ACADEMIA SUMMARIES
Martial Arts and Oriental Philosophy
(Mediated)
The original paper contains 19 sections, with 8 passages identified by our machine learning
algorithms as central to this paper.
Paper Summary
SUMMARY PASSAGE 1
Section 1
So even when I want to go directly to the heart of these things, even when I desperately want to avoid
tangling with and becoming entangled by issues of representation and mediation, I keep coming up
against the fact that our relation to these things (martial arts and Oriental philosophy) is inextricably
entangled with issues related to media and culture. In other words, there is a sense in which I can't
deal directly with martial arts or Oriental philosophy without dealing with aspects of film, TV, and
various forms of patriarchal and Orientalist fantasy, discourse and ideology. This is because our
access to, our understanding (or pre-understanding) of, and our involvement (or pre-involvement)
with either of these two things -martial arts and Oriental philosophy -and especially in their
conjunction -is always and already informed and organised by media representations, historical
discourses and filmic fantasies (Krug 2001).
SUMMARY PASSAGE 2
Beginning
Second, the young upstart disciple or student, with a hot temper and a sense of pride. (Both of these
characters abound in martial arts and action films, East and West.) And, third, the dialectical
synthesis of the two: the mature, stoic, slow to anger but invincible and righteously justified adult
master.
SUMMARY PASSAGE 3
Difference
It is less serious. But it is an expression of the same wish: to be invincible, indestructible, fearless: to
be in control. And the martial arts myth or promise is precisely this: through nothing more than
physical discipline, dedication, devotion, and diligent training, you too can become closer to the
invincible ideal depicted in these films and programmes.
SUMMARY PASSAGE 4
Philosophy
For, what is most interesting about the myth of Shaolin (and Wudang), or the myth of the origin of
Chinese martial arts, is the way the narratives both focus on the embodiment of a philosophy -the
way it states that this 'philosophy' is realised only in its embodiment. And this is where things become
very interesting to us today, because this is where, as it were, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, in
the sense that certain types of martial arts syllabi (especially the so-called 'internal' martial arts styles
of China, and especially taijiquan) require martial arts students to relive and rework this type of origin
myth in and as their daily practice. In other 9 words: the legend of monks learning to meditate by
practicing some calisthenics and in the process becoming virtually invincible warriors is not just a
dead legend from the past.
SUMMARY PASSAGE 5
Embodiment
Another contemporary martial artist, Master Lam Kam Chuen, gives this account: as a young martial
arts student, he too was impatient to become a great fighter. At one point, his teacher directed him to
stop all martial arts training and to replace it instead by 'standing like a tree' for protracted periods of
time. 'Standing like a tree' is a type of qigong.
SUMMARY PASSAGE 6
Phantasy
Now, as silly as it may seem, the virtually instant downloading and installation of complete kung fu
knowledge and superlative ability that takes place in The Matrix is actually a rather fine
representation of the dominant fantasy about martial arts. This is the fantasy of a complete and
permanent transformation; the idea that after meeting the martial art you become the martial art, and
that it stays with you, within you, as something you can switch on or off at your will for the rest of your
life. Of course, this is as preposterous an idea as the suggestion that someone who once trained to
run a marathon could at any point for the rest of their life get up one day and run a marathon again.
SUMMARY PASSAGE 7
Practice
The difference here is stark: Oriental martial arts philosophy is in a sense overwhelmingly about
taking the thinking out of practice; the subtraction of thought itself from practice.
SUMMARY PASSAGE 8
Water
In many ways the connection between a kind of philosophy or religion or ontology or psychological
disposition and martial arts training does not reside solely in the past. With martial arts it is not just
the case that once upon a time this martial art was connected to a kind of philosophy or religion. (This
kind of discourse does exist, and martial artists will often pontificate about the superior martial artists
of the past who were superior precisely because they dedicated their lives to Taoism and Zen, and so
on.)
