Paul Bowman

What is martial arts studies? Why did it emerge? What does it involve? The Martial Arts Studies Reader will provide an authoritative introduction and overview of this fascinating new field – a field that encompasses questions of race, gender, class, nation, ethnicity, identity, culture, politics, history, economics, film, media, art, philosophy, gaming, education, embodiment, performance, technology and many other dimensions of society. Written by pioneers in the field, The Martial Arts Studies Reader will be the authoritative guide for students, researchers, practitioners and anyone with an interest in the academic study of martial arts.

Explicitly inspired by Roland Barthes’ enormously influential Mythologies (1957), Mythologies of Martial Arts carries the spirit of Barthes’ incisive and engaging cultural and ideological criticism into the blossoming field of Martial Arts Studies.

Writing at the cutting edge of the emergence of both semiotics and deconstruction, in 1957 Mythologies pioneered an innovative and dynamic cultural criticism for the emerging post-war consumer culture. Six decades later, Mythologies of Martial Arts writes in its wake, long after semiotics and deconstruction have become ingrained in academic and intellectual discourses of all kinds, yet long before their questions and problems have become any less current. For, the questions and issues that Mythologies raised for a very diverse readership remain compelling today: what does this mean; how does this work on us; why do we desire this but not that; what effects do these images and practices have on us, and on others; where do these ideas, discourses and values come from, where do they take us, and where are they going?

Mythologies of Martial Arts focuses the key dimensions of the internationally circulating signs, signifiers and practices of martial arts in global popular culture. Informed by the author’s longstanding practical and professional experience in both martial arts (in which he has wide ranging experience) and academia (where he teaches, researches and publishes in cultural studies, film studies, media studies, postcolonial studies and martial arts studies), Mythologies of Martial Arts deploys the full range of resources that this personal and professional experience has afforded. It takes the form of short, engaging, accessible, yet fully referenced and academically informed essays on an extremely wide variety of subjects related to martial arts and the media cultures in which martial arts have always been steeped.

Postcolonial Studies

Rey Chow, Postcoloniality and Interdisciplinarity

Table of Contents


Notes on Contributors
Paul Bowman: Editorial: Rey Chow, Postcoloniality and Interdisciplinarity
Paul Bowman: Reading Rey Chow
Iain Chambers: Theory, thresholds and beyond
John Frow: Hybrid disciplinarity: Rey Chow and comparative studies
Marinos Pourgouris: Rey Chow and The Hauntological Specters of Poststructuralism
James Steintrager: Hermeneutic Heresy: Rey Chow on Translation in Theory and the ‘Fable’ of Culture
Rey Chow: Fleeing Objects

The Rey Chow Reader:
Modernity, Postcolonial Ethnicity, Filmic Visuality,
& Transcultural Politics

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
PREFACE:
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: Paul Bowman


Part 1
MODERNITY & POSTCOLONIAL ETHNICITY

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: Paul Bowman

1. The Age of the World Target: Atomic Bombs, Alterity, Area Studies
• Seeing Is Destroying
• The World Becomes Virtual
• The Orbit of Self and Other
• From Atomic Bombs to Area Studies

2. The postcolonial difference: lessons in cultural legitimation

3. Leading Questions, Writing Diaspora
• Orientalism and East Asia: The Persistence of a Scholarly Tradition
• Sanctifying the “Subaltern”: The Productivity of White Guilt
• Tactics of Intervention
• The Chinese Lesson

4. Brushes with Other as Face: Stereotyping and Cross-Ethnic Representation
• The Inevitability of Stereotypes

5. The Politics of Admittance: Female Sexual Agency, Miscegenation, and the Formation of Community in Frantz Fanon
• Race and the Problem of Admittance
• Community Formation and Sexual Difference: A Double Theoretical Discourse
• What Does the Woman of Color Want?
• The Force of Miscegenation
• Community Building among Theorists of Postcoloniality

6. When Whiteness Feminizes...: Some Consequences of a Supplementary Logic
• Is “Woman” a Woman, a Man, or What? The Unstable Status of Woman in Contemporary Cultural Criticism


Part 2
FILMIC VISUALITY & TRANSCULTURAL POLITICS

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: Paul Bowman

7. Film and Cultural Identity

8. Seeing Modern China: Toward a Theory of Ethnic Spectatorship

9. The Dream of a Butterfly
• “East Is East and West Is West, and Ne’er the Twain Shall Meet”
• “The Beauty. . . of Her Death. It’s a . . . Pure Sacrifice.”
• The Force of Butterfly; or, the “Oriental Woman” as Phallus
• “Under the Robes, beneath Everything, It Was Always Me”
• “It’s Not the Story; It’s the Music”
• Madame Butterfly, C’est Moi
• Coda: New Questions for Cultural Difference and Identity

10. Film as Ethnography
• The Primacy of To-Be-Looked-At-ness
• Translation and the Problem of Origins
• Translation as “Cultural Resistance”
• The “Third Term”
• Weakness, Fluidity, and the Fabling of the World
• The Light of the Arcade

11. A Filmic Staging of Postwar Geotemporal Politics: Kurosawa Akira’s No Regrets for Our Youth, Sixty Years Later

12. Sentimental Fabulations: Contemporary Chinese Films
• Where is the movie about me?
• Highlights of a Western Discipline
• Image, Time, Identity: Trajectories of Becoming Visible
• Defining the Sentimental in Relation to Contemporary Chinese Cinema

13. ‘Woman,’ Fetish, Particularism: Articulating Chinese Cinema with a Cross-Cultural Problematic
• ‘Woman’ as commodity and fetish: some observations about Chinese cinema
• Anglophone feminist film theory and the moral high ground of particularism
• Fetish power unbound

NOTES
INDEX

Editorial:
Jacques Rancière: in disagreement


Paul Bowman and Richard Stamp


There are many ways of being in disagreement. Over the past forty years, Jacques Rancière’s work has defined itself through disagreement. There have been significant disagreements: with Althusser, Bourdieu, Habermas, Lyotard, Derrida, Agamben, Badiou…; with the influence of Heideggerian categories for thinking politics and the political; with neoliberalism and thinkers of ‘consensus’; and indeed with the possibility of the concept of ‘political philosophy’ per se.

More recently, Rancière has explicitly elevated ‘disagreement’ to the status of the primary political category. His sense of the political character of disagreement has several dimensions. For firstly, there is the problem of recognition and of mutual intelligibility. This is not only the problem of ‘speaking the same language’, but the reciprocal problem of one group acknowledging that another group might be equals, equally able to command logos, sense and reason, and hence worthy of being listened to and perhaps responded to. At the same time, Rancière’s work insists on the importance of the always difficult task of establishing a shared, or common, ethos and topos for disagreement: ‘Those who say on gen¬eral grounds that the other cannot understand them, that there is no common language, lose any basis for rights of their own to be recognized’, he proposes, while ‘those who act as though the other can always understand their arguments increase their own strength ¬and not merely at the level of argument’. Hence, Rancière is communitarian precisely insofar as he is not a ‘Communitarian’: for what we share is disagreement, not consensus: it is dissensus between us that needs to be verified.

So this issue of parallax, Jacques Rancière: in Disagreement, seeks to establish a space for the verification of the disagreements within which Rancière intervenes, in a ‘sphere of shared meaning’. The issue was conceived as a way to clarify the nature of Rancière’s interventions into putatively distinct disciplinary and indeed geographical realms – politics, philosophy, history, film, aesthetics, literature, pedagogy, in francophone and – increasingly – anglophone realms; to illuminate the contours and the significance of his disagreements with others and, reciprocally, the nature of the disagreements that others have with him; and thereby to simultaneously demonstrate and verify the importance of Rancière.

The aim of this issue was to make explicit these lines of engagement and dissensus by inviting provocative thinkers and theorists to respond to the challenge of Rancière’s interventions – and to invite Rancière to respond directly to these contributions.

For responding so generously, even though up against so many other pressing commitments, we sincerely thank Professor Rancière. We thank all of our contributors, and we thank the editorial team of parallax, in particular Martin McQuillan, for affording us this opportunity to present some important disagreements.

“[Post-Marxism Versus Cultural Studies is] the first sustained scholarly assessment of the scandal of post-Marxism [which] traces the struggle – both intellectual and political – of academic Marxism to keep its footing on the long march through the institution. As the “versus” that hinges his title suggests, neither post-Marxism nor cultural studies remain unscathed by Bowman’s staging of this face off. Post-Marxism versus Cultural Studies rewards the serious reader concerned to come to terms with the discursive politics of the contemporary university”. John Mowitt (Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota).


“This is an ambitious book which will make a significant impact in […] an exciting field which is beginning to open up a sustained ‘thinking about’ politics from a post-structuralist perspective”. Martin McQuillan (Professor of Cultural Theory and Analysis, University of Leeds)



Contents



  Acknowledgements
  Preface

1 Cultural Studies and post-Marxism
1.1 Introduction: Of Deconstruction into Politics
1.2 The Discourse of post-Marxism
1.3 The Text of Cultural Studies
1.4 The Problem with the Text
1.5 The Institutional Articulation and Dissemination of Texts and Discourses

2 Cultural Studies versus post-Marxism
  2.1 Two Texts of Cultural Studies
  2.2 Stuart Hall’s Closure versus post-Marxist Discourse
  2.3 The Political Disciplinary Object
  2.4 Textual versus Discourse Analysis
  2.5 Cultural Studies versus Political Analysis
  2.6 The Object of the Subject
  2.7 Deconstruction versus Marxism

3. Theory versus Practice
  3.1 Practice versus Theory
  3.2 Theory versus Practice
  3.3 Post-Marxist Theory and Practice
  3.4 Banal Pragmatism versus High Theory
  3.5 The (dis)articulation of Theory and Practice
  3.6 Knaves versus Fools
  3.7 Investments and Institutions

4. Post-Marxist Cultural Studies’ Theory, Politics and Intervention
  4.1 Relations and Effects
  4.2 The Necessity of Articulation
  4.3 The Necessity of Institution
  4.4 The (Dis)Articulation of post-Marxism and Politics
  4.5 For a New Intervention
  4.6 The Necessity of Deconstruction

Bibliography
Index

This work engages with a longstanding problem of East-West cultural difference: the different conceptions of anatomy and biology between modern scientific/'Western' medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. To do so, the work focuses on only one example of difference: the Chinese notion of the dantian (丹田). This is not present in Western anatomy or biology. So, the question arises as to its objective existence: If Western science cannot detect it, what does it mean to say that it exists? Must a Westerner who has no prior exposure to such a notion believe in the dantian? What is the status of this belief? Many approaches to such questions turn to debates in phenomenology, epistemology, translation and religious studies. However, this work instead proposes a more direct way to proceed. It proposes that that such differences arise and can helpfully be understood in terms of the specific sensory maps and fields of the body that are developed by specific exercises, disciplines, or training regimes (what philosopher Peter Sloterdijk calls anthropotechnic practices).

This article examines the discourse of self-defence as it emerged and developed in the British context after the introduction of self-defence as a legal term in English common law in 1604. Twentieth century self-defence discourse is comparatively more well-researched than previous periods, but this study suggests that the concerns, contours and characteristics of current self-defence discourse were established much earlier, growing in the seventeenth, flowering in the eighteenth and maturing during the nineteenth centuries. The study traces this development by examining self-defence books published in Britain between the seventeenth and early twentieth centuries. This covers a 300-year period from 1604 (the year that the legal precedent for self-defence was set in England) to 1904 (the year in which publications on jujutsu mark an orientalist reconfiguration of a hitherto Eurocentric self-defence discourse). Key features of self-styled self-defence texts are discussed in order to clarify the concerns, approaches, and ideological investments of self-defence discourse through this period in this national context. This process reveals that self-defence discourse accrued a range of additional dimensions throughout this time period that remain common today. Self-defence began as a right, but soon began to be discussed as something to be prepared for. Such preparation implies training, and self-defence discourse soon morphs into a focus on training, and self-development, rather than an explicit focus on a potential future event. While discussing this, the article shows how and why 'self-defence' is an enduring discourse, with regularly reiterated patterns and features, one that can be picked up by multiple ideologies and for multiple purposes, because it is organised by the intimate melding of the enduring yet essentially variable and plastic notions of 'self', 'home', and 'threat'.

There are a growing number of studies of the history, development and spread of taijiquan and qigong. However, there are as yet few studies of taiji or qigong in the media. Based on a study of British media archives, this article traces the key contours of the construction and representation of taijiquan (popularly known as ‘tai chi’) in British media. In doing so, it establishes and critically evaluates the meanings and values that have been imputed to the practice in British media discourse. It first examines key representations of tai chi in the British context before the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, but proposes that the pandemic changed its status. It argues that popular understandings of Covid-19 as a respiratory infection led to an upsurge of interest in ‘breath-focused’ practices. In this context, taiji could potentially have stood to gain in popularity. However, the article argues that the difficulty inherent in learning taiji – especially during a time of lockdowns and social isolation – conspired to mean that it was not taiji but the related and hitherto lesser-known practice of qigong that saw an increase in popularity. It concludes with a reflection on ‘authenticity’ and the status of some new translation-constructions of hybrid taiji-qigong practices.

摘摇要:文章通过对亚洲传统武术“正宗性冶的审视,探寻亚洲传统武术的“正宗性冶与“非正宗性冶的二元论在西方
人意象中的这一现状,分析西方人对亚洲传统武术“正宗性冶的渴望以及亚洲在传承过程中“正宗性冶流变的必然
性等问题。与此同时,研究运用德里达解构主义从微观本体论的角度提出了“亚洲传统武术在传承过程中的改变
是不可避免的冶这一论述。为进一步证实此观点,以太极拳为案例研究讨论了改变的形式、改变的内容,以及传统
太极拳在西方的表现特点。文章意在呼吁全世界的武术学者与传承者传播正确的知识,而不是过度地追求“发明冶
的“正宗性冶。

This is the tenth issue of Martial Arts Studies, published almost exactly five years after issue 1. Over those five years the academic study of martial arts has come to look very different from when we began. In many ways, arriving at five years of biannual publications, with each of our issues containing influential and innovative scholarship, feels like a landmark achievement. But we are also now twelve months into our relationship with COVID-19. As much as five years of Martial Arts Studies has profoundly changed our field, COVID-19 has-in very different ways-changed the study of martial arts, possibly forever. Five years ago, we were still engaging the question of whether martial arts studies could ever be an academic field. After four years-twelve months ago-the field of martial arts studies was starting to feel fully realised, and that we were settling down into what now felt like business as usual. Then the pandemic hit, causing tumult, turmoil and transformation. Twelve months in, the consequences are still unfolding, for all countries and cultures, and in many social, cultural, and economic realms. Seeing research through into writing, then on through peer review and ultimately into publication, takes time. This means that the COVID-19 pandemic has not yet made its presence felt in all of the articles in this issue of Martial Arts Studies. Rather, what we see in them is the coming of age of our field: clear, confident and compelling contributions, from different disciplinary realms, using different methodologies, each contributing to an ongoing set of debates. Through them we can see that the academic field of martial arts studies found its feet and its voice-or rather, its range of voices-very quickly. The field is now flourishing around many mature scholarly theories, multiple vibrant conversations, multiplying research questions, and numerous productive approaches and methodologies. It is now apparent that although martial arts studies may have one broadly shared focus, it

In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, change takes place at the whim of the gods, albeit often for clear reasons and with clear allegorical or didactic meanings. In Kafka’s Metamorphosis, however, change is inscrutable, unfathomable, irresolvable, and simply something to be borne. The speculation animating the following reflection is that the global pandemic of 2020 induced a metamorphosis in the lifeworlds of martial artists, the psychological and emotional effects of which have been severe from the start, while the pragmatic consequences and implications for the near to mid-term future remain unclear. The future form, content, and cultural status of the entity ‘martial arts’ all remain uncertain. Future studies will undoubtedly map the changed terrain. But for now, in the midst of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, what follows is a personal and theoretical reflection, written at a time and from a position in which there are more questions than answers. This reflection seeks to capture something of the structure of feeling of this situation and to reflect on its potential consequences for ‘martial arts’ and ‘martial artists’, as viewed from one (g)local position and perspective.

Edward Said’s theory of orientalism proposes that Western European culture has overwhelmingly tended to (mis)represent non-European cultures, societies, regions, and ethnic groups via mythic, romantic, simplistic and simplifying sets of binaries. This article asks whether orientalism remains present or active within contemporary media, by analysing the representation of ‘Chineseness’ in British television adverts between 1955 and 2018. It argues that a predictable, recurring, limited set of aural, visual and narrative clichés and stereotypes have functioned – and continue to function – as the principal resources to evoke ‘Chineseness’ in British television adverts. The analysis suggests that caricatures, clichés and stereotypes of China, Chinese people, locations, artifacts and phenomena are so common that there can be said to be a glaring seam of unacknowledged, uninterrogated orientalism functioning to maintain a kind of ‘invisible’ racism in British advertising.

This article situates Bruce Lee at the heart of the emergence of 'martial arts'. It argues that the notion 'martial arts', as we now know it, is a discursive entity that emerged in the wake of media texts, and that the influence of Bruce Lee films of the early 1970s was both seminal and structuring of 'martial arts', in ways that continue to be felt. Using the media theory proposition that a limited range of 'key visuals' structure the aesthetic terrain of the discursive entity 'martial arts', the article assesses the place, role and status of images of Bruce Lee as they work intertextually across a wide range of media texts. In so doing, the article demonstrates the enduring media legacy of Bruce Lee-one that has always overflowed the media realm and influenced the lived, embodied lifestyles of innumerable people the world over, who have seen Bruce Lee and other martial arts texts and gone on to study Chinese and Asian martial arts because of them.

This paper derives from a lecture given at a festival of philosophy in Leuven in 2017. In line with the conference theme, it sought to connect 'East Asian Philosophy' with the Dutch word 'rust', and in so doing it uncovers surprising connections between mindfulness and madness.

This article examines conversations, dialogues and statements about martial arts in films that can by no stretch of the imagination be regarded as martial arts films. It takes this unusual focus in order to glean unique insights into the status of martial arts in mainstream popular culture. The work is interested in the ways that martial arts are understood, positioned and given value within the wider flows, circuits, networks or discourses of culture. Films examined include Vision Quest/Crazy for You (1985), Lolita (1962), Roustabout (1964), Napoleon Dynamite (2004), An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), Full Metal Jacket (1987), Rollerball (1975), Trading Places (1983), The Wanderers (1979), Once Were Warriors (1994) and Meet the Fockers (2004); and some discussion is given to ‘limit cases’ – action films such as The Matrix (1999) and Lethal Weapon (1987). The analysis suggests that martial arts tend to be represented in non-martial arts films audiovisually, and that on the rare occasions martial arts are discussed, they tend to emerge as improper or culturally unusual activities or practices. Because of their familiar, yet non-normal (unhomely/unheimlich, uncanny) status, along with their entwinement in senses of lack and related fantasies and desires, martial arts in these contexts are frequently related to matters of sexuality, insecurity and the desire for plenitude. Accordingly, although occasionally associated with higher cultural values such as dignity, martial arts are more often treated as comic, uncanny or perverse aberrations from the norm.

This article argues against all forms of scientism and the widespread perceived need to define martial arts in order to study martial arts or 'do' martial arts studies. It argues instead for the necessity of theory before definition, including theorisation of the orientation of the field of martial arts studies itself. Accordingly, the chapter criticises certain previous (and current) academic approaches to martial arts, particularly the failed project of hoplology. It then examines the much more promising approaches of current scholarship, such as that of Sixt Wetzler, before critiquing certain aspects of its orientation. Instead of accepting Wetzler's 'polysystem theory' approach uncritically, the article argues instead for the value of a poststructuralist 'discourse' approach in martial arts studies.

This article argues against all forms of scientism and the widespread perceived need to define martial arts in order to study martial arts or 'do' martial arts studies. It argues instead for the necessity of theory before definition, including theorisation of the orientation of the field of martial arts studies itself. Accordingly, the chapter criticises certain previous (and current) academic approaches to martial arts, particularly the failed project of hoplology. It then examines the much more promising approaches of current scholarship, such as that of Sixt Wetzler, before critiquing certain aspects of its orientation. Instead of accepting Wetzler's 'polysystem theory' approach uncritically, the article argues instead for the values of a poststructuralist 'discourse' approach in martial arts studies. Dealing with Disciplinary Difference I was once invited to contribute a chapter to a collection being prepared on martial arts and embodied knowledge. When all the draft chapters were in and the editors were happy with the collection, the entire manuscript was then sent off to be assessed by two academic reviewers. Of my own contribution, one reviewer said: the chapter by Bowman is terrible; it is not publishable, and should be rejected. The other reviewer said: the chapter by Bowman is the best contribution to this volume, and greatly enhances and enriches it. Faced with two diametrically opposed views from two presumably equally reliable peer reviewers, 1 the editors themselves held the casting vote. They decided that they liked the chapter overall, thought it had value, and wanted to include it. But they elected to share the reviews with me and invited me to make any changes I thought appropriate in light of them. 1 At the time, the emerging field that we now call martial arts studies was yet to be established, and the editors later commented that they had actually had considerable difficulty finding suitable academics to act as peer reviewers who were not already contributors to the collection itself. Today there would be peer reviewers aplenty for such a collection. This could be taken to demonstrate many things, including the proposition that the establishment of an academic field involves not only the establishment of (new) shared objects of attention, shared problematics and shared methodologies, but also the production of (new) academic subjects – i.e., individual scholars with a recognisable disciplinary identity, conferred or established reciprocally in the process of emergence of the discourse itself.

This paper examines the status of ‘history’ as an element of the discourses of traditional Asian martial arts. It discusses key ways in which ideas such as tradition, authenticity and history are deployed for different ideological ends, from nationalism to personal self-advancement, in different contexts, and it theorises the consequences of the antagonisms that have recently arisen between traditional beliefs about certain Asian martial arts (such as taekwondo, Shotokan karate and taijiquan being ‘ancient’) and recent historical studies that challenge such beliefs. The article proposes that the dissemination of the findings of contemporary martial arts historiography by means of academic and para-academic outlets such as scholarly blogs and open access journals has accrued the power precipitate crises in beliefs about and discourses of traditional Asian martial arts among practitioners. Accordingly, the paper turns to consider the implications of these challenges and changes for practitioners of traditional Asian martial arts. It argues that the discursive status of ‘history’ is not fixed or permanent, but varies depending on context, and that present conjunctures are characterised by forms and processes of mediatization that have amplified the visibility and effects both of rigorous scholarship and of processes of verifying the efficacy of martial arts to such an extent that the status of ‘history’ can be said to have changed decisively. Ultimately, the paper argues for the ethical and political value of rigorous critical historical scholarship even when it runs counter to cultural beliefs.

This article proposes that the emerging field of martial arts
studies will benefit by engaging as thoroughly with questions
of disciplinarity as with questions of martial arts. It argues
that thorough and self-reflexive attention to the problems
and possibilities associated with academic work as such will
greatly enrich martial arts studies and enable it to develop into
as vital and dynamic a field as possible. The article explores
martial arts studies in terms of the recent history of disciplinary
transformation in the university via the case of cultural studies,
and then goes on to explore two different kinds of approach to
the academic study of martial arts (first, the work of Farrer and
Whalen-Bridge, and then that of Stanley Henning).

Version 1 of a keynote to be given at the first UK-China Media and Cultural Studies Association Conference, Cardiff University, February 6th 2015. The Prezi Presentation that accompanies it is here:
https://prezi.com/ry2srmdt6fih/the-circulation-of-qi-in-media-and-culture/

This presentation examines and assesses the phenomenon of (English language) self-defence books, which proliferated throughout the 20 th century. It sets out the thematic arc of these publications: from the boxing, wrestling and fencing books of the 19 th century, to the new jujutsu-informed approaches of the early 20 th century, on into the inter-and postwar shifts towards military-style 'gutter fighting', and through to the media-driven explosion of interest in Asian martial arts approaches in general from the late 1960s onwards. It asks whether the age of the book-and specifically the age of self-defence writing and publication is now over-thanks to the evident superiority of audiovisual media and platforms such as YouTube for communicating embodied knowledge. However, it hesitates before deeming the internet to mean the end of the self-defence book. For, although the internet has undoubtedly moved much 'publication' into the filmic realm of YouTube, it is also the case that easily accessible online book self-publication platforms, such as those offered by Amazon, are arguably still attracting plenty of people to become authors of self-defence and related kinds of book, for reasons that may well continue for some time.

Key among influential texts in the movement of martial arts into popular consciousness is the 1974 international hit disco song, 'Kung Fu Fighting' by Carl Douglas. Curiously, despite the significance and status of this song, remarkably little serious academic attention has ever been given to it-even within books and articles that use its instantly recognisable lyrics as part of their own titles. This paper seeks to redress this historical oversight by undertaking a reading of this song, its lyrics, its aural and visual semiotics, its intertextual relations with other sound-effects and songs, and some controversial instances of its reiteration and redeployment in different cultural contexts. Following the main questions that arise about this song in journalistic contexts, news stories and conversations online, the paper poses the well-worn question, 'is it racist?' In doing so, it enters into debates about orientalism, ethnic stereotyping, and cultural appropriation, but does so in a way that recasts the orientations of these debates, away from moralism and judgmentalism to questions of interest, desire, investment in, and involvement or encounters with 'other cultures'.

This is version 1 of a paper written for the workshop Masculinities and Martial Sports: East, West and Global South Workshop, organised by Professor Kay Schiller, Institute of Advanced Study, University of Durham, 6-7 December 2018. I welcome comments by email ([email protected]), as I hope to develop this into a chapter for publication

This paper discusses the findings of initial CUROP-funded* research into the representation of martial arts and martial artists in the national British press. It is part of a larger project that aims to map out the main ways that martial arts and martial artists have been and are represented in British popular culture more widely. This specific research looks into what kinds of stories have been told about martial arts and martial artists in the British press, and seeks to relate these newspaper findings to the types of representation that take place in other media (such as film and TV). Methodologically, the approach has so far involved broad searches for items on anything to do with martial arts. Theoretically and analytically, the work is interested in establishing the types of (cross)cultural literacy that these items suggest may circulate in these contexts of British cultural discourse. Bio Paul Bowman is Professor of Cultural Studies in the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University. He is author of ten books and editor of quite a few more, on a range of topics including theories of politics, cultural theory, popular culture, Bruce Lee, and martial arts studies. He is Director of the Martial Arts Studies Research Network and founding co-editor of the journal Martial Arts Studies.

This talk discusses the mid- to late twentieth century explosion in the circulation of ideas connected with Taoism and Zen (Chan) Buddhism in Western popular culture. It argues that the introduction of ostensibly Chinese (and Japanese) philosophical notions into Western contexts and consciousnesses was never a simple act of transparent cross-cultural communication, from East to West. Rather, it always involved huge imaginative leaps and complex processes of projection, translation and transformation. With reference to examples such as the hippy counterculture, the films and writings of Bruce Lee, the TV series Kung Fu, and others, the paper argues that Western popular cultural encounters with ideas, ideals and conceptual universes like those of Taoism were always ‘in bits’. However, it will insist that this is not a negative or bad thing, and that, in fact, thinking about the ways in which ideas and practices travel and how they transform, over time and place, across cultures and within cultures, can teach us a great deal about how culture and communication always ‘work’ – or don’t, and what we might make of such fragmentation and complexity.

This is a working paper, presented at a Research Group Meeting at Waseda University, Tokyo, in March 2016, as part of the research project ‘East Asian Martial Arts as Global Culture: Transmission, Representation, and Transformation in Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom’ (「グローバル文化としての東アジア武術――日・米・英における伝授、表象、変容」）

21st October 2015
Bute Building, 0.14
School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies
Cardiff University
4pm-5.15pm

Abstract
This talk introduces some issues in the emergent interdisciplinary field of Martial Arts Studies. It poses questions about the field’s orientations, possibilities and potential impacts, with specific reference to one case study – the vexed question of the history of the Korean martial art and national sport, taekwondo. As with so many martial arts, the history of taekwondo is presented as ancient, indigenous, ethnic, autochthonous, and independent. But increasingly, historians of the art show that taekwondo did not exist before the Second World War, and was elaborated according to a nationalist and anti-Japanese agenda, whilst nevertheless being constructed from ingredients found almost exclusively in Japanese karate. The question asked in this presentation is what martial arts studies might ‘do’ with this kind of knowledge? Is it to be treated as objective knowledge that merely exists for information purposes? Or are there larger ramifications, for scholars, martial artists, and other stakeholders? In short, what can this kind of knowledge ‘do’, and how does it relate to the orientations of martial arts studies?

Bio
Paul Bowman is a Reader in the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies. In terms of martial arts, he is author of Martial Arts Studies: Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries (2015), founder and director of the AHRC-funded Martial Arts Studies Research Network (www.mastudiesrn.org) and co-editor of the open access online journal Martial Arts Studies (www.martialartsstudies.org). He is also editor in chief of Cardiff University Press, co-editor of JOMEC Journal and author of books on cultural theory, popular culture, deconstruction, Bruce Lee, and the cultural theorist Rey Chow.

Talk given on 1st February 2016 at the China Institute, School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

This talk poses the question of Bruce Lee’s national identity. Of course, the facts of this matter are widely known: there is no mystery or controversy about the US passport that Bruce Lee held from the age of eighteen. However, one question that constantly recurs is that of his ethno-national ‘cultural identity’: who owns Bruce Lee? China? Bruce Lee is after all ethnically Chinese and his first language was Cantonese. But he was born in San Francisco, raised in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, and became a US citizen at eighteen… This multiple, moving, migrant status is not unique to Bruce Lee, of course. But in all of the discourses about him there remain strong drives to ‘place’ him or ‘claim’ him – whether for a place (America, Hong Kong, China, or the world), or a people (Americans, ‘Chinese everywhere’, the colonised subaltern, this or that ethnic minority), or a ‘style’ (Wing Chun Kung Fu, ‘American Freestyle Karate’, even MMA), or an ideology (‘Western’, ‘Eastern’, ‘New Age’, ‘Postmodern’). This paper seeks to interrogate such appropriative impulses, and to examine them in terms offered by several approaches: Derridean deconstruction, Rey Chow’s (Benjaminian) take on ‘culture’, and a Rancièrean notion of ‘policing’. It does so in order to propose certain ways to think critically about acts of cultural ‘placing’.

This talk will use the notion of discourse, as developed by theorists such as Stuart Hall and Ernesto Laclau, to approach the topic of China. It will explore the changing connotations of ‘China’ in a range of different contexts – both Western and Chinese, cultural and academic – and will illustrate this primarily by discussing the status of China in a range of films (Chinese, Hong Kong and US). The aim of the talk is double: both to illuminate ‘China’ by way of the theory of discourse at the same time as illuminating the theory of discourse by way of a consideration of ‘China’.

本次讲座将以语言学理论中的语篇概念来阐述中国这个话题。保罗教授将从中国与西方，文化与学术等不同语境中来探寻“中国”一词的内涵变迁，首先讨论的将是中国在各种（本土/香港/美国）电影中的地位。此次讲座的目标有二，一是通过语篇的概念来阐明“中国”，二是通过讨论中国来阐明语篇理论。

Building upon recent constructions of queerness as mess, disorder, wild disarray, monstrosity even, in the sense of forms of embodiment that literally point to – monstre – or show the inherent entropy of life, stuff, matter, worlds, I want to explore the category of the living, walking dead, as a disordering, mobile, constant symbol of a wild which, far from disappearing with the onslaught of modernity, steadily and inexorably, encroaches upon our safe spaces and threatens to engulf us. I will use the WILD to build an argument about survival and extinction, necropolitics and humanism around the figure of the living dead, the zombie.

Writing To Reach You
Paul Bowman

{Warp/Woof: Aurality/musicality/textuality, Leeds University, July 11-13th 2003}


Abstract
This paper thinks through – it uses and abuses – the song ‘Writing to Reach You’ by Travis, in order to make sense of the situation of subjects like cultural studies, whose aims include ‘writing to reach’ something other. Given the problems such intentions harbour (problems of intentionality, at least), I argue that the such subjects cannot be understood outside of considerations of audibility, intelligibility and the voice.

As many have put it, sense is made, iteratively; audibility in this sense is structural, intelligibility is hegemonic. ‘Sense’ is, as it were, ‘beaten into’ things, as ‘making sense’ (the hegemonic logic of articulation) is forceful performative production. I argue that John Mowitt’s (2002) emphasis on temporal and aural iteration, in Percussion: Drumming, Beating, Striking, supplements and should transform our conception of intentionality and agency, and hence of how and to what cultural studies should respond.

But what difference does this make to us or our pop song? I argue that the fates of both are intertwined, and call to each other, conjure each other up. In both, it is uncertain who the ‘you’ is or should be that we are writing to reach, as is the reason we are doing so. I would like to drum up even more uncertainty, not only because it is too often drowned out, but because, ultimately perhaps, the question always demanded and/yet always already answered (silenced) is that of why we bang away at what we do as we do; or, alternatively: what is it that ought to be beaten?

The Martial Arts Studies book series aims to foster cross-disciplinary dialogue and generate new knowledge in the interdisciplinary fields of martial arts studies. The series welcomes proposals that explore martial arts studies in terms of such key questions as identity,, and so on. The series also seeks to explore such questions as the purpose(s) of martial arts studies; what martial arts 'achieve'; why people (still) practice martial arts; why there has been a huge global upsurge in some martial arts – such as the staged actual violence of mixed martial arts – and the ways in which these issues relate to such themes as contemporary capitalism, globalization, the current era of internet connectivity, and so on; as well as studies of the ways martial arts changed in recent years, the future directions of martial arts, and the future directions of martial arts studies. To Pre-Order: For deliveries to the Americas www.rowman.com For deliveries to the UK and rest of the world www.rowmaninternational.com *Don't forget to use code RLI16MAS to get 25% titles in this series! 25% off with code RLI16MAS

A book series that publishes research monographs in the fields of Martial Arts Studies.

http://www.rowmaninternational.com/series/martial-arts-studies

Series Editor: Paul Bowman (Cardiff University). Author of Martial Arts Studies: Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2015), Director of the Martial Arts Studies Research Network, and co-editor of the open-access journal Martial Arts Studies (Cardiff University Press).

The Martial Arts Studies book series aims to foster cross-disciplinary dialogue and generate new knowledge in the interdisciplinary fields of martial arts studies. The series welcomes proposals that explore martial arts studies in terms of such key questions as identity, gender, ethnicity, film, creativity, (digital) culture, media (and social media), drama, diaspora, performance, dance, memory, movement, pedagogy, institution, violence, the state, (post) colonialism, experience, ritual, training, fitness, incarceration, heritage, belief, and so on.

The series also seeks to explore such questions as the purpose(s) of martial arts studies; what martial arts ‘achieve’; why people (still) practice martial arts; why there has been a huge global upsurge in some martial arts – such as the staged actual violence of mixed martial arts (which is now bigger than boxing and wrestling combined) – and the ways in which these issues relate to such themes as contemporary capitalism, globalization, the current era of internet connectivity, and so on; as well as studies of the ways martial arts changed in recent years, the future directions of martial arts, and the future directions of martial arts studies.

Editorial Review Board:
Alex Channon (University of Brighton)
DS Farrer (University of Guam)
TJ Hinrichs (Cornell University)
Benjamin N. Judkins (chinesemartialstudies.com)
Gina Marchetti (Hong Kong University)
Michael A. Molasky (Waseda University)
Meaghan Morris (University of Sydney)
Benjamin Spatz (Huddersfield University)
Sixt Wetzler (German Blade Museum, Solingen)
Luke White (Middlesex University)
Douglas Wile (CUNY)
Gehao Zhang (Macau University of Science and Technology)

19-21 July 2023, University of Sheffield (UK)

http://masresearchnetwork.apps-1and1.net/8th-international-martial-arts-studies-conference

On the 50th anniversary of Bruce Lee’s untimely death, our 2023 conference will be structured by two overarching questions:

What is the current status of Asian martial arts in the world?
What are the key debates and issues facing Martial Arts Studies today?

The conference will have three pathways of concurrent parallel sessions, each engaging with a specific theme for the duration of the conference:

Theme 1. Studies of Bruce Lee and his influence on martial arts, both on-screen and off;
Theme 2. The status and significance of Asian martial arts more broadly, both on-screen and off;
Theme 3. Studies of current debates and pressing issues in and around the academic field of martial arts studies.

Those attending the conference will therefore be able to focus entirely on one theme throughout the duration, or dip into different themes for specific panels and papers.

To submit an abstract for the conference, please signal which theme you are primarily responding to, from the three themes below:



Theme One: Bruce Lee and Asian Martial Arts

In the half-century since Bruce Lee, what has been the story, status and significance of Asian martial arts? Bruce Lee was pivotal in making Asian martial arts into a global phenomenon, both on-screen and off. His on-screen choreography set new standards and his polemical publications about martial arts training threw down a gauntlet, the reverberations of which are still being felt, in film, television, media, popular culture, and of course, martial arts practice around the world. This conference – held on the 50th anniversary of his tragic death – first seeks to interrogate the status of Asian martial arts, both on-screen and off, in the wake of Bruce Lee. Thus, for our first theme, we invite abstracts that engage with the connections between Bruce Lee and Asian martial arts, whether in terms of cinematic styles, the development of martial arts discourses, or in the diverse connections of these realms with other areas of media, culture and society.



Theme Two: Asian Martial Arts Beyond Bruce Lee

The world of Asian martial arts – both on-screen and off – is extremely diverse and far-reaching. Many kinds of study of Asian martial arts should not be tethered to a discussion of Bruce Lee. Accordingly, we also invite proposals for papers on aspects of Asian martial arts that are not necessarily connected with Bruce Lee. We are particularly interested in papers that focus on the significance, status, controversies and issues around Asian martial arts connected with film, television, and other media.

Theme Three: Current Debates and Issues in Martial Arts Studies

Martial Arts Studies has emerged as a vibrant research nexus in English language scholarship over the last decade. Articles, monographs, collections and conferences are appearing with increasing frequency and with ever-greater thematic, conceptual and methodological interconnection and cross-disciplinary literacy. Given this proliferation, it is arguably a good moment to pause and take stock of the development of martial arts studies as a field. Accordingly, we invite papers that reflect on current debates and issues in martial arts studies. What have been the major achievements? What have been the stalemates or sticking points? What should be the current concerns of scholars? What are its current, emergent and possible new directions?

To submit a proposal for an individual paper (20 minutes), please send one Word Document to Dr Wayne Wong ([email protected]) and Professor Paul Bowman ([email protected]) containing the following information:

Title of your presentation
Abstract (300 words max)
Bio-note (150 words max)
Keywords (5 max)
Theme (1, 2, or 3 – see above)
Contact email address
Link to personal or professional webpage (if available)

Deadline for Proposals: 1 January 2023
Notification of decision: 1 February 2023
Registration opens: 1 March 2023

If you have any questions or wish to discuss potential ideas, please contact either/both Professor Paul Bowman ([email protected]) and/or Dr. Wayne Wong ([email protected]).

http://masresearchnetwork.apps-1and1.net/8th-international-martial-arts-studies-conference

50 Years After Bruce Lee: Asian Martial Arts on Screen and Off
19-21 July 2023, University of Sheffield (UK)
In the half-century since Bruce Lee, what has been the story, status and significance of Asian martial arts? Bruce Lee was pivotal in making Asian martial arts into a global phenomenon, both on screen and off. His on-screen choreography set new standards and his polemical publications about martial arts training threw down a gauntlet, the reverberations of which are still being felt, in film, television, media, popular culture, and of course, martial arts practice around the world.

This conference – held on the 50th anniversary of his tragic death – seeks to interrogate the status of Asian martial arts, both on screen and off, in the wake of Bruce Lee. We invite abstracts that engage with the connections between Bruce Lee and Asian martial arts, whether in terms of cinematic styles, the development of martial arts discourses, or in the diverse connections of these realms with other areas of media, culture and society.

The conference seeks to bridge and connect the disciplinary fields of film studies, media studies and cultural studies, but the organisers are also open to proposals from related fields such as sociology, ethnography, anthropology, history and other forms of martial arts studies.

To submit a proposal for an individual paper (20 minutes) or a complete themed panel (of three thematically-connected papers), please send one Word Document to Dr Wayne Wong ([email protected]) containing the following information:

• Title
• Abstract (300 words max)
• Bio-note (150 words max)
• Keywords (5 max)
• Contact email address
• Link to personal or professional webpage (if available)

Deadline for Proposals: to be confirmed
Notification of decision: to be confirmed
Registration opens: to be confirmed

If you have any questions or wish to discuss potential ideas, please contact either/both Professor Paul Bowman ([email protected]) and/or Dr. Wayne Wong ([email protected]).

What are the relationships between martial arts, globalisation and tradition? What are the dynamics and effects of each on the others? This conference poses these questions to the growing interdisciplinary field of martial arts studies, in a landmark international event: a conference that brings together for the first time the Martial Arts Studies Research Network and the German Martial Arts and Combat Sports Commission. Taking place in the Institute of Sport Sciences of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, with events also taking place at the Confucius Institute (University of Geneva) and the Olympic Museum (Lausanne), this is a major event for the international and multidisciplinary academic study of martial arts.

The 15 th Days of Reflection and Research on Combat Sports and Martial Arts (JORRESCAM) continues the ideas and objectives of preceding events, the first of which was held in 1991. On one hand, it studies a specific category of practices and disciplines: combat sports and martial arts 2. Taken in all forms here, Combat Sports and Martial Arts (CSMAs) are distinguished by the fact that the body is both the tool used for confrontation and domination (actual or symbolic) and the target to reach (whether directly or indirectly). On the other hand, it provides a multidisciplinary perspective on a given topic. Lastly, it brings together a wide range of actors in different positions and functions: researchers, practitioners, teachers, trainers, students, institutional actors, managers, doctors, journalists, legal experts, etc., in order to spark dialogue, discussion of ideas, collaborations and, from there, the development of new expertise. Problematising the connections between CSMAs and the dialectic of risks and safety is made complex by the variety of disciplines concerned and their specific features, but also by uses and manners of practice (particularly in connection with the theme chosen for this congress) and by the physical and symbolic involvement that they imply, more generally. Some points of reference illustrate, partially and therefore reductively, the areas of problematisation that could be developed.

Call for Papers



Special Issue Title: Advertising China

Journal: JOMEC Journal (Cardiff University Press)

Deadline for Articles: 20th June 2019

Publication Date: December 2019



This issue of JOMEC Journal seeks focused cultural and media studies articles on advertising and China. (The word ‘and’ in the phrase ‘Advertising and China’ includes meanings such as ‘in, on, using, involving’, etc.) This special themed issue will be called ‘Advertising China’ and the editors seek articles that engage with topics such as (but not limited to) the following:



·      advertising in China;

·      the use of China and Chinese imagery in advertising;

·      comparative studies of advertising involving China and other national, geographical and cultural regions;

·      differences and similarities in advertising across cultures;

·      issues in gender, ethnicity, cultural value; and so on.



The editors are particularly interested in works that contribute theoretically, methodologically and/or analytically to our understanding of the place of advertising in culture and society, with specific reference to China and/or the status of Chinese imagery in other cultural contexts.



The journal homepage is here: https://jomec.cardiffuniversitypress.org/



Submission guidelines are here: https://jomec.cardiffuniversitypress.org/about/submissions/



Enquiries can be made in the first instance to Professor Paul Bowman: [email protected]

The Martial Arts Studies Research Network was founded in 2015 and is currently funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The founder and director is Paul Bowman (Cardiff University).

Objectives

The primary objective of the Martial Arts Studies Research Network is to connect up disconnected disciplinary and cultural discourses on martial arts by fostering dialogue through cross-disciplinary events. In connecting and engaging diverse researchers, the network will develop knowledge of the significance and impact of martial arts in the contemporary world and set the agenda for future research in the interlocking multidisciplinary fields around them.

Over a period of 24 months, a series of UK seminars will take place on key questions. Events will be held in institutions where there is ongoing research into related areas.

Summary

Four decades after being kicked off by the ‘kung fu craze’ of the early 1970s, participation in martial arts in the Western world now rivals (and often exceeds) participation in traditional physical cultural practices connected with sport, health and exercise. Taekwondo and t’ai chi are as common in schools, college campuses and community centres as football and tennis; and Mixed Martial Arts are now globally bigger business than boxing. Yet, in the UK (and the English language in general), the academic study of martial arts remains in the shadows. This is so even though academics from a range of disciplines are contributing to diverse international scholarly fields via explorations of the many questions attached to martial arts, culture and society. Indeed, martial arts studies is demonstrably emerging, in diverse academic disciplines and across many geographical regions. Clusters of overlapping problematics are emerging within disciplines such as anthropology, cultural studies, ethnography, film studies, history, medicine, psychology, religious studies, sociology, and sports studies.

However, as these studies have developed within discrete disciplines, researchers have rarely engaged in cross-disciplinary dialogue. In fact, in the UK (and across Anglophone academia), the proliferation of academic writing has outpaced academic events, and there is little face-to-face exchange of ideas and approaches. Yet, there is evidence of not only a national but also an international appetite for a research network to foster cross-disciplinary communication in the development of martial arts studies. As well as increasing publications, there are growing numbers of conferences and events internationally, yet very few events have ever taken place in the UK or in the English language. There are regular academic conferences on martial arts in Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and all over Asia. Around the world, a growing number of degree programmes involve elements of martial arts studies, including some in the UK.

Yet, despite this growing research context, there is little sense of community or network for the development of martial arts studies. To address this lack, the Principal Investigator has already organised an international interdisciplinary Martial Arts Studies conference (Cardiff University, June 2015). The call for papers attracted over 100 proposals, some 60 of which were accepted. Proposals came from the UK, Australia, Guam, North America, China, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, South America, Germany, Finland, and France, and represent fields as diverse as anthropology, cultural studies, ethnography, film studies, history, medicine, philosophy, psychology, religious studies, sociology, and sports studies. This wide national and disciplinary sweep is matched in a broad spectrum of work, spanning from theoretical to practical orientations. As well as pure academic work, there will be talks by surgeons, security experts, diplomats, and medical doctors involved in research into ways of incorporating elements of martial arts as therapy into NHS treatment for post-stroke rehabilitation and depression.

The Martial Arts Studies Research Network will bring more researchers together in face to face events that advance the study of martial arts and ask what studying martial arts can contribute to knowledge more widely. Each event will engage with a cluster of questions around a specific theme, and will involve the participation of academics, researchers, practitioners, and professionals, in order to explore core social and cultural questions. In this way the research network will stimulate multi-disciplinary conversations that advance our understanding of martial arts in broader cultural contexts. Through these dialogues, the network will generate knowledge and lead the way in the development of martial arts studies that contributes to multiple areas.

Contact

To discuss the network, please feel free to contact me at my Cardiff University email address: [email protected]