Instituting Reality (in) Martial Arts: some thoughts inspired by the demise of KFM
At the beginning of 2013, news emerged of the break up of a martial arts partnership that had promised – or threatened – to take the world by storm. Justo Dieguez and Andy Norman had trained together and devised an approach to martial arts training that became a discrete fighting system; one that had gone on to be touted, by themselves and others, as revolutionary. It was first called KFM, which was short for Keysi Fighting Method; but apparently because of the number of other companies called KFM (including, inevitably, many radio stations), the acronym was soon dropped and the name changed to Keysi. However, at around the time of this name change, the partnership between Dieguez and Norman broke up. In fact, it seems likely that the name change from KFM to Keysi occurred at the moment and because of the breakup of the Norman and Dieguez partnership. So KFM is no more, and Dieguez continued with a style called Keysi. Andy Norman appears to be involved in a project called Defence Lab. The activities of the other people who appear in the early KFM training videos are not known, but I expect them they are likely to have mixed feelings about the many massive tattoos that they all sport, across their chests and backs, which will presumably continue to say 'KFM' in thick black letters.
At the time of writing, in early February 2014, many remain unclear about exactly what happened in the relationship. But it is easy to speculate. Norman, who is from Hull in Yorkshire, has recently been involved in other UK-based projects, and his name has been associated with other UK 'street self-defence' programmes. The orientation of these seem similar in approach to that of Keysi, so the obvious speculation here would be that Dieguez and Norman fell out about disagreements in foci, orientation, or teaching or business practices. If Norman had branched out into other projects whilst KFM was still alive and kicking, Dieguez may have felt that Norman was trying to simultaneously compete with Keysi whilst still also benefitting from both the Keysi/KFM brand and, presumably, income stream. Or maybe Norman branched out after their professional relationship ended. And this relationship may have ended for any number of reasons – personal, financial, ideological/philosophical, logistical, pedagogical, theoretical or practical.
I will not speculate on personal or financial matters, other than to say that I have heard it said that the Norman and Dieguez wanted to use different business models: one wanted to develop a franchise system, whilst the other wanted to remain small-scale and hands-on. This, in itself, might signal the presence of different ideological and theoretical/pedagogical biases, rather than just different ideas about how best to make a living from Keysi/KFM. In any case, all such matters are so intricately interconnected that it would always be something of a subjective matter of interpretation to make a decision about whether or not one or the other's orientation was to be regarded as being led by financial concerns or by, say, a differing theory or ideology of pedagogy and knowledge dissemination.
This seems all the more unclear in the case of the erstwhile KFM because the initial way that they had disseminated the training methods of KFM had been via signing up online for 'courses' that took the forms of DVDs and downloadable MPEG videos, each containing a different 'belt' level. As one progressed through the levels, the cost of the next DVD or MPEG increased. The black belt course was the most expensive.
Accordingly, given this earlier or initial (postmodern) adherence to the computer mediated dissemination of the KFM syllabus, it seems somewhat unfair to go on to frame a disagreement in terms of one founder wanting to 'remain' more hands on and intimate with students (in order to 'maintain standards'), whilst the other founder is framed as having somehow transgressed some 'initial/authentic' intimacy by wanting to materialise and embody the initial DVD and MPEG mode of dissemination by setting up a franchise system actually based on the production and establishment of actual human 'hands on' instructors and physically present schools.
Nevertheless, it does isolate and identify the paradox not only of Keysi/KFM discourse, but also that of all 'real', 'practical', or 'no frills' martial arts in a media-saturated world: on the one hand, they are resolutely and absolutely 'about' the physical, the 'hands on'; but, on the other hand, and to a much greater extent, they are known, disseminated, and circulated by various media – film, DVD and MPEG. Indeed, just as MMA came into existence as a result of the televising of the UFC, so one might say that KFM came into wider existence than a few men scrapping together thanks to its incorporation into the choreography of the film Batman Begins, and the space devoted to discussing KFM in the DVD extras and promotional behind the scenes clips that became available around the feature film itself. In other words, both MMA and KFM share certain key characteristics and a paradox: both champion 'bare/brute reality', but both are constituted in and by a mediascape.
In other words, there are good grounds for taking a broader perspective on the wider cultural dimensions at play in the constitution and breakdown of KFM, regardless of any 'personal' matters in this particular case. To borrow a phrase from 1970s feminism, the personal is political. It is also highly cultural, and, as I will argue, deeply institutional.
On Frills and No Frills
I have discussed the paradoxical relationships between virtuality or mediatisation and physicality or 'reality' elsewhere (Bowman 2013). Before returning to it again, I would like to ponder some of the paradoxical dimensions that arise in relation to the institution of, so to speak, 'reality' martial arts, such as Keysi and MMA. The first is that of 'frills'.
Over the last few years, there have been more and more blogs, comments, discussions, stories and opinions circulating on the internet about practitioners and former practitioners of KFM coming to feel disgruntled with the development of its syllabus. At first, so these stories go, KFM was radical, practical and entirely pragmatic, but as time went on, showy frills, in the form of less plausible techniques, sequences, tactics and strategies, were added to the system.
The introduction of 'frills' would constitute a transgression of the original 'no frills' promise of the combat system formerly known as KFM. Cracks could easily emerge in the institutional structure of KFM if there were indeed internal disagreements between Norman and Dieguez about syllabus and methods, or if factions and camps emerged among Keysi-KFM instructors loyal to one or the other founder (Norman is based in the UK; Dieguez is based in Spain, and has also made regular appearances on US and Latin American television). If one founder and/or camp were to decide that the other co-founder or camp was moving away from, selling out on, diluting, contaminating or betraying the fundamentals of the system, then a split would come to seem more and more likely.
Precisely this kind of split for exactly these kinds of reason is a common story in the history of the martial arts. Traditionally, splits and factions emerge only after the death or retirement of the master, especially if no clearly differentiated hierarchy and no clear and unequivocal successor is in place (Krug 2001). Wherever there is confusion and contestation about who knows best, then the institution itself comes into jeopardy. It is unlikely that some 'simple' challenge match to determine seniority or superiority will ever happen, simply because grievances are often old, well entrenched and relationships are accordingly 'political'. Also, seniority and inheritance disputes normally take place between the 'elders' of a system, and these elders may not typically charge headlong in actual fisticuffs with each other. Institutional disputes are far more commonly carried out in the form of badmouthing other people's teaching practices, via claims that what the other person is teaching is not 'the real thing'.
In the contemporary commercial world, it is easy to see how this form of dispute can emerge all the faster than in earlier times. I use 1973 as a date to indicate the moment in time when everything really started to change, after the global emergence of martial arts as consumer possibilities (Brown 1997). Of course, this date is schematic and is used as a kind of shorthand. For the effects of the mediatization and commodification of martial arts were always going to be dispersed over time and place, and can even be said to be continuing, in different contexts, some of which remain highly traditional and less than fully 'commodified'.
Of course, the ideology, discourse, or hype of Keysi Fighting Method itself would baulk at the idea that it was itself a commodity or that it was offering a commodity. Keysi discourse – that is, what it says about itself, internally and externally, whether in pedagogical scenarios or in terms of marketing promotions – is a discourse about the real, about reality, about real 'street' self-defence; about re-educating yourself to improve your 'street IQ'. It is a discourse that is all about improving your abilities to deal with the shock and horror of a violent attack by multiple attackers, and so on. This commitment to exploring the psychology and physicality of violent encounters seems quite far removed from the idea of being involved in a business providing commodities. Nevertheless, it is a business and it offers a commodity, whether that is formulated in the language of 'services' (in which the company offers a service to individuals), or in terms of 'self-development' (in which the service offered promises to transform your mind and body), or in terms of merchandise (clothes, DVDs, MPEG training videos, and so on), or even accreditation ('belts').
The Paradox of Development in 'reality' martial arts
Against this backdrop, in which KFM or any 'reality' martial art is recognised as a business, an institution, and a system, we can return to the paradox of 'frills'. On the one hand, the 'no frills' reality martial art claims to have identified, and conceptually and physically mastered the problems and possibilities of certain sorts of physical encounters (primarily in the street or in a pub or nightclub). It claims to be a unique approach to such situations. It claims to know. But, on the other hand, its discourse still regularly includes two complicating sorts of statements. In the case of KFM, its training videos regularly insist that no student or practitioner should ever say or think 'yes, got that: what's next?' This is because believing you have mastered something – believing you have 'done it' or 'finished learning it' – is an arrogant mistake that could cost you dearly in a real situation. The basics must be ingrained and regularly tended to, dusted and polished.
However, at the same time, or second, Keysi discourse states that the system is ongoing, unfinished, evolving; that practitioners can and should explore and improvise; and that no one but you the individual person can come up with the right answer to any problem or 'question' (i.e., the attack, which forces you to ask the question 'how do I deal with this?').
On a conceptual level, the first statement seems to contradict the second. For, taken together, the statements seem to say: you must drum these movements into yourself, and never move away from trying to perfect them; whilst, at the same time, you should constantly experiment, or at least understand that your system – as embodied by your instructors and the founders – is liable to change in response to the results of the experiments and explorations of your teachers or the founders.
On an institutional level, the two statements are not contradictory. Rather, they initiate and facilitate the generation of a syllabus and a hierarchy. You need to have internalised and naturalised the movement skills of the system (the movement skills that are the system) before you can experiment with it properly. I emphasise the word 'properly' because although anyone can knock anyone else out and although any wildly flailing novice may indeed manage to land some strong blows, one is not doing KFM if one is flailing wildly. One is not doing any 'system' or 'art'. Just as one is not doing capoeira if one is doing judo. In other words, you have to learn a system mechanically in order to play with it artistically or to have the competency to know that you are actually in possession of what you are experimenting with.
Thus, although the system may not be absolutely or classically hierarchical, in the negative sense of students not being allowed to question teachers, it is hierarchical in the sense of operating according to the assumption that time and properly guided effort in learning the mechanics, strategies and tactics – the discipline and the language – of the system will result in increasing competence over time. Thus, the assumption is that beginner questions can be answered easily within the terms of the system itself, whereas more advanced questions, or problems that probe at the limits of the system in its present form could challenge the present form of the system. These would necessarily have to be formulated by more advanced participants, or advanced challengers from outside of the system.
Hence the paradox of development: if the system has always and already promised from the start to endow students with the capacity to master the most likely kinds of attack in the most likely kinds of places for such attacks, then what is the status of any development? Does development mean that the former version was in fact not delivering on the promise? Formulated like this it all seems to sound rather like washing powder adverts – in which expressions like 'new and improved', 'ultimate' or 'now washes even whiter' betray a kind of schizophrenic relationship to the past and the future. (If this new washing powder washes white clothes 'even whiter', then was the older version, which also claimed to wash white clothes dazzlingly white, doing?) Or, worse: fashion discourse, in which we so regularly learn that what 'looks great' today soon comes to 'look passé' before quickly moving on to 'look ridiculous'.
These different levels or registers of the interpretation and operation of KFM discourse (conceptual, institutional, marketing and fashion) are all active at any given time. The terms organise the entity: first as a unique paradigm (i.e., as avowedly different from other martial arts in this or that particular way); second, they also indicate its institutional form (you must follow this path to internalise this essence 'in your blood' or 'in your heart', as its mouthpieces say, and this internalisation will translate into a kind of unique logic of movement, of attack, evasion, defence, and the delivery of techniques according to this instituted movement logic); and third, they affirm the uniqueness of the system at the same time as promising constant change and development (as in: once you've 'got it' you can innovate and explore – or, to use the extremely closely related terms of Bruce Lee – you can 'add what is your own'). The fourth term that I have added here with the evocation of the discourse of 'fashion' is not something that any practitioner is likely to welcome. No one wants to believe that 'what they are really into' is an index of the cyclical movements of historical forces. Nevertheless, it raises questions for the historian or cultural analyst who wishes to assess any practice in relation to what came immediately before it, and before that.
Each of these realms and registers calls out for closer analysis. In my next blog post, I would like to focus further on the matter of conceptualising a martial art as an institution, an institution related to a mode of conceptualising or kind of conceptualisation, because such a focus will allow us to see some important dimensions of the relationships between institutions and bodies – or, in other words, bodies and theories, theories and methods, methods and practices, practices and productions, and productions and transformations.
Comments
Post a Comment