Martial Arts (and) Migration
'history is a process without a subject'
(Althusser 1976: 99)
'I do not hit: it hits all by itself'
(Bruce Lee, Enter the Dragon)
1. Introduction: Eclipsing the Human
When I was a child, I saw an item on a children's television news programme about an imminent total eclipse of the sun. The item centred on jet aircraft being sent out to 'chase' the eclipse. The idea, as I recall, was that the jets would try to maintain a position such that the total eclipse could be experienced for as long as possible. Scientific equipment of all sorts could thereby film, record, photograph and variously monitor the eclipse for as long as possible. And this was said to be important, I recall, because having the sun blocked out in this way would enable many more things to come into view than could normally be perceived. In other words, blocking out the sun enabled scientists to see and study and learn a lot more about the sun. Blocking out the sun in the study of the sun drew into visibility things to do with the sun that the sun itself normally blocked out.
This is an analogy or metaphor for what I want to do in this paper. I want to block out or bracket off the very thing that seems absolutely central and fundamental.[1] And the figure that I want to block out, here, in the context of current studies of migration,[2] is the figure of the migrant him or herself.
The migrant might seem like a peculiar figure to want to exclude from a discussion of migration. But I want to do so in order to see whether we can see more clearly some things that a too-focused focus on the figure of the migrant might remain blind to. Moreover, I want to suggest at the outset that in a sense the migrant is always and already blocked out by most, if not all, approaches to the study of migration anyway.
In any eventuality, such an exercise might potentially be helpful for studies of migration, just as eclipse-gazing might be helpful for studies of the sun. It might be the case that we can see more things related to the supposedly 'primary' object when that primary object itself is deliberately blocked from view. Indeed, in the terms of deconstruction, it is not only important but also necessary (albeit insufficient) to invert the presumed hierarchy of things in order to detect the presence and force of conflations, blocks, traps and displacements – or even to effect certain displacements that are already 'trying' to happen, or happening, at the same time as being blocked from happening because of the hold and sway of the presumed hierarchy of things.
To rephrase this, we can put it back into the terms of our eclipse-gazing metaphor: surely one of the things that the sun blinds us to is the whole range of other things that we are actually concerned with. Are we really concerned with the sun, or are we concerned with the effects of the sun on other things? Thus, similarly, with the figure of the migrant: what is the nature of our investment in this object? What is it that we are really interested in? This is not a personal question about personal motivations. It is a rhetorical question about discursive operations. The idea is that if we block out the figure of the migrant, we might be able to see what this or that discourse about the migrant is, in a sense, 'really about' – or also about.[3]
2. Migrant Effects
To put it polemically, I would propose that academic discourses about migration are considerably less 'about migrants' than they are about either the effects of migration, or the desired effects of themselves as contributions to this or that wider discourse about migration – whether academic, policy, journalistic or economic, and so on. Even discourses about the effects of migration on migrants are still discourses about the effects of migration rather than being about the migrants, purely and simply. The migrant is in a sense the pre-text, before the production of text.
To give just a few senses of what I mean: Political discourse about migration is really what Rancière would call police discourse, and is concerned with the effects of movements of 'types' on the geometrical hierarchies of a phantasy of the status quo (Rancière 1999). Economic discourse is obviously a dehumanizing discourse about the monetary consequences of movements of entities construed as forms of capital. Cultural studies discourses about migration are overwhelmingly focused on the effects on this or that context or environment caused by the addition of new types of cultural ingredients. Ethnographic or diasporic studies are the same sort of thing in reverse – focused as they are on the effects on the 'human types' caused by exposure to new contexts. And so on.
Another, more Derridean way of putting this might be to say that discourses of migration inevitably migrate away from migrants. They cannot but drift, diverge, double, and disseminate (Derrida 1981). This is because although migrants themselves may be the nominal or notional focus, they invariably become in some sense subordinated or marginalised to other concerns and questions – political, economic, cultural, managerial, academic, and so on.
As Derrida might say, the discourse is always going to be double, divided, maybe even duplicitous (see Bowman 2007). This is for at least two reasons: first, the referent is double. It is necessarily both the putative noun 'migrant' and the process 'migration'. Of course, each of these only exists in and through the other, which is why we sometimes separate and sometimes conflate them. Second, the focus is double: the migration/migrants are approached in terms of the dictates of this or that kind of approach (politics, management, economics, culture, statistics, whatever). The approach is as much a part of the focus as the thing approached. (These kinds of linguistic, conceptual and referential conundra are what led many poststructuralist thinkers, from Deleuze to Laclau, to prefer the language of processes, flows and logics, rather than nouns and referents.)
But, what seems to be shared in common by perhaps all approaches to migration is the question of effects. That is to say: most people involved in questions of migration seem ultimately to be concerned with effects of migration. However, despite this, the desire to organise discourses on migration in and around cultural studies by focusing on the figure of the referent of the migrant seems irresistible.
But what happens when we don't: when we think migration outside of migrants? This may seem impossible. Migration needs both bodies and movements – or, rather, populations and territories. Nation states, basically: the entire language and conceptual universe of migration is a product of the nation and population management discourse.
Nevertheless, to see what happens when we eclipse the figure of the migrant, we might consider the case of the spread and development of something that is indeed apparently entirely and inescapably embodied: martial arts and martial artists.
3. Martial Arts Migration
Studies of martial arts migration are very often organised by matters of the migration of certain key people – key teachers, in particular – or, conversely, the migration of students to and from these key teachers (Assuncao 2005; Frank 2006). This is hardly surprising. Martial arts practices are uniquely physical, embodied, interhuman, tactile, sensuous activities. They are essentially wedded and welded to human bodies. Embodied, physical, face-to-face, body-to-body contact is roundly regarded as the prerequisite for any kind of teaching, learning or transmission (Downey 2005; Frank 2006).
However, at the same time as this, all studies of martial arts dissemination are obliged to acknowledge to a greater or lesser extent that what went on around the key people that made the most difference. Indeed, what went on around the key people is what made those people turn out to be key.
For instance, as is well known, 'oriental' martial arts 'arrived' in Western popular consciousness thanks to the film and media explosion in the representation of these arts in the 1960s and early 1970s (Krug 2001). It was not until this time that Westerners even started to make enquiries about Asian martial arts. Non-Asian practitioners of Asian martial arts were, before the 1960s, rare and exceptional idiosyncrasies. It was the appearance of Asian martial arts in film and television that caused the boom in practice. The boom in practice was not simply caused by a boom in Chinese, Japanese or Korean immigration into the USA, Europe or the UK.
In fact, these embodied human practices can be said to have migrated separately – often paradoxically disconnected from any migration of the humans who were their embodiment. For instance, in the UK throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the nominally Korean art of taekwondo became by far the most widely practiced Asian martial art. But its spread had no connection to Korean migration. The martial art spread through franchises, syndicates, memberships and institutional hierarchies.
Similarly, in the USA, legend has it that before Bruce Lee started doing so, no Chinese would teach the 'secrets' of kung fu to white or black Westerners. Of course, this is not true. There were indeed a number of non-Chinese students of Chinese martial arts in the West before Bruce Lee started to teach non-Chinese. Rather, the crucial point is this: the significance of Bruce Lee was not that he taught non-Chinese people but rather that he taught Hollywood actors, directors and producers. This had exponential knock on cultural effects. Before this, the fact is that the primary reason why whites and blacks were not being taught kung fu was not that the American Chinese community was racist (see Chong 2012); rather it was because before Chinese martial arts began appearing on screen no one was asking to be taught kung fu.
Some whites and blacks in the US were learning Japanese and Korean martial arts, of course. But the fact is that these were only really known in the US because ex-U.S. military personnel, returning from Japan and Korea, began to teach them.
The massive proliferation of martial arts occurred because film and media images constituted the desire. Subsequently, this also arguably constituted the sense in Asian countries that there was a demand for Asian martial arts in the West. It was this sense of a possible US demand that pulled Chinese martial artists towards emigration to the USA and other countries. Adam Frank's ethnographic works frequently relate conversations about the fact that Chinese martial artists emigrate because of perceived demand for their skills in Europe or the US. This demand comes from a desire that is constitutively mediated, put in place by film and television.
4. The Meaning of Transmigration
In a sense, then, the meaning of martial arts migration and the meaning of Chinese migration should really be two very different questions. They have different temporalities and different logics, even if they might overlap.
Yet, the pedant might complain that only people or animals can migrate. Martial arts themselves cannot migrate, because, as the OED points out, the word 'migration' in English has only ever had three dominant (or correct) usages: the earliest refers to the movement of people; the most recent refers to the movement of animals; the middle or median usage referred to the movement or 'transmigration' of the soul (OED n.d.). So, if we are talking about the movement of martial arts across global borders of race and place and language, we are not talking about migration unless we are talking about the migration of a martial artist.
This is so unless we are talking about the transmigration of the soul or the spirit of martial arts, which I think we must be permitted to do.
But before turning to anything like a question of the soul or spirit, we have to engage with the fact that it does seem counterintuitive to try to separate the 'martial artist' from the 'martial art'. For, phrased like this, we are in the conceptual terrain of thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche and Judith Butler, and their various explorations of conceptual pairs like 'the dancer and the dance', 'the actor and the action', 'the doer and the deed', and so on (Butler 1990). For such thinkers, as is well known, it is an ontological mistake to hold an idea of a pre-existing actor outside of the action. The agent or actor only comes into existence as such in and through involvement in the social practice, which itself exists only insofar as it is defined as what it is by the force of social convention.
Given this, how could any study pretend to separate the martial artist from the martial art? The martial artist only exists in and as the practice of the martial art. The martial art only exists in its embodied practice.
My contention is that, although it may be a completely embodied entity, the entity embodying it need not be the same one. There can be jumps, breaks, discontinuities and ruptures. Indeed, arguably, there always will be: arguably every kind of 'communication' or passing on and passing over in martial arts must inevitably involve an element of discontinuity and rupture (Bowman 2010a). The inheritor is never a pure repeater, but always to some degree an impure reiterator (Derrida 1988).
Moreover, the point of the Nietzschean deconstruction of agent and agency is that performative practice is constitutive of agents, rather than the other way around. We can see this very clearly in the way that the cinematic 'movement image' of Bruce Lee both sparked a set of desires and taught one or more lessons in and through the same movements/images (Chong 2012). Lee produced a much-remarked mimetic tidal wave. He taught the world that it wanted something it had never even dreamed of. And he showed the world how to do it, outside of all physical contact and all formal pedagogical relations.
Lee's films produced many mimics. His movement-image supplemented and subverted many formal pedagogical relations. After Bruce Lee, judo throws and Shotokan kicks were simply not enough. So-called 'classical karate' came to seem stultified and stultifying (Lee 1971). Indeed, it is to Bruce Lee's movement-image, on the one hand, combined with the power of the franchise system, on the other, that we can attribute the subsequent popularity and proliferation of the flamboyant and high kicking Korean martial art of taekwondo. This came to pass because of the desire to kick high, fostered by the cinematic spectacle, and fed by the institutional speed of taekwondo associations.
The cinematic martial arts spectacle (especially Bruce Lee) had multiple and contrary effects. It sent some people running to formal martial arts schools – of any kind – whatever was available. It sent other people running away from formal martial arts schools – and running into inventing their own hands-on, DIY approaches to martial arts – in accordance with the ethos of Bruce Lee's anti-establishment jeet kune do (Bowman 2010b, 2013).
Styles, techniques and movements were copied from films. Weapons were crafted in school metalwork and woodwork rooms. People wearing black belts emerged from out of nowhere. Training videos and then DVDs came onto the market. Then there was YouTube… Now, whether yours is an orientalist phantasy involving swaying bamboo, Chinese string music and silk pyjamas, or proletarian Chinese street clothes in back alleys between tower blocks, or Thai boxing shorts on the beach, or military combat pants and para-boots in pub car parks, there is a DVD or YouTube feed for you.
Manifesting as movement-images, martial arts migrate from body to body like a virus. Some are even reanimated from the frozen mists of time, like the long dead ancient Greek art of Pankration, which was reconstructed post-WWII. Virus combines with virus, mutates and sometimes threatens a new pandemic. The first great pandemic was carried by celluloid in the 1970s, when it seemed 'everybody was kung fu fighting'. Infection rates are difficult to gauge, but what is clear is that the young are most at risk. Another pandemic seemed imminent in the wake of Batman Begins (2005), when the unusual new martial art used in the fight choreography was given almost as much attention as the other aspects of the production.
Capitalising on this publicity, the devisers of the fighting style itself ('KFM' or 'Keysi Fighting Method') embraced both DVD and online means to disseminate their 'new' art as quickly and as widely as possible. They made and sold a full range of training videos, from white belt level through to black belt level.
Ironically, this most mediated of martial arts innovations painted itself as most physical, most 'real'. It had to be trained with a partner, or ideally two; and it was touted as being born on the street, and designed for the street.
This happened in the 'noughties'; but TV's Ultimate Fighting Championship (the UFC) had achieved something similar – and on a much bigger scale – in the early '90s. 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 spectacle: it had to have fixed round lengths (for ad breaks), spectacular techniques (to avoid viewer boredom), and fixed match lengths (to facilitate programme scheduling).
Soon, the UFC's deconstruction of styles produced its own style, 'Mixed Martial Arts' (or MMA). MMA itself was a hybrid form, hegemonized first by what was either called Gracie Jujitsu, or, more commonly, Brazilian Jujitsu (BJJ). In fact, the UFC had been the brainchild of the Gracie family, who had devised it as a way to legitimise, popularise and monetise their style. BJJ is now one of the most widely known and popular martial arts styles in the world.
What is clear about the many recent mutations of 'real' or 'reality' or 'street' or 'no frills' martial arts is that they are constitutively mediated – postmodern cultural productions for a media age. And, as case studies, they cast light on many important issues, related not only to martial arts, but also to culture, its causalities, relations and effects.
My argument has been that the role of mediatisation, whilst easily regarded as secondary, is arguably primary and constitutive for the dissemination of martial arts – whether those arts be postmodern, hybrid, 'classical', 'traditional', or whatever. In this relation, the much-fetishized figure of the martial art migrant is arguably secondary to the media-image, both in the sense of 'coming after' and in the sense of coming 'because of', or indeed, 'in response to'.
There is much more to say about this than time allows now. But, in conclusion, having thus eclipsed the figure of the martial arts migrant in the name of attempting to think this character's relations and effects, what happens if we now let the martial arts migrant figure return. As Barthes put it, this character can now return, but must now be regarded as a 'figure in the carpet', and not as the origin and basis of the relations in which we might still want to think of him or her as the 'centre'.
This is because, in Derrida's sense, the centre is a presence-effect. In Foucault's sense, the central figure is an effect of a network of power/knowledge. In my sense, the central figure is a simulation, who looks must uncannily like David Carradine's wandering, orientalist, 'yellowface' Kwai Chang Caine character from the 1970s TV show Kung Fu: in other words, a completely fictional yet absolutely true entity who shows that martial arts migrate not just through blood, sweat and physical contact, but by a process of transmigration from screens to minds to bodies. This is the new 'paradox of the martial arts': that the migration and the mutation of martial arts styles outpaces the migration of martial artists, even though martial arts are inextricable from lived, embodied, bodily practices.
References
Derrida, Jacques (1981). Dissemination. London: Athlone.
——— (1988). Limited Inc. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Lee, Bruce. 1971. Liberate Yourself from Classical Karate. Black Belt Magazine.
OED. n.d. In Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[1] The image of the sun as at once both centre and source of light whilst also at the same time (and by the same token) the absolute blind-spot, is one that philosophers have used in various ways for quite some time. For instance, the sun has been a metaphor for the paradigm, for the way of seeing – or, as the old zenrin poems put it: for 'the eye that sees but cannot see itself' or 'the sword that cuts but cannot cut itself', and so on.
[2] This paper was written for the conference 'The Meaning of Migration', at Cardiff University on 17th April 2014.
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