Taijiquan & Deconstruction, part 5: the politics of kung fu dreams
5 Academic Discourse and Hegemony
Academic discourse may seem inconsequential. It is easy to think that academic work is not connected to anything. However, because academic discourses constitute 'knowledge', they are strangely central even if academic work is very often disparaged or undervalued.
Academic production (papers, articles, chapters, books) is something that seems especially open to two types of reception. First, it can be accepted as truth. Second, it can be written off as 'wrong'. But there are very many possible positions in between. In fact, as anyone who works in any field of academia will be able to attest, contrary to the myths of scholarship, an academic discipline is very rarely, if ever, a field of consensus. Academic disciplines and discourses are very often fuelled by disagreement.
Moreover, an academic discourse is precisely that – a discourse; and it is so in the sense given to the term by theorists like Michel Foucault and Ernesto Laclau. Accordingly, as a discourse, one will be able to look for hegemonies, made up of positions, each with different values and orientations, each constituting and investing in different entities and identities. Discourses and hegemonies often invent entities – John Mowitt calls the things that academic subjects focus on and talk about 'disciplinary objects' (Mowitt 1992). Disciplinary objects are important because they both derive from and feed back into wider discourses about the world. They may not necessarily be verifiably real (such as God, whose existence is a matter of faith but who exists within and structures theological academic discourses), or they may be actually existing things in the world but given very different characteristics within an academic context (for instance, 'subcultures' as experienced and lived by members may be a world away from the way subcultures are discussed and studied in academia).
Taijiquan can be regarded as a 'disciplinary object' that exists within multiple discourses and senses. In some of them, it reflects and reinforces hegemony in certain ways. In others, it may subvert or change hegemonies. But, focusing first on its academic treatment: If we recall Adam Frank's argument that in much Chinese discourse, taijiquan is constructed and treated as a 'master symbol' of 'China' and 'Chineseness' (Frank 2006), then we can see how academic discourses both derive from and feed back into wider discourses.
The relations that Frank discerns between Chinese academic discourses about taijiquan and wider ideologies that circulate about taijiquan are illuminating, and should be borne in mind in any kind of martial arts studies that seeks to be circumspect, self-reflexive and critical vis-à-vis 'ideological' positions. As he notes:
The subjugation of the martial, that is, 'the real', is no more readily apparent than in the substantial Chinese scholarly literature that has developed around martial arts in general and taijiquan in particular. In addition to the martial arts training manuals that are popular both inside and outside PRC, a substantial literature has been generated through the sports universities' martial arts departments. Most of these sports universities produce journals, and many of the journals have a section devoted to martial arts history and research. Several independent journals are devoted entirely to either martial arts or sports history, a field that has grown out of the folk sports movement of the 1950s. (Frank 2006: 183)
Two points are worth emphasising here. On the one hand, martial arts are 'institutionalised' twice over: first, within universities; second, in terms of an 'attending discourse' of academic literature. On the other hand, the first discursive operation – the first 'working over' of the raw material of martial arts can be discerned. Frank notes this in the first sentence: the reality of martial arts is worked over in the academic discourse such that the 'martial' is subordinated to other foci. Then, when these other foci are established, sets of pertinent disciplinary questions and problematics are constructed:
As in the United States, scholarly literature both keys in to existing discourses and generates its own discursive space. The hard science articles are generally devoted to the medical aspects of taijiquan and to issues of kinesiology and physiology. Wang Jinghao's 'Effects and Mechanism of Taiji Exercise on Hyperlipidemia and Diabetes II' (2001) is a typical example of this literature in that it trades on the language of modern science to validate and reify the 'traditional' (taijiquan) as an essential feature of Chinese identity. (183)
Here, Frank's contention is that even 'science' can become 'ideological', first in its very orientation (the questions it asks) and second in its conclusions (here, the connection between the idea that taijiquan has beneficial health implications and the wider discourse about 'Chinese identity'). Indeed, Frank continues:
Few such articles attempt to refute the health claims made by taijiquan practitioners (in contrast, for example, to the scholarly assault on the health claims made by Falun Gong practitioners; Frank 2004). Wang's article is no exception. The "effects" he speaks of are all positive ones. (183-4)
This is an extremely enlightening observation. For, on the one hand, we see that the very formulation of questions and approaches can be driven (consciously or unconsciously) by wider ideological agendas. Thus, in a discursive environment sympathetic to or supportive of a practice, it will be treated accordingly, whereas the opposite is also true: the borders between taijiquan, qigong and Falun Gong are often very grey indeed, but they can be formulates as (if) opposites in certain discursive conjunctures. Accordingly, the questions and conclusions posed 'scientifically' about Falun Gong are negative.
Outside of 'science', Frank notes that in China, 'journal articles in the humanities and social sciences vein tend to focus on the relationship of martial arts to other "traditional arts." The social science discourse is often explicitly linked with the project of Chinese nationalism' (184). In other words, scholarly discourse often marches – consciously or unconsciously – to the beat of wider socio-political drums. In the Chinese context, Frank points out essentialism after essentialism structuring the humanities approach to Chinese martial arts. For instance:
[One] essay accepts the Herderian notion of das Volk without question, adapting Herder's position of a single-class society where 'the folk' are on equal footing with elites. [The] discussion of martial arts in the article treats such arts as uniformly ancient, as if they are neither modern inventions nor arts that undergo constant evolution. [Another] takes a diffusionist approach to Chinese martial arts as a means of preserving and spreading fundamental Chinese values. (184)
Discerning such essentialisms may require a certain kind of academic focus. But Frank also points to the frequent circulation within supposedly scholarly work of widely refuted myths and legends about martial arts. He observes that this tendency comes from and feeds back into the wider discourses in a number of ways:
Scholarly literature on martial arts in Chinese journals also legitimizes tourist sites as master symbols of the nation-state. Historical and scientific articles often repeat taijiquan origin stories, for example, and thereby lend them the weight of authority. The state has thus been able to requisition martial arts in general and taijiquan in particular as ur-symbols of Chinese culture. The production of this image can be quite precise: for example, the symbol that the Chinese Olympic Committee adopted in its successful bid for the 2008 Olympics is an abstracted depiction of the taijiquan move 'Downward Posture' (xia shi). This symbol appears everywhere in reference to the upcoming Olympics. (184)
With this type of conjunctural analysis, Frank is able to show the complex interactions between different 'levels' and contexts of discourse, including nation building, in institutions and bodies, and ideology dissemination for various ends – nationalistic, again, but also touristic: the trade in essentialisms is as good for national myths as it is for stimulating tourism. This is all condensed in both the symbol and the institutional reality of the Shaolin Temple, of course: 'The temple had seen its share of trouble, so the governmental support was crucial, even if the price was a certain shift in identity from religious order to national symbol' (180):
Since the mutual decision of the Shaolin order's abbot, Shi Yongxin, and the Party to promote the Shaolin Temple as one of the chief tourist spots in China, local people had found a steady, if not earth-shaking, source of income (Jakes 2001). The short- and long-term foreign students at the temple schools numbered in the thousands. Single-day tourists like me added thousands more. And the Chinese students who passed through the hundreds of large and small martial arts schools that surrounded the temple and spilled out into the countryside numbered in the tens of thousands. Like the boys who learned Chen style taijiquan in Wenxian County, many of the students in these Shaolin schools were poor peasant children fulfilling a dream come true. (179)
Domestic nationalistic dreams and foreign touristic dreams thus coincide in locations like the Shaolin Temple and in international taijiquan and kung fu competitions:
To return to Benedict Anderson's notion of vernacular languages of state, the sensual language of the Shaolin Festival in Dengfeng would, within a matter of hours, be communicated nationwide, and even internationally, through the foreign martial arts media present. The color, the music, the presence of Ganesh, and the unified, martial movement of dozens or hundreds of bodies combined to make a powerful statement about an ideal typic Chineseness. (178)
With such observations, we see the complexity of the ideological-institutional traffic between the subject, the nation, the state, and its policies, institutions and practices, as well as academic orientations, media discourses, and the wide ranging traffic in essentialisms that produce and organise 'kung fu dreams' which merge interchangeably with 'dreams of Chineseness'. And, it seems, all people are equally susceptible to the effects of 'Chinese kung fu dreams'. Which is precisely why it might say that the ultimate object of politics and management is 'dreams'.
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