The mystique of martial arts: A reply to Professor Keenan’s response.
Year: 1991
Type: article
Abstract: I am grateful to John Keenan for his considered response to my critique of his paper (KEENAN 1989, MCFARLANE 1990, KEENAN 1990). I shall keep my points as concise as possible, as I have no wish to bore readers with unnecessary repetition. I appreciate his reflections on these issues, which clearly are of concern beyond the academic community. I feel there are still issues of fundamental disagreement between us, and I am concerned at what I feel to be the misrepresentation of some of my points, and I accept that Keenan feels that I too misrepresented his position in my initial discussion. I am genuinely puzzled at Keenan's description of his original paper as . .. in large part a descriptive piece about popular culture in the West and how it attempts to embrace the traditional martial arts of the East (1990, p. 421). This does not seem to match the content of his paper, which contains little material evidence concerning the nature of martial arts practice in the West, and only a brief sample of some products of Western popular culture, as represented in the movies, and in references to an extremely dated Bruce Lee story (Lee died in 1973). In fact, most of his arguments in both papers are concerned with Buddhological and textual questions. While he polemically rejects the claims of some Western martial artists who are said to be claiming Buddhist insights and spiritual achievements, he fails to produce concrete evidence of who is claiming what. In both his initial paper and his later response, there seems to be a mismatch between supposed elements of Western popular culture on the one hand, and the higher levels of Buddhist theory and practice as articulated in Yogacara texts on the other. Not surprisingly, Keenan finds no common ground between them. Part of my worry with his line of approach is that he is bringing together two quite different spheres of discourse and experience and then rhetorically insisting on their difference. I would suggest that a more
Author: Stewart McFarlane
Language: English
Topic: Indian and Buddhist Studies
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2336764018