Martial Arts Studies DISRUPTIONS Disruptions is a series that interrogates and analyses disruptions within and across such fields and disciplines as culture and society, media and technol- ogy, literature and philosophy, aesthetics and politics. Series Editor Paul Bowman, Reader, Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University, UK Editorial Review Board Benjamin Arditi, Professor of Politics, National University of Mexico, Mexico Rey Chow, Anne Firor Scott Professor of Literature, Duke University, USA Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy, The New School, New York, USA Catherine Driscoll, Associate Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies, The University of Sydney, Australia Ben Highmore, Professor of Cultural Studies, University of Sussex, UK Richard Stamp, Senior Lecturer of English and Cultural Studies, Bath Spa University, UK Jeremy Valentine, Reader in Media, Culture and Politics, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK Titles in Series Bearing Society in Mind: Theories and Politics of the Social Formation, Samuel A. Chambers Open Education: A Study in Disruption, Pauline van Mourik Broekman, Gary Hall, Ted Byfield, Shaun Hides and Simon Worthington What Lies Between: Void Aesthetics and Postwar Politics, Matt Tierney Martial Arts Studies: Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries, Paul Bowman Living Screens: Reading Melodrama in Contemporary Film and Television, Monique Rooney (forthcoming) Word: Divine, Dissonant and Digital, Mariam Motamedi Fraser (forthcoming) Martial Arts Studies Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries Paul Bowman London • New York 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 Copyright © 2015 by Paul Bowman 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 9781783481279 PB 9781783481286 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bowman, Paul, 1971– author. Martial arts studies: disrupting disciplinary boundaries / Paul Bowman. pages cm. — (Disruptions) Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “Disrupts disciplinary boundaries to make a case for the future direction and growth of martial arts studies as a unique field” — Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-1-78348-127-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-78348-128-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-78348-129-3 (electronic) 1. Martial arts—Study and teaching. I. Title. GV1102.7.S85B68 2015 796.8071—dc23 2014048218 ™ 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 philosophise with the hammer —Nietzsche the twain shall meet —Kipling Contents Acknowledgements ix Preface and Note on the Text xi Chapter 1: Martial Arts Studies as an Academic Field 1 Chapter 2: Writing Martial Arts Studies: Body, History, (Trans)Nation, and Narration 55 Chapter 3: The Reality of Martial Arts 109 Chapter 4: Martial Arts and Cultural Politics Mediated: Disrupting Political Theory 137 Chapter 5: Conclusion: Orders of Discourse 149 Notes 169 Bibliography 177 Index 187 vii Acknowledgements his book may never have been written were it not for the influence Tof several people. First, Ben Judkins, whose blog on Chinese martial studies exploded onto the scene in 2012, demonstrated both the exciting possibilities of this emergent area and also the growing presence of a wide and diverse community with a hunger and thirst for critical scholarship on all aspects of martial arts. Before this, the work of Douglas Farrer and John Whalen-Bridge had already proposed a name and opened up the theoriza- tion of a field in a way that expressed precisely the project I had long been trying to engage and develop in my own work. Later on, and crucially, even though I knew I was going to write a book about martial arts, I may never have sat down to write this particular book had it not been for the support, enthusiasm, and wise counsel of Meaghan Morris. All of these people were, in a range of ways, fundamental. Along the way, other people working in and around martial arts studies have contributed to my thinking, including but not limited to Kyle Barrowman, Esther Berg, Daniele Bolelli, Greg Downey, Adam Frank, Leon Hunt, Lynette Hunter, Gina Marchetti, Ruth Mayer, Dale Spencer, Sixt Wetzler, and Douglas Wile. Similarly, I would also like to acknowledge my gratitude to Martina O’Sullivan at Rowman and Littlefield International, who enthusiastically encouraged the project, and the reviews by Greg Downey, Ben Highmore, Ben Judkins, and Gina Marchetti, each of which gave it invaluable support. ix x Acknowledgements During 2013 and 2014, several generous invitations to present my work at some very different conferences enriched this book by challenging me to engage with central questions in ways that I otherwise may not have done. Ulrike Bergermann and Nanna Heidenreich invited me to speak at the con- ference ‘Universalism and Particularism in Postcolonial Media Theory’ at the Institute for Media Studies, University of Art, Braunschweig, Germany in May 2013. The paper I presented there has grown into the bulk of chapter 4. Michael O’Rourke and Éamonn Dunne invited me to their international conference, ‘The Pedagogics of Unlearning’, at Trinity College, Dublin, in September 2014, and my thinking around their challenging conference theme has been stitched into chapter 3. Chapter 3 also contains a revised and expanded version of a paper published in the ‘Martial Arts Studies’ issue of JOMEC Journal that I edited in June 2014. Similarly, ideas I first presented in a panel I shared with my fellow travellers Esther Berg and Hiu M. Chan at Kerry Moore’s conference, ‘The Meaning of Migra- tion’ at Cardiff University in April 2014, have been developed in chapter 2, as have ideas I first presented at the Chinese Film Forum Conference, ‘Chinese Cinemas In and Outside China’, organized by Felicia Chan and Andy Willis in Manchester in October 2013. I thank all of these people for providing stimulating and enriching contexts that have aided my thinking about martial arts studies. In addition, a sabbatical from Cardiff Univer- sity’s Research Leave Fellowship Scheme afforded the time and resources during the first eight months of 2014 to carry out much of the research and writing for this book. My thanks also go to the growing community of researchers whose ef- forts are currently broadening the field(s) of martial arts studies, only some of whose work I have been able to engage with in the following pages; and also, to all of my martial arts instructors, colleagues, and students, from all of the disciplines that I have either tasted, sampled, or gorged upon throughout my life. They continue to teach me much more than I know. Finally, as always and forever, to Alice and my daughters. Preface and Note on the Text he title Martial Arts Studies may imply comprehensive or encyclo- Tpaedic coverage. However, for reasons that will soon become clear, this work could never hope to be either encyclopaedic or comprehensive. Indeed, there has only been space to discuss some select moments in some scholarship on some aspects of some martial arts related to some wider issues in culture. In terms of ‘coverage’, then, only a few martial arts are even discussed in this book. Moreover, their treatment is always subordi- nated to other concerns—academic, theoretical, cultural, political. Many martial arts receive no mention at all. Similarly, in terms of the themes that often organize scholarship on martial arts: some problematics are treated at length, while others receive barely a mention. Doubtless this reflects a definite bias—a bias that receives attention in the following pages. But at this stage it suffices to say that this work does not claim to be the first word on martial arts studies and it certainly does not seek to be the last. Its focus is on select questions and problematics of (and for) an emergent field, rather than focusing ‘directly’ on specific martial arts or specific common academic themes. As readers who move further into the main body of the book will quickly become aware, the focus of this work is on subterranean matters, matters that subtend ‘case studies’, ‘themes’, or ‘examples’, in the usual sense. Nonetheless, case studies, themes, and examples abound. The point is, I have not organized the book schematically, whether in terms of styles, schools, historical periods, geographical regions, or anything else. xi xii Preface The book progresses organically via the developing explorations of emerg- ing problematics. That being said, readers may notice a greater attention to nominally Chinese martial arts than others. However, the book is not a study of Chinese martial arts. Rather, the specific studies within it—whether ‘Chinese’ or otherwise—have been selected because their analysis relates to and can cast light upon wider issues, fields, contexts, and practices of martial arts and martial arts studies. Other texts and examples could have been selected—some will say ‘should have been’. It is my hope that they will be, and that the theoretical and analytical thrust that animates my analyses and discussions here will come to contribute to a diverse range of contributions to martial arts studies. As for the Romanization of Chinese terms: some of the authors I quote from use the Wade-Giles system (so they write t’ai-chi ch’üan and chi) while others use pinyin (so they write taijiquan and qi).