Limits of Understanding in the Study of Lost Martial Arts

Abstract

The paper is organised around the notion of embodied technique. The recent attempts to formulate scientific methodologies for the reconstruction of medieval fighting techniques based on a study of premodern fight books raise questions about the epistemological status of these (re)constructed techniques developed by modern practitioners of Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA).Approaching the subject from a perspective of cultural history and martial arts studies, the following questions are discussed: What is technique and how is it related to practice? How is technique acquired and transmitted? How can technique be recorded? And finally, how can historical records of technique be understood, interpreted and converted into practice?Following Ben Spatz, technique is defined as the knowledge content of specific practices and the semiotic references between practice, technique, and symbols referring to embodied technique are discussed. By looking at the intersubjective communication of subjective fighting skills and relying on the work of Michael Polanyi, the possibility to record the “tacit knowing” of these skills as explicit knowledge is questioned. Given the low knowledge content of the fight books in regard to the execution of the referenced techniques, modern HEMA techniques therefore are to be addressed as purely modern constructions based on modern fighting practices instead of as reconstructions of medieval technique. The discourses in HEMA are also compared to a similar debate in musicology, where the status and the “authenticity” of attempts to recreate the sound of medieval music based on interpretations of early musical notation systems was vividly discussed until the early 2000s.Fighting techniques are furthermore addressed as elements of complex fighting systems that only exist within a given historical culture of fighting and are transformed when transferred to another societal context.

Fight like a girl! An investigation into female martial practices in European Fight Books from the 14th to the 20th century

“…This collection of documents has many forms and functions, and includes both manuscripts and prints. They have different purposes, but all are limited by their imperfect format -the two-dimensional static page -for a transmission of embodied knowledge, which is spread in time and space [Burkart 2016].…”

The Ferrara Manuscript: A Discussion of Destreza and Vulgar Fencing Traditions in Spain

“…Unfortunately, some of the oldest treatises, such as those authored by Jaime Pons de Perpinan and Pedro de la Torre or Francisco Román in the fifteenth or the early sixteenth centuries, were already lost at the time of destreza's creation (Valle Ortiz 2012;Valle Ortiz and Curtis 2009). Nonetheless, there is enough information in the surviving materials to reconstruct and bring back to life a full fencing system or at least certain approaches to the verdadera destreza systems (see caveats by Burkart 2016). In this chapter, we will analyze the distinction between verdadera and vulgar destreza in light of the Spanish fencing treatises and other sources, with a focus on the work of Octavio Ferrara based on a previously unknown manuscript dated to 1625.…”

Game of text: Bruce Lee’s media legacies

“…This association is regarded as an unjustifiable mistake by some, who point to the abundant evidence that military, paramilitary and civilian combat training practices have existed historically across almost all geographical regions (Wetzler, 2017). Examples include historical European martial arts (Burkart, 2016), Victorian and Edwardian urban martial arts (Godfrey, 2010), Afro-Brazilian martial arts (Assunção, 2005), postmodern martial arts (Jennings, 2016; Judkins, 2018), contemporary military-inspired fighting systems and so on. Nonetheless, in many contexts, the ‘mistake’ endures, with people tending to read the term ‘martial arts’ as most likely signifying Asian martial arts.…”

“…martial arts (Burkart, 2016), Victorian and Edwardian urban martial arts (Godfrey, 2010), Afro-Brazilian martial arts (Assunção, 2005), postmodern martial arts (Jennings, 2016;Judkins, 2018), contemporary military-inspired fighting systems and so on. Nonetheless, in many contexts, the 'mistake' endures, with people tending to read the term 'martial arts' as most likely signifying Asian martial arts.…”