Asian Martial Arts in the Asian Studies Curriculum
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JOMEC Journal Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies Asian Martial Arts in the Asian Studies Curriculum Douglas Wile Brooklyn College, CUNY, and Alverno College Email: [email protected] Keywords martial arts liberal arts Asian Studies cultural studies higher education Abstract This article is both a review of the current state of martial arts studies and a survey of the status of martial arts in higher education. It provides a rationale for inclusion of martial arts courses in the Asian Studies curriculum and a resource guide for designing such courses. Finally, it interrogates the persistence of the body-mind split in liberal education in spite of intense interest in embodiment across multiple fields of scholarship. Contributor Note Douglas Wile is Professor Emeritus of Brooklyn College-CUNY, former instructor of medical Chinese and history of Chinese medicine at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine- NYC, and current assistant professor of Chinese language and Asian Studies at Alverno College, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is the author of six books on Asian martial arts, one on ancient Chinese sexual practices, and one on traditional Chinese women’s medicine, as well as articles on the philosophical and religious dimensions of Asian martial arts. The current article is based on his martial arts research, together with the experience of developing and teaching two martial arts courses within liberal arts curricula. cf.ac.uk/Jomec/Jomecjournal/5-june2014/Wile_Curriculum.pdf The Current State of Martial Arts in philosophy and the social sciences, and American Higher Education institutional encouragement of cross- disciplinary collaborations, martial arts In spite of unprecedented disciplinary as lived cultural practices are perfectly diversity in higher education, and the positioned to capitalize on all three enormous popularity of Asian martial trends. arts in the general culture, martial arts and liberal arts continue to exist in Martial arts scholarship, too, in both parallel universes. The landscape of sophistication and volume, has reached higher education in the West has an impressive level of maturity. In the undergone its tectonic shifts, volcanic nineteenth century, Sir Richard Burton eruptions, earthquakes, and meteor (1821-1890), explorer and scholar, impacts. Traditional disciplines like Greek introduced the neologism ‘hoplology’ for and Latin have been eroded by the his research on combative science as a vernacular languages; history, philosophy, branch of human behavior. His work was theology, and natural philosophy have revived in the mid-twentieth century by made way for the social sciences, Donn Draeger (1922-1982), and disciples psychology, and natural sciences; and in Robert Smith (1926-2011), and Hunter more recent years, the tide of inclusion Armstrong, whose research had a has given rise to women’s studies, ethnic distinct Asian emphasis. During the studies, cultural studies, and queer 1960s and ’70s, mass market magazines, studies. Meanwhile, physical education is such as Inside Kung Fu and Black Belt no longer merely sport, recreation, and and style specific journals such as Tai exercise, but thoroughly infused with Chi occasionally published scholarly medicine, kinesiology, psychology, and articles on the martial arts, as did sociology. However, the few credit- academic journals in psychology, bearing martial arts courses offered in physical education, history, anthropology, higher education have largely been sociology, and medicine. These were confined to physical education or dance followed in the 1980s and ’90s by self- departments, and the fact that yoga is consciously scholarly publications, such similarly absent from Indian Studies as the Journal of Asian Martial Arts, The departments tells us that the segregation Taijiquan Journal, and the Journal of the is systemic. Chen Style Research Association of Hawaii, which established martial arts Everywhere in academia today the studies as a legitimate scholarly movement is from theory and ‘chalk and specialization. At the rounding of the talk’ to practice and ‘hands-on’ projects. twenty-first century, the internet has The natural sciences have their labs; the provided a platform for a host of blogs, social sciences their fieldwork; the arts online forums, and podcasts, such as their studios; engineering, design, and Neijia: the Qigong and Taijiquan Forum, architecture their models and proto- Journal of Combative Sport and Martial types; and languages their immersion Arts, Rum Soaked Fist: Internal Martial and study abroad. The humanities in Arts Forum, The Iaido Journal, Journal of general have moved from memorization Chinese Martial Studies, Kung Fu Tea, to critical thinking, and internships are and The Last Masters. Distance learning, the order of the day. With the revival of hybrid courses, and open courseware interest in Dewey’s experiential learning, have opened up new possibilities in the emphasis on embodiment in education, but audio and video 1 www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal instruction, although valuable adjuncts, Where dance may analyze movement serve to highlight the uniqueness of through Laban Movement Analysis, and tactile transmission of knowledge in the physical education through bio- martial arts. mechanics, Asian martial arts utilize the language of traditional cosmology, However, in spite of a considerable body medicine, and meditation. Within the of scholarship and pervasive new media, Asian sphere, various styles are in the thirty-five years between 1976, distinguished by nation, region, and when I debuted ‘Tai-chi Ch’üan: It’s ethnicity, by technical emphasis Theory and Practice’ as a credit-bearing (punching, kicking, grappling, etc.), course in a large East Coast Modern stances (high, low, middle, or ground), Languages Department and 2010, when I military or personal, practical or esthetic, introduced ‘Asian Movement Arts: hard or soft, internal or external, direct or Taijiquan, Karate, and Yoga’ in a small circular. What they have in common, and Midwestern Dance and Theater Depart- what distinguishes them from Western ment, there have been precious few martial arts, or even sports, is the successors. Although martial arts initially emphasis on internal energy over entered American education through the strength, softness over hardness. In back door – military academies and terms of physical development, there is immigrant communities – parents are not one word in all of the premodern now just as likely to send their children literature on martial arts about muscular to the dojo as the ballet studio. To be development, and the visual record sure, there is often a lag between shows smooth bodies with no muscular popular culture and college curricula – definition; in terms of internal witness film studies, jazz, and modern development, the emphasis is on dance – but why, in spite of progress in relaxation of the chest and abdomen, inclusion, experiential learning, and allowing the breath and qi to sink to the scholarship, do martial arts continue to dantien (lower abdomen), by contrast have, at best, a marginal role in college with prominent pectorals and tense curricula? As social science methodology abdominals in Western physical culture. has evolved from positivist, to When it comes to the psychological phenomenological, to observer/partici- strategies derived from traditional pant approaches, surely there is military science, or the even subtler justification to move from ‘thick energetics of pressure points, acu- participation’ to thick pedagogy, where puncture channels, and ‘iron shirt’ scholar-practitioners involve their derived from Chinese medicine and students in both theory and practice. meditation, these are far outside the Moreover, with the sportification and physical education or dance paradigm. commercialization of many martial arts today, the college classroom may well be In seeking a home for Asian martial arts the last best hope for preserving within the humanities, and specifically traditional cultural and philosophical Asian Studies, we must also acknow- values in the martial arts. It is our ledge that Asian Studies is far from a contention, then, that Asian martial arts, settled and uncontested discipline. inherently multidimensional, can find the Criticism from the left – characterized by most congenial home within the Harootunian as a ‘growth industry […] multidisciplinary framework of Asian whose “inventories” have already Studies programs. exceeded the capacity for much further 2 www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal consumption’ (Harootunian 2002: 150) – 1906, Maeda Mitsuyo, disciple of judo’s focuses on the original sin of Cold War founder Kano Jigoro, was hired to teach governmental sponsorship, the indeterm- at Princeton. These were the first inacy of such terms as ‘Asia’ or ‘China’, attempts to invest Asian martial arts with the fetishization of language study, the American meanings and to naturalize reification of the nation state, and the them within the context of an intentional absence of theory. Rey Chow regards it cultural movement. This was also a as the anachronistic study of ‘enemies’ product of America’s Pacific expansion: and the site of ‘positivism, essentialism, Admiral Perry’s 1854 opening of Japan, and nativism – and with them the the annexation of Guam and Hawaii in continual acts of hierarchization, 1898, the Philippines in 1899, and the subordination, and marginalization – that 1900 Open Door policy in China. have persistently accompanied the Roosevelt’s interest