Bodies and Institutions: from Keysi to Taijiquan and beyond

As mentioned at the end of my last blog post, I would like to focus primarily 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. The following entry uses the apparently widely and wildly different martial arts Keysi and taijiquan as examples, in order to consider the relations between institutions and bodies.

Instituting Bodies 

The case of Keysi Fighting Method (discussed in my last blog entry) is exemplary of processes common to many martial arts institutions (and perhaps many other forms of social institution, to a greater or lesser extent). The dynamics that we can see at play here can certainly be seen to be at work in many martial arts at different times, especially in such precarious times as those of the passing on and passing over of the inheritance and the tradition. But it has all happened so much faster in this case because Keysi/KFM was catapulted into the limelight because of its association with the film Batman Begins. I have written about KFM's crucial connection with Hollywood before, in relation to the cultural legacies of Bruce Lee (Bowman 2013), but there remains more to say in the broader context of martial arts studies.

 

One such matter involves the relationship between institutions and bodies. For if, as so much sociological and anthropological work strongly suggests, bodily propensities, dispositions and capacities are more often than not strongly cultivated, then the idea of the natural and the universal become correspondingly problematic notions. Specifically, what becomes problematic is the connection of ideas like 'the natural' or 'the universal' to the idea of timelessness, or fixed and unchanging 'reality'.

 

The inexorable proliferation of ever more paradigms and approaches to hand-to-hand combat, and the ongoing development of individual styles themselves, all demonstrates that there is no single reality to combat. Rather, the 'reality of combat' will always be produced in the encounter between two or more combatants. The reality of combat between two untrained fighters will be very different to that between two people trained in boxing, or one trained in boxing and one trained in wrestling, or a judoka and a karateka, etc. In other words, martial arts institutions – indeed, all sorts of institutions – train bodies to behave in particular ways.

 

As Michel Foucault's studies of the emergence and effects of different sorts of social institution attest, human bodies and their capacities and propensities are moulded, produced and policed by institutions. In Foucault's vocabulary, institutions discipline bodies. They produce disciplined bodies. Many other scholars have offered different versions of the relationships between humans' physical capacities and institutions, but Foucault's offers a very clear correlation. Notions like 'enculturation' or 'habitus' do not offer the descriptive and analytical precision that Foucault's focus on institutional discourses promises. So in the following, preference will be given to a Foucauldian approach to the relationship between institutions and bodies.

 

One of the implications of Foucauldian and other arguments about the relationship between bodies and institutions is that we have to de-naturalise our understanding of human physical propensities. We have to denature the body. This idea may seem to be a very peculiar proposition, but it is exemplified in the active principle in the teaching and learning practices of a great deal of martial arts, wherever the learning requires the repetition of an 'unnatural' technique, movement or movement-system, until it becomes natural to the practitioner.

 

However, the becoming-natural of movements or movement principles is what I would call the becoming-institutionalised of the body. Thus, the point at which the unnatural or non-spontaneous movements of the martial arts become internalised, so that the practitioner does them naturally, is the point at which they have developed, in a Foucauldian sense, a disciplined or 'docile body'. Docility, here, refers to the lack of bodily resistance, rather than sedentariness. A body is docile in relation to an institution when it acts without resistance in accordance with the principles of the institution. Thus, the soldier who draws the weapon and charges forward in response to certain sights, sounds and signals (rather than running away or cowering in a doorway), the pugilist who senses as soon as the opponent is in range and strikes automatically, or the internal martial artist who senses, yields and redirects the incoming force without thinking, can all be said to be 'docile'. Docile means disciplined, and disciplined means entirely part of a movement system.

 

Instituting Nature

 

What this means is that 'the natural' is an effect of training. 'Natural movement' is institutionally constructed. Now, whilst this may be uncontroversial to some dimensions of martial arts discourse (one learns a movement system that 'becomes second nature'), there are other dimensions in which such a propositions seems deeply problematic. At one end of the spectrum would be the 'modern' (post-Bruce Lee) 'discover your own natural movement' perspective. At the other end of the spectrum would be the 'ancient' 'timeless' Taoist 'essential truth' perspective. I mention these two ends of the spectrum because they often seem so antithetical to each other – almost polar opposites, in fact. However, they both share the term 'nature', although they may disagree about what that term means.

 

Put very schematically, we might group contemporary 'scientific' or 'verificationist' martial arts into one group. Bruce Lee spearheaded this approach to martial arts in the west. The key principle is to establish what works best and most efficiently based on systematic research and individual experience. Thus, even if verificationist martial arts become 'scientific' in approach, that scientific approach will be based upon a belief in 'the natural' – natural, individual, bodily, physiological, mechanical principles. I think of this as the Fight Club version of the natural. It is a belief that every body has its own 'natural', and that the best thing to do is to 'find' that nature for oneself, rather than joining an institution and having an artificial system imposed upon the body. This is 'natural' is individual, contingent and bodily. My natural movement may be different from your natural movement, but we will both have 'natural movement'. It may be unnatural for me to try to copy your movement, because we may be different sizes and shapes and have different histories. This is the 'find your own truth' version of nature. It is typically anti-institutional and verificationist.

 

The putative polar opposite of modern verificationist martial arts approach would be that occupied by the 'ancient and timeless' camp. This would be exemplified by the contemporary 'Taoist' taijiquan and qigong nexus, which perceives 'nature' as constant, timeless and universal. Admittedly, 'constant' here refers to a constant state of change, but the point is that in contradistinction to modern 'evolving' martial arts and combat systems, the discourse of 'Taoist' martial arts is one of tradition.

 

All martial arts have their traditions, and all martial artists have their places within and their relations to traditions. But the point to be emphasized here is that there are two different pedagogical paradigms in play: verificationist approaches to martial arts involve free experimentation and inventive development: you find out what works for you. You can take advice or not take advice. The choice is yours. But traditionalist approaches hold that the wisdom is encoded within the traditional forms, kata and training exercises (such as step sparring, technique sparring, push hands, sticking hands, and so on). Thus, in traditionalist martial arts, one may experiment, but only in terms of applying principles. Transgression of the principles is transgression of the wisdom encoded in the martial art. Thus, in taijiquan push-hands, it would simply not do to smash into your partner with punches and kicks that force their way through their posture or moves. This would be force against force and it is anathema to taijiquan. Doing this would mean that you weren't really doing taijiquan.

 

So there are two senses of nature in play here, both with different sorts of institution around them. The nature to be discovered in modern verificationist martial arts will always be singular or particular to the individual. The nature to be discovered in traditionalist martial arts will be regarded as universal or timeless. Both senses of nature involve a different sense of 'institution'. 'Nature' in taijiquan takes the form of timeless universal principles, which translate into timeless natural biomechanical principles. Institutions are necessary and respected. The student must be conformist. The student learns how to embody and actualise universal principles in prescribed movements and logics of interaction. The pedagogical institution is one of simultaneous cultivation and stripping back of encultured 'mistakes'. The discourse states that what is being taught is natural, but that our everyday lives have made us forget how to move, act and react 'naturally'. This 'natural movement' is attained by learning the most unnatural-looking of movement sequences (such as a taiji form).

 

Verificationist martial arts may regard such an approach to learning as conformist and stultifying – as a movement away from the natural or the nature of combat, without any proper return to it. Tales abound, in the world of modern innovations into martial arts training, about how martial artists discovered painfully that they had been deluded about the nature of combat by their martial arts training; about how fear and adrenaline made them freeze or made all of their techniques fail; about how they lost their balance or grip and couldn't compensate; about how they had never trained for being attacked by multiple opponents, and so on. Thus, a 'martial art' like taijiquan could easily come to represent the most fake and artificial of institutions.

 

If the natural in taijiquan and other 'internal' martial arts involves adopting a strong, relaxed posture with a nice straight spine and low shoulders and elbows to enable the greatest sensitivity and smoothness of response and movement, in a verificationist approach like Keysi Fighting Method, this is the height of artifice. In Keysi, the natural is represented in terms of what you would do when attacked by multiple opponents spontaneously – and this involves putting your hands on your head and curling up into a ball to protect your head, face, neck, chest, belly and groin. So, whilst many martial arts seek to train this 'foetal position' out of students, Keysi seeks to build up a robust response based on the assumption that you will curl up like this anyway, and that it is a good strong starting position for a counterattack. Hence, in Keysi, 'the pensador', or 'thinking man' posture – of stooped position with hands on head – becomes the basic stance. It is the opposite of a superior natural position in taijiquan, but in Keysi its superiority derives from the fact that it will come naturally to any untrained person anyway. What Keysi strives to do is to build strong strategies, tactics and movement principles from this natural position.

 

To use a binary that is often applied to Chinese martial arts: if taijiquan is an 'internal' or 'soft' art, then Keysi would seem to be an 'external' or 'hard' art. And it is true: Keysi involves charging like a bull and smashing into an opponent with elbows, hammer-fists, shoulders, head, knees and feet, in a way that taijiquan never would. However, when assessed in terms of certain other principles that characterise 'soft' styles, Keysi may not seem quite so 'hard', or quite so 'opposed' to so-called soft styles. For instance, Keysi often involves circling around an attack or a hold. It also generates power from posture and the abdomen and torso. These are two tenets of internal arts.

 

So, for any inclined to do so, or for any who are trained to look accordingly, even something as hard and brutal as Keysi could conceivably be claimed for the 'universal' and 'timeless' truths of the principles advocated by contemporary Taoist martial arts.

 

On the other hand, such a mode of viewing could be characterised either as projection or as sophistry. To view Keysi as akin to internal martial arts can just as easily be made to appear ridiculous as it can be made to seem possible. Nevertheless, whichever way one views all of this, one feature remains present and active. This is the often invisible role of some kind of institution or discourse in the production and management of what is deemed natural. The natural is produced, and it is produced in discourses and reproduced in institutions. These institutions materialise in practices, and these practices are organised by terms, concepts and myths.

 

I have focused on the idea of nature and the natural here, in order to deconstruct it by revealing the ways in which it works within different sorts of discourse.  I have not yet deconstructed 'nature' and 'the natural' in terms of history and ideology, but I will do so next.