Theorizing Bruce Lee

Interview with Stuart Hall

2012-02-11T13:08:00.001Z

Interview with Stuart Hall:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/feb/11/saturday-interview-stuart-hall

Very important.

Interviews on "I Am Bruce Lee"

2012-02-10T11:25:00.001Z

Of tangential interest to many, but hey:

The "documentary feature", I am Bruce Lee, has been released in cinemas in Canada and the USA. I pop up in it throughout and make sometimes intelligent sometimes boyishly effusive comments. The trailer is here:

http://iambruceleemovie.com/

A podcast interview with me about Bruce Lee and martial arts is here:

http://www.thefightnerd.com/dr-paul-bowman-on-theorizing-bruce-lee/

And (for the next few days only) a BBC Radio Wales interview with me is here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b01bpj1v

For the BBC radio interview, start playing the show at 2 hours and 9 minutes. Apologies for the fact that the song playing before my interview starts is a Phil Collins track. God knows what the song half way through the interview. The producer told me that the songs in the show are selected by a computer programme, based on blandness and familiarity, so as not to alienate the majority of listeners. So stick that factoid in your Adorno lecture and smoke it ;-)

My FightNerd.com interview on "I am Bruce Lee"

2012-02-08T07:06:00.001Z

I was interviewed recently for thefightnerd.com about the "I am Bruce Lee" film. The interviewer, Matthew Kaplowitz asked some good questions:

http://www.thefightnerd.com/dr-paul-bowman-on-theorizing-bruce-lee/

The sequel to Theorizing Bruce Lee

2012-02-07T06:09:00.001Z

The sequel to _Theorizing Bruce Lee_, a book called _Beyond Bruce Lee_, will be out next Spring. That's Spring 2013. It will be produced by Wallflower Press for Columbia University Press.

Enter the dragon: Welsh academic hits Hollywood as international Bruce Lee expert - Need to Read - News - WalesOnline

2012-01-29T06:49:00.000Z

Here's an article about my trip to NYC and my talking-head role in I Am Bruce Lee:

Enter the dragon: Welsh academic hits Hollywood as international Bruce Lee expert - Need to Read - News - WalesOnline:

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/need-to-read/2012/01/29/enter-the-dragon-welsh-academic-hits-hollywood-as-international-bruce-lee-expert-91466-30217154/

'via Blog this'

Asian Martial Arts in 1970s Britain and on BBC Radio 4

2012-01-24T13:33:00.001Z

I've just been interviewed by BBC Radio 4 for a programme ostensibly about the impact of Bruce Lee on UK and Western popular culture and consciousness (although they seemed more interested in whether I'd had many fights and whether I'd used martial arts within them...!). Apparently it will air on BBC Radio 4 on 22nd February 2012. The series is called 'In Living Memory', but I'm not sure what this particular episode will be called. I'll let you know.

I Am (in the) Bruce Lee (trailer)

2012-01-19T20:38:00.000Z

What the director hopes to be the definitive documentary about Bruce Lee, I Am Bruce Lee, will be out soon. The trailer is on the official page below. To my shock, horror and delight, I'm in the trailer. I come in at 1 minute and make the most giddy schoolboy comments that any academic talking head has ever made. Still, the rest of the trailer looks grrrreat!

http://iambruceleemovie.com/

I AM BRUCE LEE | OFFICIAL PAGE | IN THEATRES FEB. 9TH:

'via Blog this'

Martial Arts and Oriental Philosophy (Mediated)

2012-01-11T21:01:00.001Z

Here's a paper I'm giving tomorrow at Brighton University, entitled "Martial Arts and Oriental Philosophy (Mediated)". The main title was their idea. The bit in brackets was mine:

http://cardiff.academia.edu/PaulBowman/Talks/68031/Martial_Arts_and_Oriental_Philosophy_Mediated_

Martial Arts and Oriental Philosophy (Mediated)

2012-01-11T20:58:00.002Z

Here's a paper I'm giving tomorrow at Brighton University, on 'Martial Arts and Oriental Philosophy':
http://tinyurl.com/6wdkhok

Question about Festive Pantomime Racism

2011-12-30T20:37:00.001Z

I have a question about UK pantomimes and racism, which I'm hoping someone out there will be able and inclined to answer for me.

The situation is this: I went to a pantomime today (for the second time in my life. The first time was when I was about 5. This second time, I'm not proud, I'm a parent. Forgive me. Anyway). It was an amateur dramatic production - we couldn't afford any of the professional shows anywhere. (As I say, I'm a parent.)

The production was of Aladdin. The story started in Egypt but flitted quickly to "Peking". Aladdin and the Princess were not the Disney ones I am unfortunately most familiar with. No: Aladdin was from "Peking". The Princess was called Princess Mandarin. Aladdin's mother was Widow Twanky, who ran a Chinese Laundry. Aladdin's brother was called Wishy Washy, and every time he entered he did a version of the flamboyant 'crane technique' kick that Daniel Laruso learns from Miyagi in The Karate Kid. You know the one. In response to this the audience were enjoined to shout "ah-so!". Which they did.

The Chinese characters were all "ah-so" sing-song "ching-chong Chinamen". Mercifully, most of them spoke without affecting "accents" or "bloken Engrish". However, the two key Chinese characters were two "Chinese Policemen", evidently crafted from Laurel and Hardy plus Mickey Rooney's Mr Yunioshi from Breakfast at Tiffany's. These two characters affected the accents, the 'hilarious' T-R pronunciation problems and the hilarious names ("Wan Long Poo" is but one example). At one point they had their own lengthy scene in which they traded rapid-fire "he a ping pong sing song ching chong" type exchanges in a contrived argument about too many Chins and Wings and Wongs in the Chinese phone book, in which one might wing the wong wong, etc., etc. You get the picture.

Entire scenes, long dialogues, and virtually all of the comedy in the entire production was structured and organised by and through the play of the most crass of stereotypes about "Chinese" dress, dialogue, concerns and lifestyle. I could go on and on about it. But I won't. Instead, I really just want an answer to the question of these representations, these fee-charging productions, and whether they are even legal. Is yellow-face really still alive and well? Is it really just ok?

Watching it, I was constantly thinking, ok, what if we substituted the "Ching-Chong Chinaman" clichés about China and Chinese with something equivalent about Africans, Indians, Israelis? Blacked-up or browned-up actors playing out the most shocking caricatures: what would have happened? Would it have been ok? Would it not?

There are obviously structures of visibility, perception, and feeling around racialised discourses at different times and in different places. There are obviously going to be different sensibilities and sensitivities and different things that will or won't offend at different times. But why is it still so ok to be overtly racist about Chinese characters in at least one British Pantomime this year?

In the past and elsewhere, in books and articles, I myself have more than once followed Meaghan Morris in her inestimable analysis of race and ethnic visibililty and visuality, in her reading of the Breakfast at Tiffany's scene as it is used in the film Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. Morris reads a scene in which we see Linda seeing Bruce Lee seeing Mickey Rooney's Mr Yunioshi as hideously racist, while all around are consumed in laughter. Only Linda notices (what Bruce has known all along) that this stuff is all entirely racist. Everyone else thinks it's harmless fun.

So I have analysed this sort of stuff before, using the critical terms and perspectives afforded to me by Meaghan Morris, Rey Chow and Jacques Rancière, among others. Equally, and at the same time, I have also, of course, laughed at ultimately racist, sexist and classist jokes. But this bit of harmless family fun today completely took me off guard. Maybe it's my lack of knowledge of a genre. Maybe I'm over-sensitive. But, could someone enlighten me about its legality? How can it even be legal? I'm confused. Then: How widespread is it? Why was everyone laughing? Why was it not openly perceived as and condemned as racist?

Answers as comments or as emails to BowmanP@cf.ac.uk

Happy New Year!

An Interview with Rey Chow

2011-11-26T10:56:00.001Z

AnInterview with Rey Chow

Paul Bowman & Rey Chow[*]

Abstract:An interview with Rey Chow carried out for this special themed issue of Social Semiotics, which is concernedwith asking Rey Chow about her past, present and future work. It is organisedby questions related to her ongoing work in postcolonialism, cultural studies,cultural theory and comparative literature, as well as her work’s connectionsto history, philosophy and cultural politics.

Keywords:Rey Chow, postcolonialism, discourse, Foucault, visuality, Žižek, Deleuze,technology

Paul Bowman: Your work has tackled manyobjects and fields: comparative literature, woman and Chinese modernity, filmand modernity, problems in postcolonialism, questions of intervention incultural politics, the relationships between “high” theory or philosophy and“pragmatic” cultural-political concerns, feminism and film studies,retheorizing translation in a postcolonial world, the relationships betweenarea studies, atomic bombs and US geopolitical hegemony, the status of “the sentimental”within contemporary Chinese films, and so on – to gesture to a few. How do youposition yourself in relation to what are normally thought to be such diverseand discrete fields? Are each of your books intended for different audiences?

ReyChow: It’s difficultto talk about one’s work objectively because one’s own psychic investments areinvolved, but if I am to give it a try, in response to these questions, I’d saythat (in relation to my published work) my point of departure was seldom aparticular field or its established object of study, but more often a set ofquestions that came with a specific work, be it a literary, film, orcritical/philosophical text, a recurrent narrative, or a popular stereotype.Instead of beginning with a bird’s eye view of a field, then, I am more proneto working with features of specific works that strike me as demanding morethought, more discussion, more debate; that suggest that there has to be alarger set of issues that have led to those features’ visibility andintelligibility. For instance, when modern Chinese literature was supposedlyundergoing revolutionary transformation in the early twentieth century, whywere there also these rather morose, sentimental, “politically incorrect”stories (in what came to be known as Mandarin Duck and Butterfly fiction) beingpublished and read with such enthusiasm – what did it tell us about therelationship between the production and consumption of fiction, and socialreform? Alternatively, among the many stories and images that can be used inrelation to people from non-Western cultures, why are some typically chosen torepresent them to a Western public, so that these cultures are either seen asprimitive and unchanging, or politically progressive and avant-garde? Whathappens to the middle regions between these two extreme ends of representation?Or, how is it that colleagues in the discipline of comparative literature tendto love the idea of translation – which, as a topic, is perhaps one of the mostheavily theorized in the field – but at the same time seem to scorn the use oftranslated works for research and pedagogical purposes as improper,inauthentic, low-rent, etc., even in a comparative context? What kinds ofassumptions make the coexistence of such contradictory attitudes and practicespossible in the first place?

When one begins with specific questions such as these,it soon becomes clear that the official field and/or object of inquiry to whichthese questions seem to correspond is often insufficient – or at leastincapable of accommodating the critical scope and extent forced open by thequestions. The questions, in other words, tend to put pressure on thedefinitions of the field(s) and objects of inquiry, and mess up theirboundaries. A more appropriate notion to invoke would be Foucault’s“discourse,” as I see many of these fields you have named as complexly relatedas discourses, once we begin with specific questions. To use the language ofelectronic communications, discourses are always “linked” or “networked”articulations; there is no telling how many “windows” can be opened or arepotentially open-able if we ask the serious questions. But then of course, theirony is that, once the work is published and out there, most audiences tend toread it in accordance to already-existing headings and subheadings ofknowledge, and the more familiar names of the fields and subfields aretypically reinvoked to “make sense” of what I have written. And so forth, andso on. Still, I am fascinated by the generative nature of discourses and by theunexpected turns they may take, as much as I am intrigued by the myths, thelong held assumptions and beliefs, that are embedded in them.

PB: You mention the “familiar name” Foucault, who seemsto be a strong (perhaps even growing) presence within your work. Wouldreinvoking Foucault be a justifiable way to “make sense” of what you havewritten? Or, given what you have just said about the stabilizing(domesticating?) effects of familiar names, is it more complex than this –despite the discernible presence and effects of Foucault’s work throughout yourown thinking on and interventions into many interlinked discourses?

RC: Yes, to some extent, Foucault is a logical way tounderstand what I have been writing, though it may surprise you to hear thatFoucault has been a major influence on my work only since about a dozen yearsago. Before then, I did not read him seriously because, to be completelyhonest, I had conflated the ways in which some of his works, such as TheHistory of Sexuality, Volume 1 and Discipline and Punish, had beenpopularized in the U.S. academy with Foucault’s own arguments and perspectives.The emphases that came with such popularization – sex and sexuality,panopticism, surveillance, and so forth – were not wrong but were notparticularly interesting to me as a close reader of literary, film, and othercultural texts. Only when I started reading Foucault carefully on my own did Idiscover that I had been quite mistaken about his contributions. In particular,his early works, such as The Archeology of Knowledge and The Order ofThings, have been instrumental in helping me articulate issues that surfacein the trans-cultural examination of knowledge production and dissemination.The explicit discussions of race, racism, biopolitics, populations,governmentality, and so forth, that were documented in the Collège de Francelectures and that became widely available only in recent years, are alsocrucial. If we remain strictly on the level of names, my attraction to Foucaultprobably has much to do with Foucault’s own indebtedness to Nietzsche. As didmany of his contemporaries (Deleuze, for instance), Foucault inherited ajoyously nihilistic attitude toward what Nietzsche called the stones ofknowledge: the momentum that springs from a readiness to destabilize theconventions of knowledge organization – the courage to overturn establishednorms, to interrogate what has long been accepted as normal – this Nietzscheanspirit I find very uplifting. This is, of course, a simplification of thecomplexities of Foucault’s work as a whole, but the Nietzschean-ness of hisintellectual energy strikes me every time I read and teach him.

What I continue to find thought-provoking is alsoFoucault’s relationship to Freud and the psychoanalytic tradition. I havewritten here and there about this relationship, which is exemplary of a kind ofproductive tension that informs the work of the most interesting authors.Foucault helps us see the historicality of some of our most cherished,deep-seated beliefs about ourselves, our “psyches,” our desires. This iseminently enabling, because the perspective he brings to the psychic isprecisely that it is the kind of fiction we moderns live on a daily basis inthe most intimate manners, yet that does not mean we should simply accept it asnature. To invoke another name: if you think of Althusser’s influential work onideology and subjectivity, and how Foucault, who was Althusser’s student,reworked Althusser’s argument in the form of discipline, by elaborating not so much on the psyche per se as onthe ways “gentle coercion” is realized through a proliferating network ofinstitutions and apparatuses, you’d get a sense of what I mean by “enabling.”Lacanians such as Slavoj Žižek, also taking as a point of departure Althusser’snotion of ideology, simply proceed to argue – and demonstrate again and again,ad nauseum! – a kind of absurd unconscious that is external to the subject inthe form of an Other, a gap, a hole that can never be completely patched over,etc. I have learned a great deal from reading the Lacanians and from Žižek aswell, and admire the skills that go into their deft and deterministicargumentative turns. But I am inspired by Foucault’s decision to turn away fromthe psychoanalytic per se and to turn toward the sociological in all its impuremessiness. Instead of revealing over and over again how a certain unconsciousmanifests itself in the most unexpected and often comical fashion, inphilosophy, politics, and popular culture alike, Foucault’s work allows us toexamine practices, which are impermanent and changeable rather thantranscendental. In this way it avoids the tendency toward dogmatism that is the other side of some otherwise very smart usesof Lacan, Althusser, and psychoanalysis, and for that matter manywell-intentioned invocations of Marx and the notions of emancipation andrevolution. If we are after dogmatisms and absolutes – and I say this with nosarcasm whatsoever – Foucault is definitely what we should avoid; he is bigdisappointment in that department.

In brief, to respond to your questions very broadly,my indebtedness to Foucault has much to do with gradually, and very slowly,understanding how he used the same sources differently from some of his mostimportant contemporaries – how he, being just as well-versed in Marx, Freud,and all these indispensable forebears, made a decisive move to go in anon-dogmatic intellectual direction and what that entailed. That said, manyproblems remain unresolved in Foucault’s work; that’s one reason it is such apositive challenge to teach it. Besides, there are so many first-ratepublications on Foucault, done by scholars from such a wide range ofdisciplines that he is simply a terrific pedagogical resource. One area inwhich I’d like to do more in-depth research, if I can find the time, isFoucault’s uses of visuality. I am interested in this area not in order towrite more about films and images but in order to articulate the dynamicsinherent in the encounter between the phenomenology of seeing and the emergenceof epistemic ruptures that Foucault was so good in charting. To some of mycolleagues, this is, of course, nothing new – just look at the excellent workof Gary Shapiro, for instance – but I think Foucault and visuality would be arichly provocative subject to explore.

PB: Although you have not yet begun this project onFoucault and visuality, can you say at this stage more about what interests youabout the relation between Foucault’s work and your thinking of visuality, orabout, as you say, Foucault’s “uses of visuality”?

RC: Well, perhaps “uses of visuality” is not the bestway to put it. Let me begin with something I recently wrote that is about to bepublished in a collection edited by Simone Bignall and Paul Patton called Deleuze and the Postcolonial. Mycontribution is about Deleuze’s reading of Foucault’s writings and how thatmight form productive links with postcoloniality. One of the illuminatingpoints made by Deleuze is that it is a misrepresentation to think of Foucaultas a thinker of confinement. Retracing Foucault’s work on Maurice Blanchot andall those spaces of confinement such as the prison, the clinic, the asylum, andso forth, Deleuze argues that what appears as confinement in Foucault is reallya secondary formation, a formalization of a relation of exclusion; what hasbeen confined is really the outside. As you can tell, this is a significantshift in the way Foucault has been interpreted, and the consequences of thatshift are only slowly beginning to unfold in global critical work. If we followDeleuze’s reading (which does not mean we have to agree with everything hesays), then one of the things we need to come to terms with is the status ofvisibility in Foucault. I cannot elaborate this status in sufficient detailhere, but perhaps I can briefly indicate some of the interesting aspectsinvolved.

First, I think we should ask: if Foucault’s work canbe understood in terms of a medium, what would that be? I’d suggest that it islight. Foucault’s earliest work on madness may thus be seen as a study in light– that is, an approach to light as a medium of thought, as this medium isembedded in the notions of enlightenment, clarity, luminosity, and so forththat come with the European Enlightenment. The history of madness is a historyof how a mystery – a form of darkness – ascribed to certain kinds of humanbehavior gradually became visible – or visibilized – against the light ofreason. Being given visibility means that madness became discernible by way ofvarious scientific, medical, penitentiary, and other categories. Becomingvisible is, accordingly, a process of differentiation through light, whichrenders things possible by making them visible and, importantly, divisible. Theextreme example of the working of light is Bentham’s Panopticon, and Foucault’sfamous assertion in his reading, in Disciplineand Punish, of panopticism is that visibility is a trap: light is what theprisoners are caught in; light is what defines, watches, and improves them;light is what reforms their souls. If we postpone the conclusion that this issimply a bleak or pessimistic reduction of modern existence to incarceration(the way Foucault is typically read), then the relation between visibility andconfinement could be the first step to a different kind of inquiry, an inquiryinto what Foucault calls limit-experiences. What if visibility is reconsideredas a form of limit-experience in thought? What happens when what is assumed tobe clarity and luminosity is in fact the space of a certain boundary,challenging us with the unthought or unthinkable? The implicit mutualitybetween visibility and divisibility, between light and partitioning, isthought-provoking, and we find a version of it in, for instance, JacquesRancière’s discussion of the distribution of the sensible, of what it means tothink about art and politics in terms of sharing (partage), etc.

Second, as Deleuze, Shapiro, and others have pointedout, the relation or non-relation between saying and seeing, between words andthings, is a fascinating area in Foucault’s work that demands much moreattention. If words and things, or discourse and visibilities, areincommensurate orders, how would we need to rethink all the relations that havebeen constructed on the assumption that they are continuous, that one hassomething to tell us about the other? In other words, precisely thejuxtaposition – the proximity – of words and things may reveal the void, the nonsensicalnature of their assumed correspondence and mutuality. Among contemporarythinkers, Bruno Latour has extended the ramifications ofproximity-as-non-relation to his interesting studies of the confrontation ofdifferent discourses (such as science, philosophy, sociology . . .) inmodernity. Foucault was clearly elaborating such a non-relation (ordisjunction) among disciplinary knowledges in a book like The Order of Things (with its unforgettable analysis of Velasquez’sLas Meninas). It would be interestingto see what he was trying to do with the forms of visibilities in an explicitlyvisual medium such as art, as found in a painter like Manet.

Third, Foucault suggests a quite unique reading ofAdam Smith’s “invisible hand” (in the Collège de France lectures), in that,instead of placing the emphasis on the hand, he puts it on the condition of theinvisible. Whereas most interpretations of this well-known notion tend toconcentrate on the hand, as the directive that, in unseen ways, helps regulatethings on the market, Foucault’s reading stresses rather the unknowability ofthe actual forces shaping things in the market. By taking seriously theadjective invisible, he is raising the interesting question how therelationship between the sovereign and the economy in the modern state ismarked by a non-knowing – and it is this condition of not knowing everythingthat defines sovereignty in the age of economic liberalism. These are just mypreliminary observations, but it seems that there is much going on inFoucault’s thinking about visibilities that will compel us to change the way wehave been looking at even a familiar issue like liberalism as an ideology ofpolitical governance.

PB: How do you assess the increasing visibility or discursiveproliferation of ways of visualizing and discoursing “the postcolonial” ingeneral?

RC: Like many theoretical trends, the postcolonial hasbeen fashionable for a while, though many people also express a lack ofinterest in its continued relevance, while others try to suggest that it hasbeen superseded by other terms. I don’t find the debate at this level – thatis, the relevance of the term postcolonial as a fashionable theoretical turnthat may or may not still have purchase – very interesting. Indeed, the term hasprobably lost its aura as a hot item, but perhaps it is during its coolerperiod that it has more to reveal to us. To that extent, the term may have morein common with a term like modern/modernity: in both cases, the controversiesover the more positivistic question of chronologies – When exactly wasmodernity? When exactly was the colonial, giving rise to the “post,”? etc. –have to give way to another perception, namely, that even when the chronologiescan never be pinned down with absolute certainty, the marker itself continuesto evoke historical issues and effects that permeate vast subject areas. It isthe evocative quality of the term postcolonial that interests me, preciselybecause in that quality lies the suggestion that things are not quite finishedand can perhaps never be finished. The postcolonial as what is residual,open-ended, and incomplete: this is how, I believe, it will likely continue tomatter, and why there seems to be such a proliferation of ways of visualizingand discoursing it in general.

In a more pedantic frame, the postcolonial has alreadytransformed well-established fields of knowledge. To take the most obviousexample: the field of English. When I was an undergraduate at the University ofHong Kong, pursuing studies in English meant, as it still means in manypost-British places of higher education, learning the line of great works thatprogresses from Chaucer, through Milton and Shakespeare, to Johnson, Pope,Swift, to the Romantics and the Victorian novelists, and finally to the modernand contemporary writings of the British Isles. Today, it would be impossibleto adhere to this curriculum without appearing provincial, and without missingthe wonderful creative works by writers writing in English who for one reasonor another cannot be restricted to the British Isles or even the BritishCommonwealth. Writers such as Rushdie, Coetzee, Ishiguro, Lahiri, Desai,Ondaatje . . . (and these are only a very few among many) demand differentconceptual categories, different codes of organization, and a quite differentkind of literary history that is still in the process of being written.Classifying them as “postcolonial” may be just a provisional trick, but thistrick, precisely because it is not entirely satisfactory, also forces a fieldsuch as English literature to update and renovate itself. The process is notunlike housecleaning or remodeling: what can be thrown out? What has been lyingin the basement or in the attic that we have no use for, that is simply takingup space? What alternative arrangements of space – and the intimations of timethat come with such spatial rearrangements – may be introduced? How do some oddpieces of furniture compel us to change the views of entire rooms, and why hadwe not done it before? What would such a change do to the demographics of thehouse, the folks who have been living there as though they were the rightfulpermanent owners – and their offspring? Who should be the future occupants ofthe house, if it is being made over? So you see, the demands placed by the termpostcolonial on the established manors (manners) of academic learning are whatI find most thought-provoking. In addition to English, similar demands havebeen placed on fields such as French, East Asian Languages and Literatures,even German, and much newer fields such as Women’s or Gender Studies. The workrequired in each case to overhaul the older paradigms is quite different, ofcourse, but in each case my sense is that some seismic shifts are happening,and this is not because of some fashionable trend in theory, with thepostcolonial being one of the more recent terms, but rather because thetheoretical term is itself a belated reflection of the historical, cultural,and social transformations that have been occurring over a long period of time.

That said, it must be pointed out that some troublingpatterns of knowledge production continue (they too have a life of their own).The apparent popular use of the notion of the postcolonial in conjunction witha big-name theorist is one example. Here, the situation is somewhat analogousto what has been well known in the world of art: the first-world artist, likePicasso, Klee, Kandinsky, Duchamp, etc., is usually allowed identification inthe form of a name of his own, that is to say, in the form of singleauthorship, while the artists of the non-Western world have typically beenidentified in the form of the group to which they supposedly belong, andinstead of being given their individual names, these artists remain, typically,anonymous. This divide between the artist as individual author and the artistas anonymous member of a collective is an entrenched part of the modern West’sway of organizing what are so called art museums and ethnographic museums. Thissilently racialized epistemic boundary has been the object of critique byscholars such as Sally Price, James Clifford, Alfred Gell, Michael M.J.Fischer, and others; I am simply borrowing their insights here. But thoseinsights can be taken much further if we see how the realm of theory iscomparable to the realm of art: there are, on the one hand, the individualartists or theorists with recognizable names such as Derrida, Foucault,Deleuze, Rancière, Badiou, Butler, and so forth, and on the other, we have acollective category, the postcolonial, which is not unlike the typicalethnographic museum where non-Western artists or theorists can be thought of enmasse, as a group exhibit whose interest value lies not in the individualgenius of the artist or theorist but in the anonymous contributions s/he makesto the group as a whole. In the one case, even when the contributions are of acollective value, the artist or theorist is visibly individuated; in the othercase, even when the contribution is of a private, eccentric, or avant-gardenature, the artist or theorist is by default judged in accordance to the group,in accordance to what Albert Memmi has called the mark of the plural. So, thecoupling of the postcolonial with particular big-name theorists could beexactly the place to begin a different kind of intervention, one that wouldrequire us to pose questions about the status of theory as, de facto, a kind ofcontemporary art (whereas the convention has been to think of theory as a kindof philosophy), and what such art – and with it performativity – means in termsof authorship, ownership, the politics of individualism and collectivity as itis linked to the non-Western world.

PB: In light of these connections, hierarchizations andseparations that you are pointing out – the various forms ofconnection/separation between “the Name” and (or versus) “the postcolonial,”the artwork and the ethnographic work, and other such “Western ways oforganizing” – one term seems conspicuous by its absence here: namely, the oldchestnut of “capitalism” – and the sets of terms associated with it:commodification, consumption, appropriation, exploitation, and so on. How doescapital/ism relate to or feature within this (or these) complex discursiveprocess(es)?

RC: For me, the link between capital/ism and thesediscursive processes is the general mode of abstraction derived from exchangevalue. I am making a huge statement here, I know, so let me just explain myselfin the following way. Abstraction tends to be frowned on because it suggestsvagueness, lack of precision, generalization, etc., but one of the mostimportant legacies we have from the many investigations of capital is thatabstraction is structural to human social relations based on exchange. (I wouldinclude under that rubric everyone from Lukács, Adorno, and Benjamin, toJameson, Baudrillard, and Žižek.) A book I have found particularly useful is bythe German Marxist philosopher Alfred Sohn-Rethel, on manual and intellectuallabor; the book shows how even empirical and mundane acts of human exchange,like going to the butcher to buy a piece of meat, are acts of abstraction –that is to say, they involve a mental operation that is inscribed materially orembodied in the very unreflective or spontaneous behavior of exchange itself –in a manner that is inaccessible to non-humans. For precisely this reason (thepresence of reflection or lack thereof), much of the cultural work that takesoff from the critique of capital tends to elaborate on consciousness – on howconsciousness has been manipulated or duped. Exchange value throughcommodification, in other words, is largely associated with the production ofwhat is called false consciousness, to which reality appears, as Marx writes inThe German Ideology, in an upside down version. Although its analysesare anything but crude, Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment muststill be understood in terms of this powerful Marxist critique of falseconsciousness. For Adorno and Horkheimer one of the major manifestationsof false consciousness in late capitalism is the culture industry, whichbrought about an unprecedented scope and scale of reification of human lifethrough the mass commodity. I believe that this uncompromised dismissal ofpostwar mass culture, American-style, was what led a theorist such as FredricJameson to offer a more redemptive analysis of mass culture by identifying init implicit forms of utopianism (the famous example in Jameson’s corpus beinghis insightful reading of the film Jaws).

In the case of a thinker such as Žižek, “false”consciousness is analyzed by way of mass culture – the films of Hitchcock,media events, jokes, even popular song lyrics – as well as scholarly texts suchas the writings of Hegel, Lacan, and other philosophers. Not only does Žižek notseem to worry about the culture industry as Adorno and Horkheimer did; in hiscase the more orthodox notion of falsehood has become irrelevant, as ideologyis not something to be deconstructed but rather something that works with alogic that cannot be reduced to consciousness per se. Variations of thisformulation are often offered by Žižek: they don’t know what they are doing,but they are doing it . . . His way of dealing with consciousness, then, is bydisplacing it onto another manifest level, such as repetitive behavior thatindicates another dimension – an unconscious – that has a life of its own andthat can bring us much closer to whatever the truth may be. Žižek’s way ofhandling capital, that is to say, is not the “vulgar” Marxist way of interrogatingclass relations; nor is it Adorno’s manner of pitting avant-garde artisticforms/practices against commodified cultural relations. Rather, it is to showhow the follies of so-called consciousness already live a kind of objectifiedexistence, external to us, in our language, our behavior, our socialrelations, our most cherished desires, and so forth.

Obviously, I can go on and on about capital,abstraction, exchange value, and consciousness, but the question I would poseto the Marxist tradition of dealing with consciousness is its anthropocentrism.There remains an implicit belief in human nature as such in these sophisticatedelaborations of consciousness. Whether it is through the criticism of massculture (as what produces false consciousness) or a Lacanian revelation of theunconscious in all kinds of unexpected objectifications, the work onconsciousness (or its variant, subjectivity) remains chained to a kind ofhuman-centered universe. If we are to take seriously Foucault’s suggestion thatMan himself is a fairly recent historical invention, then consciousness – be itin the form of false consciousness, the unconscious, subjectivity, and so forth– would need to be given a new historicity, perhaps no longer the one itreceived from Marx and his predecessors like Feuerbach and Hegel, and theirfollowers, but a different kind of history in which human consciousness itselfno longer takes center stage. One trajectory in this posthuman direction isalready laid down by our new technologies, in the midst of whichde-humanization has become our normal way of life, in the sense that the humanhas now become, literally, bits of information, dispersed and circulatedubiquitously in ways that are beyond individuals’ conscious control. Anothertrajectory is perhaps the larger ecological framework that compels us toreexamine some of the terms that had been thrown out with the focus on capital:nature, animal, earth, spirituality . . . It is not an accident that Deleuze isbeing read with so much interest. I may not agree with everything I read byDeleuze but the questions he raises are timely, precisely because they help usthink of capital/ism in a historical and also millennial dimension, so thatthose forces that seem anachronistic in earlier discussions of capital/ismbegin to matter in a new light.

PB: Your use of the word “timely” to account for thecurrent popularity of a figure who was mainly writing between the 1960s and1980s is provocative. There is much that might be asked about this “anachronistic”relation, and the “forces” it may testify to. But what do you think are theforces which determine visibility, intelligibility, clarity or popularity here(in the contexts of “engaged” or “politicized” scholarly work), and, moreover,how does academic writing (whether that be philosophical or anti-theoretical) relateto, connect with or intervene into the objects it is concerned with (such ascultural or political “issues” and “problems”)?

RC: I don’t think the 1960s through the 1990s were that distantfrom us. Deleuze and his contemporaries were writing during a period whenimportant world events were unfolding – the cold war, movements ofdecolonization on different continents, the Cultural Revolution in China, May’68, the civil rights movement in the U.S., and so forth. One could say thatthese were the decades when Europe’s sense of itself was undergoing asignificant shift, and that this was reflected in the many philosophical andtheoretical writings that continue to influence us to this day. One consequenceof this shift is a change in the way race and ethnicity are conceived. Whilethe Holocaust remains for many people the definitive event of racial or ethnicviolence in the twentieth century, it has become increasingly impossible to acceptthis definitiveness. Instead, the work on race and ethnicity these days mustaddress other episodes of violence and discrimination that have been occludedprecisely in this exclusive focus on anti-semitism, which, while beingintolerable, is also part of what of what we mean by the term Eurocentrism. So,in doing my own work, I have tried to think by juxtaposing happenings thatseem at first unrelated. What does it mean for Foucault to talk about, let’ssay, literature as a form of self-referential writing (whose power comes fromits knowledge of its own impotence) when we think not so much in the context ofthe European avant-garde but in terms of the pluralistic, perhapsincommensurate, histories of world literature? How may deconstruction as asubversive practice of language teach us about (French) colonialism as a typeof governance? Why is the essentialism of the Lacanian Real so attractiveat a time when we have supposedly learned to historicize and contextualizeeverything? How do comparative literature and area studies serve as silentpartners to each other?

In this admittedly eclectic and heterologous way ofreading, anachronism is more a question or a contentious claim than acertitude, since temporality itself can no longer be assumed as clearly indexical,with neat divisions into the past, the present, and the future. Rather, whenone reads this way, temporality tends to operate in the form of upsurges,through the unexpected proximities constructed around seemingly unrelatedthings. (Of course, this way of reading is closely related to technologies ofphotography and film as well as modernist painting.) In that vein, what mayseem anachronistic – let’s say, questions about religion, nature, animality,and affect, to give some of the most topical examples – could be rethought asthe effects of bracketing or suspension from a particular time, which is not tosay that such questions have become irrelevant once and for all. Indeed,anachronism could be another way of understanding the indispensable element oftime lag in thinking and intellectual work in general. To use a term fromDeleuze, anachronism could be a matter of deterritorialization, thedeterritorialization, or nomadization, of time’s complete correspondenceto itself. Instead, anachronism suggests that time is always “out of joint,”that this out-of-jointness or fugitiveness need not be something to lament, asphilosophers such as Heidegger and Bernard Stiegler, in their discussions oftechnologies and technics, seem to suggest (quite sentimentally, in myopinion).

The problem with our latest technics such asdigitization is not, I think, that they have produced an alienating world inwhich time is out of joint; quite the contrary: the newest technologies ofcapture, as they become ever-more exact, efficient, and flawless, are leadingto a vanishing of time lag. As it enables numerous forms of instantaneousdocumenting, immediate replayability, live coding, simulcast, open access, andso forth, digitization is eliminating from time precisely that out-of-jointnessthat is fundamental to the imagination and creative work. When you think of it,there is no such thing as an imperfect or belated copy of anything anymore.Everything is readily available as a present/now and interchangeable with somethinglike it. That elimination of time’s potential to be anachronistic, to be justapproximate, to become fossilized, to become fugitive from itself – a potentialthat for thousands of years was preserved by the imperfect technics ofreproduction – is I think the greatest challenge posed by our contemporarymedia. But we do not really know what consequences this will have on ourthinking, memory, habits of learning, or interpersonal communications. There isa lot of speculative talk about the possible consequences, but it’s probablystill too early to tell. Suffice it to say, for now, that this fundamentallychanging relation to time – a relation which pervades everything from politicsto art, health care, sexuality, or bureaucratic record-keeping, a relationwhich is rewriting the way we as a species leave our imprints on the universe –is one of the “forces” – and a major type of violence – we need to reckon with,even in the small arena of academic work. Of course, we’d need to ask whatdivisions of academic work we are talking about: the humanities always have aharder time justifying their existence (an effect also of the history oftechnics, perhaps?) but many scholars are genuinely attempting to go beyond themore restrictive disciplinary boundaries in order to create more supple, ratherthan mutually exclusive or ignorant, networks of thinking and writing. That isan encouraging sign.

Rey Chow was Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Brown Universityfrom 2000 to 2009, and is currently Anne Firor Scott Professor of Literature atTrinity College of Arts and Sciences, Duke University. Since 1991 she hasauthored the following books: Woman and Chinese Modernity; WritingDiaspora; Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, andContemporary Chinese Cinema; Ethics after Idealism; TheProtestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism; The Age of the WorldTarget: Self-Referentiality in War, Theory, and Comparative Work; and SentimentalFabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films. Primitive Passions wasawarded the James Russell Lowell Prize by the Modern Language Association.Chow’s work has been widely excerpted, anthologized and translated into majorEuropean and Asian languages. She serves on the editorial and/or advisoryboards of over 30 academic journals, book series, and research centers aroundthe world.

Paul Bowman, the interviewer, teaches cultural studies atCardiff University. He is the author of several books on cultural studies andpopular culture and editor of The Rey Chow Reader (Columbia UniversityPress, 2010).

[*] Rey Chow email: rey.chow@duke.edu; Paul Bowman(interviewer): BowmanP@cf.ac.uk

CFP ASIAN CINEMA STUDIES SOCIETY CONFERENCE

2011-11-21T09:39:00.001Z

ASIAN CINEMA STUDIES SOCIETY CONFERENCE

MARCH 18-20, 2012

THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG

This meeting of the Asian Cinema Studies Society welcomes paper, poster, workshop and panel proposals covering all aspects of Asian film and media.



Please send proposals of 200-300 words as RTF or WORD attachments to Dr. Natalie Wong at nslw@hku.hk.   For all proposals, be certain to include the title, author(s) name(s), institutional affiliation, mailing address, and email contacts, as well as a brief biography of each contributor. For panel, workshop, and group submissions, be certain to provide a brief description (100 words) of the contribution of each participant. Sessions will be 1 ½ hours in duration, and time limits will be strictly enforced.

CALL FOR PAPERS DEADLINE: December 31, 2011

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by the end of January 2012.

We regret that we cannot offer any funds for travel or accommodation. However, there will be NO registration fee for those presenting papers, serving as panel chairs, or participating in workshops, poster sessions, or in any other official capacity.   Registered guests are welcome to attend as well; however, some conference events/meals may only be available for those presenting papers or serving in other official capacities.

Program committee members: John A. Lent (Chair of ACSS), Tan See-Kam (Macau), Natalie Wong (HKU), Staci Ford (HKU), Mirana Szeto (HKU), Winnie Yee (HKU), Ang Sze-wei (HKU), Gina Marchetti (HKU).

Proposal submissions & inquiries: Dr. Natalie Wong at nslw@hku.hk

Visit our website at http://www.hku.hk/complit/acssc/

About the Asian Cinema Studies Society (ACSS):

Inaugurated in 1984, ACSS has been dedicated to fostering research in Asian film and related media. It publishes Asian Cinema twice yearly, and features all types of Asian film, including full-length movies, documentaries, animation, and experimental. Nine ACSS conferences have been held since 1988, including five in the United States and one each in Australia, Canada, South Korea and China. Many of the papers presented at ACSS conferences have been published in Asian Cinema and other journals and books.

For more information on ACSS and for membership details, visit its website at http://astro.temple.edu/~jlent/asiancinema/acss.html

About the Centre for the Study of Globalization and Culture:

The Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC), set up in 1999, is an interdisciplinary center based in the Department of Comparative Literature. The focus of its work is on issues of culture and globalization with special reference to Asia, China and Hong Kong. Major research themes include: the cultures of capitalism; global flows of culture, media and technology; cities and globalization; new communities, publics, and identities; and post-colonialism and neo-liberalism.

For more information on CSGC, visit its website at http://www0.hku.hk/complit/csgc/

POSITION IN HONG KONG CINEMA

2011-11-15T09:18:00.001Z

Subject: POSITION IN HONG KONG CINEMA

Please help to spread the word on this job opening. Thanks!

POSITION IN HONG KONG CINEMA

Assistant Professor in the School of Humanities (Comparative Literature)

Institution Type:   College / University
Location:   Hong Kong
Position:   Assistant Professor

Founded in 1911, The University of Hong Kong is committed to the highest international standards of excellence in teaching and research, and has been at the international forefront of academic scholarship for many years. The University has a comprehensive range of study programmes and research disciplines spread across 10 faculties and about 100 sub-divisions of studies and learning. There are over 23,400 undergraduate and postgraduate students coming from 50 countries, and more than 1,200 members of academic and academic-related staff, many of whom are internationally renowned.

Assistant Professor in the School of Humanities (Comparative Literature)
(Ref.: 201100947)

Applications are invited for appointment as Assistant Professor in the School of Humanities (Comparative Literature) from August 2012 or as soon as possible thereafter, on a three-year fixed-term basis, with the possibility of renewal. Appointee with demonstrated performance will be considered for tenure towards the end of the second three-year contract.

The Department of Comparative Literature enjoys a reputation as a leader in literary, theoretical, and cultural studies using cross-cultural materials and interdisciplinary approaches. Main areas of research and teaching in the Department include visual cultures and film studies, literature, critical theory, feminism and gender studies, postcolonial, Hong Kong and China studies, and new media and global studies. The Department offers B.A., M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. degree programmes, and has excellent teaching and research facilities and support. The University and the Hong Kong Research Grants Council provide substantial competitive funding for research projects of all kinds. Information about the Department can be obtained at http://www.hku.hk/complit.

Applicants should possess a Ph.D. degree or equivalent that focuses on Hong Kong cinema. The applicant will primarily contribute to teaching and research in the Department of Comparative Literature and should possess the expertise in teaching major and common core courses on Hong Kong cinema and culture, courses related to world cinema and globalization, or other courses compatible with those offered by the Department. The applicant is also expected to participate in the Arts Facultys emerging programme in Global Creative Industries as well as the new, interdisciplinary Hong Kong Studies programme. Those with a strong publication record demonstrating an ability to explore the global impact and engagement of Hong Kong cinema will be favorably considered. Capacity to engage in teamwork is fundamental to the position. Enquiries about the post should be sent to Dr. Esther Cheung, Chairperson of the Department of Comparative Literature (e-mail: estherch@hku.hk).

A globally competitive remuneration package commensurate with the appointees qualifications and experience will be offered. At current rates, salaries tax does not exceed 15% of gross income. The appointment will attract a contract-end gratuity and University contribution to a retirement benefits scheme, totalling up to 15% of basic salary, as well as leave, and medical/dental benefits. Housing benefits will be provided as applicable.

Contact: Applicants should send an application letter, an up-to-date curriculum vitae, a 1-3 page description of dissertation and/or current research project, a sample syllabus on Hong Kong Cinema and Global Creative Industries and 3 confidential references (quoting Ref.: 201100947) sent directly by the referees, to the Assistant Registrar (Appointments), Human Resource Section, Registry, The University of Hong Kong by e-mail (r1100947@hku.hk). Further particulars can be obtained at http://www.hku.hk/apptunit/. Shortlisted candidates may be invited to attend an interview. Review of applications will start on November 30, 2011 until the post is filled. Candidates who are not contacted within 4 months of the review date may consider their applications unsuccessful.

The University is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to a No-Smoking Policy

Website: http://www.hku.hk

Futures of Chinese Cinema: Technologies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures

2011-11-10T12:12:00.000Z

This looks good:

Futures of Chinese Cinema: Technologies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures:

'via Blog this'

Yellow Future: Oriental Style in ... - Jane Chi Hyun Park

2011-11-04T17:40:00.000Z

This is an excellent and hugely important book:

Yellow Future: Oriental Style in ... - Jane Chi Hyun Park - Google Books:

'via Blog this'

Donnie Yen On Preserving The Spirit Of Bruce Lee In… Vídeos de noticias | Getty Images...

2011-11-01T09:21:00.000Z

Donnie Yen On Preserving The Spirit Of Bruce Lee In… Vídeos de noticias | Getty Images...:

'via Blog this'

2nd Draft of 'Bruce Lee versus Zizek and Badiou'

2011-10-28T19:27:00.001+01:00

Here's the second draft of a paper that is now called "Ideology or Philosophy: Which Side is Martial Arts Discourse On? Bruce Lee's Philosophy versus Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek's Ideology":

http://tinyurl.com/5wg9p7y

It's destined for a book on martial arts and philosophy. Well, that's the idea, anyway.

Here's the very long version of the url:

http://cardiff.academia.edu/PaulBowman/Papers/1090231/Ideology_or_Philosophy_Which_Side_is_Martial_Arts_Discourse_On_Bruce_Lees_Philosophy_versus_Alain_Badiou_and_Slavoj_Zizeks_Ideology

Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge

2011-10-26T09:38:00.000+01:00

I still haven't received my copy of this, but I'm very much looking forward to it: Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge:

'via Blog this'

When Bruce Lee Meets Alain Badiou

2011-09-20T14:02:00.000+01:00

Draft of a paper connecting Bruce Lee to contemporary Continental Philosophy:

When Bruce Lee Meets Alain Badiou (Paul Bowman) - Academia.edu:

'via Blog this'

Re-Enter the Dragon

2011-09-05T14:42:00.000+01:00

Here's a paper I'm giving at SOAS on Wednesday:

Re-Enter the Dragon (Paul Bowman) - Academia.edu:

'via Blog this'

NETWORK ENTERTAINMENT - THE COMPANY

2011-07-26T15:55:00.000+01:00

This company is making a major new feature film documentary about Bruce Lee:

NETWORK ENTERTAINMENT - THE COMPANY

Hopefully, I should pop up in it as a talking head!

Watch this space.

Post-Cinematic Effects

2011-07-26T12:21:00.001+01:00

Post-Cinematic Effects

Paul Bowman

Steven Shaviro’s Post-Cinematic Affect (2010) engages with the effects of post-cinematic technologies on our experiences, orientations, emotions, feelings and lives. ‘Post-cinematic’ technologies include all that is associated with the rise of interactivity, gaming, multimedia, and the proliferation of different internet platforms, as well as various new types of text, such as the music video, the new ways, modes and contexts of experiencing and consuming them and the effects they have on consciousness and perception. Shaviro considers the rise to dominance of these ‘post-cinematic’ technologies in terms of a transformation of ‘affects’: mutations of experiential landscapes, emotional geographies, and perceptual and sensorial ecosystems. Using Raymond Williams’ term, yet following and developing a distinctly Deleuzean paradigm, Shaviro characterises this as an epochal transformation in dominant ‘structures of feeling’.

If such post-cinematic technologies have transformed structures of feeling, this is not the first time this has happened. Consider the emergence of cinema itself. Rey Chow opens her 1995 book Primitive Passions with a reconsideration of the famous story of the turn towards a writing career of the monumental figure of Chinese literature, Lu Xun. Whilst a medical student at the very beginning of the 20^th Century, Lu Xun watched with horror newsreels depicting atrocities committed in the Russo-Japanese War in Manchuria, including the executions of Chinese people. Chow’s analysis of Lu Xun’s emotional and intellectual response is far reaching and immensely important. But the only point that I have space to mention here is that Chow emphasises the significance of the fact that this new technology (the cinematic apparatus) precipitated a peculiar response from Lu Xun: he turned away from medicine and towards literature, believing that he could do more to improve the health of China by cultural (or ideological) intervention than by medical intervention.

Central to Chow’s reading of this famous narrative is the following: Xun’s response to the new cultural technology (cinema) sends him into a relationship with an older technology (literature). From this, Chow proposes that it is possible to perceive the effects of cinema in (and on) Xun’s literature. From this point, one may broaden the perspective and begin to grasp the significance of the emergence of cinema in much, if not all, subsequent developments in literature. Indeed, we might begin to regard the majority of 20^th Century literature as ‘post-cinematic’, insofar as it is literature produced in a cultural world into which the cinematic apparatus has intervened and transformed. In other words, in the wake of cinema, literature could never be the same again. In this sense, Lu Xun’s story is exemplary of the epochal mutation entailed in the shocks of modernity. Literature in modernity is itself post-cinematic, even if this reverses the chronological periodization and emphasis that organizes Shaviro’s title. For, the ‘post-cinematic’ that Shaviro refers us to is of course all that new stuff that comes after cinema: computers, the internet and so on. But, as with Lyotard’s ‘post-modern’, one of the key points about the postmodern is that the ‘post’ is there at the outset. Postmodern thinkers of the postmodern have long pointed out that the postmodern is implied in and active in the emergence of the modern, right from the start.

Chow’s reading of Lu Xun’s affective response to these early experiences of (or encounters with) cinema demonstrate this explicitly. The new technology intervenes into, informs and thereby transforms the cultural landscape in ways which have knock on (albeit unpredictable) effects on other forms of cultural production and reception. To see this at a basic level, one need merely consider the extent to which so many literary best-sellers today have clearly been written with the production requirements of the standard Hollywood film form firmly in mind. This is but one register of the hegemony of the cinematic form and its ‘hegemonization’ of so-called literature.

Nevertheless, Shaviro’s book argues that contemporary cultural conditions are such that that the cinematic epoch is coming to a close. We are now at the end(s) of the cinematic. This is being registered within cinema, even as cinema remains strongly influential across all of cinema’s inheritors. (Hence, the times are ‘post-cinematic’ and not ‘anti’ or ‘non-cinematic’.) Thus, gaming, all things interactive, the music video, and so forth, all remain hugely informed by cinematography, but they move away from its technological limitations.

Meanwhile, cinema attempts to incorporate the new technological advancements within itself: from DVD menus, extras, commentaries, outtakes and other supplements, all the way to the inclusion of forms of interactivity that ultimately signal the demise of the older form. According to this perspective, films like Blade Runner or Sim-One are not post-cinematic, whilst The Matrix and even Old Boy are. The former are films about future technologies, whilst the latter incorporate future technologies into themselves, insofar as both films famously affect the styles of computer simulated choreographies in their most famous fight scenes, albeit in different ways: The Matrix employs the sharpness and precision of arcade game fights, whilst Old Boy incorporates the two-dimensional plane of older forms of computer game, but it counterbalances this with the inclusion of all of the scrappiness, imprecision, stumbling, gasping, moaning and, indeed, messy brawling, that almost all action films exclude or repress (as exemplified by the ultra-precise choreography of The Matrix or The Bourne Identity trilogy).

Quite what the ‘affect’ of all of this ‘is’ – if it necessarily has ‘one’ or if indeed there necessarily is ‘one’ – is, to my mind, irreducibly debatable. In my own first viewing of the famous fight scene in Old Boy, for example, I distinctly remember perceiving passion, enjoyment, delight: Oh Dae-su was enjoying his vengeance, I thought. And this reading was eminently in keeping with the theme the film had introduced earlier, upon Oh Dae-su’s first release from his five years of sensual deprivation in captivity: the film showed us his inability to resist, and his delight in, each and every kind of sensual experience. Accordingly, this fight, I supposed, was simply a continuation of that theme: a real orgy of violence. Yet, the director’s commentary later informed me that the scene was conceptualised as one of loneliness: Oh Dae-su was the loneliest man in the world; his lack of fear was the lack of fear of someone who has lost everything, all fear, all hope (anelpis), all passion...

So whose reading is ‘right’, mine or the director’s? And what is the ‘affect’? To my mind, this ‘affect’ is not ‘one’. There is not one ‘affect’, nor even one economy, ecosystem, ecology, or whatever of affect(s); just as there is not one reading of one text. Post-cinematic effects, yes, certainly; Shaviro makes an important observation. But affects? I’m not so sure why or how they would be different from everything that postmodern theorists have long been saying about postmodernity. The ultimate question, to me, and the only one which matters, is the extent to which approaching the world in terms of affect offers or adds (or indeed takes or denudes) anything specific for cultural theory and the understanding of culture and politics.

Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge

2011-07-11T06:50:00.001+01:00

This book will be very important:

http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5294-martial-arts-as-embodied-knowle.aspx

It is the first to posit a field of ‘martial arts studies’, and to trace the characteristics of this field. Here’s what the website says:

A wide-ranging scholarly consideration of the martial arts.

This landmark work provides a wide-ranging scholarly consideration of the traditional Asian martial arts. Most of the contributors to the volume are practitioners of the martial arts, and all are keenly aware that these traditions now exist in a transnational context. The book’s cutting-edge research includes ethnography and approaches from film, literature, performance, and theater studies.

Three central aspects emerge from this book: martial arts as embodied fantasy, as a culturally embedded form of self-cultivation, and as a continuous process of identity formation. Contributors explore several popular and highbrow cultural considerations, including the career of Bruce Lee, Chinese wuxia films, and Don DeLillo’s novel Running Dog. Ethnographies explored describe how the social body trains in martial arts and how martial arts are constructed in transnational training. Ultimately, this academic study of martial arts offers a focal point for new understandings of cultural and social beliefs and of practice and agency.

“The book successfully demonstrates that martial arts and other traditional art forms are not static entities. Instead they respond to changing environments by a process of constant reinvention.” — Thomas A. Green, coeditor of Martial Arts of the World: An Encyclopedia of History and Innovation

“Taken together, these essays give a new picture of Asian martial arts as a transnational phenomenon, ranging from Singapore’s preservation of Chinese traditions to British adaptation of Indian martial arts for the stage and African usage of Okinawan traditions. Since martial arts are one of the most famous traditions to have originated in Asia, it is useful to see exactly how they are viewed or practiced around the world, from a scholarly perspective.” — Margaret B. Wan, author of Green Peony and the Rise of the Chinese Martial Arts Novel

Asian Cinema Studies Conference

2011-06-29T10:16:00.001+01:00

CALL FOR PAPERS
===========

ASIAN CINEMA STUDIES SOCIETY CONFERENCE
=============================

With the Support of
THE CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF GLOBALIZATION AND CULTURE and
THE DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE at
THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG

MARCH 18-20, 2012
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG

Hong Kong and Asian Cinema: Creativity and Culture in an Era of Globalization
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This meeting of the Asian Cinema Studies Society welcomes paper, poster, workshop and panel proposals covering all aspects of Asian film and media. Although proposals related to the conference theme of Hong Kong and Asian cinema in the era of globalization may be given priority, proposals on all aspects of Asian film and media are welcome.

Please send proposals of 200-300 words as RTF or WORD attachments to Dr. Natalie Wong at nslw@hku.hk. For all proposals, be certain to include the title, author(s) name(s), institutional affiliation, mailing address, and email contacts, as well as a brief biography of each contributor. For panel, workshop, and group submissions, be certain to provide a brief description (100 words) of the contribution of each participant. Sessions will be 1 ½ hours in duration, and time limits will be strictly enforced.

Deadline for proposals: December 31, 2011

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by the end of January 2012.

We regret that we cannot offer any funds for travel or accommodation. However, there will be NO registration fee for those presenting papers, serving as panel chairs, or participating in workshops, poster sessions, or in any other official capacity. Registered guests are welcome to attend as well; however, some conference events/meals may only be available for those presenting papers or serving in other official capacities.

About the Asian Cinema Studies Society (ACSS):

Inaugurated in 1984, ACSS has been dedicated to fostering research in Asian film and related media. It publishes Asian Cinema twice yearly, and features all types of Asian film, including full-length movies, documentaries, animation, and experimental. Nine ACSS conferences have been held since 1988, including five in the United States and one each in Australia, Canada, South Korea and China. Many of the papers presented at ACSS conferences have been published in Asian Cinema and other journals and books.

For more information on ACSS and for membership details, visit its website athttp://astro.temple.edu/~jlent/asiancinema/acss.html

About the Centre for the Study of Globalization and Culture:

The Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC), set up in 1999, is an interdisciplinary center based in the Department of Comparative Literature. The focus of its work is on issues of culture and globalization with special reference to Asia, China and Hong Kong. Major research themes include: the cultures of capitalism; global flows of culture, media and technology; cities and globalization; new communities, publics, and identities; and post-colonialism and neo-liberalism.

For more information on CSGC, visit its website at
http://www0.hku.hk/complit/csgc/

Please direct all inquiries to Dr. Natalie Wong at nslw@hku.hk.

Program committee members: John Lent (Temple), Tan See-Kam (Macau), Natalie Wong (HKU), Staci Ford (HKU), Mirana Szeto (HKU), Winnie Yee (HKU), Ang Sze-wei (HKU), Gina Marchetti (HKU).

FUEL TV Launches Late Night Kung Fu Film Series

2011-06-15T09:41:00.001+01:00

To: <BowmanP@cardiff.ac.uk>
From: "Colleen Kuhn" <CKuhn@MPRM.com>
Date: 14/06/2011 10.35PM
Subject: FUEL TV Launches Late Night Kung Fu Film Series

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FUEL TV LAUNCHES LATE NIGHT KUNG FU FILM SERIES

Television personality Kelly Choi hosts weekend series of classic Kung Fu films beginning Saturday, June 18 at 11:00PM ET/PT

LOS ANGELES, CA - FUEL TV (www.fuel.tv), Fox Sports Media Group’s dynamic entertainment and sports network for young males, announces Late Night Kung Fu, a weekly two-hour film series devoted to iconic, English-dubbed Kung Fu films. Hosted by television personality Kelly Choi, Late Night Kung Fu premieres Saturday, June 18 at 11:00PM ET/PT with “Executioners from Shaolin.”

Acquired from Shaw Brothers Studios, the largest movie production company of Hong Kong films, FUEL TV airs ten classics throughout the summer. “Late Night Kung Fu is a great way to introduce these classic, fight-fueled action films to a new generation of potential fans,” says George Greenberg, FUEL TV’s GM.

Kelly Choi, who gained fame in the U.S. for hosting Bravo’s “Top Chef Masters,” joins the FUEL TV family to host the Saturday late-night television block. “I’m excited to begin a relationship with FUEL TV by hosting Late Night Kung Fu and helping expand the awareness of this popular style of cultural filmmaking to a new generation,” says Choi.

The Late Night Kung Fu line up airing on FUEL TV Saturdays at 11:00PM ET/PT is as follows:

June 18 – “Executioners from Shaolin”

June 25 – “Ten Tigers of Kwangtung”

July 2 - “Shaolin Intruders”

July - “Clan of the White Lotus”

July 16 – “Marco Polo”

July 23 – “The Magic Blade”

July 30 – “Killer Clans”

August 6 – “Legendary Weapons of China”

August 13 – “Shaolin Prince”

August 20 – “My Young Auntie”

For more information on FUEL TV, please visit www.fuel.tv.

FUEL TV:

FUEL TV is the only cable and satellite television network that features the exciting world of adrenaline and thrill-seeking sports and the stories that surround them. This new generation of sports provides a rich landscape of some of the most vibrant and action-packed television entertainment in the world. See why young adrenaline sports fans call FUEL TV the channel they never turn off. FUEL TV, part of FOX Sports Media Group, was launched July 1, 2003 and is seen in more than 30 million U.S. homes and can be accessed by broadband, mobile devices and other digital platforms such as iTunes®. FUEL TV programming is available in more than 50 countries around the world with 24/7 channels operating in Australia and Europe. To subscribe to FUEL TV, call 877-4-FUEL-TV. For program times and other information, visit www.fuel.tv.

FOX Sports Media Group

FOX Sports Media Group (FSMG) is the umbrella entity representing News Corporation’s wide array of multi-platform US-based sports assets under Chairman & CEO David Hill. Built with brands that are capable of reaching more than 100 million viewers in a single weekend, FSMG includes ownership and interests in linear television networks, digital and mobile programming, broadband platforms, multiple web sites, joint-venture businesses and several licensing partnerships. FSMG now includes FOX Sports, the sports television arm of the FOX Broadcasting Company; Fox’s 19 regional sports networks, their affiliated regional web sites and FSN national programming; SPEED and SPEED2; Fox Soccer Channel and Fox Soccer Plus; FUEL TV; and Fox College Sports. In addition, FSMG also includes FOX Sports Interactive Media, which comprises FOXSports.com on MSN, whatifsports.com and scout.com, reaching over 27 million unique visitors monthly. Also included are Fox’s interests in joint-venture businesses FOX Deportes, Big Ten Network and STATS, LLC, as well as licensing agreements that establish the FOX Sports Radio Network, FOX Sports Skybox restaurants and FOX Sports Grills.

###

FUEL TV

John Stouffer

310.444.8564

jstouffer@fuel.tv

www.foxflash.com

MPRM Communications

Natalie Yallouz

323.933.3399

nyallouz@mprm.com

"Bruce Lee Lives!" - A Six Part Original Series from FUEL TV - Please Post Trailer

2011-06-03T06:25:00.001+01:00

“Bruce Lee Lives!” is a contemporary and provocative examination of the greatest martial artist of all time as told through the personal stories of a “who’s who” list of filmmakers, musicians and athletes he influenced. The show pays homage to Bruce Lee—the action star, philosopher, filmmaker, and Godfather of mixed martial arts. This exciting new six-part original series “Bruce Lee Lives!” premiering on FUEL TV, Wednesday, July 13 at 10:00PM ET/PT.

“Bruce Lee Lives!” explores the legend of Lee’s life with never-before-seen interviews and features of his own incredible work. The series provides viewers an in-depth look into his successes, his failures, his plight, his fight, his untimely death, and the indelible legacy he left behind as one of the most influential martial artists of the 20th Century. It also examines his expansion into acting, choreography, filmmaking, composing and philosophy and the lasting impact he’s had in those various areas.

I hope you can find space on your site to post the trailer for us, and drive awareness to the premiere on FUEL TV. If you would like artwork from the series to complement your coverage, please feel free to contact me.

Thanks,
Colleen

Watch the trailer for FUEL TV’s “Bruce Lee Lives!” here:

http://www.fuel.tv/bruce-lee-lives-teaser-premieres-july-13-on-fuel-tv

Embed the clip on your site:

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Globalization, Cultural Identities and Media Representations

2011-05-20T06:21:00.001+01:00

This looks great:

http://books.google.com/books?id=GWyF18r-tR4C&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=the+globalization+of+martial+arts&source=bl&ots=cy-z3eNmyh&sig=400IbT3FbFmK_BlzsQs2JWXTWmw&hl=en&ei=UPnVTbqrIsGKhQfGrM20Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=the%20globalization%20of%20martial%20arts&f=false

I haven’t read it yet, but intend to soon.

Deconstructing Popular Culture online

2011-05-16T19:57:00.001+01:00

Here is the full text of Deconstructing Popular Culture by Paul Bowman, published by Palgrave in 2008:

http://cardiff.academia.edu/PaulBowman/Books/595506/Deconstructing_Popular_Culture

Spectres...

2011-04-11T20:57:00.001+01:00

…of Bruce Lee:

http://www.uzak.it/lo-stato-delle-cose/49-spectres-of-bruce-lee.html

Bruce Lee DVDs

2011-03-15T19:47:00.001Z

Roll up, roll up: Get yer Bruce Lee DVDs ’ere:

http://bruceleedvds.co.uk

Bruce Lee V. Egemonia

2011-03-15T19:39:00.001Z

A paper I’m giving in Bari, Puglia (Italy) on 29^th March:

http://cardiff.academia.edu/PaulBowman/Talks/37209/Bruce_Lee_V._Egemonia

(It’ll be worth attending just to hear/laugh at my effort to present in Italian…)

Chen Zhen and Donnie Yen on Dorkarama's Blog

2011-02-14T21:28:00.001Z

Interesting article on Chen Zhen and Donnie Yen:

http://dorkarama.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/too-much-fisting-%E2%80%93-chen-zhen-chinese-nationalism-and-the-myth-of-kung-fu/

Mao loved Bruce Lee too

2011-01-16T20:17:00.001Z

Thanks to Simon for this link:

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2010-12/17/content_11716141.htm

It's a great article about Mao and Bruce Lee.

Rare pictures of Bruce Lee

2011-01-15T09:30:00.001Z

http://history.huanqiu.com/photo/2009-08/539475_4.html

Bruce Lee, My Brother

2011-01-14T09:43:00.001Z

Being based in the UK, I haven’t seen Bruce Lee, My Brother yet, but I’m trying to persuade anyone in the East to send me a DVD asap.

Here is a review of how it has fared in the cinemas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Lee,_My_Brother

Spectres of Bruce Lee

2011-01-13T16:34:00.001Z

Here is the first draft of a keynote I am giving at the Asian Exposure conference in Coventry in February (2011):

http://cardiff.academia.edu/PaulBowman/Papers/388503/Spectres_of_Bruce_Lee

The call for papers and conference info is here:

CALL FOR PAPERS

CUEAFS Presents

Asian Exposure: East Asian Cinema in a Global Context

(Coventry University, February 10-11, 2011)

A two-day international symposium and an East Asian Cinema and Film Festival (sponsored by Third Window Films) organised by Spencer Murphy (Coventry University), John Berra (Nanjing University) and Colette Balmain (Coventry University) and funded by Coventry University.

The films that have emerged from East Asia in the past decade have invigorated international cinema with their originality and vitality, capturing the attention of academics and audiences alike. Asian Exposure aims to capture this vitality through a combination of formal and informal talks, film screenings at the Warwick Art Centre sponsored by Third Window Films, Q&A sessions with key directors, workshops and themed events.

We seek papers that represent the diversity of East Asian Cinema and engage with the films from a variety of perspectives – academic, fan based, journalism, festival management, student, distribution companies and publishing – across disciplines and countries.

As this symposium emerges from the work done by CUEAFS (Coventry University East Asian Film Society), one of the foremost aims of the symposium is to challenge academic boundaries and conventions in relation to the production and dissemination of knowledge. As such, we actively welcome the submission of abstracts of work-in-progress, pre-formed panels, workshops or proposed discussion sessions by students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, in addition to academics, journalists, and people involved in the consumption, promotion and distribution of East Asian Cinema.

The purpose of the symposium and film festival is to develop a network of people involved with the production, distribution, reception and analysis of East Asian cinema. It is anticipated that the symposium will reflect the excitement and interest generated by the emergence of East Asian cinema onto the global screen, while also offering new insights into local productions and co-productions which have been overlooked by scholars and audiences in the West.

The main criteria is that proposals should be related to one of the four cinematic territories (China, Hong Kong, Japan or South Korea). Pre-formed panels, workshops, presentation of work-in-progress, and panels are sought. Suggested areas are below, but we welcome proposals on other areas of interest which fulfil the main purpose of the symposium.

Traditions and Directions

· Diasporic texts/Diasporic directors

· The auteur and the canon

· Western co-productions and Hollywood Remakes/East Asian co-productions and remakes of Hollywood films

· Academic approaches/theories of East Asian Cinema including questions of the transnational and the global

· Orientalism/Occidentalism/Self-Orientalism

· National Cinema and nationalism

· Institution and Industry

· Relationship between traditional arts and cinema as a mechanism of local identification and signification

Representations of Self and Other

· Class, society and the representation of disenfranchisement

· Ethnicity, empowerment and disempowerment

· Gender and sexual politics

· Sexuality beyond the heterosexual paradigm

· Consumerism and new sexual identities

· Monstrous becomings between East and West: zombies/ghosts/cyborgs/vampires

· Social issues on screen

· Trauma and national identity

Genre and Beyond

· Traditional genres

· Blockbusters and Franchises

· K-horror/J-horror and A-horror

· Feminist cinema/Films directed by women

· Independent cinema/Experimental cinema

· Queer cinema

· Pink/Adult cinema

· Anime – adult/family

· Youth films

· War cinema

· Romance, comedy and melodrama

· Film adaptations of novels/manga/anime

· Star as genre

· Hybrid/diffused genres

· Technology and East Asian Cinema

Audiences and Reception

· Fancultures

· Translation – subtitling and/or dubbing

· Screen quotas and exhibition

· Film Criticism/Journalism/Websites

· Cosplay and performance

· Different modes of spectatorship (home/cinema/festival)

Promotion, Distribution and Marketing

· Film Festivals e.g. Pusan Film Festival, London Korean Film Festival, FRIGHTFEST and FANTASIA film festivals, gay and lesbian film festivals.

· East Asian cinema on the internet: websites, blogs, on-line journals, youtube, specialist Asian film sites

· Production companies and governmental policy

· Distribution companies and networks

*****

The symposium will be held at Coventry University from February 10-11, 2011.

Please send a 300 word abstract for a 20 minute paper to eastasiancinema@yahoo.co.uk. Pre-formed panels and workshops will be allocated no more than 60 minutes. General inquiries should be sent to Colette Balmain (balmacolet@aol.com).

Deadline for proposals: 30 November 2010!

*****

For further details, visit us at either of the sites below:

Conference website: http://cueafs.com/?page_id=1355

Facebook site: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=146295758743709

Interview on Theorizing Bruce Lee and JKD

2011-01-13T09:52:00.001Z

The inestimable Teri Tom took the time out of her glittering schedule to interview me. Here’s a copy of the interview, on (Theorizing) Bruce Lee and JKD:

http://cardiff.academia.edu/PaulBowman/Papers/387877/Interview_on_Theorizing_Bruce_Lee_and_JKD

The Point of the Arts and Humanities

2011-01-12T10:58:00.001Z

In the context of only one of the debates that has been provoked by the Con-Dem Government’s vandalism of everything we all hold dear (there urgently need to be more debates about more of the vandalism, including the scrapping of free swimming for children and the elderly, the scrapping of ‘book start’ to encourage a love of reading, the demolition of the public sector, the removal of funding for Access courses and for teenagers as such, the selling of British forests and woodlands to private interests and companies [including, of course, logging companies], and – oh yes – the privatization of the public university system), there have recently been numerous suggestions that *if* the Arts and Humanities even think that they have a case to expect public funding of any kind then they must now make a case for themselves. Justify or die.

I didn’t want to do this all over again, but people have been hassling me to do it; so before I get back to the important tasks of the day (which include writing about the way that Donnie Yen’s recent films are constituted and haunted by the absent presence of Bruce Lee and are to be best understood as part of Hong Kong’s self-writing in the wake of the post-1997 return of Hong Kong to China; writing module outlines, and phoning BT to complain about their doubling of my monthly repayments for no good reason), let me make a few propositions about “the point” of the Arts and Humanities.

1. Any ‘point’ of or for the Arts and Humanities is bound up with the question of ‘the point’ of the university as such.

2. Any answer about ‘the point’ of the university itself is bound up with the answer to the question of what kind of society we are or ought to be living in or striving to construct.

3. The history of the debates about what the university is ‘for’ and what society ‘is’, ‘is like’ or is ‘for’ are entrenched and hundreds of years old.

4. Some of the ‘points’ of the university have involved arguments about ‘improving’ society through investments in different sorts of ‘truth’: religious truth, cultural truth, factual truth, scientific truth, political truth, and so on.

5. Some ‘points’ have therefore been explicitly ‘theoretical’, while others have been explicitly ‘practical’. Utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham were deeply against ‘useless theory’ (art, philosophy, religion, etc.), and all for practical application. Hence institutions like Imperial College were founded and organised with an eye to practical training in matters of business, management, and Indian languages (note the name: Imperial. What does that signify? Anyone? Anyone?). Here learning Indian languages is ‘useful’ and ‘beneficial’ and ‘justified’ because it constitutes practical training for Colonial and Imperial programmes of social and economic domination. (Today language learning is more often than not part of ‘arts and languages’ – ‘less’ useful. Arabic, however…)

6. “Utilitarian” rationales have led ineluctably to one dominant definition of ‘useful’/’practical’: profitable.

7. The argument that knowledge should be ‘practical’ and that ‘practical’ means immediately and obviously linked to the ‘profitable’ is currently in the ascendant. The problem with it is that it is very wrong. Ask any scientist which is more important: ‘fundamental’, theoretical, speculative, ‘disinterested’, open-ended research or technical, project-based, aim and outcome-oriented, corporate or military funded or sponsored science. But it need not be this venerable old example. What else is useful but not profitable? What else is useless but invaluable? Music. Pictures. Laughing. Masturbation. Grooming. Walking the dog. Dancing. Stretching. Riding a bike. Teaching. Listening. Talking. I don’t know. Thinking. Think about it.

8. The belief that anything have “a point” is flawed. Nevertheless, many things do have rationales. Certainly, all things in the university do. Many activities are based on a theory, even if those involved in this or that activity aren’t necessarily aware of or interested in articulating the underlying theory of their own activity or practice.

9. If people are genuinely interested in establishing ‘the point’ of this or that Arts or Humanities subject, degree programme or disciplinary field per se, then the discussion would not remain a discussion about “the” Arts and Humanities in general. History programmes will have a different rationale in different departments in different universities in different countries in different times, and these will be different from each other as well as different from the rationales for art, art history, philosophy, media studies, and so on. No two syllabi will (or ‘should’) be identical.

10. No Arts or Humanities or any other subject will be likely to define itself as useless or lacking in a practical or useful “point”. Media studies, for example. This is the most caricatured and ridiculed subject that we have. Yet, whilst there *may* be programmes in media studies which claim that media studies is important because TV is great fun to watch and celebrities are just so cool, I have yet to encounter this. Rather more often, the rationale for media studies is that the media is socially, culturally and politically ubiquitous, important and consequential. The media is biased. Programming is orientated and organised certain ways, ways that could be different. Society is informed or misinformed or uninformed in ways which affect people’s beliefs and thinking and actions and orientations, and so on. So one practical point to media studies is that it is ethically and politically important to understand the workings of such a complex and dominant set of interlocking institutions which permeate everyone’s everyday lives, thoughts and actions. Does studying media studies mean that you will get a job in the media? No. Should that be the rationale for media studies? No. Do students often enter into degrees in media studies and leave feeling embittered because they are not immediately employable in a precise profession? Yes. Whose fault is that? It depends. But certainly the perspective which holds that you go to university to get a degree and that degree is your ticket to a job is on conflict with what universities actually offer. But should universities only offer vocational degrees?

11. It is true that there is a mismatch between students’ hopes and dreams when they undertake something like media studies (a job on the telly!) or film studies (I will be the next Tarantino) or journalism (move over, Kate Adie) or fine art (Damien who?), and those of their lecturers and professors, most of whom will most likely want to disabuse the students of their misconceptions of the subject and seek to transform them into critical and politically engaged members of a democratic citizenry. Students may enter identifying with presenters on TV, but the academics spend three years trying to transform that into an identification with Noam Chomsky. And what is the point of Noam Chomsky?

12. The contemporary marketization of the university has been taking place for a long time now. Read Lyotard. Read Bill Readings. The question is whether we want UK universities to be private universities. As the more astute commentators have pointed out, the privatization of UK universities will not transform UK academia into US academia. The entire funding structure of the universities and of the country is completely different….

13. I could go on. But I will stop on unlucky thirteen by referring you to some key points. The logic of the thinking which underpins the rationale for the cuts is flawed. The research upon which its justification is based is shockingly poor. (As one academic wrote under a link to the research methods and practice of the Browne Report: “Clear Fail”.) The consequences of the cuts are likely to be devastating for the UK – not just for universities, but for the UK as such. The claim that the cuts are necessary for financial reasons is nonsense. The rationale is, rather, blatantly ideological – neoliberal, to be precise. There is loads of money around. It’s just that on neoliberal thinking, it has to stay in the hands of the very wealthiest very few. Somehow people are accepting of this rationale, even as they grumble a little about bankers’ bonuses… Shouldn’t it be these people who have to justify their existence, rather than historians and philosophers? What about the politicians who justify their existence and their point on a set of election promises that are then systematically and completely reneged upon? … And so on. Any ‘point’ of or for the Arts and Humanities is bound up with the question of ‘the point’ of the university as such. Any answer about ‘the point’ of the university itself is bound up with the answer to the question of what kind of society we are or ought to be living in or striving to construct.

Bodies in Movement

2011-01-07T08:12:00.001Z

This looks like it could be a great conference:

http://www.englit.ed.ac.uk/postgraduate/BodiesinMovement/BodiesInMovement.htm

Police Violence, Media Violence

2010-12-14T11:16:00.001Z

Police Violence

· It is eminently possible to understand the much publicised excessive and preemptive police violence at the anti-cut Demonstrations in London last week (and previously).

· It is also easy to understand the government’s desire to recast the police violence as the violence of the protestors.

· What is mystifying is the sustained and ongoing media violence. This violence is of a different order.

The police violence makes perfect sense, even if it perplexed me at first.

· At first I could not understand why the police were using such barbaric tactics. I could understand that individual policemen were going to be violent. (I know people who joined the police, and they joined the police for precisely that reason: the chance to be allowed to be justifiably violent. All of them the same: this was their rationale. And these were people I knew at university, by the way; students taking their degrees without having to pay fees, just like me. Indeed, I remember clearly one of them saying to me “Oh, I really want to be an accountant for the money, but I really want to be a copper for the aggro”. ‘Thankfully’ he became an accountant. I say ‘thankfully’, though I worry about his clients…)

· What I could not believe was why the orders from above seemed so brutal. The police on the lines are of course surely merely following orders and instructions, which is why rage directed against them seems so counterproductive and distracting (shifting, as it does, attention away from the issues, away from ‘politics’ and onto issues of ‘policing’). And it took me some time to get beyond my shock at what I was seeing.

However, thanks to a conversation with my colleague Kerry Moore, I now realise that:

· The police pawns on the front line are of course ‘merely’ following orders and implementing a strategy.

· The most obvious strategy hinges on the decisions about where to kettle people. It has become clear that the kettles were often set for the most dramatic media effect. The logic is as follows: ‘Kettle them there, so that when they start to boil, they graffiti on this monument, light fires with this treasured material and smash these particular windows. Perfect for demonizing the freezing, frustrated, angry protestors, showing them to be violent vandals.

· This is similar to the much publicised event of the police abandoning a police van right in the middle of the demonstration. The idea here is obvious: let the demonstrators smash it up, so that there is plenty of footage of the protestors attacking the poor old police and vandalising the police van. (Thankfully, even sixteen year old schoolkids saw through this feeble tactic and actually started protecting the police van from vandalism.)

· The strategists behind the police pawns are quite clear about what they intend to do, which is to maintain the status quo. In this the ends justify the means.

· So, it obviously makes sense to deter protests and protestors. It helps therefore to make sure that protests are construed as scary, violent and associated with criminality, irrationality and badness. This will help to deter potential challenges in future and also to pre-empt and undermine future protests.

· From the policing point of view, there is never enough and can never be enough policing. There are always ‘threats’. So it makes sense – even at the risk of attracting some bad press – to test the boundaries of what is acceptable policing practice. Push the envelope; punch the invalid.

· Each demonstration is equally a demonstration of police power, and therefore also an experiment in what can be practiced and normalised.

· For strategists in charge of policing there is a logic: there can never be enough security. Therefore, for them demonstrations mean exceptionalism. Anything constructed as a ‘state of exception’ can be used to try to justify any exceptional violence.

· As a footnote to this “police logic” or “police perspective” we also need to note: the police force is also facing budget cuts. Anything that they can do to demonstrate their necessity and the need to expand investment in the police force rather than cut it back is surely understandable. The police force need criminals, and plenty of them – good, dramatic, visible ones too; ones that need lots of police to police them.

· This police logic is already working. Already the Home Secretary has given explicit approval for the use of water canon on future protests – of which there will doubtless be many.

· Finally, perhaps, it needs to be clear that the intensive physical policing we have seen has always operated as a means to enable lots of information gathering, surveillance and scrutiny. Everyone who wants to leave a kettle (i.e., everyone) is only allowed to leave after being photographed and definitively ID-ed.

What remains inexplicable is the sustained media violence – the persistence in representing the protests as ‘riots’, riots that were simply spontaneously ‘caused’ by the violent intentions of the protestors; the persistence of framing the protests as inherently violent; of focusing on minor acts of vandalism rather than the simple reasons for the protestors being stuck there in the first place; the violence of representing the protests as purely student-interest, as selfish, as merely a matter of self and selfishness; and the complete ignoring of the political logic of the shocking responses, on the streets, in Parliament and, worse, in the media itself.

Just seen "Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen"...

2010-12-04T22:33:00.001Z

… and I can’t help thinking ‘Poor old Donnie Yen, condemned forever to try to play (whilst never being) Bruce Lee in hyperbolic training films where all the training comes at the end when the Japanese punchbag/victim stands still against a wall to be punched, whilst the acrid Chinese nationalist message is hammered home “Hong Kong! You belong to Beijing now! You and your little Bruce Lee toooooo!”’

Ted Wong sadly dies

2010-12-04T11:05:00.001Z

Sadly, Ted Wong died last week. This is a great loss. My condolences and sympathies to his family, friends and students.

Send Me Your Links!

2010-12-02T11:06:00.000Z

A few of us are now working to produce a Culture Machine / Liquid Books online book – essentially a collection of articles, arguments, information and links designed to help to further the struggle against the Con-Dem-Nation Coalition Government.

So, please SEND ME YOUR LINKS! I need links to articles, comment, information, ideas, events, etc, focusing on strategies and tactics for beating this terrible undemocratic government’s insane proposals and policies.

With each link please tell me what the link leads to: what is it about and why is it useful. Then I can upload them to the Liquid Books site.

Email them to: BowmanP@cf.ac.uk

Interview on my take on Bruce Lee

2010-11-26T20:09:00.001Z

The wonderful Teri Tom posed me some questions about my take on Bruce Lee. Here are her questions and the answers I finally managed to respond to, on the eve of the great man’s birthday, no less:

Interview

1. How did you come to study Bruce Lee from an academic standpoint?

I always believed Bruce Lee was important in ways that exceeded martial arts. I am a cultural studies academic, which means that I am fairly interdisciplinary from the outset – as culture involves history, geography, film, literature, language, the body, fashion, and so much more. I kept suspecting that Bruce Lee was important, especially when it came to thinking about postmodern culture and postcolonialism: East meets West in Bruce Lee in a very explosive manner.

2. You said that there’s an academic stigma attached to studying Bruce Lee. Why do you thank that is?

I think that a lot of complex cultural antagonisms and energies peaked and dissipated in the kung fu craze of the 1970s. You know, it’s like the kung fu craze was the aspect of multicultural or even postnational and certainly interethnic bonding and transformation that was taking place in the US in the early 70s. But, as is so often the way with the move to the mainstream, it all became a silly joke: think of the way the interethnic appeal of kung fu among black communities became mainstreamed and sent up in the cartoon ‘Hong Kong Phooey’ – the guy is a buffoon, a fantasist, and moreover, he is a dog, in a menial job, with a black actor providing the voice. What does that tell you about what people have come to think about kung fu? … The ironic thing is that the way everyone got to know about kung fu is through Bruce Lee. Even kids in primary school in the UK still make Bruce Lee catcalls in the playground. And yet no one actually knows that what they know about is down to Bruce Lee. This seems closely connected to the reduction of an entire culture to a stereotype – and moreover a fairly childish one (solving problems through fisticuffs). This is a classic tendency of what Edward Said called ‘orientalism’: the simultaneous championing or celebrating of an ‘other’ culture (like, ‘wow, these Chinese are amazing with their kung fu!’) and their consequent belittling through the very act of apparently celebrating (like, ‘all Chinese are kung fuers, aka, only able to communicate through childish physical actions, rather than mature discourse’). That kind of thing. It runs deep.

3. You cite Tierney’s paper on Kill Bill, Bulletproof Monk, and The Last Samurai. Indeed, I have a very hard time with martial arts movies made here because the “Asian practitioner” is always killed/defeated. You question Tierney’s shift towards blaming this on the audience. What do you think would need to change for Asian protagonists to gain acceptance?

I think Tierney is right, and I also think that you are right to agree with the problematic character of the reiterated narrative of the Western appropriation of Asian arts in Western cinema. Tierney calls it orientalist and essentially racist. And it may well be. And, yes, I wonder how much has changed since Bruce Lee’s day. The racial problems dramatized in the 1993 film about Bruce Lee, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story depict Bruce breaking through Hollywood racism thanks to his success in Hong Kong and Hollywood realizing that he really was a valid and viable ‘product’ who might find a big audience in the US. But since then who has emulated this? HK actors have been used in US film. But in a very limited way. Remember: even in Enter the Dragon, the lead role is split three ways, just to make sure that no key demographic is alienated: so we have the white ‘Bond’ character, the black ghetto karate dude and Bruce Lee playing, basically, a spy for the British, and an ‘inscrutable Chinese’, with no discernable character traits or personality… I understand that this was the least popular of all of his films in HK, and that the HK audience really protested vociferously at the terrible character he was playing. In all other films Lee played a mainland country boy. For the Hollywood film, he played a stereotype, moreover a stereotype in the service of the Westerners. Deeply problematic… And what do I think would have to change? Well, I think that you may need to look outside the genre of HK or US action films to find substantial ethical or political changes in the way groups are represented! Perhaps looking for Hollywood action films to become more ethnically or ethically sensitive is (to borrow a witticism from Slavoj Žižek) like insisting on looking for your lost keys under the light of the street-light: You can’t find them, of course, but you can’t look anywhere else because you need the light to see them… But maybe we do need to look somewhere else. Hollywood will always disappoint – and as long as we know this, it will never disappoint!

4. As recently as 2001, Jet Li was in Romeo Must Die, in which the original kissing scene was nixed because the studio didn’t think an audience could handle the depiction of an Asian man romantically involved with a white woman. Apparently not much has changed since the 1960s! Bruce Lee never had a romantic scene either. Do you think things would be different now, though, had he lived?

Again, yes, Hollywood racism is entrenched. Hollywood is conservative and reactionary. … Bruce Lee did have some implied sex scenes. I understand that these were largely censored (a colleague of mine is working on a definitive history of the censorship histories of Lee’s films: it’s fascinating – they were cut and recut that there are essentially different films at different times). But what is interesting is that in the early days people (even Chinese commentators) suggested that Lee was apparently gay – or certainly not interested in women. Yet, in Italy he goes with a white prostitute. In his first HK film he goes with a Thai prostitute. In a different version of this film he evidently returns to the same brothel but to a different girl the night before he goes to the big boss’s house – apparently in that warrior tradition of living life to the full in the knowledge that one is about to die. But this has all been lost or forgotten in the reduction of the films to the fighting. … Whether Lee would have gone on to make great films – films with different ranges of acting and so on, I have no idea. I am heartened to see Jacky Chan be allowed to act rather than just perform in the remake of The Karate Kid. For all else that can be said about that film, Chan is definitely the star – in a really great and heartening way.

5. You briefly mention some of the more “esoteric philosophy” and mystical aspects of the martial arts as being “long removed from the arts” since their migration to the west. Do you think if Bruce Lee had lived, he would have explored these arts as he got older? Do you think those mystical aspects will experience a resurgence in interest as more Eastern medicine is incorporated into Western medicine? Or do you think Western medicine will appropriate only certain things as the West has similarly done with the martial arts?

I think it is quite clear that the Western belief in mystical arts of the East predates the Western encounter with martial arts. An orientalist belief in the ‘mysticism of the East’ prepared the ground for the manner of the Asian martial arts’ reception and adoption in the West. So people got into these arts in the hope of becoming a ninja or as amazing as a (fantasy of a) Shaolin Monk. But, at the same time, Westerners largely met judo and karate, and had a knowledge of things like boxing and wrestling, so these were the two options of understanding martial arts: either mystically or sportingly. I think that the mysticism has now congregated around things like tai chi [taijiquan], while the overwhelming tendency in other forms has been to move toward the full-contact or MMA mat. … Now, I don’t know for sure, but I tend to suspect that Lee would have tended toward the MMA world; but I feel sure that he would never have abandoned the meditational dimension. I think he was too shrewd to burn his bridges or to put all of his eggs in one basket. I know it is well documented (by Dan Inosanto, for instance) that he would put aside time to meditate, and I think that this signals something important. But I don’t know whether he would have done what many martial artists do and move toward the internal arts as he got older. Who knows? When you don’t want to kick as much you tend to want to use chin-na and leverage more. I know I do!

6. What’s your personal opinion on the removal of the more lethal aspects of the martial arts being removed in the name of sport?

My first love was shotokan and then taekwondo. In the former, we were promised secret lethal knowledge when we got to black belt. I didn’t get there. In the latter we were assured that all the lethal moves had been taken out in the name of sport. Saying that though, one of the most senior martial artists I met in that realm had actually killed someone – with a jab. The unfortunate guy had been provoking the martial artist somewhat, so this trained fighter gave him a little jab to rattle and deter him, but the man fell, banged his head on the ground, and that was that for him. So I don’t think that lethal moves have been removed. A jab can kill. … I think that sport is great. But I don’t think there’s a lack of lethal martial arts around. Anyone can study systema or ninjitsu or choy lee fut or anything, and these all have lethal techniques. A groin punch or a head kick or a strangle hold or a vicious throw are all lethal moves. You don’t need to study ‘dim mak’ to be lethal. But, if you do want to do that, you can: there are books and DVDs galore now. But, yes, I tend to side with Bruce Lee: we all have two hands and two feet!

7. How do you think Bruce Lee would have felt about today’s MMA?

I suspect he would have discussed it with an air of aloofness! Lee’s lack of interest in getting into any sporting ring is well known. … But I think he would have studied it, scrutinized it, critiqued it, and mastered it conceptually if not in practice himself.

8. The JKD Concepts crowd would rather call JKD anything they want it to be, but then why even bother giving it a name? Does the name become that much more important in the wake of Bruce Lee’s death in order to preserve his work? Do you think the death of a martial arts founder tends to solidify the institutionalization of an art?

Inosanto reports that in the early days he and Lee would use the acronym ‘JKD’ to mean ‘great’, ‘cool’, ‘excellent’ – as in ‘Is such-and-such JKD?’, ‘Yeah, it’s JKD!’ etc. So, from the outset, JKD was a term that was used pretty loosely. And I think that this is fine. But I think that Lee regretted naming what came to be called a style, for the reasons that he lays out in ‘Liberate Yourself’ and elsewhere. But I also think that Lee was influential over his students, and that they wanted to emulate him. So, as the man said, ‘these styles become institutes…’ The narrative Lee lays out in ‘Liberate Yourself’ applies also to what happened to his insights: genius insights become institutionalized as dogma and are religiously imitated, and so on. But at the same time, I think it is implicit that from Lee’s perspective, ultimately, the process of liberation is always possible, no matter how disciplinarily hidebound anyone or anything becomes. Liberation has to be liberation from something, so you are always indebted to that. However, in discussing this with Joseph Svinth and Thomas Green, they proposed to me that Lee’s relation to JKD was that of a scholar’s relation to a ‘research programme’: thus, for Lee, there are a set of questions to be explored according to a set of concerns, hypotheses, orientations, preferences, and so on. As I argue in my book, Lee was indebted to certain styles but tried to experiment. He was hard on advocates of styles as such, of course; which is why a lot of people are hard on those who follow and teach ‘merely’ what Bruce Lee did and taught. I used to feel the same way. But now, in my older age, I am actually becoming more of a stickler for styles than for anything else: if my instructor throws in a wing chun move or principle (say, raising the elbow higher than the wrist and shoulder when performing a block) when we are meant to be training in tai chi or choy lee fut, I act all outraged (although I am obviously joking when I do this). But nevertheless, if you haven’t got a discipline, you can’t be interdisciplined or antidisciplined. I do not simply believe Bruce Lee’s rhetoric about ‘natural style’ and ‘balance’ and all the rest of it. I think that his rhetoric was very of the zeitgeist in the late 60s and early 70s. Yet I think the point is that you unlearn something that you never knew you had and then become cramped and stilted with form until you finally grow into the style in a way that your techniques and you become natural again. Lee is right about this.

9. Some would argue that the Western appropriation of the martial arts is how we make progress. Do you see any upside to appropriation? And with all the institutionalizing of all martial arts, is there any way to really preserve the original teachings?

I am always skeptical about ‘progress’, as much as I am about ‘origins’ (if ‘origins’ are meant to be ‘pure’). I tend to think that things undergo revolutions and completely transform and warp into something else. I think there are lethal fighters and competitors and hard people all the time. I think that some arts become ‘spectacles’, some people go in the opposite direction, some people make whatever it is they do into a ‘philosophical’ activity, some into a sport, some into a way to beat people up or defend themselves, and so on. Fighting is always like what we in the UK call ‘scissors, paper, stone’ or ‘rock, paper, scissors’: everything trumps something but can always be trumped by something else. Call this five elements, as they do in Xing-I if you like. But I think that all teachings are originally institutional: the teacher-student relationship is institutional in its very origin. Reciprocally, even in the most institutional of situations, creativity and insight and mutation can arise easily. You have to remember that the word ‘original’ is irreducibly ambivalent: it means the oldest and most venerable and also the newest and most novel.

10. The UNESCO survey ran into the same problem that the JKD Nucleus ran into two decades ago. They couldn’t define JKD, and on an even larger scale the UNESCO survey couldn’t define “martial arts.” You cite the inability of the martial arts to extricate themselves from myth as one of the reasons. So are we forever doomed to run in circles when it comes to classifying them? And yet, as you state, the question always will always remain, “What’s your style?”

With that argument I wanted to draw attention to the fact that the way we define things is institutional. There is no simple, unmediated, un-institutional access to the truth. I class my practice of tai chi as a martial art, where many others simply would not. We operate according to different paradigms. These are all equally enabling and restricting, generative and limiting. Definitions are as much ‘decisions’ than they are statements of truth. Definitions do not simply ‘reveal’ pre-existing truths; they arguably construct situations. Classifications and reclassifications should be regarded as inevitable, necessary and helpful, but not as things that are immutable or necessarily universally correct. The problem with the UNESCO study that I mention in my book was that it was meant to be a co-authored work, researched and written by multiple scholars; but it was a complete non-starter because they all disagreed with each other about what they were even talking about when they said ‘martial arts’! I find this extremely amusing and extremely thought-provoking. It goes to show that ‘definitions’ are constructions rather than essences.

11. It seems to me the inherent problem with the martial arts is that you must remove their lethal aspects in order to practice them—for obvious reasons! Even with a UFC match, which is still a sport, we can’t really determine who is the better fighter in the true sense of the word. Is there any way, then, to judge just how good Bruce Lee was?

Bruce Lee followed Nietzsche – whether wittingly or unwittingly: there is no fighter behind the fight, no actor behind the action. This means that when two hardened fighters confront each other, the loser will always know what went wrong to have made him or her lose. This does not mean s/he is a ‘worse’ fighter. It means the fight went one way. It’s all performative and, indeed, undecidable. There is no objective measure, no yardstick residing somewhere outside of the fight. So, no, I don’t think there is any way to judge ‘how good’ someone was. It would come down to which punch landed first, which kick landed first. … This is not to say that some things cannot be predicted: a trained martial artist or fighter will be able to beat an untrained person, unless they do something really stupid. … A fight I saw when I was at school has really remained with me: the tall, athletic, mesomorph looked to be winning the fight; but then he moved backwards and tripped over an inch-high difference in ground level between the concrete and the field, and the other guy raced forward and pounded him. Who was the better fighter? To my mind the guy who was comprehensively beaten. But there you go.

12. I love that you equate Samurai martial theory with Derrida’s Gift of Death (one of my favorite books). Are there any Western academic works that do so as well? Or any Asian studies, for that matter? It seems like such an obvious comparison since as you state, both explore issues of “death, desire, responsibility, discipline, mortality and purpose.” And if there hasn’t been any academic study drawing parallels between the two, why do you think that is?

There are some really great works coming out and in the pipeline which are creative in their approaches to martial arts, philosophy and even deconstruction. The connection I made using Derrida and the Hagakure was based on the fact that these are philosophies which confront the certainty of death. We all have to confront this certainty. How many ways are there to do this?

13. It’s refreshing to hear you question the “hyperbole” as you call it, bestowed on Bruce Lee, in both the philosophic and martial arts arenas. And yet you do so respectfully. That’s a fine line to toe. How has the response been to your taking Bruce off his the pedestal and looking at him more objectively?

You know, I thought that I would publish this book and it would sink without a trace. I really did. Yet it’s elicited the most response I’ve ever had to anything I’ve ever written. If I’d been able to predict this in advance, I would have taken much greater care over it! I would certainly have worried more and perhaps modified some of my treatment of some people – I think I was very critical of some writers, when what I could have and should have done at the same time was point out that I was only bothering to critique them in the first place because I thought their work was so suggestive and thought-provoking. But that being said, I have to say that the response has been great. I have been contacted by people from all over the world – yourself included – and this is wonderful. Academics, students and martial artists alike all seem to welcome the book in various ways. I have had Chinese professors asking to come to visit me in the UK and I am getting completely unexpected invitations to talk at all sorts of places. … Yes, I critique the hyperbole of Bruce Lee worshipers; but, if you think about it, my treatment of Bruce Lee is also hyperbolic. One critic recently called it intellectual masturbation – you know, totally over the top attention. But even that critic said that what he meant by that was something affectionate in itself – i.e., not leveled as a term of denigration or abuse. And I think that this is in one sense what it is: excessive. But, I’m with Derrida on this one: what is too much and what is not enough and what is just right? And who decides? And on what grounds? And signifying what? For whom? – As you know, this book is not a book of ‘fandom’. It is a book which seeks to take seriously an immeasurably influential and still highly controversial cultural figure, a figure who, it must be remembered, was multicultural, interethnic, multilingual, postmodern, postcolonial, deconstructive, and immensely – immensely – wonderful, captivating and endlessly enthralling to watch and to try to emulate.

The Privatization of the Humanities

2010-10-17T08:19:00.001+01:00

http://www.thelondongraduateschool.co.uk/thoughtpiece/if-you-tolerate-this%E2%80%A6-lord-browne-and-the-privatisation-of-the-humanities/

If you tolerate this… Lord Browne and the Privatisation of the Humanities

By Martin McQuillan

The pithily entitled ‘Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance’ was published on Tuesday. In short, for those not parochial enough to be concerned by this, it was a committee set up by the previous Labour government, chaired by ex-BP boss John Browne (as one of the many sinecures offered to him, including Chair of the Tate Trustees, in compensation for the homophobia that chased him out of the oil industry, otherwise it would have been him and not Tony Hayward taking the rap for the Deepwater Horizon disaster) charged with considering future funding arrangements for universities and their students in England. The headlines from the report are that 1. The current cap of £3,290 on student tuition fees should be scrapped in favour of potentially unlimited fees set by universities themselves, 2. The current teaching grant distributed to English universities should be cut by £3.2billion with a 100% reduction for the arts, humanities and social sciences. In effect Browne’s committee (which included the Chief Executive of Standard Chartered PLC, the Head of McKinsey, and two Vice-Chancellors) has at a stroke privatised the arts and humanities in England. The committee recommends that the state should no longer have any investment in these areas and that private individuals who wish to pursue such things at their own cost should pay for them.

It is hard to know where to begin with this. There are no workarounds, no accommodations to be made, no temporary crisis to be endured; this is the nuclear option, total and irreversible wipeout. Now, there is a difference between the publication of a so-called ‘Independent’ Review (Browne has now moved on to his next job advising the coalition government on Whitehall job cuts, and his review has clearly been hijacked to feed the ideological attack on the state currently being pursued by an administration that no one voted for) and how it translates into legislation through the torturous process of what Washington would call ‘the pork barrel politics’ of buying off a Lib Dem back bench revolt. However, there would seem to be little to be hoped for in this regard. What is striking here is not that higher education (and the arts, humanities and social sciences in particular) have been targeted but that they have been the first thing to be attacked and in such a spectacularly ruthless manner. The calculation must be that the news agenda will have moved on next week when everyone is more concerned by the fate of ‘useful things’ like hospitals and fire stations in the Comprehensive Spending Review. And of course, if the ConDems cannot be bothered to fund humanities teaching any more there is very little prospect that they will continue to fund humanities research. ‘The future has been cancelled’, as Graham Allen, writing in the context of Irish cuts, put it recently.

Most people will blame the Conservatives; the Conservatives will hope that most people will blame the LibDems. I do not blame either; I expect nothing else from the guardians of class privilege and their unscrupulous carpet-bagging associates. The people who are to blame for this are the Vice-Chancellors of UK universities (with one honourable exception) who have consistently pressed for an increase in tuition fees in order to maximise the return to their institutions. Tuition Fees used to be called ‘top-up fess’ because they were additional to state funding which had fallen behind the real costs of running universities. However, the short-termism of Vice-Chancellors failed to understand that as soon as fees were introduced the university sector would not only lose its place in the queue for, but its claim entirely on, the public purse. The Browne Report hits Vice-Chancellors with a sucker punch: you can have unlimited fees but you can no longer have public funding.

While science and ‘priority’ subjects will continue to receive a teaching grant the rest of us must fend for ourselves. The people who will be most affected by this is not so-called ‘teaching-focussed universities’ but those so-called ‘elite’, so-called ‘research-intensive’, so-called ‘universities’. Dear reader, I spent 10 years directing research in a Russell Group university, I know how much mediocrity there is out there, wrapped in snobbery and shrouded in utterly bogus ‘missions groups’ which allow ministers to divide and rule the sector through its own vanity. If there is no public funding and no funding council to distribute it then there will be no cap on student numbers for institutions. Humanities departments in ‘elite universities’ will only survive by piling students high and servicing them at low costs. The Browne Report does not set them free to compete with the world’s best universities, it impoverishes them and turns all of the arts, humanities and social sciences in England into teaching-focussed universities. Lets not even get started on what it means for the Art Schools and monotechnics; all advances made in funding of the humanities over the last thirteen years have been put into sharp and irrecoverable reverse.

I could make a defence of the worth of the humanities but if legislators cannot recognize their value from the outset then no words here will persuade them. Nor will I make the obvious case for the social mobility afforded by a university education—as if a Conservative-lead administration gave two figs for the education of the lower orders. However, the fundamental reason to oppose tuition fees of any kind is that those who benefited from a free higher education as a democratic right should not when in government (as a result of that free higher education) tell future generations that they must now take on mortgage-sized debts to pay for the same privilege. How this is ‘progressive and fair’, as our politicians like to say, is a mystery. One should not just resist this situation; it has to be refused utterly. Distracted by the chimera of RAE results and QAA inspections, academics in the United Kingdom have not had the best track record in saying no to government in the last twenty years, but if this does not rouse us nothing ever will. And if it can happen in England it will without doubt be rolled out across Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Europe, and Australia. This is a culture war in which critical thought is threatened with extinction. It is time to stop writing the monograph on the footnotes of Henry James, drop the myth of ‘research’ and ‘teaching’ institutions, and do something quickly to save everything any academic worthy of the name holds dear.

http://www.thelondongraduateschool.co.uk/thoughtpiece/if-you-tolerate-this%E2%80%A6-lord-browne-and-the-privatisation-of-the-humanities/

Popular Cultural Pedagogy

2010-10-15T14:44:00.001+01:00

Popular Cultural Pedagogy, in Theory;

Or: What can cultural theory learn about learning from popular culture?

Call for Papers

Special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory

Edited by Paul Bowman

Central to politicized academic projects such as cultural studies and politicized work in cultural theory and philosophy is a critique of the cultural power of institutions – pedagogical institutions in particular. In thinkers as diverse as Gramsci, Althusser, Derrida, Bourdieu, Rancière, Spivak, Hall, Giroux and way beyond, distinct – albeit often widely differing – theories of the social, subjective, cultural, ideological and political importance of pedagogical institutions and practices can be discerned as being central.

Culture has been theorized as pedagogy. In several languages and many contexts ‘culture’ and ‘education’ can be used interchangeably. This special issue of the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory seeks to explore the dual proposition that (1) pedagogy is central to politicized cultural theory, but that (2) it has been under-explored – both as constitutive of politicized cultural theory as such, and in relation to the question of what can be learned about pedagogy as such by studying popular culture accordingly.

So this issue asks: Given the often implicit but nevertheless demonstrable centrality of the themes of pedagogy to politicized cultural theory and philosophy: (1) What paradigms, models or theories of pedagogy are implied in popular forms of cultural theory and philosophy? And (2) What might or ought such popular theory itself (or themselves) be able to learn about learning from the popular culture it theorizes?

This issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory invites contributions which interrogate the notions of pedagogy that are active within specific forms of cultural theory and/or which offer new theorizations of pedagogy by way of analysis of popular cultural texts, practices, institutions or processes.

Submission: August 2011.

Publication: ejournal: Fall 2011; paper journal: 2012; book: 2013.

Paul Bowman: BowmanP@cardiff.ac.uk

Dr Paul Bowman

Director of Postgraduate Research

Director: Race, Representation and Cultural Politics Research Group

School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies [JOMEC], Cardiff University

http://cardiff.academia.edu/PaulBowman

Teri Tom Theorizing Bruce Lee

2010-10-12T06:24:00.001+01:00

Quite exciting to hear that none other than Teri Tom (JKD student of Ted Wong) has read Theorizing Bruce Lee and may well be writing a little blog entry on it soon:

http://teritom.wordpress.com/

Amusingly "wanky"

2010-10-10T19:27:00.001+01:00

This is amusing:

http://www.petemccormack.com/blog/?p=5276

It’s called “BRUCE LEE, SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK, GLOBALIZATION, COMMODIFICATION, CONSUMERISM, WANKER INTELLECTUALISM etc…”

The guy calls me a wanker, but does so whilst smiling.

Publish with Anthem Press

2010-09-27T09:26:00.001+01:00

Anthem Press, an independent international publisher of academic, educational and reference works would like to welcome submissions of proposals for challenging and original academic monographs and edited volumes, major works, handbooks/companions or course textbooks/readers.

As a matter of course, we pride ourselves in publishing our scholarly monographs and edited volumes in hardback, paperback and e-book international editions. Moreover, if indeed there is demand, we now publish low-cost editions for developing countries.

Should you wish to send in a book proposal or have any other queries, please contact us at: proposal@wpcpress.com.

Our current list includes such works as:

Action! Interviews with Directors from Classical Hollywood to Contemporary Iran
Edited by Gary Morris

''Action!' is a treasure-trove: nineteen rare interviews with a wide variety of film directors, all conducted by writers who are truly savvy about their subjects. The book as a whole adds up to a practical PhD in what it takes to put personal vision up on the screen, both then and now.' —Jeanine Basinger, Chair, Film Studies Department, Wesleyan University

‘Action!’ presents nineteen outstanding interviews with directors past and present, from around the world, working in a variety of genres, budgets and production environments from major studios to indie and DIY. The result is a vibrant group portrait of the filmmaking art, a kind of festival in words that explores everything from the enormous creative and personal satisfactions to the challenges and frustrations of the process.

Paperback | 9781843313298 | July 2009 | 370 Pages

Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation and Diaspora
Edited by Rini Bhattacharya Mehta and Rajeshwari V. Pandharipande

Commercial cinema has always been one of the biggest indigenous industries in India, and remains so in the post-globalization era, when Indian economy has entered a new phase of global participation, liberalization and expansion. Issues of community, gender, society, social and economic justice, bourgeois-liberal individualism, secular nationhood and ethnic identity are nowhere more explored in the Indian cultural mainstream than in commercial cinema. As Indian economy and policy have gone through a sea-change after the end of the Cold War and the commencement of the Global Capital, the largest cultural industry has followed suit. This book is a significant addition to the study of post-Global Indian culture. The articles represent a variety of theoretical and pedagogical approaches, and the collection will be appreciated by beginners and scholars alike.

Hardback | 9781843318330 | January 2010 | 210 Pages

Drama and Film: A Comparative Approach (forthcoming)
Edited by Bert Cardullo

'Drama and Film: A Comparative Approach' is one of the first books in 35 years to examine the historical, cultural, and aesthetic relationships between the theater and the cinema. In this volume, a variety of writers, directors, and theorists examines the differences between working in—and creating for—drama and film.'Drama and Film' is thus intended to provide a theoretical and practical foundation for understanding the effect that these two media have had, and continue to have, on each other's development.

Paperback | 9780857289773 | January 2011 | 220 Pages

Screen Writings: Partial Views of a Total Art, Classic to Contemporary
Bert Cardullo

'Among my contemporaries, the best film critic writing in English in America is Bert Cardullo, and 'Screen Writings' proves why.' —Dan Harper, American film scholar

'Screen Writings: Partial Views of a Total Art, Classic to Contemporary' offers close readings of individual films intended to explain how moviemakers use the resources of the medium to pursue complex and significant humanistic goals. It fills the middle ground between vague, simple plot summaries and theoretical pronouncements. As such, this book can be considered a call for the return of practical criticism as the best way to understand and appreciate the work of cinematic artists.

Hardback | 9781843318798 | March 2010 | 246 Pages

ABOUT ANTHEM PRESS
www.anthempress.com

Anthem Press is a distinguished independent international publishing house pioneering a distinctive approach to the publishing of serious works across a wide range of subjects that appeal to academics, area specialists, researchers, school and university students, professionals as well as to general readers. Our list is international in scope and consists of leading authors ranging from academics making original contributions in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences to trade authors, including journalists and experts.

We relish our individuality and the breadth of our interests - being entirely independent, we are free to pursue our ideas and inspirations; we shall continue to build on our reputation for scholarship, innovative publishing and the very highest standards of book production.

Many of our books are published in association with a wide variety of other organisations, including scholarly international institutes, non-governmental organisations, financial institutions and other publishers around the world.

Anthem Press is headquartered in the UK (London) with offices in the USA and India. We have a global profile supported by our team of representatives and agents.

Rey Chow and Postcolonial Social Semiotics

2010-09-23T20:26:00.001+01:00

I’m delighted to announce that this appears to be out now:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g927263428~tab=toc

Toy Story 3 Screen Grab Again

2010-09-22T13:33:00.001+01:00

Thanks for Steve Jones for sending me two brilliant screen grabs of Mrs Potato Head wielding nunchakus! Much appreciated! My book will be much improved, I think. After all, everyone likes to see a potato brandishing both a handbag and nunchakus in a pugilistic manner, don’t they!

paul

Toy Story 3 Screen Grab

2010-09-22T09:10:00.001+01:00

This may sound odd, but I urgently need a screen grab of Mrs Potato Head brandishing a set of nunchakus (a la Bruce Lee) in the opening sequence of Toy Story 3.

If anyone can provide me with a good one asap, I’ll give you an acknowledgement in the book I want to include the image in…

My email is BowmanP@cf.ac.uk

Cheers!

paul

Dr Paul Bowman

Director of Postgraduate Research

Director: Race, Representation and Cultural Politics Research Group

School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies [JOMEC], Cardiff University

http://cardiff.academia.edu/PaulBowman

CFP: Collection on Philosophy and the Martial Arts

2010-07-25T09:36:00.001+01:00

Please feel free to distribute.

We are currently intending to produce an edited collection of academic essays

on the philosophy of the martial arts, to be published by a good academic

publisher. We invite contributions.

The martial arts may be Eastern or Western, ancient or modern. The scope is

not restricted to any school or tradition of philosophy, and we do not favour

any particular area of expertise, e.g. aesthetics, metaphysics, ethics. The

important thing is that the essays be of high philosophical quality and be

related to a or some martial art(s).

Papers will be peer-reviewed by at least two scholars before inclusion in the

volume. An appropriate publisher will be approached if and when we have a

sufficient number of suitable papers.

Papers must be received by the editors by 1st July, 2011. Expressions of

interest and requests for information can be sent to Damon Young,

youngd@unimelb.edu.au <mailto:youngd@unimelb.edu.au> .

Please circulate this CFP widely.

Damon Young, University of Melbourne, Australia

youngd@unimelb.edu.au <mailto:youngd@unimelb.edu.au>

Graham Priest, University of Melbourne/CUNY, USA

gpriest@unimelb.edu.au

Book, free, online

2010-07-12T14:41:00.001+01:00

After finding yet another scanned-in version of Theorizing Bruce Lee online, I have realised that grumbling about it or trying to do anything about it is a bit like talking about closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. So, instead, I have downloaded it from one of these sites and posted it on my own. So, for anyone interested, here is the free version of Theorizing Bruce Lee:

http://cardiff.academia.edu/PaulBowman/Books

A Quick Dip into Hong Kong Bak Sing Choy Lee Fut: A Visit to Wan Kei Ho International Martial Arts Association, Hong Kong

2010-07-02T14:41:00.000+01:00

One good thing about being an academic is that June signals the end of teaching and the start of the conference season. Occasionally conferences are even in interesting locations. This year, all my Christmases and birthdays came early, when I got to go to a conference in Hong Kong.

Thanks to a suggestion made by Sifu Rand that a certain Master Wan Kei Ho looked like someone who would be worthwhile trying to meet, and thanks to Graham Barlow’s judicious use of Facebook as a tool for making contact, I was put in touch with one of Master Wan’s senior students and instructors, Phil Duffy. Phil assured me that I would be more than welcome to attend a class or two or even organise private tuition with Master Wan whilst I was in Hong Kong.

So it was with much excitement and great trepidation that I eventually found the gwoon. (Eventually is the operative word here: the story of my search for Master Wan’s gwoon is a long story in itself!) Phil had given me clear instructions about the gwoon’s location on the third floor, but I still had to struggle past a lady at the entrance who jabbered at me in Cantonese – whether helpfully or obstructively I have no idea, as she evidently had no English or Mandarin and I had no Cantonese. But I guess she knew what I was there for, and eventually it became likely that she was most probably telling me what I already knew: to make my way up to the third floor.

On arrival at the third floor I peered through the glass door of the gwoon. I knocked and entered. I saw a smart but compact room, lined with a tightly-packed collection of a wide range of traditional martial arts weapons, plus more contemporary training pads and shields (I even noticed a pair of foam training nunchakus among the wooden ones – a sight which made me feel better for preferring to train with this infinitely less lethal version of such an unpredictable weapon). The room was thick with the scent of incense, and as I entered I saw Master Wan before he saw me: he was pacing the room with the air of someone who had just finished a very intense workout. (I later learned that the incense came from the alter (Gwan Dai) in the corner of the gwoon. The alter is to the God of martial arts, Kwan Gung, also known as General Kwan, who is a figure of both Buddhism and Taoism.)

Master Wan welcomed me into the room and offered me tea or water (warm: he doesn’t drink cold water). I accepted water and offered him what I understood to be the traditional courtesy of a gift (some liqueurs from Wales, where I work); whereupon Master Wan became very animated about a DVD he had recently been shown by Phil Duffy: a DVD made by a Wing Chun teacher about “how to beat Choy Lee Fut”.

Master Wan was obviously seriously irked by this particular DVD – even to the extent that he had me sit at his desk in his seat and watch the video, while he complained with some passion and gusto about the terrible misrepresentation of Choy Lee Fut contained on the film.

So, here I was, approximately two minutes into the Hong Kong martial arts world, and already I was involved in the long-running and intractable feud between Choy Lee Fut and Wing Chun! – a feud that has been (in)famous ever since tales emerged of Bruce Lee’s involvement in the legendary Kowloon rooftop competitions between Wing Chun and Choy Lee Fut practitioners in the 1960s.

Soon, other students began to arrive, but the sense of injustice being perpetrated by the DVD spiced the conversations. As such I was immediately treated to a demonstration of precisely how and why the DVD representation was wrong and unfair: Master Wan demonstrated a whole repository and armoury of CLF techniques which were not at all represented in the film – specifically, the fast and furious leopard fist techniques which are a world away from the huge swinging sao choys that were being caricatured in the DVD.

Master Wan had Phil warm up the class and set to work on training the ‘ging’ [jin] in various techniques [‘Yew Kune Ging’, or ‘waist-fist-energy’ training]. Unfortunately, a year ago I sustained a very serious ankle injury, which had made me cautious and careful to warn Phil and Master Wan in advance that I really was not up to much in the way of intense training. So I was quizzed about this, and when Master Wan and the other students saw the scars and lumps and bumps of the metal in my ankle, they decided that CLF training was not a good idea for me. Instead, Master Wan was keen to show me ways to treat my injury.

Being a practitioner of Dit-Da medicine (aka, ‘Chinese Bonesetting’), Master Wan concurred with what an acupuncturist in the UK had formerly told me: that a meridian has been blocked by the trauma of the injury. Master Wan demonstrated this by prodding various pressure points on both of my legs and demonstrating that there was pain in the left but no pain in the right leg, and suggesting that this was a sure sign of the blockage.

So, instead of doing and CLF, Master Wan taught me several ‘tai chi gung’ drills [‘yuen gung’] that would help my ankle. These certainly focused a lot of movement on my ankle – so much so that I couldn’t actually keep up the drills for long without the eruption of searing pain. But the upside of this was that I got to watch more CLF training than I otherwise might have seen.

The students drilled and drilled for ‘ging’ [jin]. (In conversation with Phil afterwards, he suggested that this focus on developing the ging/jin over and above all other considerations is a defining characteristic of the difference between kung fu training in Hong Kong and the UK.) They each practiced different forms: some, a northern Shaolin form; others, one of three CLF forms (Fut Gar style Kau-da Kune, Wong Lung Gwan (southern staff form), Northern Shaolin no. 6 (known in Canto as Dun-da Suilam), Fut Gar style Sap-gee Kune, Choy Li Fut style Kau-da Kune, and their beginner’s form, Gung Lik Kune). Unfortunately I did not get to see any of their tai chi, which I was assured is unlike anything I would have seen before.

I was asked to demonstrate my tai chi form, which was greeted with approval; and later to demonstrate our CLF form. Master Wan commented in a mixture of English and Cantonese that I could not easily follow. But Phil later explained that Master Wan had acknowledged that my form was definitely ‘family’ (i.e., ‘legitimate’ Bak Sing CLF, as far as he was concerned – an acknowledgement that Phil later told me was quite rare and hence quite a significant event), but that there were differences in what I was doing with my hands (not extending them as fully as they would) and in my footwork (not as ‘active’ and ‘aggressive’ as their footwork).

As I have come to understand this, I think that the differences in footwork may amount to Master Wan’s school using the stepping that we use much more in the ‘secret’ section of our form (a section that I – regrettably, perhaps – omitted from my demonstration), or, alternatively, the kind of stepping that is much more characteristic of the Xing-Yi that Sifu Smith practices. As for the comment about my hands/arms: I think that this is more about the way ‘I’ practice the form than about the way that ‘we’ practice the form. My own instructor(s) repeatedly voice the selfsame criticism of my arm extension – or deficiencies thereof!

Nevertheless it was a real pity that my ankle injury hampered my ability to take tuition in this context. But I still learned an awful lot about the some of the ways that Master Wan’s students practice CLF and Northern Shaolin. I was also extremely lucky to be treated with great hospitality by Master Wan himself: not only did he provide me with both physical and spoken lessons, he also gave me various gifts, pieces of advice, and a wide range of demonstrations – from the intense form of Golden Bell qigong that he practices to what it feels like to be hit on the hand by a finger – little more than a tap, really – but with ‘ging’, which put a real whack into it and caused a significant amount of pain. But apart from a couple of prods and raps on the hands and forearms, Master Wan’s students seemed most impressed by the fact that I had gotten off so lightly! Perhaps he liked me, they speculated; or perhaps he was seriously concerned about my ankle and hence was treating me with kid gloves. Either way, my meeting with everyone involved in Wan Kei Ho International Martial Arts Association was the highpoint of my Hong Kong trip. (Conference? What conference?)

Links:

Wan Kei Ho International Martial Arts Association:

Website: http://www.kungfuwan.com/
Facebook Group:

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/group.php?gid=5369293354&v=info

More about Phil Duffy’s relationship with Master Wan:

http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=396

articles in expensive places

2010-06-24T11:53:00.001+01:00

I wrote a couple of chapters for this/these book/s:

http://www.abc-clio.com/products/overview.aspx?from=schools&productid=110830&viewid=1

One is on Bruce Lee and JKD. The other is on the globalisation of martial arts.

Unfortunately, the book itself is enormously expensive.

Some Bruce Lee News

2010-06-23T09:26:00.001+01:00

Bruce Lee to be played by Hong Kong singer in biopic

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS • June 21, 2010

Type Size A A A

HONG KONG — Filmmakers have cast a rising star from Hong Kong to play Bruce Lee in an upcoming biopic that focuses on the late kung fu icon's youth.

Aarif Lee rose to fame by playing a high school track star in the recent hit "Echoes of the Rainbow," a nostalgic look at 1960s Hong Kong. The 23-year-old was a physics major at London's Imperial College.

The actor bowed to a statue of Bruce Lee on Hong Kong's waterfront at a press conference Monday. He said he was preparing by watching Lee's films and practicing the wing chun fighting style he learned as a teenager in Hong Kong.

"Bruce Lee: My Brother's Story" is funded by a consortium of studios from Hong Kong and mainland China. It will start shooting in June.

Theorizing Bruce Lee, free online

2010-05-24T12:31:00.000+01:00

The entirety of Theorizing Bruce Lee appears to be here for free:

http://www.docin.com/p-47209111.html

Want to contribute to a book on Chinese Cinema?

2010-05-16T16:15:00.001+01:00

I received this today, which seems to be an open invitation. Looks interesting. If you're interested, please contact them, not me:

For 2011 our festival will publish a book on Chinese cinema.

It will be bilingual French and English to allow an international distribution.

This book of 360 pages will be accompanied by a DVD with interviews, trailers and bonuses. After Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, and Taiwanese Cinema, this work is the fifth of our series - ASIAN CONNECTION - dedicates to the Asian cinema:

http://www.asiexpo.com/edition/

We wish that this work be the fruit of a joint work between contributors (journalists, directors, associations, cinema professionals, fans, students, writers, researchers,...) French, Anglo-Saxon and Chinese. It will approach the Chinese cinema from the origins at today with chapters or short notes on the genres, short film, the directors, actors/actresses, producers/distributors, theatres, the market of the DVD and the piracy, media, festivals, some statistical data.

A conclusion, a bibliography, an index (by film and by director) and 10 films recommended by each author and his biography.

But any proposal for articles is welcome.

Deadline for sending your articles: July 10, 2010

Publication: 2011 First quarter.

Specialist in Chinese cinema, would you accept to write some pages (3000 to 50000 signs), and if you would have topics concerning Chinese cinema that you would like to write. we are very open.

Moreover, if you know somebody who accept to write in French or English an article, they are welcome.

We hope a fruitful collaboration and to have news from you very soon.

all the best.

Ke PI

Under the direction of Jean Pierre Gimenez

----------------------------

ASIEXPO EDITION

9 quater rue Montbrillant

69003 Lyon

Tel / + 33 (0)4 72 91 43 73

Fax / + 33 (0)4 72 35 90 11

http://www.asiexpo.com

Save Middlesex University Philosophy

2010-05-05T14:31:00.001+01:00

See whereabouts in the world people have signed the petition to save Middlesex University Philosophy - oh, and sign it yourself:http://www.gopetition.com/map.php?petid=35831

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-middlesex-philosophy/signatures.html

To Anon

2010-04-10T19:02:00.001+01:00

To Anonymous:

Yes, but Bruce Lee was already [always already, so to speak] "colonized" by "western theories".

Look at his library: his key influences were Alan Watts and Christmas Humphreys.

Maybe you could pay more attention to Bruce Lee as a product of a very loaded cross-cultural context.

Bruce Lee Book

2010-03-26T13:18:00.000Z

I’m not 100% sure, but it looks rather a lot like 100% of my Bruce Lee book has found its way online, here:

http://www.docin.com/p-47209111.html

Seeing and Event: Bruce Lee and the Emancipated Spectator

2010-03-12T20:27:00.001Z

A very short paper I gave at Bristol University yesterday at a nice little gathering:

http://cardiff.academia.edu/PaulBowman/attachment/776861/full/Seeing-and-Event--Bruce-Lee-and-the-Emancipated-Spectator

The Man who dubbed Bruce Lee into English

2010-03-06T09:29:00.001Z

I’ve had an email from Michael Kaye, the man who dubbed Bruce Lee’s voice into English for the Hong Kong films. I am like a kid in a candy store, as they say.

I showed him my paper on the translation etc of Bruce Lee –

http://cardiff.academia.edu/PaulBowman/Papers/134285/Sick-Man-of-Transl-Asia--Bruce-Lee-and-Queer-Cultural-Translation

And he has replied, saying:

“I don't know how Bruce Lee would have reacted to your 'reading' of his place in history. He might have been flattered - he was a not unintelligent man, as you know. Equally, he might have offered to show you a few rather painful moves. Or he might have been amused.

As the person who dubbed the three roles of Lee; the chief villain; and the 'translator' , I suppose I am in a position to talk a little about 'Fist of Fury'. I am afraid that the banality of the business of film dubbing in Hong Kong may revise some of your views.

As to the script of 'Fist of Fury', I am afraid I am guilty of having perpetrated that crime on cinema.

Given the huge number of people who must by now have seen the film, I suppose I can also lay claim to being the most famous anonymity in cinema.”

Needless to say, I am very excited about the possibility of finding out more. I’ll let you know all about it.

Seeing and Event: Bruce Lee and the Emancipated Spectator

2010-02-26T20:05:00.001Z

@ Bristol University, 11^th March.

http://cardiff.academia.edu/PaulBowman/attachment/739354/full/Seeing-and-Event--Bruce-Lee-and-the-Emancipated-Spectator

Bruce Lee's English Voice

2010-02-25T09:30:00.001Z

I’m delighted to say that I’ve just been put in touch with the man who did Bruce Lee’s English voice in his HK films. I will be finding out about this – specifically in terms of the issues of translation and cultural difference that it involved – and let you know all about it.

(I’m positively giddy with excitement at the prospect.)

About Theorizing Bruce Lee

2010-02-11T11:11:00.001Z

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/jomec/newsandevents/news/10paulbowmantheorizingbrucelee.html

The Future of Post-Human Martial Arts

2010-01-24T11:21:00.001Z

I will be trying to blag a free copy of this in the not too distant future:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/reader/1443813729/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link

Nice Mention

2010-01-20T12:18:00.001Z

Thanks to Andrew DeWaard for this:

http://andrewdewaard.com/tag/bruce-lee/

Theorizing Bruce Lee on Google Books

2009-12-16T20:36:00.001Z

They appear to have put quite a lot of Theorizing Bruce Lee on Google Books:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=f22p4HU9Q8IC&pg=PT3&dq=theorizing+bruce+lee&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q=&f=false

(I still haven’t actually seen a physical copy of it myself yet, though)

http://cardiff.academia.edu/PaulBowman

Bruce Lee Review

2009-12-06T09:31:00.001Z

This is a very good Bruce Lee Blog:

http://bruceleereview.blogspot.com/

Preview

2009-11-29T19:30:00.001Z

Here’s a link with a preview and whatnot. I’m still perplexed about the price, mind you:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/9042027770/ref=sib_rdr_dp

Theorizing Bruce Lee out soon

2009-11-27T13:33:00.001Z

My book from Rodopi, Theorizing Bruce Lee, is almost cooked and will finally be hitting the virtual shelves of Amazon soon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Theorizing-Bruce-Lee-Film-fantasy-fighting-philosophy-Contemporary/dp/9042027770/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259328015&sr=8-1

Cultural Translation Conference

2009-11-18T20:39:00.001Z

Here is the programme for a FREE conference at Cardiff University on CULTURAL TRANSLATION on 11^th December:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22701271/Programme

If you want to come, please email BowmanP@cardiff.ac.uk (spaces are limited)

http://cardiff.academia.edu/PaulBowman

First Draft of a new paper on Bruce Lee, Rey Chow, Cultural Translation, Europe/China and 'Queer'

2009-10-15T20:15:00.000+01:00

I’ve just finished a reasonable first draft of a chapter for a book on Europe and Queer. My chapter is provisionally called “Sick Man of Asia Crosses The River: Bruce Lee and Queer Cultural Translation”. It’s here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21136069/Sick-Man-of-Asia-Crosses-the-River-DRAFT

It’s too long and could doubtless benefit from a good edit and redraft. But here you are anyway.

Hilarious

2009-10-14T06:19:00.001+01:00

This is hilarious:

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/work-connect/bruce-lee-green-dragon.html

What’s funnier is that this link was pasted on facebook and in less than 48 hours over 1,000 people had “liked” it.

Publication Date

2009-09-30T09:42:00.001+01:00

Well, Theorizing Bruce Lee – a book I finished writing and submitted to the publishers over 12 months ago – ‘ought’ to be out ‘by December’…

Watch this space.

Fist of (Con)Fusion: Bruce Lee and monolingual cultural translation

2009-09-06T09:29:00.001+01:00

Here’s an abstract of a paper I’m working on at the moment:

The opening of Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury (1972) depicts the funeral of a Chinese martial arts master, in a Chinese school in the Japanese-dominated area of the Shanghai International Settlement, circa 1908. This is already a fraught moment of cultural transmission: indeed the eulogists expend most of their energy emphasizing to the assembled martial art students that they know the correct way to preserve their master’s lineage and their tradition. But the funeral is rudely interrupted by the arrival of belligerent representatives of a Japanese martial arts school, who contemptuously present the Chinese with a large framed piece of calligraphic writing, which reads “Sick Man of Asia”. The Japanese issue a challenge, via their translator, the creepy and culturally and sexually ambiguous Hu En. The senior Chinese elders prevent any of the Chinese students from answering the challenge, in order to preserve decorum.

At one key point a senior Chinese teacher addresses the translator, Hu. In the dubbed English version, the Chinese senior asks Hu, “Look here, just what going on here?” In the English subtitles, however, this exchange is rendered as, “Look here, are you Chinese?” These are significantly different renderings. Hu’s answer in the subtitled version is that whilst he is Chinese he shares a different destiny to them. In the dubbed version, however, Hu shortly proceeds to speak of the superiority of “we Japanese”.

Deliberately without having sought to establish whether the different combinations of Dutch and Mandarin subtitles and dubbing replicate this disjunction or introduce others, this paper assumes the likelihood of these and other possibilities. It does so in order to explore several interconnected issues of translation. Firstly, various theories of translation and their imbrication in various models of culture and tradition; and secondly, Benjaminian arguments about the text as construct – Fist of Fury is clearly a complex (and internally contradictory) construct, with all sound added post-production and hence lacking any ‘original’ as such – and the complexity of such putatively ‘simple’ popular cultural texts as Fist of Fury when approached as the ‘arcades’ of ‘cultural translation’.

In order to explore such a massive set of problematics in such limited time and space, the paper will focus specifically on the two key dimensions of this opening scene: first, the fact that the funeral of the founder is already a fraught scene of rupture/tradition, transfer/loss, continuity/disjunction – indeed, of cultural translation – here supplemented – secondly – by the double, duplicitous (cultural) status of the (literal/linguistic) translator, Mr Hu. The reading of this scene will be organised by Rey Chow’s contribution to theories of translation in her essay, “Film as Ethnography; or, Translation Between Cultures in the Postcolonial World” (1995), which itself begins from a consideration of the Italian expression “Traduttore, traditore” – “Translator, traitor”.

Bruce Lee book out soon

2009-08-19T08:16:00.001+01:00

Theorizing Bruce Lee will be out soon. Here’s some information about it:

http://cardiff.academia.edu/documents/0033/0199/Possible_Theorizing_Bruce_Lee_Cover_Wording.pdf

That’s a link to a pdf file. If you want to get to the page ‘before’ that, it’s here:

http://cardiff.academia.edu/PaulBowman/Books

Films that Changed My Life

2009-08-08T06:52:00.001+01:00

A BBC Radio Two programme on Martin Kemp’s experience of Enter the Dragon:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lxjtd

Association for Cultural Studies, Hong Kong, 2010

2009-07-29T10:15:00.000+01:00

Here’s a panel on Bruce Lee I’ve organised for the ACS in Hong Kong in 2010:

http://www.crossroads2010.org/panel_session.html

My Abstract is here:

http://www.crossroads2010.org/pdf/B3.pdf

Kung Fu conference

2009-07-22T08:07:00.001+01:00

I am so sad I won't be in Hong Kong for this. Thought you might like to know about it.

http://www.kungfufestival.com/event.php?s=symposium

The Fantasy corpus of Martial Arts

2009-06-25T19:47:00.000+01:00

Here’s my latest effort. It’s a final-ish draft for a book coming out on ‘embodied knowledge’ and martial arts next year:

http://cardiff.academia.edu/PaulBowman/Papers/99434/The-Fantasy-Corpus-of-Martial-Arts

Theorizing Bruce Lee

Interview with Stuart Hall

Interviews on "I Am Bruce Lee"

My FightNerd.com interview on "I am Bruce Lee"

The sequel to Theorizing Bruce Lee

Enter the dragon: Welsh academic hits Hollywood as international Bruce Lee expert - Need to Read - News - WalesOnline

Asian Martial Arts in 1970s Britain and on BBC Radio 4

I Am (in the) Bruce Lee (trailer)

Martial Arts and Oriental Philosophy (Mediated)

Martial Arts and Oriental Philosophy (Mediated)

Question about Festive Pantomime Racism

An Interview with Rey Chow

CFP ASIAN CINEMA STUDIES SOCIETY CONFERENCE

POSITION IN HONG KONG CINEMA

Futures of Chinese Cinema: Technologies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures

Yellow Future: Oriental Style in ... - Jane Chi Hyun Park

Donnie Yen On Preserving The Spirit Of Bruce Lee In… Vídeos de noticias | Getty Images...

2nd Draft of 'Bruce Lee versus Zizek and Badiou'

Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge

When Bruce Lee Meets Alain Badiou

Re-Enter the Dragon

NETWORK ENTERTAINMENT - THE COMPANY

Post-Cinematic Effects

Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge

Asian Cinema Studies Conference

FUEL TV Launches Late Night Kung Fu Film Series

"Bruce Lee Lives!" - A Six Part Original Series from FUEL TV - Please Post Trailer

Globalization, Cultural Identities and Media Representations

Deconstructing Popular Culture online

Spectres...

Bruce Lee DVDs

Bruce Lee V. Egemonia

Chen Zhen and Donnie Yen on Dorkarama's Blog

Mao loved Bruce Lee too

Rare pictures of Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee, My Brother

Spectres of Bruce Lee

Interview on Theorizing Bruce Lee and JKD

The Point of the Arts and Humanities

Bodies in Movement

Police Violence, Media Violence

Just seen "Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen"...

Ted Wong sadly dies

Send Me Your Links!

Interview on my take on Bruce Lee

The Privatization of the Humanities

Popular Cultural Pedagogy

Teri Tom Theorizing Bruce Lee

Amusingly "wanky"

It’s called “BRUCE LEE, SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK, GLOBALIZATION, COMMODIFICATION, CONSUMERISM, WANKER INTELLECTUALISM etc…”

The guy calls me a wanker, but does so whilst smiling.

Publish with Anthem Press

Rey Chow and Postcolonial Social Semiotics

Toy Story 3 Screen Grab Again

Toy Story 3 Screen Grab

CFP: Collection on Philosophy and the Martial Arts

Book, free, online

A Quick Dip into Hong Kong Bak Sing Choy Lee Fut: A Visit to Wan Kei Ho International Martial Arts Association, Hong Kong

articles in expensive places

Some Bruce Lee News

Bruce Lee to be played by Hong Kong singer in biopic

Related

Theorizing Bruce Lee, free online

Want to contribute to a book on Chinese Cinema?

Save Middlesex University Philosophy

To Anon

Bruce Lee Book

Seeing and Event: Bruce Lee and the Emancipated Spectator

The Man who dubbed Bruce Lee into English

Seeing and Event: Bruce Lee and the Emancipated Spectator

Bruce Lee's English Voice

About Theorizing Bruce Lee

The Future of Post-Human Martial Arts

Nice Mention

Theorizing Bruce Lee on Google Books

Bruce Lee Review

Preview

Theorizing Bruce Lee out soon

Cultural Translation Conference

First Draft of a new paper on Bruce Lee, Rey Chow, Cultural Translation, Europe/China and 'Queer'