Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

Frequently Sylvie and I have talked about native Muay Thai as if it were a language. There are many ways to imagine this, but in this film montage (sound on), the particular way that a film genre will communicate itself, discursively, through "blocs of sensation", discursively, gives clue to its communication. These tropes and movements (including camera movements) compose a "language" of expression. It is the same with traditional Muay Thai, the refining of these communications.

An early note in my reading was on McLean's speculative translation of melos and "machine". Not sure of its bearing here in the trace of thought, but post it because it was an off-shoot of my reading, and might as well preserve the footnote. At the start of reading a book it is a beautiful virtual space; much is possible. Here @BHMcLean108's new book Deleuze, Guattari & the Machine in Early Christianity starts by retranslating "μέλος" as machine, instead of merely parts. But moves away from them being "organs"

In tracing this mental landscape I made these notes, with these caps of McLean's work: "This D&G Disjunctive Synthesis summation by McLean (in analogy for early Xp church) provides a powerful template for explaining the affective powers of ring Muay Thai, esp in the festival setting (and helps explain the surplus value of the deities of the ring & Muay Thai itself)." "These Deleuze & Guattari dynamics help flesh out a Girardian reading of the sacrificial rite power of the festival Muay Thai ring, how the production of the (sacred) loser helps propitiate the gods/dieties, thru symbolic expulsion, and generate the surplus value of the community." "prospectively: The paranoic pole helps us understand how the revulsion against the gamblers (the very organs of the generation of Muay Thai as a sport), produces a low-intensity paranoic body." "McLean on "milieu" to give context to territorialization..." and, then noted: "Getting an enormous amount out of McLean's D&G & Early Xp book, understanding the dynamics of the festival fighting Muay Thai trad, the unwritten development of Muay Thai in the provinces, in the light of the territorializations the early Christian Church. socio-religious flows. I've always had the sense that the traditional, custom-rich festival fight ring was a stage upon which "the god was made to appear", often only in flashes. Girard opened one door to this, but McLean's book opens up the floor plan of the process. The generation of surplus."

Posting this as a fragment, as a developmental post on the nature of Thailand's native Muay Thai. Usually my posts are more comprehensive, but this time I ran into old Twitter posts were I had done some reasoning work which I believe I didn't continue on with. It's good to move it here in case much more can be made of this. working from McLean's Deleuze, Guattari and the Machine in Early Christianity: Schizoanalysis, Affect and Multiplicity The thought/analysis ends with this graphic describing the expressive nature of Thailand's Muay Thai: The above represents the culminative end to which I traced the analysis, but it had begun with the reading of McClean's book studying the Deleuze & Guattari "machine" of the Early Christian Church, really thinking about how the material conditions and the ideas came together expressively. Here were some excerpts that started out my investigation and potential application to Thailand's native Muay Thai: This is what I wrote following these citations: Posting as a note to myself for further study. A project of outlining the rural muaywat fesitival fight (form, event) along D&G lines of nondiscursive content & discursive expression. This McLean summation (in the service of the Early Christian Church, using the same as helpful). Ess. the nondiscursive form of the content (the ring, the wat, the festival) & its substance (the bodies, physical money-flows); AND its discursive expression, its form (genre styles of fighting, modes of masculinity) and content (fighting as writing) produces power/knowledge. This will allow us to trace the expressive characteristics of Thailand's native Muay Thai, what is unique to it, as in particular how it relates to violence and its expression, a very meaningful content in contrast to Western modes of violence as entertainment. This would also allow us to trace just how radically the West is reformulating and recoding the expression of Thailand's Muay Thai (to forward and feed its own differing values), and to mark where in the discursive/nondiscursive structure this is occurring. I also posted this Reddit sourced description of a Deleuze & Guattari Abstract Machine:

Whatever one's position on the future of Thailand's Muay Thai, its hard to deny that many of the arguments for the unstoppable - but sometimes delayed - "evolution" of the sport, it's imagined "potential" being reached through globalization and hoped-for mass popularity, it's provincial/parochial (or corrupt) nature being technologically "modernized" and rationalized, mirror the justification reasonings behind colonialism, which held a concept of beneficent, educating husbandry and willful, well-rewarded participants in the culture. This is not to say that they are the same, we are in a different time in history, but only that the ethical questions about colonialism likely need to also be answered in this case, where "development" by powerful outside forces and interests is assumed as an unproblematic Good.

This is aside from the worrisome corrosive effect of replacing extremely knowledgeable, deeply invested in-stadium fans with phone scrolling tourists who know very little about the sport or what is going on in the ring. A sport (and art) in a certain sense cannot survive at a high level of performance with such a huge in-stadium fan disparity. Audience will over time shape the product...when it becomes a "product". This is one of the quagmires of a consumerist approach.

Reflecting on it, I think these are my three main objections - or at least points of constructive criticism - towards some of the globalizing efforts on Thailand's Muay Thai: 1. Changing the rules and very form of the sport so that Westerners (and other non-Thais) will win fights that they otherwise would have lost. (This goes from changing weigh-in rules to down-regulating primary Thai skills - defensive counter fighting, narrative control, clinch, etc - that non-Thais just are not good at.) 2. Decaying the once vast small kaimuay/festival culture of provincial Muay Thai which created such diversity and complexity of skillsets in Thailand historically AND radically altering the developmental training methods of Thais. Both of these lead to Thai fighters just becoming less and less skilled, and more in line with a Western/International baseline. 3. Changing the ethos of Muay Thai fighting. Moving it from a sport that fundamentally expresses control to a sport that expresses violence. The first of these puts a thumb on the scale that gives the illusion that Western/International fighters are much better than they are. This is great for International marketing. And the second of these reinforces that illusion because it drains the Thai standard of greatness that gives Muay Thai its allure in the first place. If Thais become less skilled, again International fighters will win more fights. The primary motivator and promise of the "Magical" or untouchable fighter of Thailand becomes lost, an image that ironically enough has been essential to Soft Power. The third of these is maybe the most troubling, or at least harder to see and pernicious. In order to align Thailand's Muay Thai with Global appetites it must move towards expressing similar values that combat fight culture expresses in global capitalism, which is that of transgressive violence. The very foundational value of control-in-the-face-of-possible-violence that generated such high level fighters of Thailand, which gave it its aura in the world, becomes culturally colonized; it is replaced by a lower value of entertainment violence (which over time produces much less complex or fluent skill sets). Prescriptively, one would maybe list: 1. Try to take the thumb off the scale for International fighters. Now that they have been skewed for start sliding the sport back towards complexity and higher level skills. 2. Protect and nurture the kaimuay/festival grassroots of Muay Thai, the small gym networks and fighting circuits that develop rich skillsets. AND, preserve or return to aspects of traditional training practices, because higher level skills were embedded in these practices. 3. Pull back on the valorization of violence or aggression for its own sake, and embrace the uniqueness of control in the face of violence, extol "gep awut" for instance. This unlocks the greater levels of skill which will give Thailand enduring value in the world. I could mention as well, this is really core to the persistent debate about youth fighting in Thailand. From an Internationalist perspective because fighting is fundamentally violence, it is inherently transgressive and "adult". Because fighting in Thailand's history is NOT fundamentally violence, but instead is about mastery and control (quite complexly developed, including the use of aggression, but not fundamentally so), it is not inherently adult. In fact, it is an inculcative practice, a practice of maturation that aligns with the process of becoming adult, possessing control. One reason why Thai fighters have been so sublimely skilled is that they grew up within a process of developmental control over oneself and threatened violence. An art counter to violence as it is commonly conceived in a fundamental way. If we change the spectrum of this valuation, not only are the highest level skill sets threatened to be lost, but also the valuable lesson that Thailand's culture has for the world will fall away. Ideally, the key to long term Soft Power for Thailand has to be founded on the uniqueness of Thailand's perspective on fighting and fight culture. This is what brings people across 1,000s of miles and causes them to invest their lives in the specialness of the art. And this comes out of the valuation of what fighting itself means and the incredibly high level of skill that was developed in that value, come out of the root-system of provincial fighting.

Pretty crazy that all time elite Muay Thai fighters of the Golden Age ended their careers incredibly young. Oley 20 (two fights at 22, but basically done at 20), and Saencherng at 22. Really craziness. Not even (arguably) physical prime, and certainly not mental prime, but some of the best who ever fought. Sylvie trained with Saencherng today, full of physical wisdom almost 40 years from retirement.

Today I watched Chatchai imitating Samson Isaan's interfering, smother style when teaching Sylvie how she should fight. It came out of nowhere, but it warmed my heart so much. and his movements were so beautiful. It's not his style, but he was adopting it. He also told a short story of when he used to be a sparring partner of Samson's at Petchyindee when Samson turned to Boxing. He said that Samson didn't really like sparring him as Chatchai would hurt him with select shots (Chatchai more experienced at the time). He knew how to handle that tempo pressure. So something really special today. Chatchai guiding Sylvie into some of Samson's tactics because it would be really good for her style, but also having experienced them directly himself, and knowing the solves. Such a great instructor.

There is a fundamental dichotomy, a catch, which farang will experience when coming to Thailand to dream of becoming recognized in a traditional way. The more "value" you have...in your attempted authenticity, the more you are pulled into a traditional hierarchy in which the fighter holds an extremely low position, and in which your opportunity to develop as a fighter becomes highly restricted to the meaning-system of those held by those high in that pyramid. In short, the more value you achieve, the less opportunity you have. And, for women - because traditional Muay Thai is quite patriarchal - this can be more intensely so. So, if your aim is to develop as a fighter to the height of your capacities, our experience and guiding rule has been: Be very careful about how much "value" you have, especially within traditional concepts of value. This means that to some degree you have to skate by, across some concepts of "authenticity", certain types of recognition or symbolic value (because they can foreclose growth and opportunity), and instead carve out new, creative forms of value to others. This is Sylvie's secret gift and path, the way she carefully avoids kinds or limits of value, while creating value and meaning, so that her horizon as a fighter is not curbed by tradition itself.

I feel like even when I find a voice in Muay Thai with whom I may have some sympathy, discourse itself is impossible, because of the highly political nature of social media life-rafting, everyone grabbing onto their own piece to stay afloat, often using the social media form to assail others, but also signaling their potential place within commerce. The very sense of reachable agreements become divorced from the possible. Allies and potential allies because disagreeable promimates and competitors for attention or even a place in the "idea space". I can't even suitably ask: Do you actually agree with the things you are saying? It's a very odd hyper-real collapse of what discussion is supposed to be. This is why the discussion now can only be had at the level of the muay you build - which is difficult as they fast change the rules to favor foreign schematics and values - the muay becoming the language of a true-ist discourse. The alphabet of limbs and spaces and nothing more...a muay that betters what it disagrees with.

One thing to appreciate is that ONE Championship is really just "Muay American". Not only is it captured by the image of the UFC, it was dreamed up by an American boarding school kid, his imagination of what "Muay Thai" should be, far away from the country and culture of Thailand itself.

I confess that in this, the above, there is a sense in these inner beats a secret language. A language which develops intuitionally out of the art of individual fighters and the matrixes of the sport, but also an expressive geometry that - coded and displayed - becomes a communication. An occult communication of human potential, locked in the finitude of its Space...symbolized by the Ring and its ropes. Muay Thai is a dance of freedoms, and in that way at least (ideologically) transcendent.

I should add that these are two nice summations in comment on the original posting of the micro-gallop video on YouTube, in answer to someone who asked for elaboration:

Returning to the OP, one of the interesting things about the comparison of Yodkhupon's movement and Chatchai's inner beats movement is that it points out how futile or insufficient visual imitation can be. Just looking at their shapes they look nothing alike. A large part of the Western and International grasping at and training of Muay Thai is based on visual cuing and bio-mechanical imitation, a great deal of it video-based as well. This visual-mechanical lead just keeps us on the surface of "strikings" and tends to cut away all the living material beneath the strikes, the rhythms and stylistics that animate the strikes and make them so effective (and beautiful as well). Only when you get down into the rhythms, leaving the visual map aside, do these two gallops come together, a secret affinity that connects them, and suggests that they could in practice amplify each other.