



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sincere accounts. Large-scale community participation is achievable given widespread contemporary access to digital and visual technologies in social media environments, spurring the renewed development of visual anthropology and digital ethnography (Pink et al. 2015). Informed consent and community participation necessitates an open, ‘overt’ approach to the research, rather than proceeding via ‘covert’ or secret investigation. This helps to avoid ethical dilemmas and gain richer information (Alfred 1976). Signed permission slips should be obtained from subjects prior to carrying out research, where a brief explanation, if not exactly a ‘cover story’, may be provided to attain ‘informed consent’. Grant bodies, universities and academic publishers require signed informed consent forms prior to awards and publication. Unless a film or photograph is ‘public domain’, signed consent forms should be obtained from those photographed or filmed, and from the photographer or filmmaker, or from the owner of the photograph/footage. Personal names, presented in ‘research outcomes’ (articles, chapters, books, films, photographs, blogs), may be the informant’s actual names, or pseudonyms, depending on the sensitivity of the material, and whether obscuring the names is actually feasible, all the while taking into account the requirements of the interlocutors. Turning to research ethics, important biases to be avoided in ethnographic research include ethnocentric, racial, gender, class, sexual, ageist and orientalist stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination. As a general ethical precept, the researcher must ‘do no harm’, and protect the interlocutor’s identity and right to privacy. This is because the publication and dissemination of research can result in unanticipated negative consequences. Furthermore, the ethnographer might herself become a ‘vulnerable observer’, subjected to passive aggression, lies, manipulation, verbal abuse, vicious rumours, theft of personal belongings, burglary, sexual harassment, assault, rape, arrest, detention and imprisonment during the fieldwork period (Behar 1996). Martial arts are sometimes entangled with shamanic, mystical and magical practices that may extend from poisoning to murderous assault sorcery (Farrer 2016a; Jokić 2015; Whitehead 2002; Whitehead and Wright 2004). Historically, with minimal discussion of method, anthropologists were thrown into the deep end to conduct their fieldwork. Nevertheless, given the considerable time and expense involved in long-term immersive research, correct preparation is essential. OUSTING ETHNOGRAPHY FROM ANTHROPOLOGY? Social anthropology ventures not only to describe but also to explain culture and society. Explanation asks how and why, relating the individual to the

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society, the particular to the general (induction) or the general to the particular (deduction). Explanation links theory to practice, to test a hypothesis, or trace out lines of interconnections or ‘multiplicities’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2004, 8). While ethnography, fieldwork and anthropological methods are commonly used interchangeably, some anthropologists claim ‘ethnography’ is more precisely descriptive recording, seeking to describe the ‘who, what, when, and where’, whereas anthropology engages social activity to explain ‘how and why’, to formulate social theory, or philosophy (Ingold 2014). Tim Ingold has entrenched his objection to the prime position accorded to ethnography in doing anthropology, arguing that anthropology is ‘philosophy with the people in’, and not the excrescence of a method to collect precise documentary records about a culture or society in some particular time and place (2014, 393, 2017). Mainstream anthropologists, however, are entirely dismissive of any suggestion to disassociate anthropology from ethnography. Nevertheless, critical developments in performance ethnography and cultural studies invite reflection and suggest ways to further develop the method. COLLABORATIVE ACTION IN PERFORMANCE ETHNOGRAPHY Having conducted deep immersive fieldwork among refugees in Thailand, and in the Chicago ghetto, Dwight Conquergood (2013) said performance ethnography should emphasize the ‘3 a’s’ (i.e. artistry, analysis and activism) and the ‘3 c’s’ (meaning: creativity, critique and citizenship). Conquergood’s performative approach draws from Zora Neale Hurston, and Frederick Douglass to blend black, subaltern, medieval, cultural and performance studies with literature, so that disparate points of view and competing voices coalesce in dialogical performance. Conquergood’s (2013, 40) performance ethnography criticizes the Western imperialism of ‘scriptocentrism’, or ‘textocentrism’ in academia, making it clear that ‘textocentrism – not texts – is the problem’, where the logocentric dominant position of the authoritative written word operates to obscure and eviscerate subtle, embodied and subaltern forms of communication, including nonverbal communication, utterance, posture, gaze and gesture. Conquergood’s ethical move towards an activist agenda subsumes literature, history, sociology, anthropology and performance under the banner of cultural studies. Following Turner and Turner (1988), Conquergood advocates the performance of ethnography, to re-enact actual research for an audience, a procedure that takes an important step towards the embodiment of research in and for the community. Reflecting on my own research, I proceeded to self-consciously engage in collaborative ethnography in 2004, with the Malaysian artist Mohammad



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Din Mohammad, who read the final draft of my article on his artwork and provided a wealth of subtle insights and corrections (Farrer 2008). Subsequently, I collaborated with jingwu practitioners in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Guangzhou (Farrer 2011, 2013, 2015). Awarded a small grant to bring interlocutors together from Singapore to Hong Kong, Yang Fang and Ah Kin helped to settle a dispute regarding the correct designation of a martial art style, ‘Chow Gar’, that had supposedly changed its name from ‘Chu Gar’ when historically translated from Hakka to Cantonese. More recently, doing research on Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ), rolling with police, National Guard, coastguard, wrestlers, MMA fighters and trainers on Guam changed my outlook on martial arts practice, law enforcement and the state. Subsequently, nursing a broken arm, I took a one-year sabbatical during which time I read Spinoza, a wild ride upon a witch’s broomstick destined to reconfigure my entire cognitive architecture (Deleuze 1988, 1). Here a brief example from the BJJ research must suffice to illustrate what I mean by the ‘emergence’ of theory from the ‘immanence’ of experience in the embodied research of performance ethnography. Clamped firmly in Sensei Bob’s headlock, I found myself immobilized with my ear fastened onto his chest. Hearing Bob’s heartbeat pound through his kimono transported me to a personal experience, to a childhood memory of being hugged to the chest of my late father, which I dreamt about later that night. This experience invites a psychoanalytic treatment, especially when considered alongside a sign in the gym declaring that ‘Brazilian jiu-jitsu is therapy’ (Farrer, forthcoming). Embodied practitioner research must utilize the body as a site of knowing, as an epistemological device proceeding sensuously via touch, feeling and all the myriad combined senses, alongside intuition, the acquisition of skill and experience (Benjamin 2002; Cohen 2009; Csordas 1999, 2002; Farrer and Whalen-Bridge 2011; Hartley 1995; Spatz 2015). Embodiment juxtaposes insights drawn from the body with symbolic, verbal, performative, virtual and textual materials to foreground actual lived experience. Emphasizing the body in movement, as ‘being alive’, and not some dead thing animated by spirit, led Ingold (2011, 10) to dismiss ‘embodiment’, where the body is regarded as an ontological vessel or container for the soul, spirit or agency. Nevertheless, following Csordas (2002, 59), ‘embodiment’ does not mean a container for spirit but should rather be regarded as an epistemological device, as a means to gain an immanent understanding of the world as it unfolds through performance, collapsing the dualisms inherent in mind/body, subject/object and alive/dead formulations (Farrer 2009, 73). The somatic risk of placing the body on the line is acute in martial arts performance ethnography. Chatting indoors with neighbours about last night’s gunshots heard outside in the ghetto, or driving a getaway car ‘on the run’ with your interlocutors, compares favourably to suffering a broken nose in the

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ring (Goffman 2015; Wacquant 2004, 7, 255). As for myself, I have acquired more injuries doing field research than I care to recount, but I must leave this story for elsewhere. IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE IN EMBODIED RESEARCH The best ethnographic works result from long-term encounters between researchers, interlocutors and the environment in a generous, open and nonpredetermined exchange of knowledge (e.g. see Benjamin 2014; Waterson 2009). Performance ethnography invites a democratic, community-centred approach, where knowledge springs from the ground up and is not limited to text but takes into account embodied action, everything from posture and gesture, a sideways glance, to a grimace and a delicate smile (Conquergood 2013). In martial arts research, ‘the ground’ may be regarded as a ‘plane of immanence’, a totality of relationships between and among different martial bodies, including all the myriad different martial arts and their variations, their organizations and the actual sweating human bodies of which they are ultimately comprised (Deleuze 1988, 122–30). To place the body on the line in the plane of immanence, to learn a martial art, extends the ethnographic method into the realm of skilled practice and performance. Thus, performance ethnographers must simultaneously utilize the body as a technique du corps, while asking of what is a body capable (Deleuze 1988, 17–18; Mauss 1979, 107; Spatz 2015). Investigating the capabilities, or ‘wisdom of the body’ (Hartley 1995), performance ethnography puts the body on the line to move through collaborative, interpretive, performative and embodied lines of inquiry, analysis and action, to embrace alternative ontologies and epistemologies: For . . . it is not at all a matter of giving a privilege to the body over the mind; it is a matter of acquiring a knowledge of the powers of the body in order to discover, in parallel fashion, powers of the mind that escape consciousness . . . that leads us to discover more in the body than we know, and hence more in the mind than we are conscious of. (Deleuze 1988, 90)

Taking an imminent, emergent approach means to join in with the group’s training, to learn from the experience, to analyse, cross-check, combine and apply the knowledge as it emerges. Performance ethnography is a subtle, embodied, experiential procedure – an extension of participant observation that eschews dialectical transcendence for immanent emergence. Antonio Negri (2013), in Spinoza for Our Time, situates immanence versus transcendence, emergence against dialectics, and the commons versus bourgeois



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individualism. The relegation of the study of martial arts to a sideline, to a supposedly ‘trivial’ pursuit with no place in the hallowed university halls of knowledge, reflects a bourgeois transcendent scholasticism that refuses to get down in the trenches, preferring to tick off survey boxes of prefigured questions and straightjacketed answers (Bowman and Judkins 2017). Performance ethnography, rooted in somatic, collaborative, community emergence, potentially advances an anarchist or nomadological becoming, subversive by nature, revolutionary in outlook. What the future holds for this approach is difficult to predict, yet studies of the senses, social memory, carnal sociology, visual anthropology, space, time, place, new technology, disability, dance and acting shimmer on the horizon of possibility. NOTES 1. A decade has passed since the ‘Perils and Pitfalls of Performance Ethnography’ (Farrer 2007) was published, following in the footsteps of Zarrilli (1998), Fabian (1990) and Turner (1988), an article that elicited a fair share of citation in performance studies, martial arts studies, sociology and embodied research. In 2015, the article was supplemented by a blog for Kung Fu Tea, with a pragmatic focus on ‘how to do’ performance ethnography in martial arts research. Doing Research (1) was penned for my undergraduate students taking AN413 Research Methods in Anthropology at the University of Guam. See: http://bit.ly/29wQkrM. 2. Denounced for sexual exploitation and spurious invention, Carlos Castaneda became discredited in anthropology (see Wallace 2007). 3. The ‘the-foot-in-the-door tactic’ means to gain compliance one requests something small before requesting something more significant (Hogg and Vaughan 2002, 212). 4. Disciplinary preferences to nomothetic (to discover general scientific laws) or ideographic research (seeking particular scientific facts and processes) shape the selection of research method.

REFERENCES Agar, Michael H. 1996. The Professional Stranger: An Informal Introduction to Ethnography. 2nd ed. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Alfred, Randall H. 1976. ‘The Church of Satan’. In The New Religious Consciousness, edited by Charles Glock and Robert Bellah, 180–222. Berkeley: University of California Press. Babbie, Earl R. 2016. The Practice of Social Research. 14th ed. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. Barbash, Ilisa and Lucien Taylor. 1997. Cross-Cultural Filmmaking: A Handbook for Making Documentary and Ethnographic Films and Videos. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Bateson, G. [1972] 2000. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Behar, Ruth. 1996. The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Benjamin, Adam. 2002. Making an Entrance: Theory and Practice for Disabled and Non-disabled Dancers. London: Taylor and Francis. Bloch, Maurice. 2017. ‘Anthropology Is an Odd Subject: Studying from the Outside and from the Inside’. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 7 (1): 33–43. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau7.1.007. Boretz, A. 2011. Gods, Ghosts and Gangsters: Ritual Violence, Martial Arts, and Masculinity on the Margins of Chinese Society. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Bourdieu, P. and Loïc J. D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bowman, P. 2015. Martial Arts Studies: Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. Bowman, P. and B. N. Judkins. 2017. ‘Editorial: Is Martial Arts Studies Trivial?’. Martial Arts Studies, 4: 1–16. doi: http://doi.org/10.18573/j.2017.10183. Carlson, Marvin. 2017. Performance: A Critical Introduction. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge. Castaneda, Carlos. 1968. The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press. Clifford, James and George E. Marcus. 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cohen, Einat Bar-On. 2009 ‘Kibadachi in Karate: Pain and Crossing Boundaries within the “Lived Body” and “within Sociality” ’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15 (3): 610–29. Conquergood, Dwight. 2013. Cultural Studies: Performance, Ethnography, Praxis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Csordas Thomas J. 1999. ‘Embodiment and Cultural Phenomenology’. In Perspectives on Embodiment: The Intersections of Nature and Culture, Gail Weiss and Honi Fern Haber, 143–64. New York: Routledge. Csordas Thomas J. 2002. Body/Meaning/Healing. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave. Cull, Laura. (ed.). 2009. Deleuze and Performance. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Davis, Sarah H. and Melvin Konner. (eds.). 2011. Being There: Learning to Live Cross-Culturally. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Deleuze, G. 1988. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, translated by Robert Hurley. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books. ———. 1990. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, translated by Martin Joughin. New York: Zone Books. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 2004. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by B. Massumi, reprint. London: Continuum. Original edition, Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1980. Mille Plateaux. Capitalisme et schizophrénie. Vol. 2. Paris: Les éditions de Minuit.



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Descola, Philippe. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture, trans. Janet Lloyd. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Downey, G. 2005. Learning Capoeira: Lessons in Cunning from an Afro-Brazilian Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Emerson, Robert M., Rachel I. Fretz and Linda L. Shaw. 1995. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. London: University of Chicago Press. Fabian, Johannes. 1990. Performance and Power: Ethnographic Explorations through Proverbial Wisdom and Theatre in Shaba, Zaire. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ———. 2014. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Farrer, DS. 2007. ‘The Perils and Pitfalls of Performance Ethnography’. International Sociological Association, 6: 26–42. ———. 2008. ‘The Healing Arts of the Malay Mystic’. Visual Anthropology Review, 24 (1): 29–46. ———. 2009. Shadows of the Prophet: Martial Arts and Sufi Mysticism. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 2011. ‘Coffee-Shop Gods: Chinese Martial Arts in the Singapore Diaspora’. In Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World, edited by DS Farrer and John Whalen-Bridge, 203–37. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 2013. ‘Becoming Animal in the Chinese Martial Arts’. In Living Beings: Perspectives on Interspecies Engagements, edited by P. Dransart, 215–46. ASA Monograph 50. London: Bloomsbury. ———. 2015. ‘Efficacy and Entertainment in Martial Arts Studies: Anthropological Perspectives’. Martial Arts Studies, 1: 34–45. ———. (ed.). 2016a. War Magic: Religion, Sorcery and Performance. New York: Berghahn Books. ———. 2016b. ‘The Olympic Future of Mixed Martial Arts’. Anthropology News, 57 (7–8): 12–4. ———. 2018. ‘Captivation, False Connection and Secret Societies in Singapore’. Martial Arts Studies, 5: 36–51. doi:  http://doi.org/10.18573/mas.4 Farrer, DS, and John Whalen-Bridge. (eds.). 2011. Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World. Albany: State University of New York Press. Fassin, Didier. (ed.). 2017. If Truth Be Told: The Politics of Public Ethnography. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Festinger, Leon, Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter. 1964. When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World. New York: Harper & Row. Finkelstein, Ellis. 1993. Prison Culture: An Inside View. Aldershot, Brookfield: Avebury. Frank, Adam. 2006. Taijiquan and the Search for the Little Old Chinese Man: Understanding Identity through Martial Arts. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. García, Raúl Sánchez and Dale C. Spencer. (eds.). 2013. Fighting Scholars: Habitus and Ethnographies of Martial Arts and Combat Sports. London: Anthem Press.

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Geertz, Clifford. 1973. ‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture’. In The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. ———. [1960] 1976. The Religion of Java, reprint. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Goffman, Alice. 2015. On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. New York: Picador/University of Chicago Press. Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. ———. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Hartley, Linda. 1995. Wisdom of the Body Moving: An Introduction to Mind-Body Centering. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. Hobart, Angela and Bruce Kapferer. (eds.). 2007. Aesthetics in Performance: Formations of Symbolic Construction and Experience. New York: Berghahn Books. Hogg, Michael A. and Graham M. Vaughan. 2002. Social Psychology: An Introduction. 3rd ed. London: Prentice Hall. Hurston, Zora Neale. 1990. Mules and Men. New York: Harper & Row. Ingold, Tim. 2014. ‘That’s Enough about Ethnography!’. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 4(1): 383–95. ———. 2017. ‘Anthropology contra Ethnography’. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 7 (1): 21–6. Jokić, Željko. 2015. The Living Ancestors: Shamanism, Cosmos and Cultural Change among the Yanomami of the Upper Orinoco. New York: Berghahn Books. Klens-Bigman, Deborah. 2002. ‘Toward a Theory of Martial Arts as Performance Art’. In Combat, Ritual and Performance: Anthropology of the Martial Arts, edited by David E. Jones, 1–10. Westport, CT: Praeger. Kapferer, Bruce. 1997. The Feast of the Sorcerer. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 2011. Tristes Tropiques. London: Penguin Modern Classics. Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1948. Magic, Science and Religion, and Other Essays. New York: Doubleday. ———. [1922] 1999. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Routledge. Mauss, Marcel. 1979. Sociology and Psychology: Essays, translated by Ben Brewster. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. McKenzie, Jon. 2001. Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance. London: Routledge. Metcalf, Peter. 2002. They Lie, We Lie: Getting on with Anthropology. London: Routledge. Miller, Daniel. 2017. ‘Anthropology Is the Discipline but the Goal Is Ethnography’. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 7 (1): 27–31. Mroz, Daniel. 2017. ‘Taolu: Credibility and Decipherability in the Practice of Chinese Martial Movement’. Martial Arts Studies, 3, 38–50. Nader, Laura 2011. ‘Ethnography as Theory’. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 1 (1): 211–21. Negri, Antonio. 2013. Spinoza for Our Time: Politics and Postmodernity, translated by William McCuaig. New York: Columbia University Press.



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Pelto, Pertti J. and Gretel H. Pelto. 1978. Anthropological Research: The Structure of Inquiry. 2ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pink, Sarah, Heather Horst, John Postill, Larissa Hjorth, Tania Lewis and Jo Tacchi. 2015. Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practice. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE. Robben, Antonius C. G. M. and Jeffrey A. Sluka. (eds.). 2006. Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Samudra, Jaida Kim 2008. ‘Memory in Our Body: Thick Participation and the Translation of Kinesthetic Experience’. American Ethnologist, 35 (4): 665–81. Schechner, Richard. 1985. Between Theatre and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ———. 2006. Performance Studies: An Introduction. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Spatz, Ben. 2015. What Can a Body Do? Technique as Knowledge: Practice as Research. Oxon: Routledge. Spencer, Dale 2013. Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment: Violence, Gender and Mixed Martial Arts. New York: Routledge. Spinoza, Baruch. 1977. Ethics, and the Correction of the Understanding, translated by Andrew Boyle. London: Everyman’s Library. First published 1910. Taylor, Diana. 2016. Performance, translated by Abigail Levine. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Turner, Victor Witten. 1975. Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ———. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Pub. ———. 1985. On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience. Tucson: University of Arizona. ———. 1988. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Pub. Turner, Victor W. and Edith L. B. Turner. 1988. ‘Performing Ethnography’. In The Anthropology of Performance, edited by Victor Turner, 139–55. New York: PAJ Pub. Virilio, Paul. 2004. The Paul Virilio Reader, edited by Steve Redhead. New York: Columbia University Press. Wacquant, Loïc. 2004. Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wallace, Amy. 2007. Sorcerer’s Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda. Berkeley, CA: Frog Books. Waterson, Roxanna. 2009. Paths and Rivers: Sa’dan Toraja Society in Transformation. Leiden: KITLV Press. Whitehead, Neil L. 2002. Dark Shamans: Kanaimà and the Poetics of Violent Death. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Whitehead, Neil L. and Robin Wright. (eds.). 2004. In Darkness and Secrecy: The Anthropology of Assault Sorcery and Witchcraft in Amazonia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Whyte, William Foote. [1943] 1993. Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zarrilli, P. B. 1998. When the Body Becomes All Eyes: Paradigms, Discourses and Practices of Power in Kalarippayattu, a South Indian Martial Art. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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Martial Arts Studies and the Sociology of Gender Theory, Research and Pedagogical Application Alex Channon INTRODUCTION: MARTIAL ARTS STUDIES AND GENDER STUDIES In this chapter, I offer an outline of the interrelation of two fields of study, namely, martial arts studies and gender studies. I begin with a brief rationale of how the study of martial arts and combat sports (hereafter, MACS) can illuminate the sociology of gender, and vice versa, of how attending to the core concerns of gender studies can add important dimensions of inquiry to the field of martial arts studies. The chapter then progresses on to discuss two short thematic cases, illustrated through my own and others’ research, to show how questions of interaction, performativity and power can be addressed through a combined focus on gender and martial arts. I conclude by arguing that the potential for MACS to challenge normative constructions of gender requires purposeful pedagogical action, the likes of which martial arts studies researchers are well placed to develop through critical academic inquiry. WHY MARTIAL ARTS FOR GENDER STUDIES? It is my contention that gender studies scholars should pay close attention to MACS as sites of research and reflection for three specific reasons. Firstly, MACS are fundamentally embodied activities, while the body and questions of embodiment are clearly of vital importance to understanding contemporary gender problems. After all, the body is central to the construction of 155

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meaning attributed to gendered difference, and it is through our embodiment of gender that the realities of such differences become reified. As Joyce Carol Oates succinctly describes with respect to boxing, ‘a boxer is his body, and is totally identified with it’ (2006, 5). Indeed, the rapidly expanding martial arts studies literature reveals that concerns over bodies and embodiment are centrally important to the practice, organization and representation of MACS (cf. Farrer and Whalen-Bridge 2011; Sánchez García and Spencer 2013). Similar to many other physical cultural activities, the opportunity to develop reflexive self-knowledge, effect personal transformation or contest dominant social discourses via processes of embodiment has been repeatedly noted by scholars studying gender and MACS (e.g. Channon and Matthews 2015; McCaughey 1997; McNaughton 2012; Mierzwinski, Velija and Malcolm 2014), some of whose work will be returned to below. This leads into the second point of interest, namely, the symbolic proximity of martial artistry to the matter of physical violence. This sets MACS apart from other physical cultural pursuits – such as athletics, dance, fitness and team games – in notable ways. Perhaps most importantly in this respect, training and competition here typically involve the development and performance of the ability to physically dominate others (or, at least, effectively resist their attempts at dominating oneself). This holds particular significance for gender studies, given the close association physical domination holds with normative, discursive constructions of masculinity and the attendant consequences such discourse holds for sustaining idealizations of gendered power differences (Bryson 1987; Connell 1995; Matthews 2014). While (typically male-dominated) sports such as rugby, gridiron football or bodybuilding include various kinds of symbolic, ritualized performances that involve or imply physical dominance, MACS very often centre on literally dominating a resisting opponent. In this sense, it is not uncommon to hear (certain) MACS disciplines described as ‘quintessentially masculine’, ‘male preserves’ or ‘hypermasculine spaces’ (cf. Carlsson 2017; Matthews 2014; Mennesson 2000). However, while this characteristic resonates with public discourses suggesting an essentially masculine character, the third key point of interest is that many MACS are practised in ways which attempt to de-emphasize gender difference. Many practitioners dismiss such notions out of hand; as Carlsson writes, quoting a male boxing trainer, ‘In the ring, you’re not a man or a woman: You’re a boxer’ (2017, 1). Meanwhile, classes in many disciplines are taught in mixed-sex settings (Channon 2013a; Maclean 2016), and women’s participation in competitive combat sport is becoming both increasingly common and visible (Channon and Matthews 2015). Unlike in most sports, uniforms in many martial arts are unisex, covering and thus hiding some of the most obvious sexual differences between men and women. Furthermore,



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it is not uncommon for coaches or instructors to purposefully ignore or even challenge gender norms within training environments (Dortants and Knoppers 2012). Thus, MACS provide fascinating settings within which to investigate the construction and performance of gender, and to explore the possibility for challenging normative manifestations of this phenomenon. WHY GENDER FOR MARTIAL ARTS STUDIES? Scholars in the newly emerging field of martial arts studies cannot afford to lose sight of gender in their analyses of MACS. The first and perhaps most obvious reason for this is the sociological importance of gender to the normal procedure of social life itself. As Kessler and McKenna write, ‘In our society, the decision that one makes as to whether someone is a woman or a man is probably necessary, and is certainly crucial for all future interactions and for giving meaning to the other person’s behaviour’ (1978, vii), such that ‘gender very clearly pervades everyday life’ (3). Lorber argues that this pervasiveness of gender means that for most people, ‘talking about gender . . . is the equivalent of fish talking about water’ (1994, 13). As such, it stands to reason that gendered behaviours and beliefs impact deeply on the social practice of MACS, and indeed, this supposition has been well borne out by empirical research (returned to below). Bearing in mind that gender constructions are almost always implicated in hierarchal distributions of power (Connell 1995), studying gender provides a window on the exclusionary, exploitive or otherwise-harmful manifestation of (hetero)sexism, homophobia and intersectional social privileges within MACS spaces – while also, of course, laying the intellectual foundations for contesting them. Understanding gender is therefore a necessary (although, of course, not sufficient) step in grasping the multifaceted nature of the experience of martial artistry today. Even those interesting moments wherein gender is challenged or forgotten by martial artists, as alluded to above, remain marked by gender insomuch as it gives those experiences particular sociological significance. If gender is indeed as pervasive as Kessler and McKenna (1978) state, then any normalized departure from gendered normality (e.g. men and women hitting one-another in training) highlights something profoundly abnormal about martial artistry. As Butler (1990, 149) notes, ‘The strange, the incoherent, that which falls “outside”, gives us a way of understanding the takenfor-granted world . . . as a constructed one, indeed, as one that might well be constructed differently’. What we might call a ‘normalized abnormality’ of gender performance in MACS holds out the promise of offering rich empirical opportunities for martial arts studies scholars interested in such academic problems. In this light, examining gender in MACS contexts can be seen as

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a route to answering some of the more pressing questions raised by martial arts studies over the past few years. Among others, these include those surrounding the interrelation between political forces, social hierarchies and the embodied practices of martial arts; of how martial arts mediate the place of the self within society; and how personal and social transformations might be realized through pedagogical work in the martial arts. Critical theorizing relevant to such questions abounds in gender studies, a field heavily influenced by feminist theory and praxis.1 On a related note, the criticality of (feminist-informed) gender studies offers a further boon to martial arts studies, as a tool for proactively advocating for positive social change, as well as careful introspection regarding the development of the field of study itself. The paradigmatic positioning of martial arts studies requires us to recognize that its research endeavours involve the active production of knowledge rather than its objective discovery. Epistemologically, this invites critique of the characteristics of the social interactions and relationships that shape these acts of production. As with the practices of martial artists then, the practices of martial arts studies scholars may also be marked by gendered forms of behaviour, shot through with (often unrecognized) power relations that have the potential to both influence the knowledge produced and implicitly normalize the inclusion or exclusion of people involved in its production. Although I don’t mean to focus on this point in this chapter, it is worth pointing to two pieces of commentary on this issue emerging in the wake of two martial arts studies events from recent years, which debated the extent to which forms of male/masculine privilege shaped academic discourse (Bowman 2016; White 2016). While gender is not the only sociological phenomenon affecting academia in such ways, recognition of its pervasiveness is a necessary step in protecting the intellectual credibility, and democratic credentials, of martial arts studies as an academic field. With these points in mind, I now turn to exemplifying how the intersection of martial arts and gender as objects of study might inform sociological inquiry, foregrounding notions of interaction, performativity and power to illustrate my case. GENDER PERFORMANCE, POWER RELATIONS AND SOCIAL CHANGE: SOME ANIMATING CONCEPTS FOR MARTIAL ARTS STUDIES Although there are myriad theoretical approaches to understanding gender, the notion of performativity holds considerable traction across much of



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contemporary academic discourse on the matter. Although often attributed to Butler (1990), theories of gender performativity were earlier forwarded in West and Zimmerman’s (1987) Goffmanian model, and before that in Garfinkel’s (1967) and Kessler and McKenna’s (1978) ethnomethodological works. Regardless of its genesis, the notion is typically adopted within many other theoretical interpretations of gender today. Although various scholars’ articulations of the concept may differ, at its root is the notion that gender is not an expression of innate, sex-linked qualities, or of one’s inner, core identity, but rather a socially constructed reality brought about through individual behaviours and interactions, with its significance derived through reference to culturally specific structures of meaning. In other words, gender is something which people continually ‘do’, and for which others hold them accountable to do ‘correctly’ in order to be recognized as a (certain type of) man or woman. Questions around how individuals thereby do gender within MACS settings; how dominant expectations for men’s and women’s behaviour shape their embodied practices; how contradictions and potential improprieties are negotiated along the way; and what kinds of consequences these phenomena lead to have animated much research on MACS. Although these are certainly interesting questions, the constitution and confirmation of one’s gendered identity through interactive social performance is not an inert or power-neutral phenomenon but, as noted earlier, has implications for sustaining observable social hierarchies. Indeed, sociological theories of gender very often offer commentaries on how the performative construction of gender supports power differences in the lives of various people, with reference to social categories such as sex groups, sexualities, class and ethnicity (among others). Rather than see such power differences as completely intractable, performative theories of gender suggest that if certain individuals’ or groups’ power is accomplished through doing gender one way or the other, then this may be open to contestation if gender is done differently (or indeed ‘undone’, as some have argued – see Deutsch 2007). Regarding hierarchal relations between men and women, West and Zimmerman succinctly argue that if ‘the gender attributes deployed as a basis of maintaining men’s hegemony are social products, they are subject to social change’ (2009, 114). This observation has also been a key driver of research on MACS, where scholars have explored the possibility for such practices to subvert the inequities and exclusions sustained through embodied gender performance. With these two phenomena in mind – the performance of gender and its relationship to sustaining or challenging power differences (which I will express below as ‘gender/power’) – I now turn to two case studies exploring a small range of selected research on contemporary MACS practices, largely drawn from Europe and North America. These highlight, in turn, the kinds of

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further work that martial arts studies scholars might do to critically illuminate the relationship between gender and martial arts in future research. PERFORMANCES OF GENDER IN MIXED SPARRING ENCOUNTERS: HOLDING BACK AND LASHING OUT As noted previously, the association between (potential or actual) physical dominance and idealizations of masculinity marks out various MACS disciplines as a prime example of what might be imagined as ‘maleappropriate’ sport/leisure activities. The fact that many practitioners are quick to criticize such notions does not mean that this implied masculinity has no impact on the lived experience of training and competing within them. Indeed, as empirical research on MACS has shown, individuals still continue to ‘do gender’ in these ostensibly de-gendered spaces. The ways in which gender is thereby done sheds light on the complexities involved in attempting to depart from deeply entrenched, normative social structures through embodied practice. The first example I choose to illustrate this comes from research on sex integration in martial arts. Several studies over the past few years have specifically explored sex-integrated training environments (e.g. Channon and Jennings 2013; Guérandel and Mennesson 2007; Maclean 2016), while many others have included phenomena pertinent to them in broader analyses (e.g. Carlsson 2015; Lökman 2010; McNaughton 2012; Mierzwinski et al. 2014; Owton 2015; Paradis 2012). Many instructive themes arise from this body of work, but perhaps foremost among them is the observation that integrated training forces participants to confront gender as an embodied social problem – a phenomenon which carries important consequences for (re)shaping the place of gender in conceptions of the self and other. In this respect, the potential efficacy of mixed training for providing opportunities to counter normative gender constructions, particularly as they relate to or support notions of hierarchal sex difference, has often been highlighted. Writing of her experiences in training with and fighting alongside male kickboxers, McNaughton notes that ‘the fact that I can hit harder than some of the men that I train with . . . violates nearly all traditional conceptions of what it means to be a woman’ (2012, 7). Concluding their study of mixed training in a range of martial arts, Channon and Jennings argue that physical exchanges such as sparring, if premised on equality between men and women, involve ‘a lived-out “undoing” of gender, impacting upon . . . understandings and embodied performances of sex difference’ (2013, 500). Carlsson neatly summarizes the impact such experience had on her own (gendered) sense of self: ‘In the moment, I do not think about that I am a woman and my opponent is



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a man. There is nothing apart from two boxing bodies that seek to hit and not be hit’ (2017, 11–12). Meanwhile, for Maclean, ‘the physically and emotionally intimate practice of karate challenges conventional ideas of gender difference and ways of doing gender’ (2016, 1379), building mutually respectful relationships between men and women that challenge (hetero)sexist gender norms. Yet while it is important to note the possibility of these outcomes, common to each of the studies cited here and earlier is the observation that men and women training together nevertheless continue to behave in line with dominant gender norms in various ways, often to the extent that such outcomes are thrown into doubt. This is specifically the case when considering mixed-sex sparring interactions. Thanks to the symbolic proximity of martial artistry to acts of physical violence, some men feel a strong sense of unease when sparring with women, owing to the stigmatizing construction of male-female physical combat as a manifestation of violent abuse. Thus, to ‘hurt’ a woman while sparring is a deeply dishonourable act. Meanwhile, because of the association between physical dominance and masculinity, some men experience the prospect of ‘losing’ to a woman in a sparring exchange2 as threatening, since as men, they assume that they ought to be able to easily win any such encounter. In the former case, men withhold meaningful effort, undermining the efficacy of the exercise; in the latter, they apply too great an effort, risking injuring or intimidating their partner. While research shows such problems generally affect novice MACS practitioners more than others, they can also be persistent among those who are more experienced: I feel really uncomfortable that I could hurt a woman in that way, even if she’s asking me to do it I feel really uncomfortable, you know, physically uncomfortable with doing that. (Interview with ‘Steve’, kung fu black belt and instructor, in Channon 2013b, 102) After 30 seconds, Claire brings down Julien in a spectacular manner. . . Then he gets up and increases the physical intensity of the fight. His movements are livelier, he pulls harder on the kimono and redoubles his attack efforts. Claire falls twice. (Field notes from elite judoka training session, in Guérandel and Mennesson 2007, 175)

In explaining these phenomena, Guérandel and Mennesson (2007) refer to the use of two interpretive frames used to give meaning to social exchanges in sex-integrated judo: a judo framework, prioritizing the expectations of the sport and involving no reference to gender, and a gender framework, stressing socially normative codes of propriety for interactions between men and women. With respect to how and when such frames become active in shaping interactions, Channon (2013b) refers to the role of habituated gender ideals which are strongly inflected with notions of honour (i.e. men shouldn’t hit

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women), while Owton points to lingering attachments to notions of male privilege and entitlement: The power from his ‘old boy’ punch felt fuelled with sexism and misogyny; a flooding of historical women’s suffrage and oppression had hit me in that one punch saying ‘you shouldn’t be here’. . . that’s why it had hurt more. (Field notes from mixed boxing sparring encounter, in Owton 2015, 231–2)

In both cases, it is those moments in which sex-integrated training most clearly threatens what R. W. Connell (1995) refers to as the ‘gender order’ – the orthodox structure of gender relations privileging men and masculinity over women and femininity – which seems to activate Guérandel and Mennesson’s (2007) ‘gender framework’ within integrated MACS. That is to say, the closer such interactions come to challenging the idea that men are always, inevitably going to be better than women at fighting, the more likely they are to be destabilized one way or another through the reassertion of gender as a principal guide to behaviour.3 Taking the power dynamics embedded within normative gender relations into account, such an observation reveals an important sociological phenomenon regarding the persistent nature of power. As human behaviour approaches a threshold at which orthodox structures of power are threatened, various mechanisms for the maintenance of those structures spring into action. On the one hand, a code of honour (and/or fear of stigma) sees bodies withdraw from engagements that might trouble power-laden idealizations of their relative capacities (men will always beat women in fights; therefore, such a fight is unfair/illegitimate and should be avoided). On the other hand, the threat of forfeiting one’s personal status (you lost to a woman; therefore you have lost face as a man) results in disregarding the situational rules of interaction, instead using overwhelming physical force in an attempt to restate the wider social basis on which that status is supposed to rest. As interesting as such phenomena as these may be from a critical, scholarly point of view, such an observation also begs an important pedagogical question. If there indeed remains the possibility of effecting change in gender/power relations through MACS, as several researchers (including myself) have argued, then how might we work to bring this about? How can we minimize the disruptive impact of gendered frameworks on MACS training, while maximizing the possibilities for MACS to ‘undo’ gender itself, building less exclusionary and more socially just forms of physical culture? The answers to such questions may lie in an examination of a related area of literature.



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POLITICIZING GENDER AND MACS: WHAT’S ‘FEMINIST’ ABOUT FEMINIST SELF-DEFENCE? To date, martial arts studies scholars have been slow to recognize the value of a considerable body of work on women’s self-defence, composed by feminist researchers over the past several decades. From the 1970s onwards, this work has set out a comprehensive agenda for the intellectual theorization, ethical defence and pedagogical modelling of strategies by which women might actively resist the norms of ‘rape culture’ through self-defence training (e.g. Hollander 2004; McCaughey 1997; Pascalé, Moon and Tanner 1970; Searles and Berger 1987; Thomson 2014). Countering beliefs in the inadequacy of resistance against supposedly inevitable male physical dominance, several studies have shown that self-defence training is effective in reducing both attempted and completed sexual assault (e.g. Brecklin and Ullman 2005; Hollander 2014, 2016). Further to this, others have identified that self-defence training offers transformative experiences to women, in terms of recovering from post-assault trauma, but also relative to the ‘unlearning’ of harmful forms of femininity that have normalized an expectation of victimhood (e.g. Cermele 2010; Hollander 2004; McCaughey 1997). This important work departs from lines of reasoning embedded in dominant constructions of gender, which position women vis-à-vis sexual assault as inevitable victims-in-waiting, who must rely on men’s goodwill or protection in order to be and feel safe from attack.4 Celebrating female agency, dismissing notions of inevitable female violability and refusing to take male domination for granted offer a significant shift in conceptualizations of male-to-female violence. Particularly, it departs from a normative paradigm centred purely on the ability of men to choose a woman’s fate for her, reasserting women as active agents in social interaction (De Welde 2003). While this logic has riled some feminist commentators, for whom selfdefence advocacy carries echoes of ‘victim blaming’ (i.e. a rape victim ought to have defended herself – see Hollander 2016), scholars advocating self-defence point to its transformative value in refiguring how women have been socialized to see themselves as passive objects of men’s decision making, which carries far-reaching consequences for everyday life (Rentschler 1999; Standing, Parker and Bista 2017; Thomson 2014). Among others, these include improved self-confidence, reduced levels of fear, greater body satisfaction, a heightened consciousness of sexism and greater feelings of autonomy. As McCaughey writes, self-defence instructors ‘do not merely teach women to fight. They teach women that they are important, that they are worth fighting for’ (1997, 98). And for De Welde, this means ‘women are able

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to see themselves as having an effect on their own lives rather than (being) wholly determined by the volition of others’ (2003, 250). The consensus emerging from this wide body of scholarship is therefore that self-defence training offers powerful experiences that can effectively disrupt dominant discourses constituting gender/power, with a range of tangibly positive effects on women’s lives. Yet, a key observation to arise from this work is that such transformations are linked specifically to the use of overtly feminist pedagogies. In line with the logic of values-based approaches to physical education and sport coaching (see Lambert 2015; Whitehead, Telfer and Lambert 2013), outcomes of physical training regimes linked to emotional, ethical or social phenomena cannot be assumed to arise naturally from predominantly technical, skill-based approaches to teaching and learning. As such, simply learning to fight within (non-feminist) MACS classes may fail to realize the range of positive outcomes noted here. This may be for a number of reasons but each pertains to the value of recognizing the role played by gender/power in constituting women’s lives in relation to the body. First, regarding the physical skills taught, techniques that rely on a kind of physicality one does not (currently) possess, or which take a long time to learn, are unlikely to lend themselves to acute personal transformations regarding assumed weakness. Thus, De Welde (2003, 251) describes a feminist self-defence instructor’s design of a technical syllabus which emphasized women’s (‘natural’) lower body strength, which ‘was not imbued with elaborate martial arts movements or with strength tactics that could have been inaccessible to most women’. Meanwhile, Rentschler emphasizes the importance of teaching ‘high-damage’ techniques early in self-defence courses, specifically to show women ‘that they are capable of inflicting pain and physical damage on attackers of all sizes and shapes’ (1999, 156). McCaughey succinctly summarizes the reason why: ‘women feel differently knowing that they could kill someone’ (1997, 86). Second, with respect to the social environments of gyms, it must be remembered that typical discursive constructions of MACS often echo orthodox assumptions about gender and fighting ability. Perhaps unintentionally, this may help to reproduce male privilege in certain training settings (Matthews 2015), particularly in gyms where instructors fail to grasp the ways in which gender norms pervade classes that they teach. McCaughey notes that various, unchallenged gendered expectations among students in a nonfeminist self-defence class ‘added up to an often condescending or embarrassing atmosphere’ (1997, 79), making for an unproductive experience. Such interactional dynamics echo the problems discussed earlier regarding mixed sparring, yet in this context, gendered awkwardness becomes more than an obstruction to learning. If the object of training in self-defence is to overcome the harmful impacts of gender on one’s life, yet gender remains salient and



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insurmountable in practice, then the purpose of training collapses into farce, its promise vanishing. For Thomson (2014), this underscores the necessity for ‘empowerment self-defence’ instructors to spend time discussing and sharing stories regarding the social and ethical contexts of gender and violence. Further, Guthrie (1995, 111) describes how women ‘emphasized the importance of the gynocentric environment’ of a feminist self-defence centre on their continued involvement in learning karate, including specifically designed physical spaces, women-only classes, cooperative approaches to training and engagement in community activism. Meanwhile, Hollander argues that feminist self-defence should be specifically characterized by ‘substantial training in assertiveness (verbal self-defence) and discussion of psychological and emotional issues surrounding both violence against women and self-defense’ (2004, 206). Foregrounding specific, psychic effects of gender on the process of learning to fight makes these problems visible, while mental skills training helps overcome them and storytelling exemplifies how others have successfully done so in the past (Cermele 2010). For these authors and others, a feminist consciousness is vital in realizing the promise of self-defence training as a means to challenge dominant formations of gender/power. By purposefully foregrounding an awareness of how societal gender norms contribute to the disempowerment of women, meaningful strategies for overcoming this can coalesce into practice. Referred to as ‘physical feminism’ by McCaughey (1997) and others (e.g. Rentschler 1999), the embodied experience of self-defence training can effect profound personal transformation, inviting the ‘undoing’ of gender through the medium of MACS. Yet, as with other feminisms, physical feminism does not happen by accident; it requires a clear political orientation to be manifest in practice through a careful pedagogical design sensitive to the objectives it seeks to achieve. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS Returning then to the questions posed earlier in this chapter, insights from research into feminist self-defence point towards the necessity of purposefully working towards ‘undoing’ gender in MACS settings in order to reduce the obstructions it can pose to effective training, while maximizing the value of that training in contesting gender to begin with. Scholars with interventionist ambitions may therefore wish to move beyond the production of knowledge via critical intellectual analyses drawing on gender theory, towards the development of critical pedagogical models on the basis of that knowledge. In line with the feminist praxis discussed here, the social justice implications of

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revealing possibilities to transform sexist, homophobic or otherwise-harmful cultural norms invite researchers to become actively invested in propagating ideas and practices which can do so. Thus, the development of readily applicable models for instruction, coach education and so on, which build meaningfully on the insights gained from social scientific research, may become a worthwhile endeavour for colleagues with a desire to effect tangible change in the fields of practice comprising contemporary MACS. This has been a clear ambition of the feminist self-defence literature discussed earlier, yet comparatively few attempts have been made outside of this sub-field to condense research into gender-critical pedagogical models (see Channon 2014; Van Ingen 2011). While it is crucial that efforts at doing so build meaningfully on extant empirical research, my attention in this chapter to scholarly work that may be useful in this context has been necessarily narrow, in the interests of space. The topics I have discussed lend themselves well towards informing pedagogy, but efforts at developing progressive interventions would do well to also draw on other investigations and theorizations at the intersection of gender and martial arts studies. To do some justice to this wider body of work, it is worth noting that gender has been a topic of interest in specific analyses of masculinities (Matthews 2015; Spencer 2012) and femininities (Channon and Phipps 2017; Kavoura, Ryba and Chroni 2015), studies of intersectional identities (Chan 2000; Chin and Andrews 2016; McCree 2011), historical research (Jennings 2015; Van Ingen 2013), film studies (Caudwell 2008; Lu 2011), sport media analyses (Jakubowska, Channon and Matthews 2016; Quinney 2016) and sport development studies (Hayhurst 2014) concerning martial arts – to name but a few. Each of these areas may offer productive insight for colleagues wishing to extend knowledge in the field or build recommendations for applying it in practice. In conclusion then, despite a tendency for some scholars to (still) begin journal articles with claims as to the dearth of research on the two, the study of MACS and gender is well established and, it seems, continuing to grow in various promising directions. This research provides opportunities for academic concerns from two different fields to intersect neatly, benefitting the construction of knowledge in both. As I have attempted to argue in this chapter, questions over how best to utilize such scholarly knowledge in applied interventions deserve to become a key focus as this research moves forward. Doing so will not only expand on the relatively slim offering made in this direction to date by martial arts researchers but will also contribute towards martial arts studies’ impact on the communities and wider societies that constitute the objects of its scholarly attention.



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NOTES 1. In this sense, it is probably worth remembering Stuart Hall’s famous (although somewhat problematic) pronouncement as to feminism’s impact on British cultural studies – a paradigm which has clearly influenced the early trajectory of martial arts studies itself: ‘As a thief in the night, [feminism] broke in, interrupted, made an unseemly noise, seized the time, crapped on the table of cultural studies’ (1992, 282). 2. This is itself a strange proposition, given that the purpose of sparring while training is principally to learn, and not ‘win’ – a fact which can be quickly forgotten when gendered anxieties replace the normative meanings otherwise constructed around MACS activities. 3. These dynamics are not the only ways in which gender framing interrupts mixed training encounters. For instance, see Channon and Jennings (2013) and Mierzwinski et al. (2014) for discussions on the role or sexualization in framing malefemale touch in MACS. 4. It is worth noting that such logic often features in public campaigns supposedly intended to reduce sexual assault, which advocate avoidance behaviours by women such as not walking alone at night, not drinking to excess and being wary of ‘signals’ they give to strangers. It is also evident that, despite some exceptions, the efficacy of self-defence training – women’s active resistance to men’s violence – is often erased in mainstream media accounts of sexual assault (Hollander and Rogers 2014), further normalizing an absence of women’s agency from discourse on the subject (see Cermele 2010 for a powerful account of the value of women’s self-defence stories).

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———. 2016. ‘The Importance of Self-defense Training for Sexual Violence Prevention’. Feminism and Psychology, 26 (2): 207–26. Hollander, J. A. and K. Rogers. 2014. ‘Constructing Victims: The Erasure of Women’s Resistance to Sexual Assault’. Sociological Forum, 29 (2): 342–64. Jakubowska, H., A. Channon and C. R. Matthews. 2016. ‘Gender, Media, and Mixed Martial Arts in Poland: The Case of Joanna Jędrzejczyk’. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 40 (5): 410–31. Jennings, L. A. 2015. She’s a Knockout! A History of Women’s Fighting Sports. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. Kavoura, A., T. V. Ryba and S. Chroni. 2015. ‘Negotiating Female Judoka Identities in Greece: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis’. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 17: 88–98. Kessler, S. J. and W. McKenna. 1978. Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lambert, J. 2015. ‘A Values-Based Approach to Coaching within Sport for Development Programmes’. In Becoming a Sports Coach, edited by J. Wallis and J. Lambert, 167–79. Abingdon: Routledge. Lökman, P. 2010. ‘Becoming Aware of Gendered Embodiment: Female Beginners Learning Aikido’. In Women and Exercise: The Body, Health and Consumerism, edited by E. Kennedy and P. Markula, 266–79. London: Routledge. Lorber, J. 1994. Paradoxes of Gender. London: Yale University Press. Lu, J. 2011. ‘Body, Masculinity, and Representation in Chinese Martial Arts Films’. In Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World, edited by DS Farrer and J. Whalen-Bridge, 97–119. Albany: State University of New York Press. Maclean, C. 2016. ‘Friendships Worth Fighting For: Bonds between Women and Men Karate Practitioners as Sites for Deconstructing Gender Inequality’. Sport in Society, 19 (8–9): 1374–84. Matthews, C. R. 2014. ‘Biology Ideology and Pastiche Hegemony’. Men and Masculinities, 17 (2): 99–119. ———. 2015. ‘The Tyranny of the Male Preserve’. Gender and Society, 30 (2): 312–33. McCaughey, M. 1997. Real Knockouts: The Physical Feminism of Women’s SelfDefense. London: New York University Press. McCree, R. 2011. ‘The Death of a Female Boxer: Media, Sport, Nationalism, and Gender’. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 35 (4): 327–49. McNaughton, M. J. 2012. ‘Insurrectionary Womanliness: Gender and the (Boxing) Ring’. The Qualitative Report, 17: 1–13. Mennesson, C. 2000. ‘ “Hard” Women and “Soft” Women: The Social Construction of Identities among Female Boxers’. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 35 (1): 21–33. Mierzwinski, M., P. Velija and D. Malcolm. 2014. ‘Women’s Experiences in the Mixed Martial Arts: A Quest for Excitement?’. Sociology of Sport Journal, 31 (1): 66–84. Oates, J. C. (2006) On Boxing: Updated and Expanded Edition. London: Harper Perennial. Owton, H. 2015. ‘Reinventing the Body-Self: Intense, Gendered and Heightened Sensorial Experiences of Women’s Boxing Embodiment’. In Global Perspectives

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on Women in Combat Sports: Women Warriors around the World, edited by A. Channon and C.R. Matthews, 221–36. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Paradis, E. 2012. ‘Boxers, Briefs or Bras? Bodies, Gender and Change in the Boxing Gym’. Body and Society, 18 (1): 82–109. Pascalé, S., R. Moon and L. B. Tanner. 1970. ‘Self-Defense for Women’. In Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement, edited by R. Morgan, 469–77. New York: Vintage Books. Quinney, A. 2016. ‘The @UFC and Third Wave Feminism? Who Woulda Thought? Gender, Fighters, and Framing on Twitter’. Martial Arts Studies, 2: 34–58. Rentschler, C. A. 1999. ‘Women’s Self-Defense: Physical Education for Everyday Life’. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 27 (1–2): 152–61. Sánchez García, R. and D. C. Spencer. (eds.). 2013. Fighting Scholars: Habitus and Ethnographies of Martial Arts and Combat Sports. London: Anthem. Searles, P. and R. J. Berger. 1987. ‘The Feminist Self-Defense Movement: A Case Study’. Gender and Society 1 (1): 61–84. Spencer, D. C. 2012. ‘Narratives of Despair and Loss: Pain, Injury and Masculinity in the Sport of Mixed Martial Arts’. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 4 (1): 117–37. Standing, K., S. Parker and S. Bista. 2017. ‘ “It’s Breaking Quite Big Social Taboos”: Violence against Women and Girls and Self-defense Training in Nepal’. Women’s Studies International Forum, 64: 51–8. Thomson, M. E. 2014. ‘Empowering Self-defense Training’. Violence against Women, 20 (3): 351–59. Van Ingen, C. 2011. ‘Spatialities of Anger: Emotional Geographies in a Boxing Program for Survivors of Violence’. Sociology of Sport Journal, 28 (2): 171–88. ———. 2013. ‘ “Seeing What Frames Our Seeing”: Seeking Histories on Early Black Female Boxers’. Journal of Sport History, 40 (1): 93–110. West, C. and D. Zimmerman 1987. ‘Doing Gender’. Gender and Society, 1 (2): 125–51. ———. 2009. ‘Accounting for Doing Gender’. Gender and Society, 23 (1): 112–22. White, L. 2016. ‘Martial Arts Studies and Gender (University of Brighton, 5 February 2016)’. Kung fu with Braudel. http://kungfuwithbraudel.blogspot. co.uk/2016/02/martial-arts-studies-and-gender.html?m=1. Whitehead, J., H. Telfer and J. Lambert. (eds.). 2013. Values in Youth Sport and Physical Education. Abingdon: Routledge.

Chapter 12

Masculinities, Bodies and Martial Arts Dale C. Spencer

INTRODUCTION While historically many people have regarded martial arts as primarily a male arena, there is no doubt that the twentieth century saw the definitive and highly visible entrance of women into these realms. Despite the presence of women in martial arts, male participation is still associated with ideas of the ‘performance of masculinity’. Drawing on body studies and masculinity studies literature, this chapter probes how masculinities may be practised through martial arts, examining the relationship between the embodied practice of martial arts and the representations of martial arts and the ambiguities and paradoxes that accompany this relationship. While masculinities are enacted through violence associated with martial arts both in the participation in martial arts and representations of martial arts in television and film, the practice of martial arts is simultaneously marked by homosociality, corporeal breakdown and failure. It is in this space of disjuncture between the representations of martial arts and masculinities and their practice in the everyday life of martial artists that this chapter seeks to work as a corrective to certain contemporary approaches of martial art studies and understanding of men, masculinities and martial arts. To do so, I rely on corporeal realism (see Shilling 2008, 2010; see Shilling and Mellor 2007) to understand male bodies and masculinities in martial arts. Drawing on this theoretical framework, I emphasize the centrality of practice to martial arts. In this way, in this chapter, I assert that martial arts practice always troubles the ‘performance’ of mediatized representations of masculinities, while also challenging conceptions of masculinities in martial arts as unitary and coherent with these representations. 171

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In the first section, I discuss the existing paradigms within the body studies literature and their relationship to corporeal realism. In the following section, guided by corporeal realism, I critique the existing literature on men, masculinities and martial arts. In light of this critique, the third section probes the epistemological problem of ‘citationality’ in martial arts studies. The final section outlines observant participation as an apogee for studying martial arts in situ. BODY STUDIES AND CORPOREAL REALISM Early work in the sociology of the body from the early 1980s and beyond concentrated on its subject by rejecting biologically reductive conceptions of the organic subject and drawing instead on social constructionist analyses that positioned the body as an object produced and regulated by political, normative and discursive regimes. This perspective, primarily influenced by the work of Michel Foucault (1980, 1995), generated salient contributions (e.g. Turner 1982, 1984) but has been recognized subsequently as substituting biological determinism for social reductionism. The study of the body that this perspective offered is overdetermined: bodies are construed as a passive location for social forces and passively reveal or express the structuring powers of social systems. In contradistinction to this perspective, body scholars progressively emphasized the lived experience of embodied action (see Frank 1997; Leder 1990). The ‘lived body’ is accentuated to stress that the body is a source of the social, rather than just being ordered and inscribed by power relations. In turn, however, this conception tends to overstress the structuring powers of embodied agency without much attention to the role of structure or power relations. In order to overcome this dualism between embodied structure and agency, the highly influential work of Pierre Bourdieu relied on his concept of habitus and placed the reproduction of the external environment at the centre of his approach to action (Bourdieu 1984, 1992). The problem here lies in the fact that embodied action, bodies’ styles and ways of movement appear predetermined, echoing and reproducing existing structures (Shilling 2008; Spencer 2009). In this paradigm, the body serves as a pneumonic device reflecting culture and class. Elizabeth Grosz contends that the problem with the predetermination of bodies lies in the fact that bodies always possess the ability to ‘extend the frameworks which attempt to contain them, to seep beyond their domains of control’ (Grosz 1994, xi). Due to the potential of bodies to elude definition, the quest for defining what the body is and what it can do, along with recognizing the impact of power and structure on the body, becomes the fundamental problem of analysing the body.



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In relation to the problem of the body, critical realist scholar Margaret Archer refers to the aforementioned polarized positions as forms of ‘conflation’ (Archer 2001). The first form she denotes as ‘Modernity’s Man’, and regards as an upwards conflation, in which the powers of the people are held to make both human beings and also their society. The second form, ‘Society’s Being’, is a downwards conflation, in which ‘effects of socialization impress themselves upon people, seen as malleable “indeterminate material” ’ (Archer 2001, 5). To approach the problem of the body, the critical realist position stresses the independent properties and powers of human agency and society and is firmly anti-reductionist. The critical realist approach to humanity is repositioned as beginning by offering an account of a sense of self, which is prior to, and primitive to, our sociality. The emergence of selfhood springs from how our species-being interacts with the way the world is, which is independent of how we take it to be, or the constructions we put upon it. Each singular human must discover, through embodied practice, the distinctions between self and otherness, then between subject and object, before moving on to the distinction between the self and other people. It is only in learning these distinctions through embodied practice that they may be, in turn, articulated in language. More than anything else, critical realism can be said to (re-)vindicate ‘real powers for real people who live in the real world’ (Archer 2001, 10). Concomitantly, Margaret Archer’s (2001, 2007) work on reflexivity and human action asserts that participants’ stories and agency can be significantly understood without overstating their personal responsibility for their hardships. Drawing on critical realism’s focus on embodied practice, corporeal realism is an approach developed by Chris Shilling (1993, 2005, 2007, 2008), one of the leading scholars in body studies or the sociology of the body in the past thirty years.1 Corporeal realism is associated with critical realism (Archer 1995; Bhaskar 1986) but positions the body-society relationship as the central subject matter. At the core of corporeal realism is an ontologically stratified view of the world that maintains that the body and society exist as real things possessed of causally generative properties (Shilling 2005: 12). Neither the body nor society can be dissolved into discourse. While the body remains central to concerns, corporeal realism acknowledges social structures as emergent phenomena. The existing elements of society are not reduced to the structural conditions in which embodied action occurs but includes cultural norms and values that potentially shape the conduct of the generations that confront them. These core principles of corporeal realism mean that while it is valid to view the body as a location for pre-existing structural parts of society, it would be inappropriate to reduce embodied subjects to society or to overlook in analytical formulations that bodies continue to possess – albeit variously

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according to a multitude of factors – their capacities for creative action. Corporeal realism asserts that the embodied subject must be viewed as an emergent, causally consequent phenomenon and an important object of analysis in its own right. While cognizant that the human body consists of distinctive parts – including our genes, blood and bones – we cannot be reduced to these parts (Spencer 2011). This is due to the fact that the embodied subject is possessed not only of a physical boundary and a metabolic network but also of emotions, dispositions and an embodied consciousness which emerge through its evolution and development as an organism and which combined enable humans to intervene in and make a difference to their environment, to exercise agency (Shilling 2005, 13). This implies that the ‘establishment and endurance of particular structures are likely to be affected by the affinity, or lack of affinity, they possess with the conditions of human embodiment’ (Shilling 2005, 14). Keeping with the mandates of critical realism, corporeal realism incorporates a temporal element to social analysis. This inclusion signifies that to understand the relationship between embodied actors and society, it is essential to understand the body in a specific way. This not only recognizes how the body may be generatively associated with the emergence of social structures but also traces over time how recurrent structures form a context for embodied action that has the potential to shape people’s bodily actions and habits. The utilization and development of corporeal realism in specific areas, including religion, technology and education, recognize how the generative capacities of embodied subjects actually interact with these structures and either reproduce or transform them and therefore establish the conditions in which the next generation of bodies develops, senses and behaves (Mellor and Shilling 2010; Shilling 2010; Shilling and Mellor 2007). The third mandate of corporeal realism is that it can and should be critical. Taking from critical realism (Bhaskar 1986, 1998), there is a recognition of the value of truths and uncovering those institutions and conditions that give rise to false beliefs and that undermine the individual’s capacity to engage in the process of communication and the pursuit of truth. Critical realism, though, is chiefly focused on the valuation of cognitive truths, without much consideration given to the role of the body. Corporeal realism, in contrast, recognizes the salience of exercise and health and other goods to human flourishing (Sayer 2000). Furthermore, and crucially, the critical criteria informing corporeal realism lie in recognizing both the adaptive and creative capacities to the embodied subject, but also how bodies break down and fail, elements valuable to martial arts studies. For corporeal realism, in sum, the body as a multi-dimensional medium for the constitution of society is corporeal because it puts the body at the centre of its concern with social action and structures. The body is a recipient of



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social forces but also is a contributor towards social forces and an ‘enfleshed’ medium through which their effect is mediated. The body is not singularly a source of and location for society but a crucial means through which individuals are positioned within and oriented towards society. Social action is embodied and must be recognized as such, while the effects of social structures can be viewed as a consequence of how they condition and shape embodied subjects. With its realist underpinnings, this approach distinguishes between embodied action and social structures vis-à-vis attributing bodies their own ontology that is irreducible to society and because it acknowledges the importance of examining the interaction between society and embodied action over time. In the next section, I consider how the body has figured in studies of men, masculinities and martial arts and the implications of corporeal realism for martial arts studies. MASCULINITIES, BODIES AND MARTIAL ARTS The contemporary men and masculinities literature suffers from similar treatment of the body. For example, Raewyn Connell, a trailblazer in the field, argues that within mainstream thinking of masculinity, ‘true masculinity is almost always thought to proceed from men’s bodies – to be inherent in a male body or to express something about a male body’ (Connell 2005, 45). Within this conventional way of looking at men and masculinity, scholars point to the fact that the male body either drives and directs action or sets limits to action. In relation to the former, men are viewed as innately more aggressive than women and rape results from an uncontrollable lust or an inherent compulsion to violence. In relation to the latter, the male body sets limits to action, insofar as men are not able to take care of children or nonheterosexualities are unnatural and ipso facto are a perverse minority. Within the constructionist-inspired men and masculinities literature, masculinity only exists in contrast to femininity. This is to say that masculinity is regarded as inherently relational and antipodal to femininity. Sociologists of gender have long posited the existence of multiple femininities and masculinities (Connell 2001, 2005; Gadd 2000; Sabo, Kupers and London 2001). Gender is defined here as socially constructed via distinctions based on sex differences enacted through various practices that (re)work bodies in specific ways in the attempt to signify specific masculinities and femininities (Bourdieu 2002; Connell 2005; Whitehead 2002). With this emphasis on the plurality of genders, Connell (2001, 2005) has constructed the concept of hegemonic masculinities and femininities. Hegemonic masculinity signifies a status of cultural authority and leadership, formed in relation to various subordinate masculinities as well as in relation

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to women (Connell 2001, 2005). Hegemonic masculinities are said to be associated with such ideals as domination, aggressiveness, competitiveness, sexual and athletic prowess, control and stoic affect. Within this concept, men are believed to consent to sustaining hegemonic masculinity, but individuals vary in their replication of, and relationships to, the aforementioned ideals (Connell 2005). As a concept, hegemonic masculinity is often deployed at a far too global level and fails to explain the performance of dominant masculinities within local contexts (Spencer 2011; Whitehead 2002). In relation to martial arts studies, it follows a sensationalized, and often mediatized, vision of martial arts that reflects neither the everyday practice of martial arts and combat sports nor the embodied realities of practitioners (Downey 2007, 2014; e.g. see Hirose and Pih 2009; Vaccaro and Swauger 2015). In the Bourdieuian tradition, the act of being included as a man is evidenced in embodiment of the historical structures of the masculine order particular to specific spaces, and it involves forms of unconscious schemes of perception and appreciation (Bourdieu 2002) – that is, particular types of ‘habitus’ that reflect functioning systems of schemes of perception, thought and action. These are not solely the result of performative operations, or mere constructions. Rather, they are the continuous result of durable transformations of bodies and minds through processes of practical construction that impose a differential definition of ‘legitimate’ uses of the male body. The corporeal formation of masculinities is reflected in stances, gaits, postures and types of speech and physical appearance that serve to naturalize not only males’ domination of women but also domination of some males over other males. This moves us towards recognition of the malleability of bodies. Based on this premise, martial arts masculinities can be understood as embodied in manifold ways that are reflected in, inter alia, characteristic postures, speech and gait of martial arts practitioners and combat sport participants (see Green 2011, 2015; Spencer 2009, 2011, 2013; Wacquant 2005, 2006). In regard to martial arts, the criteria for good performance in the dojo or club or in a fight contest define ideal masculine embodiment that is often defined through strong codes of dress, speech and deportment. Following corporeal realism, it is far more important to understand the emergence and embodiment of specific masculinities within local, martial art club contexts. For example, martial artists can embody specific masculinities that emerge from the practices associated with martial arts. These specific masculinities are often not dissimilar to the martial arts masculinities that are found across geographically diverse contexts because of the similarity of practices within martial arts clubs (cf. Paechter 2003, 2006) that constitute the habitus of martial artists. For example, it is often remarked that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or ‘Arte Suave’ practitioners move and inhabit space in particular ways that are recognizable to other practitioners (Hogeveen 2013). Similarly,



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Greg Downey (2005) has shown that capoeira styles are regional and impress upon their practitioners particular ‘cunning’ ways of being in the world. As such, attention to practices of and the habitus of martial artists in local contexts is decisive to understanding the actual performance of masculinities. In the next two sections, I discuss the epistemological and methodological problems associated with reading off popular, mediatized discourses regarding masculinity as reflective of what transpires in the lives of men practicing martial arts and combat sports. IMAGE, MASCULINITIES AND FAILURE: EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS WITH CITATIONALITY For Judith Butler (1990, 1993), gender is primarily a performance, a citation of all previous performances of gender. Gender, in this framework, is not an innate or natural character of a person. Masculinity and femininity are not the outgrowth of sex differences but are iterations of previous performances of gender. They are the repetition of stylized acts in time. Butler avers that gender can be compared to the performance of theatre (see Butler 1988). But unlike the theatre, the net effect of the stylized repeated acts over time is the establishment of an essential ontological core gender. But against the naturalization of sex and sexuality, Butler points to the possibility of parodic citations of gender – like drag – as evidence of gender being inauthentic. Martial arts studies, while an emerging field, has witnessed a considerable amount of inquiries into sex and gender (Channon 2012; Channon and Matthews 2015; Green 2015; Mierzwinski, Velija and Malcolm 2014; Spencer 2013). This is due, in part, to martial arts being a critical space for challenging what has been regarded as a forum for the display of dominant masculinities. Early films and popular representations of martial arts, featuring such figures as Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee, and later Jean Claude Van Damme, present conceptions of manhood that have influenced many generations and formed understandings of what it means to be a ‘tough guy’ (Bowman 2010; Chan 2000; FitzGerald 2014; Shu 2003; Sparks 1996; Spencer 2015). To be sure, the citationality of martial arts masculinities in both North American and Chinese martial arts movies (Bowman 2010; Shu 2003) and more recently in mixed martial arts (Downey 2014; Hirose and Pih 2009) plays a role in how broader publics understand men, masculinities and martial arts, but also how they conceive of the spaces of martial arts practices. At the same time, this citationality of masculinities in martial arts has made its way into martial arts studies where scholars interpret the representations of martial arts as representative of what actually goes on in the practice of

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martial arts (see Hirose and Pih 2009; Vaccaro and Swauger 2015). The main epistemological problem with this downwards conflation of the projected image onto the actualities of martial arts as a basis of inquiry lies in the centrality of practice to martial arts. The image of martial arts – that which is manufactured in Hollywood and by mixed martial arts fight promoters – is taken for the reality of martial arts practice, the central feature of martial arts. However, practice is central to how people learn, feel and execute martial art techniques, as conveyed in Miyamoto Musashi’s famous axiom: ‘You can only fight the way you practice’ (2005, 27). Practice is the well from which the stylized forms of martial arts spring. I am here emphasizing the repeated acts of practice of the techniques that are on display in martial arts. Concomitantly, practices form the basis on which individuals (through primarily joint actions) make sense of the worlds around them, and also the basis of identity formation (Bourdieu 1992; Paechter 2003; Thrift 2007). As Downey argues: ‘Doing a practice means living, perceiving, and understanding through it’ (Downey 2005, 154). In relation to martial arts, individuals come to make sense of their identities through the practice of the martial arts. The ways of being that are inherent to specific martial arts inscribe themselves on the bodies of martial artists, refiguring the way in which they perceive and inhabit the world. At the same time, while individual communities of practice serve as spaces of emergence where innovative techniques are formed (Spencer 2011), they serve as the basis of formation of diverse martial arts masculinities. For example, the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu community reveals the formation of more traditional mystically oriented martial arts masculinities – embodied in figures like Rickson Gracie (see Goodman 1999) – and a new guard of practitioners like the ‘Danaher Death Squad’, who exhibit a performance-oriented masculinity. The ongoing interactions between broader depictions of martial arts and masculinities in film and other forms of media and the local practice of martial arts in dojos across the world reveal the emergent properties operating at the broader societal level and those at the local, individual level. Complicating the space of martial arts as spaces for the production of masculinities is the experience and meanings of pain, injury and failure in martial arts. Focus on practice reveals how corporeal breakdown places limits on ideal masculine embodiment. Roderick and colleagues (2000) show that meanings associated with pain and injury, along with the status of practitioners who are unable to play because of injury, can be understood only by locating these shared meanings within the network of social relations characteristic of a given practice. As shown in my work on mixed martial arts fighters (Spencer 2011, 2012), practitioners’ own interpretations of ideal masculine embodiment changed during their own careers as professional mixed martial arts fighters, often significantly because of pain and injuries that contributed to



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their failure to perform ideal masculinities. This temporal distinction, while not an example of the emergent properties of bodies, reflects how bodies ­forever challenge attempts to conform to mediatized martial art masculinities and foil attempts to maintain performances of dominant masculinities in the sport. In the next section, I consider the methodological implications of corporeal realism for the study of masculinities and martial arts. FRIENDSHIP, OBSERVING PARTICIPATION AND MARTIAL ARTS Martial arts and combat sports have long been preoccupied and intertwined with philosophical reflection (e.g. Lee 2011; Musashi 2005; see Spencer 2011). Surprisingly, perhaps, this connection to philosophy concomitantly makes martial arts a matter of friendship, or ‘oriented to the friend’. As Agamben (2009, 25) contends, the ‘intimacy between friendship and philosophy is so profound that philosophy contains the philos, the friend, in its very name’. The existence of the friend figures as almost as desirable as our own existence. With the philosophical aspect of martial arts being so elemental to its practice, so too is friendship elemental to the development of the martial artist. The primacy of the other/friend to practice, to the passing on of knowledge, and the generation of community, makes friendship a fundamental element of martial arts. As such, understanding the lived experiences of martial artists and combat athletes must involve the friend and friendship, specifically of the kind of ‘con-tact’ (see Nancy 2000, 2008) that proceeds from the everyday experience of friendship between participants. Loïc Wacquant (2006) advocates for an approach to studying combat sports and martial arts that he refers to as ‘observant participation’. As an observant participant, researchers throw off the yoke of the moralizing discourse that demands that researchers engage with their subject matter from afar – as an outside observer – standing at a distance or viewing from above. In his approach, martial art scholars are to engage with a given art in terms of how participants make sense of their art, going to the farthest extreme to get close enough to grasp the given style with one’s body, in what Wacquant refers to as a ‘quasi-experimental situation’ (2006, 7). Juxtaposing sociological analysis, ethnographic description and literary evocation, he conveys ‘at once precept and concept, the hidden determinations and the lived experiences, the external factors and the internal sensations that intermingle to make the boxer’s world’ (2006, 7). While focused on boxing, Wacquant justifies this intervention based on the tendency towards the ecological fallacy, whereby the researcher takes public accounts of combat sports and martial arts as representative of

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how participants experience martial arts, their views of participation and their sense of identity. Wacquant, however, points out that none of the statements [made by boxers] here were expressly solicited, and the behaviors described are those the boxer in his ‘natural habitat’, not the dramatized and highly codified (re)representation that he likes to give himself in public, and that journalistic reports and novels retranslate and magnify according to their specific canons. (Wacquant 2006, 6)

In line with corporeal realism, Wacquant’s Body and Soul and other embodied ethnographies of martial arts (Downey 2005; Spencer 2011) point to the salience of the body to inquiry. Concomitantly, they draw attention to the centrality of friendship for ethnographic inquiry into fighting arts. For Wacquant, his story was intertwined with references to his deep relationship to Dee Dee, his coach and his stable mates. In addition, the organization and function of sparring sessions is predicated on trust between pugilists so as to not injure each other. Engaging in the Afro-Caribbean martial art capoeira as an observing participant, Downey (2005, 81) emphasizes that players transform into new sorts of social, experiential and physical actors. They become capoeiristas. This thoroughly social initiation involves membership of capoeira communities and high levels of trust in other participants, to avoid injury and keep away forms of aggression that would inhibit practice. In addition, Downey explains that ‘a good leader carefully monitors the intensity of the game and initiates corrective songs to prevent uncontrolled violence from erupting’. Friendship and the trust implied in such relationships, then, are a means of controlling aggression within martial arts practice. While these authors do not pay much analytical attention to masculinities, their work – along with other work on martial arts (Green 2011, 2015; Spencer 2011, 2012) – reveals a number of challenges associated with researching combat sports and martial arts. The trust tied to friendship in martial arts is set against the fact that martial arts are an arena for the display of dominant masculinities (Channon 2012; Channon and Matthews 2015; Chapman 2004; Hirose and Pih 2009; Spencer 2009). As such, the displays of strength and virility, whether legitimate or illegitimate, belong to the ‘logic of prowess, the exploit, which confers honour’ (Bourdieu 2002, 19). Displays of strength and virility through martial arts are an indirect challenge to the masculinity of other males; it reveals the agonistic side of masculinities. These displays of strength and virility, in many respects, only make sense to those participating in martial arts. How they make sense of martial arts practice and how that determines their positioning in the club are contingent on both performance and deployment of language. As Kiesling (1997, 1998, 2005) has consistently demonstrated, men draw on forms of power processes



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in the language they use, and using language in this way is highly contextual. Linguistic devices are particularly effective in displaying different masculinities and can be understood as a repertoire of authoritative stances that implicate a social hierarchy. Speakers choose from this range of stances depending on the speech activity and their interlocutors (Kiesling 2001). Masculinity scholars and linguistics researchers overwhelmingly demonstrate that men do, in fact, participate in forms of gossip (Benwell 2001; Brennan 2004; Briggs 1998; Dunbar 1998; Johnson and Finlay 1996; Kimmel 2013; Levin and Arluke 1985). Males, like their female counterparts, engage in gossip as a way of maintaining unity and reinforcing morals and values in social groupings. It is also a way of achieving validation (cf. Tiger 2004), not only in terms of belonging to an in-group but also as a way of validating what constitutes ‘normal’ behaviours. Gossip creates and attaches discrediting signifiers to particular behaviours and, in doing so, demands a clarification of masculinity as a requirement within the group. Concomitantly, gossip leads to a feeling of belonging and ‘being in the know’ that confirms the advantage of some men over others. With this aspect of masculinities and the centrality of friendship to martial arts practice, observant participation is reaffirmed as the most effective stratagem for understanding the goings-on of martial arts clubs and broader politics of masculinities.2 It allows for a deeper emic understanding of the dynamics between masculinities in situ, but also that which is not said (i.e. gossip) in public settings. The forging of friendship that is produced via observant participation opens the researcher to the actualities of masculinity-conferring practices without submerging the real to the mediatized image of martial arts. CONCLUSION In this chapter, I rely on corporeal realism to apprehend male bodies and masculinities in martial arts. Drawing on this theoretical framework, I evince the centrality of practice to martial arts. In this way, in this chapter, I argue that martial arts practice always challenges the ‘performance’ of mediatized representations of masculinities but also confronts conceptions of masculinities in martial arts as unitary and coherent with these representations. To be sure, I am not advocating that we should abandon mediatized representations of martial arts but recognize that analyses of such representations of martial arts and masculinities are different in kind from the type of embodied inquiry advocated in this chapter. In terms of future research, studies could probe the sensory and emotional experiences of martial arts practice as it takes place in the dojo. Future research could also consider how the experiences of combat impact on fighters’ senses of self and how it impacts on their interactions with individuals

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outside of martial arts. Future research could illuminate how the constant exposure of martial arts on the Internet and TV impacts on martial artists’ identities and how their experience of martial arts challenges or confirms such depictions. Furthermore, subsequent research could probe how the building of bonds between artists through participation in martial arts impacts on their sense of a martial arts community and their conceptualizations of ideal masculinities. NOTES 1. While others have incorporated the body into critical realism (Archer 2001; Sayer 2000), Shilling’s offers the most sustained attention to the relationship between embodied action and social structures. 2. This approach is contrary to recent analysis of martial arts that take formal, managed interviews as reflections of the actually goings on of martial arts clubs, their interpretations of practice and the hierarchies between martial arts masculinities. Take, for example, Vaccaro and Swauger’s (2015) recent text on mixed martial arts. While (singularly) observing the training sessions and MMA events, the lead author conducted interviews with fighters. Vaccaro refers to himself as a ‘friendly outsider’, understood by his researcher subjects in the MMA club as a social researcher interested in MMA. ‘In some ways Christian felt like he became part of their manhood acts by giving them an outlet to recount their actions. The interviews provided rich data, and the style in which they were conducted gave an emic understanding of the interactional dynamics of fight interviews conducted by novice and professional sports reporters. This allowed Christian to gather and interpret additional data from a treasure trove of online interviews of MMA fighters conducted in the same style’ (Vaccaro and Swauger 2015, 11). When one reads Vaccaro and Swauger’s (2015) book against this sort of approach to inquiry, it is reflective of the sort of academic delusion that conflates the mediatized image of martial arts with the actual practice of martial arts; furthermore, it produces the additional error of believing that the front-stage projection of masculinities is not in variance with the image that many men in martial arts present to each other in private settings as friends (see Spencer 2011).

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Chapter 13

Martial Arts as Embodied, Discursive and Aesthetic Practice Tim Trausch

The alleged divide between practice and discourse, informed by underlying traditions of separating body and mind, the world and its image or the thing and its symbol, constitutes a core issue of martial arts studies. In their demarcation from studies of martial arts, proponents of martial arts studies have stressed the inclusion (or understanding) of martial arts as discourse (Farrer and Whalen-Bridge 2011; Goto-Jones 2016) or institutions (Bowman 2015). Martial arts discourse was projected as ‘a training ground in which mind and body do not pull rank on one another, mainly because they have not been artificially separated’, and as ‘a way to refer to the embodied practices that does not semantically divide muscular action from intellectual evaluation and appreciation in limine’ (Farrer and Whalen-Bridge 2011, 7, 21, emphasis in original). Paul Bowman’s seminal writings in particular addressed a lack of attention to the media supplement or media representation in studies of martial arts (see Bowman 2015). What Bowman proposes and does to great effect is exactly to look closer at the entanglement of what is commonly perceived as two distinct spheres. Yet the very (need to) claim that media representations have been underrepresented in studies of martial arts paradoxically always runs the risk of reinforcing ‘actual martial arts’ as the point of departure for martial arts studies. The crux of the matter may lie in the idea of ‘representation’ and its implied divide from, yet direct connection (and subordination) to, ‘the actual thing’. The obverse of the aforementioned claim, Bowman notes at a different opportunity, ‘is equally problematic – namely, the fact that film, TV, gaming, and other media studies scholars are not prepared to take the leap out of a text-focused disciplinary discourse and into an exploration of the implications and consequences of their text- and technology-focused studies and insights in other contexts, such as bodily lived practices, social relations, para-textual ideological constructions, embodied martial arts practice, and so 187

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on’ (Bowman 2018, emphasis in original). Instead of taking said leap per se, this chapter will explore how media texts are involved in the negotiation of martial arts between the alleged divides of practice and discourse, embodiment and representation and so on, and how this may feed back into martial arts studies. Rather than a mere supplement in the common sense, media are constitutive of martial arts culture. As Bowman notes, ‘The very object or field called “martial arts” was effectively invented in popular cultural discourses through [. . .] cinematic “(re)presentations” or simulacra’ (2015, 140, emphasis in original). Media images are never simply representations of reality but constituent of reality in their own right. While images on the screen are ‘flat’ and devoid of bodies in this sense, aesthetic practice (the inseparable interplay of representation, perception and memory) allows them to refer back to (the idea of) physical bodies. At the same time, the body can be considered as image and representation even before it is ‘(re)presented’ in media images (Belting 2001; Ritzer and Stiglegger 2012). The very first medium was the body itself, increasingly surpassed, expanded, translated and transformed by other media over the course of human history. Addressing the object or field of ‘martial arts’ in an age and media culture in which (technical apparatusbased) medium, dispositif, image and body increasingly converge (Couchot 1988; Lazzarato 2002) presents challenges and opportunities for martial arts studies. Perhaps the most important intervention in the (supposed) divide between embodied practice and media representation is the computer game. The medium of the computer game participates significantly in the hypercultural re-assemblage and production of (embodied) knowledge of martial arts. In The Virtual Ninja Manifesto, Chris Goto-Jones pursues the hypothesis that martial arts video games (MAVs) are not mere ‘representations of the martial arts’: Street Fighter might contain at least some of the performative and embodied possibilities for personal transformation that the discourse associates with more traditional forms of martial art. That is, there is a sense in which Street Fighter is not only like a martial art – it doesn’t merely represent a fantasy of the martial arts – but it actually is a martial art. Hence, the emerging field of Martial Arts Studies should include such videogames in at least two senses: first, as contributions to the discourse of martial arts; and second, as contributions to the evolution of the practice of martial arts themselves. (2016, 11, emphasis in original)

While highly innovative in its approach towards breaking down common conceptions of what would be considered martial arts, both practice and discourse appear to stay relatively intact as two distinct realms, implying that there can be martial arts without martial arts discourse and vice versa. The problem may have to do with our focus on the category of being – something



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we may hardly be able to escape, at least within certain languages. For as soon as we state ‘x is a martial art’, we have already closed several doors and induced a standstill. Finding a definition of the term ‘martial arts’ has not only proven to be a problematic endeavour, it is perhaps even uncalled for in light of the myriad cultural practices that have come to be associated with it. An alternative could be to approach martial arts (studies) as a processual, dynamic network, accessible via associations and relations. This is not too far from how, as studies in the neurosciences suggest, the dynamic ecosystems that are our brains work: ‘the brain is an analog processor, meaning, essentially, that it works by analogy and metaphor. It relates whole concepts to one another and looks for similarities, differences, or relationships between them’ (Ratey 2001, 5). This can in fact already be seen at work in Goto-Jones’s important contribution to martial arts studies, which mainly revolves around how gamers frame their experiences and practices, what self-descriptions and narratives they employ, and how the meaning they attribute to their practices relates to the discourse on established martial arts. According to his study, there is a distinguishing feature of MAVs in comparison to other games: ‘Unlike most other game genres, in which mastering the control scheme is an instrumental achievement that enables access to and exploration of the virtual world or narrative of the game itself (i.e. learning the controls is a pre-condition for play), in MAVs mastery of the control interface is itself the goal’ (2016, 46). Similar to martial artists, gamers’ ‘skills are represented as being the result of constant physical conditioning until techniques become “normal” or natural or automatic’ (50). There is a term in Chinese that describes such continuous, enduring practice that results in highest skill: ‘gongfu’, the very term that in a shifting of meaning has come to be globally known as ‘kung fu’ through and associated with an inseparable nexus of martial arts and media culture. You can have a gongfu cooking, painting, doing ‘kung fu’ or playing Kung Fu Rider (2010). Constant practice and ‘naturalness’, which may appear to contradict each other at first, were closely related in Chinese aesthetic principles, proposing that it takes years of enduring practice to reach a level of skill at which things can become ‘natural’ and spontaneous (Pohl 2008, 10–12), a thought that could be applied to martial arts as much as it could be applied to calligraphy. ‘Nature’ was not something conceived of as constituting the other of, for example, ‘culture’, and there was in fact no single, unified term for nature in pre-modern Chinese. There are, however, a number of terms that can be taken into consideration when speaking of nature with regard to China, including, but not limited to ziran, the long-standing term that came to be used as its modern translation, which is also the notion behind the aforementioned ‘naturalness’ and spontaneity that becomes possible at the highest level of skill, and can be translated literally as ‘so of itself’. This notion of gongfu and ziran, albeit not in these

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very terms perhaps, figures prominently in martial arts discourse, as becomes apparent in Goto-Jones’s example of the parallelism between the ways that skills are framed with regard to martial arts video gamers and Bruce Lee’s character in Enter the Dragon (1973), who after the victory over an opponent explains to his teacher, a Buddhist monk, ‘I do not hit . . . it hits all by itself’ (2016, 50–51). Such notions are matched by studies in the neurosciences that renegotiate the separation of body and mind in ways that (together with the philosophical debate on body and mind, as well as philosophical traditions where this divide did not appear in the first place) can deliver impulses for martial arts studies. Our brain is a muscle that can be learning or forgetting. ‘Like a set of muscles, it responds to use and disuse by either growing and remaining vital or decaying’ (Ratey 2001, 6). That is why I used to be good at Tekken, having embodied the movement patterns, with ten-punch-combos inscribed into my muscle memory. Used to – the connections formed in my brain have long since decayed. Neurosciences have re-addressed the brain as dynamic, its structure being informed by the stimuli it receives, and this structure in turn colouring the reception of future information in an endless updating process: What happens to our brains during new experiences? First, we must reject the idea that our brains are static storage depots of information. Rather, the nerves are constantly making new connections that will serve us better in the things we do frequently. The brain can be shaped by experiences, just as particular muscles respond to particular exercises. As we rehearse lines in a play or memorize multiplication tables, we build nerve assemblies, just as we do when we repeat a dance step or a karate move. As our brains train, the tasks become easier and more automatic. (Ratey 2001, 56)

From this point of view, martial arts practice and Street Fighter are not substantially different, even beyond the discursive level. However, they are equally not substantially different from memorizing a poem. So in order to make meaningful statements about martial arts (studies), we necessarily have to include the discursive realm: martial arts as discursive practice. The communication and discursive construction of martial arts to a large degree relies on (key) narratives and (key) visuals.1 Take the example of the Assassin’s Creed series (2007–), the Batman: Arkham series (2009–), and Sleeping Dogs (2012), all of them third-person action-adventure games with similar fighting systems, in which you battle one or several opponents timing your attacks, blocks and counterattacks (ideally creating a rhythmic flow), and employ combinations of strikes, kicks and throws together with weapons/gadgets and, in some cases, interactions with the environment. Despite similarities in their fighting system, the games’ relationship to ‘martial arts’ differs due to the knowledge of martial arts produced by hegemonic



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discourses. The Hong Kong underworld of Sleeping Dogs is a much stronger marker of martial arts than Batman’s Gotham City or the twentieth-century Holy Land or fifteenth-century Europe presented by the first two instalments of the Assassin’s Creed series, respectively. This is not due to an absence of martial arts in the latter eras and regions but because of the strong connection of ‘East Asia’ and ‘martial arts’ in popular discourse and the global dissemination of Hong Kong martial arts cinema in the second half of the twentieth century in particular. Sleeping Dogs employs a setting and an array of markers associated with ‘martial arts’ / martial arts cinema (the two of which become inseparable), such as the figure of the ‘sifu’ (shifu), the ‘wing chun decorations’ promised by a downloadable ‘Martial Arts Pack’ (including a wooden dummy), and perhaps most prominently the wide range of costumes that act as key visuals of martial arts (Trausch 2018). Yet it is not only signs like the black and yellow Bruce Lee jumpsuit that act as key visuals of martial arts in Sleeping Dogs but also combat animations like the execution of a side kick. The types of movements and outfits go hand in hand in the case of certain special costume packs, with a Muay Thai outfit introducing knee and elbow attacks, or a mixed martial arts outfit opening up the possibility of doing an arm bar, a ground and pound or a flying head scissor throw. These movements are as much part of the game’s reference structure as its costumes in that they refer to and trigger memory images of the media discourse of martial arts, including UFC events, filmic fight scenes and so on. Yet their spectacle of movement moves us in a particular way and thus deserves special attention. The issue of movement is essential to renegotiating the separation of body and mind as well as the separation of practice from discourse and media representation. Findings in the neurosciences suggest that the cognitive process of creating motor images uses the same brain regions as physically moving (Ratey 2001, 147). As Christina Jung and Peggy Sparenberg point out, ‘Oberserving [. . .] body movements automatically activates the motor system in the same way as performing the action(s)’ (2013, 142). This means that watching the execution of a kick activates nerve cells in the same way and in the same region of the brain as physically executing a kick. In the case of the gamer, the observer is also the activator of the observed action, resulting in a dynamic spiral of our physical movement translating into onscreen movements we perceive via cognitive processes using the same brain regions as physically moving and including our memories of these moves, in the sense of both seeing those moves before (in the game, on television, etc.) and pushing the necessary buttons in a certain combination. While large parts of the reference structure of Sleeping Dogs pay homage to twentieth-century Hong Kong martial arts cinema, producers have acknowledged the 2005 Thai martial arts film Revenge of the Warrior as the first point of reference for its

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fighting system and have stressed the role of motion capture as well as the assistance of (mixed) martial arts practitioners in its design. The reference of the animations to the body (that extends to the user body) becomes obvious in the utilization of motion capturing. An extra-textual advertising feature for Sleeping Dogs showcases how Georges St-Pierre, also known as GSP, former UFC Welterweight Champion, assisted with the motion capture process. The (advertisement of the) involvement of a UFC champion is aimed at lending symbolic capital in the form of ‘authenticity’ and ‘authority’ to the game. As GSP states in the short documentary clip, he was asked to assist in order ‘to make it more authentic, make it more real’, bringing the player, in the words of senior producer Jeff O’Connell, ‘even closer to having a truly authentic fighting experience’ (GSP Sleeping Dogs Documentary 2012). Like the inspiration by and acknowledgement of Revenge of the Warrior, a film that has been part of a discourse of new Thai martial arts cinema hailed as a return to the performative, CGI- and wire-free stuntwork-intensive action style associated with Hong Kong martial arts cinema of the 1970s and 1980s (see Hunt 2005), the allusion to GSP and the UFC taps into the discourse of ‘the real’: ‘Presenting itself as having “no rules” and as being “ultimate” and completely “real”, the UFC initiated the deconstruction of styles in the name of “reality”. But ultimately it developed according to the dictates of televised media spectacles. [. . .] Soon, the UFC’s deconstruction of styles produced its own style, “mixed martial arts” (MMA)’ (Bowman 2015, 99). In Sleeping Dogs, mixed martial arts appear as one part of the mix of styles and markers, signified by key visuals such as the ‘fighting shorts’ as well as by certain (key) movements that refer to martial arts as practice and are part of the discursive knowledge of martial arts as they have themselves become key visuals in their constant remediation. We are building nerve assemblies through game practice, through pushing a certain button or combination of buttons in response to a certain stimulus, which results in animated movements that refer back to motion-captured physical bodies, triggering corresponding motor programmes in the brain and evoking memory images of those movements that influence their perception. In the words of John Ratey, ‘the brain’s motor function affects so much more than just physical motion. It is crucial to all other brain functions – perception, attention, emotion – and so affects the highest cognitive processes of memory, thinking, and learning’ (2001, 175). The ‘reality’ the motion capture process and the involvement of martial arts practitioners bring the gamer closer to is the reality of media discourse. The discourses and textual strategies mentioned earlier suggest a recurrence of what Alain Badiou has labelled as characteristic of the twentieth century, namely, a ‘passion for the real’ (2007). Its reappearance, or persistence, in the media culture of the twenty-first century that has supposedly surpassed such a passion can be conceived of as



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the product of a heightened need to reaffirm ‘realness’ in a world in which the alleged borders of technical media, body, representation and reality are increasingly being questioned. One of the dominant discourses, both fan and academic, surrounding martial arts film since the late twentieth century has focused on questions of the technologization, digitalization and subsequent disappearance of the martial body. The discourse of the body in martial arts film has largely evolved around a shift from performative, athletic, martial skills to reliance on film and computer technology (e.g. see Abbas 1997; Hunt 2003; Teo 2009; Bordwell 2011; Trausch 2017). As the case of the computer game exemplifies, the same media culture that has participated in this shift away from the reference of the filmic image to the martial body has produced new convergences of body and image. Such discourses are in turn echoed by martial arts film itself. In the 2012 Tai Chi Hero, part two of director Stephen Fung’s update of the myth of Yang Luchan, technologies acting upon the body (and vice versa) become part of the narrative, making the discourse on the technologization and mediatization of the body that is symptomatic of the alleged crisis of martial arts film an object of reflection (Trausch 2017, 349–50). This becomes evident in the character of the son of the Chen family whose martial skills turn out to be the product of a special machinedriven armour suit fitted with movement- and power-enhancing cogwheels. We learn that the son is an inventor who has always been more interested in technical tools and machines than learning and carrying on the knowledge of the family’s martial art. The son, whose skills are eventually exposed as ‘fake’, has been shunned by his father for not wanting to continue the family legacy, yet eventually he is the one who rescues his family through the aid of his machines. Here, the film questions a substantial differentiation of ‘pure’ and ‘mediated’ martial arts, picking up and synthesizing the discourse on the authenticity of the performative body in martial arts cinema, as well as the generic trope of kung fu versus technology. Stephen Fung’s Tai Chi Zero (2012) and Tai Chi Hero (2012) are exemplary of the entanglement of (the symbolic communication of) martial arts as discourse, aesthetics and practice. Among the recurring textual strategies of the Tai Chi series are playful inscriptions into and modifications of the filmic image, such as the written text popping up to introduce new characters and, in an act going beyond a closed diegetic narrative system, their respective actors. What is meaningful for our discourse is that these short contextualizations of the actors playing the parts may refer to their training, skills and renown as martial artists as well as to their place in martial arts cinema history. While Jayden Yuan (Yuan Xiaochao), debuting as the hero in Tai Chi Zero, is announced as winner of the wushu tournament in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, Leung Siu-lung, closely associated with the ‘Bruceploitation’ cycle, is introduced as a superstar of 1970s kung fu cinema. In other

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words, the film brings together references to martial arts as physical, athletic skill and practice with symbols of martial arts (cinema) as part of a culture of links, with every inscription drawing from and adding to a semiotic web. The Tai Chi series acts as a hyper-cultural collection of the aesthetics associated with a variety of media including animation, cinema, television, comic books and the computer game, the programmatic medium of the information era, in which the convergence of user, medium, image and dispositif becomes most evident. This convergence is reflected in the (multimodality of the) aesthetic design of Tai Chi. It presents us with a form of multimodality that goes beyond a mere combination of sounds and images to multiple modes of representation standing equally next to each other. The Tai Chi series can be seen as the product of digital technologies and the transformation potential of their images. At the same time, it simulates the acting upon the image and the convergence with the spectator/user on an aesthetic level. Inscriptions into the filmic image appear as if we moved a cursor over certain parts of the image to get additional information. Such is the case when the kinship degree is displayed above the heads of several members of the Chen family, leaving one member of the family with a question mark above his head in a playful twist. The same kind of playfulness is evident in a scene where question marks appear above the heads of two characters, and different possible answers to their question show up on screen as written text, with a cursor switching between answers until finally one of them is logged in. The scene evokes the interactive culture of online browsing as well as popular game show formats. At the same time, it hints at the image production of digital media technologies as a system of choice between endless possibilities of zeros and ones (Lazzarato 2002, 90). The aesthetic strategies of Tai Chi give us an idea of the transformability of images through the user and their convergence with medium and dispositif, in which the alleged divide between seeing subject and image has become obsolete (Trausch 2017, 345–49). Rather than mediating user and image, touch screens, controllers, keyboards and computer mouses act ‘almost like organic extensions of the image, which is literally merged with the “spectator” ’ (Couchot 1988; Lazzarato 2002, 91). User, images, media and dispositif become one in the digital technologies. With regard to MAVs, Goto-Jones grasps this through the notion of the ploystar, a merging of player, joystick and avatar, ‘which collapses the boundaries between the animal body (human), material technology (joystick) and virtual artefacts (the avatar)’ (2016, 69). The active media user of the information age, interacting and merging with technological devices and digital image production, epitomized by the figure of the gamer, has also become the target audience for martial arts film production. Like the producers, with whom users become more and more alike with regard to cultural production, audiences are not merely film audiences, but involved in multiple aspects of



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media culture, and it is their memory of martial arts films, computer games and so forth that is addressed by the film’s reference structure. Within the confines and possibilities of their mediality, martial arts films like Tai Chi seek to reproduce and participate in the interactive digital media culture that is their environment. The popular medium of the computer game in particular has left traces in the aesthetic design of Tai Chi. From the Karate Champ (1984) arcade game in Bloodsport (1988) to the aesthetic reproduction of Street Fighter in City Hunter (1993) to the young gamer whose skills are put to the test when he finds himself transported to (a fantasy of) ancient China in the narrative of Warrior’s Gate (2016), fighting games have had a significant impact on martial arts films. These games have themselves drawn from and expanded upon the pool of narratives, tropes, signs and images of martial arts cinema. New media incorporate and reproduce previously established media, and previously established media react to new media, as well as to the broader sociocultural circumstances intertwined with their establishment. In Tai Chi Zero, the hero’s fight for the right to learn the style of the Chen family is presented via successive levels of increasingly challenging opponents. A stylized map of the village inscribed with the Chinese characters for ‘walkthrough’ and the blinking letters ‘Level 1: Village Entrance’, complete with sounds associated with the 8-bit era, set the stage for the sequence. Similar to Street Fighter and comparable fighting games, the big bright letters ‘Round 1’ and ‘vs.’ mark the announcement of the first pairing of fighters in the first stage. These signs associated with the fighting game continue to prevail in the scene via inscriptions highlighting the number of hits and a ‘K.O.’ followed by a written announcement of the winner. Winning a stage without taking any damage is praised by the inscription ‘Perfect’, and in later rounds stamina bars add another layer in referencing key visuals of the fighting game. In addition, here too the names and backgrounds of the actors playing the opponents are highlighted via inscriptions, and again they switch effortlessly between references to martial arts practitioners and symbols of martial arts cinema. With the boss of the final stage – a master who has no style of his own but mimics the style of his opponent – showing parallels to the opponent Bruce Lee’s character meets on the highest level of the pagoda in Game of Death (1978) – a master of no established style who proves to be the greatest challenge of all – Tai Chi evokes memories of the very film that, similar to Enter the Dragon, employs structures that would become a staple in computer game design. The first-person view from the eyes of the hero running through the village is yet another echoing of computer game culture, as well as of first-person parkour videos disseminated via online platforms, and also of first-person games echoing the parkour trend. Just like successive levels of increasingly challenging opponents (as in Game

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of Death) or tournament settings (as in Enter the Dragon, which is also the point of reference for the Sleeping Dogs DLC ‘The Zodiac Tournament’), first-person shots are nothing entirely new to (martial arts) film (e.g. think the 1978 Drunken Master). Yet through the use of key visuals, Tai Chi makes its cultural influences and its intended aesthetic effects evident (Trausch 2017, 350–53). The actualization of this intention hinges on the socialization and memory performance of its users, underscoring that in aesthetic practice, representation, perception and memory always go together. Images are not just something outside of us that we perceive as a copy or reflection but are formed in the synthesis of memory and the impression of light registered in the brain. Memory images always complete and interpret our present perception (see Bergson 1962). External stimuli shape the brain and have an effect on how it receives future input (see Ratey 2001). The active media user converged with technology that Tai Chi projects as its audience will have knowledge and memories of martial arts games, including embodied knowledge of the practice of such games, which is triggered by key visuals of the fighting game, just as the movements on screen trigger corresponding motor programmes. Texts like Tai Chi and Sleeping Dogs present us with a notion of martial arts as a dynamic network of associations, and thus as something we can take back to martial arts studies. These associations move across and assemble references to martial arts as embodied, aesthetic and discursive practice. They give an idea of how the body-mind-binarism and the alleged divide of practice and representation are negotiated in the aesthetic practices of a media culture in which the lines between image, medium, dispositif and user have been redrawn and partially disappeared. This short article could only touch upon some of the issues concerning martial arts and media representation, body and mind, practice and discourse. Its intention was to raise more questions than it answers, to deliver impulses rather than final statements. Instead of colonizing their alleged object by speaking about martial arts, martial arts studies have the chance to do what Trinh T. Minh-ha (1999) has proposed as speaking nearby. Rather than employing a single view and pursuing fixed definitions, this requires martial arts studies to be dynamic, polysemic and multicentric, and to approach ‘martial arts’ via tracing references and associations. It will further have to be tested if martial arts studies may even have the potential to become not only something defined by their object, but a method or an approach to doing research as well. NOTE 1. On key visuals see Kramer (2008).



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REFERENCES Abbas, Ackbar. 1997. Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Badiou, Alain. 2007. The Century. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press. Belting, Hans. 2001. ‘Das Körperbild als Menschenbild: Eine Repräsentation in der Krise’. In Bild-Anthropologie: Entwürfe für eine Bildwissenschaft, edited by Hans Belting, 87–113. München: Fink. Bergson, Henri. 1962. Matter and Memory. London: George Allen and Unwin. Bordwell, David. 2011. Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment. 2nd ed. Madison, WI: Irvington Way Institute Press. Bowman, Paul. 2015. Martial Arts Studies: Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield International. ———. 2018. ‘Afterword: Martial Arts and Media Supplements’. In Chinese Martial Arts and Media Culture: Global Perspectives, edited by Tim Trausch, 187–199. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield International. Couchot, Edmond. 1988. Image: De l’optique au numérique. Paris: Hermès. Farrer, D. S. and John Whalen-Bridge. 2011. ‘Introduction: Martial Arts, Transnationalism, and Embodied Knowledge’. In Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World, edited by DS Farrer and John Whalen-Bridge, 1–28. Albany: State University of New York Press. Goto-Jones, Chris. 2016. The Virtual Ninja Manifesto: Fighting Games, Martial Arts and Gamic Orientalism. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield International. GSP Sleeping Dogs Documentary. 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHBbn MkwhvU. Hunt, Leon. 2003. Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger. London: Wallflower Press. ———. 2005. ‘Ong-Bak: New Thai Cinema, Hong Kong and the Cult of the “Real” ’. New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 3 (2): 69–84. Jung, Christina and Peggy Sparenberg. 2013. ‘Cognitive Perspectives on Embodiment’. In Body Memory, Metaphor and Movement, edited by Sabine C. Koch, Thomas Fuchs, Michela Summa and Cornelia Müller, 141–54. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins. Kramer, Stefan. 2008. ‘Hypermediale Key Visuals’. In Intermedialität – Analog/Digital: Theorien – Methoden – Analysen, edited by Joachim Paech and Jens Schröter, 91–102. München: Fink. Lazzarato, Maurizio. 2002. Videophilosophie: Zeitwahrnehmung im Postfordismus. Berlin: b-books. Pohl, Karl-Heinz. 2008. Ästhetik und Literaturtheorie in China: Von der Tradition bis zur Moderne. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Ratey, John. 2001. A User’s Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain. London: Little, Brown and Company. Ritzer, Ivo and Marcus Stiglegger. 2012. ‘Körper, Medium, Repräsentation: Einleitende Bemerkungen’. In Global Bodies: Mediale Repräsentationen des Körpers, edited by Ivo Ritzer and Marcus Stiglegger, 9–21. Berlin: Bertz und Fischer.

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Teo, Stephen. 2009. Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Trausch, Tim. 2017. Affekt und Zitat: Zur Ästhetik des Martial-Arts-Films. Stuttgart: Springer/J. B. Metzler. ———. 2018. ‘Introduction: Martial Arts and Media Culture in the Information Era: Glocalization, Heterotopia, Hyperculture’. In Chinese Martial Arts and Media Culture: Global Perspectives, edited by Tim Trausch, xi–xxvi. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield International. Trinh T. Minh-ha. 1999. ‘Speaking Nearby’. In Cinema Interval, edited by Trinh T. Minh-ha, 209–26. New York and London: Routledge.

Chapter 14

Carnival of the Drunken Master The Politics of the Kung Fu Comedic Body Luke White

The martial arts are not only physical disciplines; they also come loaded with cultural significance, their practice surrounded and made meaningful by the representations, discourses and images with which they are intertwined – meanings which are, of course, ever-shifting and contingent. In modernity, it is above all popular culture that has provided such a context, and it was most definitively Hong Kong’s kung fu cinema of the 1970s that marked their globalization. This chapter investigates the significations of the martial body in this cinema in order to better understand its meanings – and its politics – at this historical juncture. Much writing on ‘kung fu’ in Hong Kong and Chinese cinema – such as Stephen Teo’s (1997, 110–21) influential work – has understood this as a matter of cultural nationalism. I will seek to complicate this. In particular, my interest here is in the body as represented in the kung fu comedy films that rose to prominence in the wake of the box office success of Drunken Master (1978). This genre-defining film launched Jackie Chan to superstardom, and spawned innumerable imitations, often featuring, as their heroes, anarchic kung fu ‘punks’ (xiaozi) and their disreputable, vagabond masters. My argument here is that the kung fu comedy imagined the martial body in fundamentally different ways to the more ‘serious’, epic and tragic films that defined Hong Kong martial arts cinema of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and that this marks a decisive shift in the meaning of ‘kung fu’ in Hong Kong during this period, in turn responding to the changing social, economic, cultural and political context. Above all, I argue, they register – in their very aesthetics of the body – an increasing ambivalence towards kung fu’s nationalist narratives, which critics have often understood as lending earlier films a political ‘seriousness’, serving within a project that resisted Western colonial and imperial hegemony 199

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by asserting a separate, strong identity in its face. But does the rejection of such narratives in the kung fu comedy entail a depoliticization, as some critics have suggested, or do they also offer an alternative corporeal aesthetic of resistance? To examine such a proposition, I will discuss parallels between the kung fu comedy and the ‘grotesque body’ of medieval European carnival, as discussed by Mikhail Bakhtin. BRUCE LEE’S NATIONALIST BODY Before turning to the comedy itself, however, it seems essential to examine the body in the ‘heroic’ kung fu films whose pattern they broke. I will take Bruce Lee’s performance in Fist of Fury (1972) as exemplary of these. As Paul Bowman (2010, 2013) has explored at length, Lee is a complex figure whose meanings have been contested. I wish to focus here, however, on those arguments that present him as a nationalist icon. Fist of Fury, the film most open to such readings, diegetically locates his performing body within the Shanghai International Settlement, a colonial enclave ceded to a confederation of Western and Japanese occupying powers, and subject to their extraterritorial jurisdiction. Lee plays Chen Zhen, a Chinese martial artist who uses his kung fu to fight racism and oppression, taking revenge against his master’s foreign killers and restoring pride in ‘Chineseness’ at a moment of national humiliation. Like Hong Kong itself, the Shanghai International Settlement was lost to colonial occupation in the ‘unequal treaties’ of the mid-nineteenth century, in the wake of China’s defeats in the Opium Wars, and these parallels afforded the film’s scriptwriters a clear allegory of ethnonationalist rebellion. Iconic scenes showed Lee smashing a sign that refused Chinese subjects entry to a park on racial grounds; single-handedly defeating an entire dojo of Japanese martial artists in order to make them (literally) eat the words of their claim that China is the ‘Sick Man of Asia’; and defeating a Russian strong man in a fight to the death. Breaking Hong Kong box office records, Fist of Fury inspired numerous imitations. Lee’s body in the film – hypermuscular, sculpted and ideal, the result of disciplined training – can be understood as continuous with a longer history of the martial body in modern Chinese culture, both within and beyond the movies. It has been read as serving as a reserve of strength and resistance, negating stereotypes of orientalising ‘femininity’, weakness and decrepitude. As has been discussed at length by Andrew Morris (2004), the early twentieth century saw the rise of modernising martial arts movements in China as part of a broader discourse on ‘physical culture’ (tiyu), which sought, whether through Western sports or indigenous forms of exercise, to strengthen the individual’s body and impart discipline upon it, and through this to renew



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the body politic of the nation, reversing its reduction to semicolonial status and producing a citizenry capable of economic, political and military competition in the modern era. The martial arts increasingly took a special place within this agenda, as a means to renew the nation’s warrior spirit (much as Japan had done with its cult of the samurai), and to offer a sense of pride by connecting such strength explicitly to national identity and cultural heritage. Fist of Fury, in fact, explicitly locates Lee and his muscular body at a pivotal moment in this history, making him the fictional student of the real-life martial artist Huo Yuanjia, a founding father of the influential Jingwu Athletic Association, which was one of the pioneering organizations in the movement to ‘modernize’ and spread kung fu within a progressive, nationalist agenda (Kennedy and Guo 2010; Morris 2004, 186–203). For their first audiences in Hong Kong, these images must have drawn potency from the still-fresh memory of the anti-colonial riots of 1966 and 1967, and all the global tumult of the 1960s; from the student protests going on throughout 1972, which focused on the Japanese occupation of the Diaoyutai islands; and from ongoing conditions of poverty and corruption, and lack of democratic representation, welfare or labour rights under what at the turn of the decade was still a largely unreconstructed colonialism (Fu 2000, 73–74). EXIT THE DRAGON However, the power of such images and discourses seems to have already by 1972 passed its zenith. The following year, Lee’s Enter the Dragon (1973) – in spite of the emotional storm caused by the star’s untimely death shortly before the release of the film – was ousted from the number one spot at the box office not by a martial arts film but by a comedy, Chor Yuen’s House of 72 Tenants. This drew its appeal from its ensemble cast of stars from the recently created television channel TVB Jade, the first channel programmed specifically for a Hong Kong audience, and broadcasting in the local Cantonese language. While Fist of Fury was set in an absent, historical China, and through its use of Mandarin interpellated its Hong Kong viewers within a broader, pan-Chinese ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1991), echoing in its linguistic address what Stephen Teo (1997, 111–12) has termed an ‘abstract nationalism’, House of 72 Tenants spoke to its audience in their native Cantonese about everyday life in present-day Hong Kong. As Jenny Lau (2000) has discussed, the torch of Cantonese comedy lit by House of 72 Tenants was picked up in particular by Michael Hui – also a TVB star – whose films consistently topped box office charts throughout the 1970s. These also took contemporary Hong Kong as their setting, and typically

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followed a cast of small-time chancers attempting to make it big in the rapidly expanding, dog-eat-dog economy of 1970s Hong Kong. With the dice always stacked against the little man, these films – like House of 72 Tenants – offered a social satire of the emerging world of postcolonial capitalism. Hui’s films mixed local slang and word-play (addressing its audience through the pleasure of an exclusive shared language and set of references) with physical and farcical slapstick scenes that anticipated the formula of the kung fu comedy. The reasons for these changes in cinematic tastes are complex, but in short, the potency of the nationalist narratives of Fist of Fury waned partly because the mythical China to which they referred had lost its emotive power, and because Hongkongers increasingly identified themselves as much through opposition to Chineseness as in its terms. While Hong Kong had seen a massive explosion of immigration from the mainland in the wake of the Second World War and the Communist takeover of 1949, by the 1970s an increasing proportion of the population had been born in Hong Kong. Anti-colonial sentiment was undermined by the rapidly growing prosperity of the island in the face of its ‘economic miracle’; by concerted welfare, housing and anticorruption programmes by the British authorities that offered working-class inhabitants more of a stake in the social order of the island; and by the general fear created by the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, just over the border, which made left-wing political radicalism largely untenable, and further made ‘China’ an image of alterity rather than identity. Locating themselves in relation to the global culture and economy in whose flows they had become such a lynchpin, Hongkongers increasingly liked to define themselves as modern, urbane, outward looking and entrepreneurial in opposition to an imagined backward, peasant, isolationist and communist mainland. The highly popular Cantonese comedy became an important vehicle through which such local identities were articulated. KUNG FU COMEDIES Such, then, is the context of the emergence of the kung fu comedy – also primarily produced in Cantonese. While experiments with combining comedy and kung fu slowly emerged through the mid-1970s, the films that decisively announced the new genre were Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Master, both directed by Yuen Woo-ping and starring a young Jackie Chan. These arrived in rapid succession in 1978, and, as models of imitation, defined through their success the winning formula of the new genre, in terms of its typical setting, stock characters, narrative tropes, cinematic style and modes of performance – and its corporeal aesthetic.



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In stark contrast to the ideal and idealizing ethno-nationalist body of Fist of Fury, which Lo Kwai-cheung (2004, 116) has even termed ‘sublime’, the kung fu comedic body is emphatically material, even basely so. The body as we find it here is often abnormal and excessive. Rather than sculpted supermen, we are presented with a cast of cripples, beggars, drunkards and fools, white-haired eunuchs or scabrous and bald monks, the fat, the sickly, young girls and elderly women, all often nonetheless – irrespective of bodily type – endowed with fantastical ‘kung fu’ powers. The body itself is disorderly and revolting, sprouting excess hair in comic moles or prosthetic eyebrows, or sporting greasepaint freckles, red noses or bruises. Eyes cross in a squint, or glasses are perched precariously on the nose. When struck on the head, monstrous, cartoon-like lumps appear. The appetites of the body are insistently thematized in the genre, with food an ever-present spectacle. Tableware becomes equipment for martial training (e.g. in Shaolin Rescuers, 1979), or even a weapon in fights (in, e.g., the very first scenes of Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow). Food plays a prominent role in Drunken Master, too, in a scene where the young hero, Wong Fei-hung (Jackie Chan), having left home penniless, seeks to con a free meal from a restaurant owner. Wong is shown guzzling a Gargantuan quantity of food in sped-up time until his belly swells and he has to loosen his trousers. Then, having been discovered in his trick, he is beaten until he vomits it all back up again. In another scene, Wong attempts to use a pair of cucumbers as weapons to fight a sword-wielding opponent. The ease with which they are cut serves to highlight metonymically the slice-ability of Wong’s own flesh, which thus becomes figuratively cucumber-like. The body’s transgressions of its own limits in not only in eating but also puking, shitting and farting come to the fore, with toilet humour prevalent. Beggar So, in Magnificent Butcher (1979), uses both farts and bad breath as offensive weapons. In Drunken Master, Wong not only breaks wind in an opponent’s face (christening the move, in a parody of the poetic names of many Chinese martial arts manoeuvres, ‘A Fart for the King of Sticks’) but also goes on to press the enemy’s face in a cowpat (‘Dog Eats Shit’). In Prodigal Son (1981), Wong Wah-bo (Sammo Hung) teaches Leung Chan (Yuen Biao) a martial arts form that mimes sitting on a toilet, straining, wiping and flushing – including a movement called, in the English dub, ‘Great Relief’. Stars such as Sammo Hung – known sometimes by the nickname ‘Fat Dragon’, drawn from the title of one of his films, Enter the Fat Dragon (1978) – are themselves emblematic of this shift in the signification of the kung fu body. Hung’s rotund figure belies his prodigious physical strength, flexibility and agility, but it was not until the comedy came into its own – in

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part through his own efforts – that Hung could break into leading roles, lacking the ideal looks of the Lee-era kung fu hero. Perhaps the figure who most neatly embodies this logic, however, is the Drunken Master himself, Beggar So, played in the eponymous film and in several more until his death in 1979 by the elderly Simon Yuen. Casting Yuen in a major fighting role, often defeating multiple opponents, overturns the equation made by Lau Tai-muk (1999, 32) between Bruce Lee’s characters’ fantastical fighting powers and their youth, perfect physique and physical discipline. Yuen hams up what must have been the real stiffness and immobility of old age, and presents a portly, shambling figure. But the expectations this sets up are then contradicted by Yuen’s own impressive dexterity from a lifetime of operatic experience, and by the use of doubles who allow his character to suddenly move with virtuoso acrobatic agility. Beggar So, an alcoholic dressed in rags, lives a vagrant’s bachelor life on the edge of society and respectability, refusing the discipline, health, hygiene and sexual and economic productivity that the modern state – and the modernist martial arts movements of twentieth-century China that promoted its interests – sought to inculcate in its citizens. In this regard, the comedic kung fu body resists the political subjectification ‘kung fu’ may have offered, and on which a film such as Fist of Fury relies. CARNIVAL What, then, are we to make of the politics of such a body? For an answer, I shall draw here on the striking parallels between the kung fu comedic body, as just described, and the account of the ‘grotesque body’ discussed by Mikhail Bakhtin (1984) in his account of European carnival traditions – a resemblance that other critics have noted, if not interrogated at length (Gallagher 1997, 31–32; Hunt 2003, 105). I introduce Bakhtin’s term not in order to simply affirm the ‘transgressive’ nature of the kung fu comedy – Stallybrass and White (1986, 6–7) have argued that the notion of the ‘carnivalesque’ has been over-used in such a fashion by often uncritical critics – but rather to sketch out some of the complexities and ambivalences of these films and to understand better the form that politics might take in such a body. According to Bakhtin, on feast and carnival days, the normally rigid and closely policed order of medieval European society was turned on its head, liberating the peasantry temporarily from the strict morality, the inflexible social hierarchy, the regimentation of life and the denial of fleshly pleasure under conditions of drab poverty and religious abstinence that otherwise characterized their existence. Carnival instantiated a ‘second life of the people,



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who for a time entered the utopian realm of freedom, equality and abundance’ (Bakhtin 1984, 9). At the core of this experience was the enactment of what Bakhtin termed the ‘grotesque body’. This, rather than mortifying the flesh, plunged headlong into it. The eating, shitting, farting, lumps and smells – not to mention the slapstick clowning – of the kung fu comedy were also thus prominent carnival tropes. For Bakhtin (1984, 49), this grotesque body stood in opposition to the ‘ideal body’ typified by Renaissance classicism (and ultimately Enlightenment modernity), which asserts reason and order over the chaos and materiality of the flesh. The grotesque body, in contrast to this, sides with the id and with all that reason and order represses. EXCESS AND BECOMING IN THE GROTESQUE BODY For Bakhtin, at the core of the grotesque body is the principle of excess. The grotesque body is perpetually exceeding both its own limits and those that a stable social order seeks to impose around it. Constantly transgressing ‘form’, it is always in a process of metamorphosis, as with the decoration in Titus’s Baths, from which the grotesque derives its name, where animal, human and vegetable forms meld fluidly one into the other. In Bakhtin’s argument, such a principle of excess and transformation is dangerous for power, which requires the imposition of a stable, fixed system of order and identity through which to regulate the world and maintain the status quo. Rather than an ontology of things in their proper places, the grotesque proposed that ‘the inner movement of being itself was expressed in the passing of one form into another, in the ever incompleted character of being’ (Bakhtin 1984, 32). Bruce Lee’s body, in contrast to this grotesque aesthetic, appears ‘perfect’ and ‘complete’, as with neoclassical beauty. The kung fu comedic body, however, is always incomplete and in transformation – as is highlighted by the prominence of extensive training sequences within the genre, which highlight the fact that one kind of body can be transformed into another. While Bruce Lee always appears in films as already the ‘finished article’, in the comedy film, through training, ‘kung fu’ serves as the source of strange becomings: the kung fu comic hero becomes drunkard, woman, snake, cat, dragon (Jackie Chan’s Cantonese stage name, Sing Lung, means ‘becoming dragon’), fearless hyena, thundering mantis and many other things besides. These plunge the body into an alterity – often a low or animal alterity – that upsets the ideal hierarchy of being. Such comic alterity often further scrambles the order of the human body itself, which is literally turned upside down in combat,

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with protagonists rolling on the ground or standing on their hands to fight with their legs, leaving the upright axis of the ‘proper’ hero and substituting ‘improper’ body parts for fists as weapons. In this regard, the exceptional athletic abilities of the kung fu comedians seem to signify very differently from the generation of performers that came before them. Paradoxically, the acrobatic performance of the comedian resembles less the ideal (and hence normalizable) body of modernist martial arts movements and enters into the ‘freakishness’ of the circus or fairground performer. In partaking of an excessive flexibility and agility, the comic kung fu body is profoundly akin to the imperfect bodies of the genre’s cripples and drunkards, running to the same logic of unruly, surplus corporeality. This helps make sense of the fact that it is so often a kung fu located around ‘femininity’, drunkenness (both are at stake in Drunken Master, where Wong must learn the ‘drunken fist’ and take on the persona of ‘drunk immortal’ Miss Ho), disability (e.g. in Crippled Avengers, 1978) and even sickness (Dance of the Drunk Mantis, 1979) that are finally depicted in the genre as the apotheosis of deadly skill. IS CARNIVAL POLITICAL? What we can certainly say about such a body is that it appears to throw off the form of ethno-nationalist politics that was inscribed in the martial arts during its modernist phase – a politics that is still, perhaps, inscribed in Bruce Lee’s rebellious, militant, anti-colonial body in Fist of Fury. It does so, of course, at a moment when the appeal to national identity in Hong Kong is, as argued earlier, losing its appeal. That the kung fu comedy chimes so strongly with Bakhtin’s account of carnival may, in this case, be a result of a shared context. Bakhtin’s book was written in the 1940s, and, although ostensibly analysing the medieval world, it has often been taken as allegorizing the totalitarian society of Stalinism. The culture of the Soviet Union – like that of Nazi Germany, and like the Guomindang and the Communist Party in China alike – was profoundly invested in ideal, modernist bodies and in the techniques of physical culture that produced them. In Bakhtinian terms, then, we might read the kung fu comedy as rejecting the ‘body fascism’ of the mass calisthenics movements into which the modernizing martial arts were fitted. It is also no accident that it is during the countercultural 1960s that Bakhtin’s work was finally published, and in the momentous year of 1968 that it was first translated into English – becoming, by the time of the kung fu comedies, as Stallybrass and White (1986, 7) note, a ‘fashionable’ theoretical reference. Throwing off militant-style politics, the mode of carnival was not one of ‘protest’ or ‘resistance’ but rather affirmation and celebration. In this regard,



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carnival was ‘political’ in very different ways to a film such as Fist of Fury, which, as Keiko Nitta (2010) has argued, can be critiqued as exemplifying the logic Rey Chow has defined through the notion of the ‘protestant ethnic’. For Chow (2002, 47–49), ‘ethnic’ subjects often find themselves asserting their legitimacy and their ‘authenticity’ through a protestation of difference; but such subjects are also in a double bind: they are never ‘authentic’ enough, and their protestations become a means to discipline and discount them rather than offering a means for empowerment, while their ‘difference’ is readily absorbed into a marketplace of identities. However, carnival, too, has been understood as ambivalent, rather than simply effective. With its ‘liberation’ held within the strict temporal bounds of the feast day (or, as in the case of its cinematic parallels, the cinema visit), its critics note that it may have served as a stabilizing force – a ‘safety valve’ for dangerous energies – that only served to reinforce the oppression that existed for the remaining calendar. For Robert Stam (1989, 96), carnival is neither intrinsically radical nor conservative, but rather a field of contestation. Stallybrass and White (1986, 14) similarly note that sometimes carnival would run smoothly within a social order over long periods, and at other moments, it could explode as both catalyst and locus of revolt. The kung fu comedy film is further weakened, however, as a political resource in that, as spectacular entertainment, it involves neither the active, participatory dimension of carnival – which, as Bakhtin (1984, 7) puts it, ‘knows no footlights’ – nor, as an industrial-generic product, the transformation of carnival energies into conscious critique, as happens, according to Bakhtin, in the ‘carnivalesque’ work of authors such as Rabelais (Wills 1989, 131). In this regard, the shift from ‘protest’ to the ‘affirmatory’ politics of carnival can be seen as a loss – perhaps especially in the colonial context where the muscular body also took on the burden of expressing the violent fantasies that Fanon diagnosed as providing the energies of decolonization, and where national identity has also been a profound resource for emancipatory struggle (White 2015). There is much truth, then, in the arguments put forward by critics who propose that the kung fu comedy marks a straightforward retreat from the political and an increasing accommodation to the new forces and conditions of globalized capital (Chan 1980, 149–50; Hunt 2003, 102; Lau 1999, 33; Ng 1981, 42–46). The flexible, gymnastic kung fu comedic body, always in transformation, might, after all, be understood as expressing the qualities demanded in subjects by the neoliberal system of ‘flexible accumulation’. The very ontology of the grotesque, posited around becoming rather than a fixed order of beings, might be seen to echo that of a capitalism which is itself inherently dynamic in nature, which ‘cannot abide a limit’ (Harvey 2010) and in which, as Marx and Engels (2000) put it so famously, ‘all fixed, fast-frozen

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relations . . . are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air’. From such a perspective, if the kung fu comedy seems to reject the modern modes of ‘discipline’ described by Michel Foucault (and the ways that the martial arts performed a function in disciplinary terms for the nation state), they ironically do so at the very moment that these disciplinary means of ordering society give way to what Gilles Deleuze (1992) has termed the ‘society of control’– seemingly hedonistic but nonetheless fully programmed.1 POSTCOLONIAL CARNIVAL – FROM THE MASS TO THE POPULAR BODY Such an analysis, however, seems fundamentally incomplete without returning to think more specifically about Hong Kong itself, and about the postcolonial context for kung fu comedy’s activation of a grotesque aesthetic of the body. It seems to be this that can offer a more precise positioning of the particular nature of identity that is produced through it as an alternative to nationalism. Though it may seem initially problematic to lift a category drawn from an analysis of medieval European culture in order to think about East Asian cinema, Stallybrass and White (1986, 11) note that the most successful attempts to apply notions of carnival to contemporary culture have tended to focus on ‘literatures produced in a colonial or neo-colonial context where the political difference between dominant and subordinate culture is particularly charged’. Among the most famous of these has been Roberto DaMatta’s searching analysis of the centrality of carnival in constituting Brazilian identities. Discussing DaMatta’s work, Stam has suggested why Stallybrass and White’s observation may be so strikingly true, noting the parallels between DaMatta’s Brazil and Bakhtin’s Russia, both of which are marked as liminal in relation to a European metropolitan mainstream. Both cultures are typified by ‘insecure or tremulous nationalism in societies dominated by foreign-influenced elites’, and both are rife with an awareness of censorship and possible repression (Stam 1989, 123). All this, of course, can apply strongly to 1970s Hong Kong. Stam locates the relation between carnival and the postcolonial in terms of a ‘double consciousness’ nurtured in such conditions, and thus shared between the pre-modern and the postcolonial subaltern. For such subjects, belonging both to the world of an urban elite, and to their own, life is already spoken by an alien, oppressive discourse of power, and carnival offers a means of doubling this speech, re-appropriating and re-signifying its terms. Such conditions open up an ironizing, parodic mode of existence, in which



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the signifiers of the master culture are cannibalistically devoured, turned on their head, and forced into new meanings and purposes. That such a parodic and appropriative mode is at work in the kung fu comedy is evidenced, for example, in the Drunken Master’s choice of Wong Fei-hung as its hero. As Po Fung and Lau Yam’s (2012) edited collection of essays on him abundantly attests, Wong was already one of Hong Kong popular culture’s most iconic characters, whose exploits had been fictionalized in innumerable novels, radio serials and movies – with some ninety films being produced throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Wong stood as synonymous with upright, patrician and Confucian virtue. Drunken Master, then, performs an act of transgressive carnival inversion in making him an anarchistic, lazy, amoral kung fu ‘punk’ kid (xiaozi), who starts fights and sexually harasses women in the marketplace. Similarly, movie conventions are upended in the refunctioning of the kung fu genre’s reiterated ‘master’ figure as a disreputable drunkard, problematizing the respect that such a figure is inherently due. It is not just the shibboleths of the kung fu genre or of local traditional value systems, however, that receive such a treatment, with its cannibalistic procedures of poiesis extending even to the films’ soundtracks, which borrowed eclectically (and with little regard to intellectual property law) both from other martial arts films and from recent Hollywood blockbusters. Jaws and Star Wars became favourite sources for appropriation, subjecting the colonizer’s ‘official’ culture to the same irreverent treatment as everything else. In the postcolonial, post-nationalist context of Hong Kong, however, what seems of even more importance in figuring out the political valence of the genre is to rethink the forms of identification involved in the kung fu comedic body. As I have noted, this body is no longer formed in relation to a corporeal ideal, as with Lee, but rather, it seems to celebrate the heterogeneity, impurity and even cultural hybridity (if not, perhaps, ethnic or racial pluralism)2 that typifies the postcolonial experience of identity in Hong Kong. In this much, it seems to move on from the ‘mass’ body of nationalist calisthenics towards a ‘popular’ body that accords with the ‘all people’s character’ that Bakhtin accords the grotesque body of carnival. As Bakhtin (1984, 19) puts it, ‘The material bodily principle is not contained in the biological individual, not in the bourgeois ego, but in the people, a people who are continually growing and renewed’. We find such a collective, grotesque, all-people’s body, in a more recent kung fu comedic context, in the inhabitants of ‘Pig Sty Alley’ in Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle (2004). Such an ‘all-people’s body’ can be understood as positing a referent which is no longer assumed to reside in the unity of the nation-state, but instead in a ‘popular’ subject, constituted in opposition to as well as through the state and other forms of power exerted upon it. Petrus Liu’s (2011) arguments about the

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politics-beyond-nation of martial arts literature in his book Stateless Subjects might help us further understand what’s involved in this shift from the mass to the popular body. Liu argues that the twentieth-century Chinese martial arts novel consistently refused narratives of the desire for a strong nation-state, as expressed in the literary and intellectual modernism of the early-twentiethcentury New Culture Movement, which, like contemporary martial arts reformers, sought to modernize China and reject its feudal past in favour of Western models of rational efficiency. Instead, suggests Liu, the martial arts novel often contested this version of modernity, positing forms of community, belonging, social organization and meaning beyond the organization of the nation state – holding out a model of what it would be to become ‘stateless subjects’. It is also such a vision, I have been arguing, that animated the ‘politics’ of the kung fu comedic body in 1970s Hong Kong, as Chinese nationalism increasingly lost its power as a focus for identity. Even if ambivalent in its political nature, perhaps serving both emancipatory and regressive ends, the grotesque carnival body of the kung fu comedy’s address to the ‘popular’, I have argued, marks the continuation rather than the disappearance of politics, as this takes on a new and different form. The ‘militant’ body of films such as Fist of Fury and the ‘carnival’ body of Drunken Master and its imitations offer us two very different postcolonial aesthetics, both of which respond, in very different ways, to changing experiences of diasporic life in the colony. NOTES 1. Objectors to such an argument might note, against Deleuze, the extent to which, in spite of the growth of hedonistic consumer cultures, society remains grounded in work and on the forms of repressive fixity that underpin legal responsibility, property and contractual labour. Massumi (1992, 136) even mounts such an argument in specifically Deleuzian terms. 2. The body in kung fu comedies remains almost entirely a Han Chinese – and even more narrowly an implicitly Cantonese – body. Where ‘others’ are represented, it is usually as monstrous, and to open them up to ritual carnival abuse. This may remind a reader of some of the most reactionary aspects of carnival, whose targets could easily shift from the rich and powerful to the weak and different – women, foreigners and the like – serving, in the name of the ‘all-people’s body’, as a means to reinforce racial, ethnic and gender hierarchies. Xenophobia and sexism often also permeate the kung fu comedy.

REFERENCES Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.



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Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Bowman, Paul. 2010. Theorizing Bruce Lee: Film-Fantasy-Fighting-Philosophy. Amsterdam: Rodopi. ———. 2013. Beyond Bruce Lee: Chasing the Dragon through Film, Philosophy and Popular Culture. London: Wallflower. Chan, Ting-ching. 1980. ‘The “Knockabout” Comic Kung-Fu Films of Sammo Hung’. In A Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film, edited by Lau Shing-hon, 149–50. Hong Kong: HKIFF/Urban Council. Chow, Rey. 2002. The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1992. ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’. October, 59 (Winter): 3–7. Fu, Poshek. 2000. ‘The 1960s: Modernity, Youth Culture and Hong Kong Cinema’. In The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, edited by Poshek Fu and David Desser, 71–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gallagher, Mark. 1997. ‘Masculinity in Translation: Jackie Chan’s Transcultural Star Text’. Velvet Light Trap, 39 (Spring): 23–41. Harvey, David. 2010. ‘The Enigma of Capital and the Crisis This Time’. Monthly Review. https://mronline.org/2010/09/27/the-enigma-of-capital-and-the-crisis-this-time/. Hunt, Leon. 2003. Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger. London: Wallflower. Kennedy, Brian and Elizabeth Guo. 2010. Jingwu: The School That Transformed Kung Fu. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. Lau, Jenny. 2000. ‘Besides Fists and Blood: Michael Hui and Cantonese Comedy’. In The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, edited by Poshek Fu and David Desser, 158–75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lau, Tai-Muk. 1999. ‘Conflict and Desire: Dialogues between the Hong Kong Martial Arts, Genre and Social Issues in the Past 40 Years’. In The Making of Martial Arts Films: As Told By Filmmakers and Stars, 30–34. Hong Kong: HKFA/Urban Council. Liu, Petrus. 2011. Stateless Subjects: Chinese Martial Arts Literature and Postcolonial History. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Lo, Kwai-cheung. 2004. ‘Muscles and Subjectivity: A Short History of the Masculine Body in Hong Kong Popular Culture’. In Stars: The Film Reader, edited by Lucy Fischer and Marcia Landy, 115–26. New York: Routledge. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. [1848] 2000. Manifesto of the Communist Party, translated by Samuel Moore. Available online from the Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/. Massumi, Brian. 1992. A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Morris, Andrew. 2004. Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ng, Ho. 1981. ‘Kung Fu Comedies: Tradition, Structure, Character’. In A Study of the Hong Kong Swordplay Film, 1945–1980, edited by Lau Shing-hon, 42–6. Hong Kong: HKIFF/Urban Council. Nitta, Keiko. 2010. ‘An Equivocal Space for the Protestant Ethnic: US Popular Culture and Martial Arts Fantasia’. Social Semiotics, 20 (4): 377–92.

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Po Fung and Lau Yam. (eds.). 2012. Mastering Virtue: The Cinematic Legend of a Martial Artist. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive. Stallybrass, Peter and Allon White. 1986. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. London: Methuen. Stam, Robert. 1989. Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Teo, Stephen. 1997. Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimension. London: British Film Institute. White, Luke. 2015. ‘A “Narrow World, Strewn with Prohibitions”: Chang Cheh’s The Assassin and the 1967 Hong Kong Riots’. Asian Cinema, 26 (1): 79–98. Wills, Claire. 1989. ‘Upsetting the Public: Carnival, Hysteria and Women’s Texts’. In Bakhtin and Cultural Theory, edited by Ken Hirschkop and David Shepherd, 130–51. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Learning from Martial Arts Meaghan Morris and Paul Bowman

Paul Bowman: Well over ten years ago, when I was trying to work out whether, how and in what way I could begin to write about martial arts academically, I spent a lot of time rummaging around, both in non-academic publications and looking for helpful academic work from any discipline. I found and read a lot of stuff, but, perhaps because I came from a cultural studies and political theory background, I didn’t find much that seemed particularly helpful to me. I suppose it didn’t connect up with my premises and my ‘cultural studies/cultural theory’ concerns. But gradually I found studies out there that were increasingly helpful to me – helping me to ‘find my feet’ and orientate myself. Without doubt, one of the most influential, helpful, stimulating and exciting works that I encountered at that time was your chapter, ‘Learning from Bruce Lee’, which came out in 2001, but which I only really turned to much later. I read it in 2001, but it didn’t chime with anything that was really on my mind or research agenda then, so it just lay dormant for me. But, later, when I decided that my ‘way in’ to writing about martial arts in culture and society was via Bruce Lee, I returned to it. And, all of a sudden, it was incredibly stimulating. For it takes in so much and covers so much ground, capturing much of the multinational, multimedia and multicultural complexity of supposedly ‘simple’ popular cultural formations; and by the same token, it clarifies just how sensitive to these complexities any attempt to study martial arts in culture must be. However, another way of saying this is that it is extremely complicated. Maybe you have to be heavily steeped in cultural studies style work to ‘get into’ an essay like that. Do you think that’s true? To my mind, a lot of scholarship that attempts to study martial arts as social and cultural phenomena still often struggles to handle such complexity, and can revert to other, less circumspect approaches. What do you think the issues are here? How should we write martial arts studies? Different approaches have different stakes, different benefits, different costs, different consequences, don’t they? What do you think is at stake? Meaghan Morris:  I can’t think about all those questions at once because in the first place I’m not sure that the challenges of complexity in reading and 213

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composition that you mention have all that much directly to do with martial arts studies. Maybe they arise in all kinds of academic enquiry today when people’s time is so regulated by productivity imperatives that the instrumental question of ‘what does this do for me now?’ immediately jumps up to push us on to the nearest path of least resistance. I think that happens now right across the disciplines as well as in new studies areas, and the research funding process further helps to entrench corporate dullness in the name of innovation.

I got into writing and reading for a living before all that came in to academic life. I don’t actually have a cultural studies background and I’m basically quite ‘undisciplined’ in the narrow sense of the term. Just because the Australian cinema revival was exciting to me in the late 1970s, I started writing film reviews for newspapers and magazines. I did this until I was in my mid-thirties, and I worked with cultural and political theory on the side as something like a vocation. But I published in collectively edited social movement journals, not refereed academic outlets. So, my habit is still to start with a problem or a question that really bothers me in everyday life and just follow threads in my reading and thinking until stuff comes together in a way that illuminates the problem for me and that I can express coherently. ‘Learning from Bruce Lee’ is a case in point. Your experience is interesting because I think of that essay as a ‘simple’ exposition of problems with public debates that politicize how people look at films and an attempt, yes indeed, to show why that whole phenomenon is complicated. See, you read it because of Bruce Lee. But the subtitle of the 2001 version is ‘Pedagogy and Political Correctness in Martial Arts Cinema’ and it started as a talk called ‘A Short History of Political Correctness: Film Aesthetics and Social Change’ that I did for a National Screen Directors’ Conference in Sydney in 1995. A public thing for industry people, not academic at all. But this was in the dying days of the Hawke-Keating Labor government (1983–1996), and I was scared by how the first ‘political correctness’ panic started by George Bush Snr in the United States was spreading like wildfire through Australian media to everyone from my mother to filmmakers feeling persecuted by increasing censoriousness and bureaucratic meddling around representation. The meddling was often real. I forget what I said exactly but a right-wing shift was in the air, and I was pleading with these directors, ‘It’s complicated’. Bruce Lee got into the title as the Labor Party lost power in 1996. The backlash was awful and in the midst of it I’m obsessively looking, on the one hand, at the scene from Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, where Jason Scott Lee as the young Bruce and Lauren Holly as Linda are watching the racist scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and on the other hand, I’m trying to work out why I’m resisting this wonderful essay by Sam Rohdie that spells out everything I think myself about the imaginary nature of cinema and why we should just let it rip. Those were my threads, and I didn’t know how to bring them



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together. So, for two years, I fret over this talk with different publics, and at some point, I realize that the ghost of Bruce Lee in this other film, No Retreat, No Surrender, that I’m watching for love in my research on U.S. martial arts cinema, nothing to do with Australia, has been giving me the answer all along. That made it possible to write something for the Australian Teachers of Media magazine, Metro, in 1998. It was revised twice more for international versions, one of which you read. But here’s the thing. Looking back, I see that the early drafts referred to action cinema rather than martial arts cinema. Now, like you, I’m not interested in definitional projects and at best I see a thought-provoking definition as the outcome of an analysis, never its starting point. So, it was exactly as a product of this work on film – that is, of my practice as a critic – that a clear constellation of issues to do with pedagogy, legacy, cultural transmission and creativity with boundaries materialized for me as definitely to do with martial arts. Obviously other people will gravitate to different issues, but those are mine, and while I don’t necessarily see writing or reading complexity in martial arts studies as more challenging than it might be for other areas, I do think the general question of the relationship between ‘practice’ (of whatever kind) and intellectual inspiration presents itself to our field in irreducibly interesting ways that should resist simplification and academic automatism. Practice is not a virtue for me the way it was in some kinds of Marxist cultural theory. Rather it matters because it is so open to the reality of hazard, chance, mistakes, struggles, unexpected victories, messing up and unpredictability. Like writing an essay. What do you think? PB: Well, I definitely remember finding ‘Learning from Bruce Lee’ complicated! Not complicated in the way first reading someone like Derrida was (is) complicated. Derrida often seems to cut into an already-complex text by someone else and proceed to raise more and more complex questions about it, like some kind of lawyer in a court case trying to pull apart a witness. It’s not like that. Rather, it’s complicated in a different way, as you’ve just explained: as the product of years of your own personal working away at a set of sometimes discrete, sometimes overlapping and in your final rendition always interconnected problems. So, by the time you come to say it, you have already ‘got it’, but it takes a reader like me at least several passes to start to feel like they really get it.

I certainly always felt like I got bits of it. I grasped the importance of No Retreat, No Surrender as a complex text that illustrates at least one of the ways that supposedly trivial or supposedly fictional things (like Bruce Lee films) can come to play a massive real part in people’s lives, reconfiguring them in the most intimate and profound ways. I also got a strong sense of the importance of taking such films seriously, in all the complexity of their production and reception, and their status as real indicators of culture, in

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translation and transformation. In this case, you showed how No Retreat, No Surrender is a film that quietly revealed some of the ways that Hong Kong film was moving to America and being transformed in the process. And, on other readings, I picked up on bits and pieces of other arguments, such as the one about the complexity of political correctness and the importance, places and consequences of films. But it was very much a bit at a time. The essay changed on different readings, for me; and reciprocally it changed my own thinking and writing. I used the word ‘bits’ a lot back there. I did so deliberately. Just as (spoiler alert) my decision to reference Derrida was also deliberate. I’m also using the idea of ‘getting’ bits and pieces at a time when reading a complex construct like that essay because it chimes so much with my interests in and experiences of learning (and learning about) other things, particularly for me Chinese martial arts. Maybe what I am about to say also applies to my learning of Japanese and Korean martial arts, which I studied when I was much younger; but definitely less so. For, in all my experiences of learning, nothing compares to ‘internal’ Chinese martial arts when it comes to feeling like you don’t quite get it, that you’ve kind of got a bit of it, or maybe, but you can’t really be sure – that ‘maybe I’ve always understood this’ which flips repeatedly over into ‘maybe I’ll never understand this’. Maybe this is a consequence of trying to study an avowedly Chinese art like taijiquan in a small corner of Britain, with next to no Chinese people involved. Taijiquan and qigong are practices that are always expressed, explained and taught via terms and contexts that mean they are apparently inherently intimately plugged into a specific field of Chinese connections of philosophy, cosmology, epistemology, ontology, vocabulary, culture and all the rest of it. (To be clear, I’m suggesting that it is the specific arrangement of these connections, among others, that constitutes the ‘Chineseness’, rather than anything inherent, ethnic or geographic. The point is that I know it’s complicated – more complicated than there is space to develop here.) So, what the ‘bittiness’, or incompleteness, of my context meant was that learning such practices always required an effort of reconstruction – of both leaps of imagination and dives into various kinds of research into what the ‘proper’ approach, orientation and context should ideally be. What I’m driving at here is to do with context, possibly place, and (hence?) bittiness. I’ve certainly thought for a long time that we so often just pick up bits and pieces of stuff and run with them, often (or inevitably) in ignorance of so many other bits and pieces that other people in other places would regard as crucial accompaniments or stabilizing contextual supports. The variability of this leads to the inevitability of drift, mutation, transformation and complexity, in more or less all ‘cultural’ things. Effects include using Bruce Lee as a muse of self-invention (as in No Retreat, No Surrender) and



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the occurrence of parochial Westerners disagreeing with, differing from and often even dismissing Chinese practitioners of ‘the same’ style and so on. So, I’m wondering to what extent you think matters like this are down to ‘hazard, chance, mistakes, struggles, unexpected victories, messing up and unpredictability’, or down to some more predictable matters of cultural difference, or the key coordinates and organizing forces of different cultural contexts? Derrida argues that it is inevitable that different people are going to pick up ‘the same’ text and see different things in it and do very different things with it. Is what is done with texts (and discourses) really chance, or is it to some degree predictable (or unsurprising) what certain groups or contexts do with them – whether we’re talking ‘men’, ‘western men’, ‘white men’ or whatever? MM: Let me start with how much I like your idea of a forensic Derrida pulling apart a witness! I can’t read Derrida, literally can’t in the sense that I never get to the end of his essays; I run out of puff. A friend who worked in a government ministry, acutely stressed, once told me that he read Derrida to relax because he found deep predictability soothing: ‘with Derrida, you can always be sure’, he said, ‘that in the end, the butler did it’. I laugh when I remember that. But it didn’t help. Reading Derrida to me is like watching someone pulling the wings off an endless series of flies. I can’t read Lacan either. One summer I tried taking The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis to the beach, to see if I could relate to it better by getting sand in its cracks and sunscreen smears on the pages. No luck, and I gave up for life. It’s not about conceptual difficulty: I love reading Deleuze, or Dewey, no matter how much I puzzle over bits. There is a cutting, self-regarding quality in the writing that repels me in Derrida and Lacan, and in the way they position a reader. I like prose that blows me off my feet and across the room, rather than making me sit and watch someone else do cross stitch. No matter: the interesting thing is that I happily read other people who love these thinkers and sociably share ideas they borrow and put to work in projects of their own. I enjoy your Derrida, not mine.

So, this bears on the questions you raise about context. In any context, there are at least three terms at work, and this multiplies the number of possible relations between terms. There is mediation and translation going on (Bowman mediates Derrida for MM), but also there is addition: Bowman adds issues and questions in his reading of Derrida, and rather than taking MM ‘back to’ Derrida (which might be an outcome for some readers of Bowman), this carries me outside the Bowman-Derrida relation to open up a whole new field of inquiry and interest in martial arts studies – which is different from but connectable to the thinking about genre that I get from reading Anne Freadman or John Frow, other Derrida readers whom I admire. We also need to think about closure and the conditions making it possible. Any semiotician will say that different people can make different sense of the same text, but the interesting problem is often why many people come to the

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same or similar conclusions about what it means. This is a pedantic way of describing something that feels simple in practice and that we do whenever we read: we add and we also subtract (‘I’m not interested in that bit’) because we read in a context, and contexts have more than two terms. It’s an everyday experience of complexity that we tend to forget when broaching those big, polemical issues of cultural ‘ownership’ and appropriation, and the contests of authority that you mention. I’m afraid that my answer is that yes, there is always chance and incompleteness involved in any concrete instance of such contest, and yes, there are also regularities that derive from predictable matters of cultural difference or, when gender is added, conventional but deeply felt social allocations of authority. When I was younger, I experienced the latter myself when giving lectures on martial arts cinema, for goodness sake: in Australia and the United States in the late 1980s, when I started this work, there’d very often be a white guy who was enraged just sitting there listening to me dare to talk about this. But these instances of ‘white male rage’ also differed contextually in my experience. In Australia, it would be a white sinologist who would get up and flash his not-especially-relevant Mandarin and maybe his knowledge of the novels of Jin Yong to challenge my right to speak about Hong Kong films. In the United States, I had much more trouble with plain muscle fury: I’ll never forget one guy who’d snorted and groaned all through my talk about ‘two schools’ in 1970s cinema then came up and loomed over me at the end, like, twice my size in all dimensions, quite threatening, then said the most insulting thing he could think of: ‘I suppose you love Jean-Claude Van Damme?’ Those stories are funny, but over time I learned not sympathy, exactly, but curiosity about my own incompleteness of understanding about why they felt like this. What is going on in anyone’s life when they invest so strongly in an exclusive, proprietorial relationship to the thing they love and have poured much of their life into learning? What makes them not want to share, and not be delighted to add their knowledge to whatever a stranger brings? These examples are internal to the Anglophone West and relatively simple, although there are discussions about fan elitism in popular culture that can broaden their import. I do think, though, that we can usefully carry those sorts of questions over to complex situations of ‘cultural difference’ where histories of colonialism and geo-political conflict are invoked and often structuring the context in which an exchange or a conflict takes place. Indigenous Australians, for example, do not want to ‘share’ some traditional designs and stories because unlike white people who want to use them to decorate tea-towels or tourist ads they have a cosmology in which not all knowledge is common property and some knowledge is secret as well as sacred to very specific local groups. By beginning to learn about this (and



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this is only one path), other Australians begin glimpsing the incompleteness of our own understanding of what has happened between us over two centuries of brutal colonialism. Coming back to your examples, it’s not as though Chinese culture has no history of investing in exclusive and proprietorial knowledge claims, whether of a language (Cantonese teachers in Hong Kong will tell you frankly that foreigners can never learn) or a style of martial arts. But are those claims and the need for making them the same on both sides, or is there an incommensurability here? These are things you can only deal with sensibly by remembering the third term, which is always in the first instance the situation in which a conflict takes place or a difference materializes. For me, the Westerner who dismisses Chinese practitioners is always embarrassing, not because I think it’s impossible for any Westerner ever to ‘know more’ about something specific than a Chinese interlocutor (in the moment, that’s a matter of chance) or because I myself believe in a mystic link between an ethnicity and a practice, but because the Westerner’s need to be in the position of mastery shows so blatantly, shoving aside all grace and courtesy and respect for the other’s history and beliefs, that it’s a damp squib. Mortifying. That’s what is predictable or, if you like, over-determined. I like your description of learning internal Chinese martial arts in terms of a fluctuating sense of incompleteness. The only analogue I have for that is my experience of doing (don’t laugh) serious Pilates. I hate Pilates. Years ago, you were horrified when I told you I was mixing up boxing and kicking and lifting weights and you said, quite rightly, ‘that’s like having a furnace inside!’ and I said I loved that feeling. I can’t do that now because of injuries and so I have to do Pilates, all slow and internally strenuous when I love fast and explosive. I have no interest at all in the connected field of concepts, rudimentary as they may be compared to those plugged in to taijiquan and qigong; whenever my teacher refers to my ‘powerhouse’, I repress an infantile snigger. But yet, there are exercises with absurd names that I can rarely execute properly but when I do it’s exactly that feeling of ‘maybe I’ve always understood this’ – which next week flips back to ‘maybe I’ll never get this!’ Boxing was different: it taught me the limits of my intelligence and that I could never develop the specific kind of imagination it takes to box well, never mind the speed and power, although I didn’t care. So, my next question is, what do you think of the concepts of ‘embodiment’ and ‘embodied practice’ as ways of approaching these matters? I am uneasy with these terms – I’m not sure what exists in advance to be embodied, as it were? – but I’m at a loss for other ways to describe my wholly unspiritual, slow and begrudging Pilates learning experience, or indeed the radiant comprehension acquired as yet again my teacher artfully misses my nose by

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a whisker that boxing is a mentally as well as physically sublime form of training. PB: ‘Wholly unspiritual’, you say? Well, now I can’t get Althusser’s lines from Pascal out of my head – the one where he says that people don’t go to church because they believe: rather, the (repeated) act of taking part in in ritualistic church ceremonies (kneeling, bowing, sign of the cross, making the gestures of praying, etc.) is what produces religious belief. I often think something like this happens in martial arts. I didn’t necessarily believe in taiji before I started, although I was inclined to and wanted to. It was the repeated rituals of training that produced and sustained that belief. And now, after so many years, I essentially ‘don’t believe in it’ as a martial art any more, and yet I can’t stop myself from doing it. How many church-goers can identify with that, I wonder.

In any case, the key point here is that it is not belief that comes first, driving people to church, but rather it is the ‘having-always-gone’ to church (however grudgingly) and having joined in with the ritualistic repetition of the practices of church services that produces (or stimulates, or indeed simulates) the belief – even if only as something you ‘can’t shake’, or something you ‘don’t really believe in’ yet cannot really escape, like me and taiji. But whether it’s religion or exercise or reading, the point is, the process is, among other things, at least part of the production of belief and of identity, and is fully bodily. Peter Sloterdijk has even proposed that all religions are misrecognized ‘anthropotechnic practice systems’. This is a phrase that requires some training even to be able to say, let alone interpret. Nonetheless, I often think if it, especially whenever I want to engage my pectoral muscles in a particular way. Try this: put your palms together, point your fingers straight up in the air, flare your elbows out to the sides (or alternatively push your elbows together), and press your hands together. This is a great way to feel and engage and flex the pectoral muscles. Try it after you’ve done some push-ups. Maybe like me you’ll immediately feel a bit self-conscious. I only ever do this in private. This is because it looks uncannily like praying. During yoga, during the sun salutation, for instance, it very easily starts to feel like some kind of devotional act. And all of this makes me imagine a lot of creation scenarios for all kinds of ritualistic gestures and movements in all kinds of religions. But you ask what comes before, what is there beforehand that is subsequently em-bodied. Without wishing to sound too much like Slavoj Žižek here, I nonetheless think that he makes a good point when he argues that you can never simply step out of ideology, misrecognition or mystification, for the simple reason that other than through acts and practices of identification, disidentification, interpellation, mimesis, fantasy and performance, there is nothing else there. There is only what philosophers East and West for



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millennia have figured as void, abyss, impossibility – and other hyperbolicsounding terms for the reasons why our identities and our ‘selves’ are always constructed by way of external objects, institutions, discourses and practices. All of which places ‘embodiment’ front and centre and deconstructs any supposed ‘mind/body’ dualism. It does so by placing incompletion at the origin and by introducing a third term. We might call this (as Lacanians did) the constitutive character of the outside, or society, imposing itself on us and making us act in certain ways and be certain things. Whether we’re into the language of cultural theory or not, surely we can all agree that society makes us act in certain ways, starting long before we are able to think about that fact, and continuing long after it all becomes automatic. Sociologists and anthropologists are able to say a lot about people’s cultural background and class by looking at their behaviour in different contexts. Psychoanalysis famously focuses on really extreme matters, like issues around infants coming to terms with not being allowed to play with faeces or genitals (at least not in public). But surely almost any parents can attest to their (often almost constant) battles around the behaviour of their children in all key private and public situations. Parenting often involves putting a seemingly relentless effort into teaching children how to sit properly at the table, eat properly, with specific utensils in specific ways, stand properly, walk properly, talk properly, be quiet properly and myriad other micro-disciplinary checks and directions at key points of each and every day. Little to none of this massive micro- and macro-disciplining will be remembered by the child in question, of course, but it is all massively constitutive of and for them. ‘Manners maketh man’, as the saying goes. Or indeed ‘you can only fight the way you practice’. Whether ‘embodiment’ is a helpful way of thinking about all of this in relation to martial arts studies or cultural studies or anything else is a very good question. One part of me wants to declare ‘Yes! Thinking in terms of embodiment is massively enabling’. But another part wants to suggest that, like any other exciting or successful term, it seems faddish, all too easy to use, and may actually stop people from thinking certain things, or lead them by the nose into certain programmatically predictable lines of inquiry and repetitive conclusions or findings. I think this could be argued to have happened to some extent with ‘habitus’ too. Following Loïc Wacquant’s often wonderful writing and reflection on what a boxing gym in the Chicago ghetto ‘produces’ (a certain habitus), lots of people looking for ways to write about martial arts picked up on this approach, advocating ethnographic immersion in order to come up with thick description and insightful characterizations of this or that habitus. However, I have a number of problems with some of these works, on several different grounds. I wrote about this in my 2015 book, Martial Arts Studies: Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries. Without going over all of that again, suffice it

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to say here that I think there is a world of difference between the intensive environment of a working-class, pre-Internet, competition-focused boxing gym back in those days and, say, the extensive or expansive (non-)environment of going to a martial arts class a couple of times a week, supplemented by joining its Facebook group and flicking through YouTube videos about martial arts whenever you’re at a loose end. But I guess our evaluation of the use of a term, concept or metaphor, should depend on what work we want or need our concepts and metaphors to do. Maybe we don’t always know why we all seem to be beavering away at the same time on a certain set of questions using a certain set of terms, but something about those questions and those terms grabbed us. Tectonic shifts happen periodically. From alienation and interpellation to Lacanian lack and Derridean différance to Deleuzean rhizomes and reterritorializations to empire and multitudes to trauma to affect and habitus and embodiment, these conceptual, tropological or paradigmatic waves wash over different areas of the beach at different times and reconfigure the figures in the sand and organization of the pebbles. My worry is that people become myopic and amnesiac in their attention to a new problematic and set of terms and lose the important insights and tensions provided by earlier or other paradigms. I would definitely like to see more people reflect a bit more on why they use one organizing term over another, and also about the relationships between their preferred term or paradigm and others. I think that it’s only by doing this that we can avoid the pitfalls of myopia and ignorance of history and context. This is why, whenever I think about embodiment, I cannot but think of it as anything other than ‘embodiment of’. In living, we embody something (else) – the day-to-day material facts of our time, place, class, gender, age and so on. In striving physically, we (attempt to) become the embodiment of something (else). As Derrida once provocatively proposed, ‘all culture is originally colonial’ – which is one hell of a formulation. In the end, it means that one thing’s becoming is another’s unbecoming. This is so even though embodiment is not necessarily the embodiment of ‘a presence’, or the eradication of a former fixed self or state. It can be the attempt to approximate to a fantasy. I pondered this and wrote about it at length in my works on Bruce Lee. In fact, for me, this is the most interesting thing about him: Lee personified what many of us wanted to be. Indeed, more interestingly, what we wanted to be was installed or instilled in us by seeing Bruce Lee in the first place. It wasn’t there before Bruce Lee. Either it was produced by the image, or the image of Bruce Lee collected, ordered and gave form and direction to desires that would have found other outlets in other forms.



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Of course, I’m only using Bruce Lee as a peg to hang all of this on. You can insert your own examples and see how they play. But, with Bruce Lee, among others, the images produced and fuelled fantasies and hopes, directed our training and our aims and aspirations and generated new or growing forms of experience and embodiment. Like anything, this has all kinds of dimensions, ranging from desire to envy to aspiration, from failure to success, disappointment to excitement, pain to pleasure, challenge to suffering to delight and so much more besides. How tedious is the training, how hard is the stretching, how hard is the sparring, how impossible the dream of invincibility or a permanent six-pack; but how delightful is it to land that beautiful head kick, sidestep, slip, counter, takedown, combination or tap-out technique? This brings me back to the way you played-off one kind of apparently ‘unspiritual’ learning/practice with a kind of ‘radiant’ and ‘sublime’ delight in another kind of learning/practice at the very end of what you said before. In one sense, there is nothing mystical or spiritual about practicing stretching, practicing spinning kicks against a bag or a pad, practising arm-bars or whatever. In one sense, it is a daily grind. But in another sense, it is devotion. It is at least analogous to the essence of religious practice. And when, in free sparring, competition or combat, I make that religiously drilled technique work, it is as sublime, radiant or even magical for me as a spiritual event, or as it is when I watch Bruce Lee make something even more spectacular ‘work’. As a slight digression: in a discussion about stages and levels of perception and comprehension in terms of even being able to grasp how the person who just beat you actually beat you, a high-level jujutsu player once said to me that when novices ask him how he ‘did it’, he knows from experience that they are so far away from being able to ‘get it’ that nowadays he simply says, ‘as far as you’re concerned, it’s magic’. I agree with him. In taiji, it is impossible to grasp how the person who just beat you actually did it unless they are only a little bit better than you. Too far ahead and what they do is utterly incomprehensible. In escrima, facing someone who is too much better than you is like facing some kind of shark or wolf that is all teeth, saliva and blood-lust, and seems utterly impregnable as a target. But I would add to this that it is not just someone else’s perfect technique that appears to be magic: when I land a near-perfect hook-kick, say, or killer combination of punches, it feels equally like magic to me. I honestly think there is so much distilled into all of this – so many matters of identification and desire, fantasy and discipline, value, belief, ideology, culture, identity, knowledge, self-knowledge, mystification and more. In fact, in many respects, I think that most of the things I have been able to perceive, comprehend or intuit – I hesitate to say ‘learn’ or ‘know’ – to do with things

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like culture and identity, and the relations between media culture, subjectivity and embodiment, have been massively enriched by my fascination with all things martial arts, and my tendency to try to test or explore any and all propositions and ideas in terms of my understandings of martial arts in media and culture, and my own experiences. Maybe that is the thing. When it comes to the focus on embodiment as a theme of martial arts research today, I suspect that people sometimes tacitly assume that our experiences of martial arts in media are separate from our experiences of martial arts in the training hall or as a lifestyle activity. I have never done that. For me, it’s all part of a complex system – perhaps so complex that it might barely be classifiable as a system at all. Martial arts take me everywhere. They are an object of inquiry that is constantly unfolding and opening out onto new questions and insights, or casting new light on old questions and insights. So, I wonder, what about for you? What are you most learning from martial arts? Where do you think we might be going next? Where might this be taking us? MM: I don’t have a good punch-line here because what you’ve said sums up much of the appeal of martial arts studies for me too. At the same time it gives me another take on the question of complexity that we started with. Martial arts take you everywhere, but for me, it goes the other way: most things that I do with enthusiasm lead back to thinking about martial arts. That’s partly because I spent so many years in Hong Kong. I find the culture of that city and its cinema, its history and its political problems inexhaustibly involving, and what I am most immediately learning from martial arts cinema, at least, is how some filmmakers are rethinking their wuxia and kung fu traditions to explore aspects of Hong Kong’s situation in China that perhaps we should all start thinking about. Considered as everyday practices, martial arts don’t have often have much to do with people’s everyday lives there these days, but the imaginative force of the stories and traditions and the sense of local cultural ownership are both quite strong (especially when threatened) and I think sustaining in ways that are both remarkable and precious to me.

However, there are other reasons for always coming back to martial arts. What problems, what themes, what issues great and small in life, cannot be posed in this field? Recently, for example, I was teaching a guest introductory class on de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics, a rush-through-it in one-hour sort of thing, and I was moved all over again by the sheer beauty of those dry little opening pages that record him asking in 1907 how we can understand an object as complex as language when there are so many facets to think about, so many paths to take. He decides to choose one, ‘linguistic structure’, and set aside the rest. Decades later people would fuss about de Saussure ‘denying’ other aspects of language but that’s silly. This was an



Learning from Martial Arts 225

exercise in focus; to subtract is not to deny. After de Saussure, you can go to other linguists for better ways to think about language use than you had before his work. Focus is creative precisely by being reductive for a certain period of time. Looking for a way to enliven this for the class, I saw the same kind of creativity in a clip of the young Mohammed Ali telling how he invented his boastful persona (‘I am the greatest! I cannot be beat! I’m too pretty to be a boxer!’) by watching ‘Gorgeous George’, the famous wrestling villain of the 1940s and 1950s who styled himself as a cowardly, cheating cross between a Roman emperor and a vain Hollywood diva. Ali describes how the crowd hates George, all the booing and sledging from people paying good money to sit ring-side abusing George, while he himself leans in to focus on one thing: ‘this is a good idea! Look, he’s getting rich!’ Putting these utterly disparate historical moments together to consider ‘subtraction’ as creativity is fun but serious work involves the open-ended production of coherence, finding another term that can begin to unfold a series of different reflections. In this case for me, it was movement and then multiplicity: obviously, any canny soul could have seen what Ali saw in Gorgeous George’s performance, but then we can ask what it means for a boxer to ‘focus’ in the midst of so much intense activity, so many moves to see and foresee and, at the same time, initiate and respond. What does boxing teach us about establishing ‘theoretical objects’? Martial arts studies offers me space to ask questions like this without sounding crazy. In fact, for me, the most exciting form of composition is organized by a motivated set of focal shifts in relation to a complex object. Perhaps this shifting is what makes some of my own essays difficult to read, or perhaps it is, after all, a ‘cultural studies style of work’, as you said. But a good conference that has a topic or a project, as the martial arts studies conferences do, achieves this too in an accessible, sociable way. Given the global scale, historical depth and social breadth of our object, martial arts, we have no choice but to be multi-disciplinary in foundation but whether in practice some new idea of what academic ‘studies’ can be and do will take shape across the different worlds we inhabit is a question for me. I think perhaps we have yet to address the real differences between those worlds, especially when it comes to what counts as academic. I’m very happy to wait, participate and see what happens.

Index

Acta Periodica Duellatorum, 51 advertisements, 6, 57–71, 94, 192 aestheticization, 131 Agamben, Giorgio, 179 agency, 139, 147, 163, 167, 172–74 aikido, 32, 63, 64 Ali, Mohammed, 225 Altenberger, Roland, 38 America, 2, 5–6, 57–72, 79, 91–95, 109, 159, 177, 216 anarchist/ic, 149, 209 animals, 107–17 anthropology, 1, 2, 5, 8, 52, 102, 137–43, 145–46, 149, 149n1 archery, 13–20, 22–24, 42 Art of War, 28–30 aspirations, 223; religious and/or therapeutic, 6, 73, 76, 79–82 Assassin’s Creed, 190–91 Australia, 214, 215, 218 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 11, 200, 204–9 Barthes, Roland, 44, 103–4n6 Bateson, Gregory, 114, 143 Batman: Arkham, 190–91 Baudrillard, Jean, 103n2, 117n1, 117n8 belief, 44, 74, 77, 142–43, 157, 163, 174, 219–20, 223

Berg-Chan, Esther, 6, 41, 73–84, 85n13, 96 BJJ. See Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Bloodsport, 123, 195 bodies, 9, 31, 38, 41, 43, 75, 79–80, 83, 140, 148, 156, 161–62, 171–86, 188, 192, 206 Bourdieu, Pierre, 142, 144, 172, 175–76, 178, 180 Bowman, Paul, 11, 71, 72n8, 78, 84n1, 135n1, 187–88, 200, 217 Boxers, 6, 76, 79–83, 85n12 boxing (Chinese), 15, 16, 22–23, 79, 80 boxing (Western), 94, 108, 117n3, 118n12, 132, 134, 140, 156, 161–62, 179, 219–22, 225 Brazilian jiu-jitsu, 61, 147, 176, 178 Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 214 Buddha, 34 Buddhism, 35, 76–77, 84n8, 85n9, 190 Butler, Judith, 157, 159, 177 cage names, 107–17 Campbell, Joseph, 94, 103–4n6 capitalism, 11, 117, 202, 207 capoeira, 93, 131, 177, 180 carnival, 11, 199–212 Chan, Jackie, 10, 199, 202, 203, 205 227

228

Index

Channon, Alex, 8–9, 32, 160, 161, 167n3 China, 4, 5, 10, 13–25, 27, 30, 31, 35, 60, 72n7, 76–77, 79, 83, 93, 96, 102, 104n7, 141, 189, 195, 200, 201–2, 204, 206, 210, 224 Chinatown(s), 58, 63 Chow, Rey, 207 Chow, Stephen, 209 Chow Gar, 147 Choy Li Fut, 143 City Hunter, 195 class (socioeconomic), 13, 93, 123, 139, 145, 159, 172, 202, 221–22 Cohen, Paul. A, 79 Collins, Randall, 8, 126–27, 134 colonialism, 11, 144, 199–202, 206–8, 218–19, 222 combat sports, 7, 9, 107–17, 123–26, 132, 134, 155–56, 176–77, 179–80 computer games, 6, 10, 41, 57, 101, 188, 190, 193–95 confrontational tension, 127–28 Connell, Raewyn, 162, 175 Conquergood, Dwight, 8, 138, 146 corporeal realism, 171–76, 179, 180, 181 Crippled Avengers, 206 critical realism, 173–74, 182n1 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 113, 116, 119n28 cultural difference, 217–18 cultural studies, 1–2, 5, 8, 11, 52, 93, 103n6, 137–38, 146, 167n1, 213–14, 221, 225 culture, 12, 20–21, 65, 67, 69, 74–75, 78, 84n2, 96, 104n6, 112, 118n19, 124, 130, 138, 142, 143, 145, 146, 172, 189, 194, 202, 206, 208, 209, 210n1, 213, 215–16, 219, 222–24; Chinese culture, 20, 200, 219; counterculture, 78, 206; martial arts culture, 10, 61, 188; material culture, 53n12, 75; media culture, 10, 188–89, 192–93, 195, 196, 224; physical culture, 9, 10, 61, 83, 138, 162, 200,

206; popular culture, 11, 41, 80–82, 94, 103n2, 199, 209, 218; rape culture, 163; subculture, 31, 63 DaMatta, Roberto, 11, 208 Dance of the Drunk Mantis, 206 Daodejing, 28–29 Daoism, 27–28, 35 Darwinian ideas, 111, 116, 119n30 deconstruction, 30, 124, 192, 221 Deleuze, Gilles, 8, 148, 208, 210n1, 217, 222 Derrida, Jacques, 44, 215–17, 222 digital media, 41, 75–76, 194–95 discourse theoretical perspective, 6, 74–76, 82–83 Donohue, John, 128 Downey, Greg, 117n2, 118n18, 177–78, 180 downwards conflation, 173, 178 Dragon, 214 Drunken Master, 196, 199, 202–3, 206, 209–10 Eco, Umberto, 103n2, 117n1 embodiment, 73, 76, 77, 79–81, 138, 146–47, 155–56, 174–76, 178–88, 219, 221–24 emic notions and etic concepts, 144 epistemology, 8, 138, 142–43, 147–48, 158, 172, 177–78, 216 escrima, 223 Esherick, Joseph W., 79, 81 ethnicity, 2, 58, 60, 63–66, 159, 207, 209, 210n2, 216, 219 etic. See emic notions and etic concepts Even-Zohar, Itamar, 124–25 failure, 9, 116, 171, 177–79, 223 Fanon, Frantz, 207 Farrer, DS, 8, 73 femininities, 166, 175 femininity, 162–63, 175, 177, 200, 206 feminism, 32, 112, 158, 163–66, 167n1 fencing, 15–16, 23, 46–48, 51, 89, 93–94, 100



Index 229

fight books, 5, 41–52, 52n9, 53n11 film studies, 1, 2, 11, 166 Finkelstein, Ellis, 141 Foucault, Michel, 172, 208 friendship, 179–81 Fung, Stephen, 10, 193 Gaje, Leo T., 130 Game of Death, 195 Garfinkel, Harold, 159 gender, 2, 8, 9, 31, 32, 103n4, 111–12, 118n13, 119n24, 137, 139, 145, 155–67, 175, 177, 210, 218, 222 genital training, 34–35 global history, 83–84 globalization, 71, 199; of martial arts, 94 Goffman, Erving, 139, 159 gongfu/gong fu. See kung fu Gottschall, Jonathan, 111, 118n16, 119n23 Gracie, Rickson, 178 grotesque body, 200, 204–5, 209 habitus, 28, 142, 172, 176–77, 221–22 HEMA. See historical European martial arts heteronormativity, 32 heterosexuality/heterosexism, 9, 111, 116, 157, 161, 175 historical European martial arts, 52 Hollywood, 178, 209, 225 homoeroticism, 9, 31 homosociality, 9, 171 Hong Kong, 8, 10–11, 68, 76, 99–100, 133, 141, 147, 191–92, 199–202, 206, 208–10, 216, 218–19, 224 House of 72 Tenants, 201–2 Hui, Michael, 201–2 Hung, Sammo, 203 Hung Gar, 94 hunting, 13, 112, 115, 119n22 Huo Yuanjia, 201 hyper-reality, 7, 92–93, 102, 103n2, 107–9, 117n1, 117n8, 117n10; definition of hyper-real martial arts,

92; hyperreal/ity vs. hyper-real/ity, 103n2; hyper-real religions (including Jediism), 103n2; social function of hyper-real martial arts, 99–100, 102–3 identity, 2, 11, 93–95, 100, 125, 128, 140, 145, 159, 178–80, 200–202, 205–10, 220, 223–24 ideology, 11, 220, 223 Ingold, Tim, 146–47 injury, 35, 104n7, 114, 125, 135, 148, 161, 178, 180, 219 Japan, 6, 20, 29, 58–63, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71n6, 72n7, 83, 91, 93, 96, 135n3, 200–201, 216 Jaquet, Daniel, 5 Jingwu Athletic Association, 83, 93, 143, 147, 201 Judkins, Benjamin N., 6–7, 71n6, 85n11, 117n1, 118n16, 118n19 judo, 29, 58, 61–64, 69, 132, 161 jujitsu. See jujutsu jujutsu, 223, 58, 61 karate, 57–58, 60–70, 71n4, 94, 96, 123, 131, 161, 165, 190 Karate Champ, 195 kata, 49, 68, 91, 131 Kessler, Suzanne and McKenna, Wendy, 157, 159 key visuals, 10, 190–92, 195–96, 196n1 kickboxing, 91, 93, 123–25, 134, 160 Klens-Bigman, Deborah, 139 Korea, 6, 58–60, 62, 66, 68, 93, 96, 216 Körper-Leib dichotomy, 8, 125–26, 134 krav maga, 93, 108 kung fu, 6, 10–11, 61–64, 69, 71n6, 76, 76–79, 80, 81, 82, 91, 94, 101–2, 161, 189, 193, 199–210, 210n2, 224 Kung Fu (television series), 58 Kung Fu Hustle, 209 Lacan, Jacques, 3, 217, 221–22 Lau, Jenny, 201

230

Index

Lee, Bruce, 11, 41, 58, 62–63, 68, 72n8, 78–80, 82, 177, 190–91, 195, 200, 204–6, 213–16, 222–23; Bruceploitation, 193; Enter the Dragon, 190, 195–96, 201; Fist of Fury, 200–204, 206–7, 210; Jeet Kune Do, 68, 72n8 Leung, Siu-lung, 193 lightsaber combat, 89–106; as an American vs. global martial art, 94–95; development and history, 92; as liminoid play, 100–103 Liu, Petrus, 11, 209 Lo Kwai-cheung, 203 Lorber, Judith, 157 Lorge, Peter, 4 magic, 129–30, 134, 145, 223. See also martial magic Magnificent Butcher, 203 male preserve, 157 martial arts: and class community, 90; and class structure, 89, 91; ethnonationalist associations, 93–95; personal motivations, 90–91, 100–101, 102–3; social function, 99–100, 102–3; traditional vs. hyper-real, 92, 99–101; varieties of, 92 martial arts studies, 1–12, 22, 41–43, 52, 73–74, 84, 89, 99, 102, 135n1, 137, 149n1, 155–58, 160, 163, 166, 167n1, 172, 174–77, 187–90, 196, 213–15, 217, 221, 224–25 Martial Arts Studies Research Network, 73, 84n1 martial magic, 76, 79–82, 85n11 Marxism, 36, 142, 215 masculinities, 9–10, 166, 171–82, 182n2 masculinity, 9, 111, 156, 160–62, 171, 175–78, 180–81 material religion, 6, 73, 74, 75, 76, 82, 83 McCaughey, Martha, 112, 118n19, 163–65 McKenzie, Jon, 140

media culture. See culture media representation, 10, 187–88, 191, 196 media supplement, 187 mediator, 6, 73, 76, 77, 79, 80, 82, 84n7 Miller, Davis, 72n8, 78 mindfulness, 33 Ming dynasty, 4, 13, 19–20, 23–25, 36, 81–82 mixed martial arts, 33, 107–11, 117n2, 118n12, 118n16, 124–25, 132, 134, 147, 182n2, 192 Miyamoto Musashi, 178 MMA. See mixed martial arts modernism, 210 modernity, 111, 173, 199, 205, 210 Mohammad, Mohammad Din, 147–48 Molasky, Michael, 5–6 Morris, Andrew, 83, 200 Morris, Meaghan, 11, 213–16 motion capture, 192 motor images, 191 Muybridge, Eadweard, 43 myth/mythology, 8, 25, 36, 41, 92, 94–95, 100–102, 103–4n6, 109, 126, 129–30, 133–34, 193, 202 nationalism, 11, 68, 93–96, 102, 199–203, 206, 208–10 Negri, Antonio, 148 neurosciences, 189–91 New Culture Movement, 210 No Retreat, No Surrender, 215, 216 Norris, Chuck, 177 observant participation, 172, 179, 181 Okinawa, 6, 57–58, 62–63, 66–69, 71n6, 72n7 Olympics, 29, 42, 51, 61, 94, 193 ontology, 8, 16, 138, 142–43, 147–48, 173, 175, 177, 205, 207, 216 O’Shea, Janet, 7 pain, 107, 125–26, 141, 164, 178, 223 Pascal, Blaise, 220



Index 231

pedagogy, 58, 78, 155, 158, 162–66, 214, 215 Pekiti Tirsia Kali, 130 performance, 7–9, 20–21, 31–35, 52, 73, 75–77, 79–82, 92, 94, 108, 109, 128, 132, 137–49, 156–60, 171, 176–81, 196, 200, 202, 206, 220, 225 performance ethnography, 137–49 performativity, 75, 155, 158–59 philosophy, 2, 29, 84n8, 93, 101, 143, 146, 179, 216 physical culture. See culture Pilates, 219 play, 7, 92, 94, 98, 100, 102, 109–10, 112–17, 117n9, 118–19n20, 119n26, 119n30, 130–32, 139, 189, 194, 221 political correctness, 214, 216 polysystem theory, 124–26, 135n1 popular culture. See culture postcolonial, 202, 208–10 postcolonial studies, 2 power, 29, 34, 35, 38, 39, 80–82, 96, 111, 128, 130, 140, 148, 155–59, 162, 164–65, 172–73, 180, 201–5, 208–9 PRC. See China Prodigal Son, 203 psychology, 2, 104n6; evolutionary, 111, 114, 118n19, 119n27; social, 137, 139, 141 qi, 28, 35, 81, 82 qigong, xi, 77, 216, 219 Qī Jìguāng, 14, 15, 19–24, 25n2 Qing dynasty, 17, 37, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85n12 religious knowledge, 76, 76–79 religious studies, 6, 73–75, 84n4, 84n5, 103n2 Revenge of the Warrior, 191–92 risk play. See play rites of passage, 95–98, 142 ritual, 13, 27, 42, 77, 80, 89, 95–98, 128, 130–32, 139–40, 156, 210n2, 220

Rohdie, Sam, 214 Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 80 Ruan Zutang, 81, 83 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 224–25 Schechner, Richard, 8, 139 self-defence, 27–29, 91, 108, 128, 131, 135, 163–66, 167n4 Seni Silat Haqq, 141 sex, 27–39, 116, 149n2, 159, 176–77, 204 sex integration (mixed sparring), 160 sexism, 157, 161–63, 166, 210n2 Shahar, Meir, 81–82 Shaolin Rescuers, 203 Shaolin Temple, 76 Shaolin Temple (China), 23, 100; mythic destruction, 100 Shaolin Temple (Germany), 76–78, 84n8 Shilling, Chris, 173, 182n1 Sleeping Dogs, 10, 190–92, 196 Sloterdijk, Peter, 220 Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow, 202–3 social constructionism, 32, 172 society, 7, 12, 13, 76, 94–99, 102, 109, 111, 124, 126, 131, 133, 145–46, 157, 158, 173–75, 204, 206, 208, 210n1, 213, 221 Sofsky, Wolfgang, 8, 125 Spencer, Dale C., 9–10 Spinoza, Baruch, 8, 138, 147 spirituality, 77, 78, 84n8 Stallybrass, Peter and Allon White, 204, 206–8 Stam, Robert, 207–8 Star Wars, 90, 92–94, 101, 103n4, 103n6, 209; academic criticism of, 93–94, 103n4–6; as American popular culture, 94–95; fandom, 90, 92, 101 St-Pierre, Georges, 192 Street Fighter, 188, 190, 195

232

Index

taekwondo, 58, 62, 64, 66, 68–69, 71n5, 91, 93, 94, 108 tai chi. See taijiquan Tai Chi, 10, 193–96 Tai Chi Hero, 193 Tai Chi Zero, 193, 195 taiji. See taijiquan taijiquan, 28, 29, 69, 77, 216, 219–20, 223 Taoism. See Daoism Tao te Ching. See Daodejing Taylor, Diana, 216 technique du corps, 28, 148 Tekken, 190 television, 6, 9, 57, 58, 62, 78, 101, 107, 123, 171, 191, 194, 201 Teo, Stephen, 11, 199, 201 Theiss, Christine, 123 Trausch, Tim, 10 Turner, Victor, 8, 92, 95–98, 100, 102, 139, 141, 146, 149n1; critics of, 96, 102, 104n8; liminality, 95–96, 99, 102; liminoid, 97–99, 102 UFC. See Ultimate Fighting Championship Ultimate Fighting Championship, 107, 191–92 upwards conflation, 173 USA. See America Van Damme, Jean Claude, 177, 218 Van Gennep, Arnold, 95; rites of passage, 95, 97, 99–100 victim blaming, 163 video games. See computer games

violence, 7–9, 37–38, 78, 108–14, 116–17, 117n4, 117n5, 117n7, 118n11, 118n12, 118n19, 118n20, 119n25, 119n27, 123–35, 135n3, 139, 140, 156, 161, 163, 165, 167n4, 171, 175, 180 Wacquant, Loïc, 119n32, 140, 179–80, 221 Warrior’s Gate, 195 West, Candace and Zimmerman, Don, 159 Wetzler, Sixt, 7–8, 42 White, Allon. See Stallybrass, Peter and Allon White White, Luke, 10–11 white male rage, 218 Wile, Douglas, 5 wing chun, 68, 71, 91, 100 Wong Fei-hung, 203, 209 wushu, 5, 93, 99–100, 102, 131, 193 wuxia, 224 Yang Luchan, 193 Yellow Pages, 5, 6, 57–70, 71n1, 71n4 Yihequan. See Boxers yoga, 220 Yuan, Jayden/Xiaochao, 193 Yuen, Simon/Siu-tien, 204 Yuen Biao, 203 Yuen Woo-ping, 10, 202 Zarrilli, Phillip, 149n1 Zen, 35 Zheng Manqing, 28 Žižek, Slavoj, 220

Notes on the Contributors

Esther Berg-Chan is a research fellow at the Jesuit College Sankt Georgen in Frankfurt/Main, Germany. She studied religious, East Asian and transcultural studies and holds a PhD in religious studies from Heidelberg University. Her research interests include rethinking martial arts and religion from a material religion and discourse theoretical perspective and the global history of contemporary martial arts discourses. Apart from her focus on martial arts, her research focuses on lived religion in modern times and the contemporary evangelical and Pentecostal-charismatic movements in Asia. Her PhD is based on extensive field research in Singapore as a member of the junior research group ‘Transcultural Dynamics of Pentecostalism: Pentecostal Christianity between Globalisation and Localised Spheres in Singapore and the Straits’ at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia and Europe in a Global Context’ at Heidelberg University. She is founding member and also speaker of the working group on evangelical, Pentecostal and charismatic movements (AK EPCB) of the German Association for Religious Studies (DVRW). Paul Bowman is professor of cultural studies at Cardiff University. He is author of ten books and editor of many more. He is founding editor of JOMEC Journal, founding co-editor of the journal Martial Arts Studies, and has edited issues of the journals Parallax, Social Semiotics, Postcolonial Studies and Educational Philosophy and Theory. In the field of martial arts studies, he is author of Theorizing Bruce Lee (2010), Beyond Bruce Lee (2013), Martial Arts Studies (2015) and Mythologies of Martial Arts (2017). He is currently completing a monograph entitled Deconstructing Martial Arts, which will be published online and open access.

233

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Notes on the Contributors

Alex Channon is a senior lecturer in physical education and sport studies at the University of Brighton, United Kingdom. His doctoral research explored sex integration in martial arts and combat sports, and he has published several academic papers on issues pertaining to gender, sexuality and sport. Alex is an active member of the Martial Arts Studies Research Network and is the editor of Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sports: Women Warriors around the World (2015), Sex Integration in Sport and Physical Culture (2017) and Teaching with Sociological Imagination in Higher and Further Education (2018). He is the co-founder of the anti-violence project Love Fighting Hate Violence. DS Farrer is visiting professor of performance studies at the University of Plymouth and associate professor of anthropology at the University of Guam. Alongside articles and chapters on various styles of silat and Chinese martial arts resulting from longitudinal research in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, Farrer edited War Magic: Religion, Sorcery and Performance (2016), co-edited Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World (2011) and authored Shadows of the Prophet: Martial Arts and Sufi Mysticism (2009). Having learned the basics of twenty-two martial arts, he holds black belt–level qualifications in East River Chow Gar, Southern Praying Mantis, Chin Woo and Seni Silat, and teaches university courses in martial arts studies: Baguazhang. In the United States, Dr Farrer was awarded an O-1 Visa for extraordinary ability in martial arts. On Guam, he is researching Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts. Daniel Jaquet received his PhD in medieval history at the University of Geneva in 2013. He specializes in European martial arts studies. He is currently head of scientific research and pedagogical activities at the Museum of the Castle of Morges and editor of the journal Acta Periodica Duellatorum. He recently published Combattre au Moyen Âge (2017). Benjamin N. Judkins is co-editor of the journal Martial Arts Studies. With Jon Nielson, he is co-author of The Creation of Wing Chun: A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts (2015). He is also author of the longrunning martial arts studies blog Kung Fu Tea: Martial Arts History, Wing Chun and Chinese Martial Studies (https://chinesemartialstudies.com/). Judkins is currently a visiting scholar at Cornell University’s East Asia Program and previously taught at the University of Utah. Peter Lorge (Vanderbilt University) is a historian of tenth- and eleventhcentury China, with particular interest in Chinese military, political and



Notes on the Contributors 235

social history. He is author of The Reunification of China: Peace through War under the Song Dynasty (2015), Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century (2012), The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder to the Bomb (2008) and War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China (2005). Michael Molasky is professor of Asian cultural studies at Waseda University (Tokyo). He previously taught at the University of Minnesota and at Connecticut College in the United States and holds a PhD in East Asian languages and civilizations from the University of Chicago. After writing The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa: Literature and Memory (1999) and co-editing Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese Literature from Okinawa (2000), Molasky has been writing primarily in Japanese. His first book written in Japanese, Sengo Nihon no jazu bunka: eiga, bungaku, angura (The Jazz Culture of Postwar Japan: Film, Literature, the Underground) (2005), was awarded the 2006 Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities. Since then he has written or edited many books, from academic studies to essays. In his spare time, he also plays piano in jazz clubs. Meaghan Morris is professor of gender and cultural studies, University of Sydney, and former chair professor of cultural studies in Lingnan University, Hong Kong (2000–2012). Former chair of the international Association for Cultural Studies (2004–2008) and chair of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society (2012–2015), she is a fellow of both the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities and the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Her books include The Pirate’s Fiancée: Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism (1988), Too Soon Too Late: History in Popular Culture (1998), Identity Anecdotes: Translation and Media Culture (2006) and Creativity and Academic Activism: Instituting Cultural Studies, co-edited with Mette Hjort (2012). Janet O’Shea is author of At Home in the World: Bharata Natyam on the Global Stage (2007) and Risk, Failure, Play: What Dance Reveals about Martial Arts Training (2019) and co-editor of the Routledge Dance Studies Reader (second edition 2010). Recipient of a UCLA Transdisciplinary Seed Grant to study the cognitive benefits of martial arts training, she is a practitioner of Filipino martial arts, jeet kune do, Brazilian jiu jitsu, kickboxing and empowerment self-defence. Her research focuses on corporeality, interdisciplinary exchange and the politics of everyday life. She is professor of world arts and cultures/dance at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

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Dale C. Spencer is associate professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University and the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice. His main interests are violence, victimization, policing and sex crimes. He has published three books, Reimaging Intervention in Young Lives (with Karen Foster), Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment and Violence, Sex Offenders, and Corrections (with Rose Ricciardelli) and three edited volumes, Emotions Matter (with Kevin Walby and Alan Hunt), Fighting Scholars (with Raul Sanchez Garcia) and Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology (with Sandra Walklate), and his work can be found in a number of journals, including Body and Society, Punishment and Society and Ethnography. Tim Trausch is a research associate in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Cologne, Germany. His research focuses on Chinese media culture and aesthetics. He is the author of Affekt und Zitat: Zur Ästhetik des Martial-Arts-Films (On the Aesthetics of the Martial Arts Film) (2017) and the editor of Chinese Martial Arts and Media Culture: Global Perspectives (2018). Sixt Wetzler (Deutsches Klingenmuseum [German Blade Museum], Solingen) studied religious studies, Scandinavian literature and medieval history and wrote his PhD thesis on ‘Combat in Saga Literature: Traces of Martial Arts in Medieval Iceland’. Wetzler has published on martial arts studies both in English and German, from a Kulturwissenschaft and comparative perspective. As assistant director of the German Blade Museum, one of his main interests is in the European fencing tradition and other blade-fighting systems. Wetzler has practised several martial arts since his childhood, and teaches Pekiti Tirsia Kali, a Filipino martial art. Luke White is senior lecturer in visual culture and fine art at Middlesex University. Recent journal articles have been published in Asian Cinema, JOMEC Journal, Radical Philosophy and the Journal of Visual Culture. Luke is editor (with Claire Pajaczkowska) of The Sublime Now (2009). His current research investigates the politics of the body in Hong Kong martial arts cinema. Douglas Wile holds a doctorate in East Asian languages and literature from the University of Wisconsin and is professor emeritus of Chinese language from Brooklyn College-CUNY. His Lost T’ai-chi Classics from the Late Ch’ing Dynasty was the first scholarly work on taijiquan to be published by an American university press, and his ‘Taijiquan; Theory and Practice’ was



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the first credit-bearing martial arts course offered in a university humanities curriculum. His 1992 Art of the Bedchamber was the first major contribution to Chinese sexology in English since Van Gulik’s pioneering 1951 work. T’ai-chi Touchstones was the first comprehensive collection of the writings of three generations of Yang family taiji masters, and in four works, he introduced the thought of polymath Zheng Manqing on taijiquan, qigong, medicine, meditation, the arts and Yijing. His T’ai-chi’s Ancestors attempted to dispel myths of origin and discover the roots of taijiquan in historical and cultural antecedents. Recent articles on martial arts include ‘Taijiquan and Daoism: From Religion to Martial Art and Martial Art to Religion’, ‘Asian Martial Arts in the Asian Studies Curriculum’ and ‘Fighting Words: Recent Document Finds Reignite Old Debates in Taijiquan Historiography’. Professor Wile’s monographs and articles on Chinese martial arts have been translated into eight languages and appear in numerous anthologies. He has studied taekwondo, aikido, capoeira and baguazhang, and maintains a fiftyyear daily practice of Yang-style taijiquan.