Journaling - Readings, Muay Thai, Concepts and Articulations

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

More and more I am convinced. You fight exactly how you train...which does mean you execute the strikes you have trained.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

I have long thoughts on this, but I simply can't get myself to write them. The audience for this kind of information simply is crumbling in the face of waves of near-mindless, replicating "content". I sense the ability to even discuss these things is being lost on a slope of consumption.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Positioning the extraction of techniques from Thailand's trad Muay Thai, into a globalizing culture of technique bent toward expansion. 

Fredrico Campagna, Technique and Magic.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Simondon and the Infinite grammatical positions of Becoming

from the same work

I see some parallels in transition a fighter can make between gyms in Thailand, in years as they elapse, as a fighter you ARE your techniques (not of striking, but of training). Avatars of oneself unfold, in series of successions. In the passage below swap out "technology" with techniques-of-training, perhaps, to make the most sense of where I am heading.

 

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

17 hours ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

Simondon and the Infinite grammatical positions of Becoming

from the same work

I see some parallels in transition a fighter can make between gyms in Thailand, in years as they elapse, as a fighter you ARE your techniques (not of striking, but of training). Avatars of oneself unfold, in series of successions. In the passage below swap out "technology" with techniques-of-training, perhaps, to make the most sense of where I am heading.

 

 

An "ontology of positions"

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Recommended.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

The Knowledge Mill

There is a very interesting dilemma that has gradually arisen, as the totalization of cognitive Capitalism takes its hold on the world, which is that so much of our information sphere has become a knowledge mill. This is to say, we all work producing knowledge and perspectives to feed into the mill, day and night, such that the meaning of our knowledge, our experiences, becomes asymptotically less and less. It just wants to be fed. And we grist it all, feeding it back in.

As the producer of perhaps the greatest documentation of a fighting art, in the history of the planet, and art full of nuance, culture and history, as well as great efficacy, how does one keep it from just being ground up by the mill and losing all meaning? Just another set of details, coordinates of interest, to be mapped and ultimately colonized by pure consumption?

We've purposely made much of the documentation hard to digest for such a mill. Hour long videos of narrative structure that force investment and discovery by the viewed. We've made it hard to mine...but still is lacking, other than this mode of resistance, an appropriate expression and conversation of that knowledge, something that honors its meaningfulness.

I've felt myself grow sensitive to this milling, and feeds are populated by advice and social-credit expertise, increasingly a flood of nonsense (from a certain perspective). Just let the mill mill, I say. But, its more than that. It needs a positive form, resistant to that churning mouth of it all.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

"Thai fighters are lazy"...think about all the things implied by this statement.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

I recognize that I have loved you through the art of Muay Thai. I used its script to speak beneath surfaces.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

I believe we need to take an anti-knowledge stance towards Muay Thai, in this Age. This is to say, anything that measures is to be shunned. I've not always done that, but I'm coming to see that simply is not the direction. Cadence is an interesting question. Not the cadence that measures, in the sense of the unfeeling cadence, the cadence which cannot see. But also, and more importantly, every spatial coordinate, anything that maps on neutral space. Any gridding.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

It's crazy. Sylvie dropping knowledge from her years of experience in Thai gyms, a slowly evolved observation on the hidden dimensions of hierarchy and fighter evolution, and people in comments proposing theories on what is REALLY happening, you know, based on no connection to kaimuay culture. We live in a time when the simulation of knowledge (and perspective) is the purpose of exchange. Heading toward pure simulcrum. They haven't a clue, she gave them a clue. The internet is anti-knowledge.

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Reading Berardi, I become convinced, that we must find a way to island the knowledge, protect it from its encryption. The only thing I can think of...is a place...not a means of expression or communication. A topos. But these are at most gyms or museums. It does not come to me yet. But, we must prevent or forestall, retard encryption.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Watching this fight today. Two insanely skilled 9 year olds. The beating heart of trad Muay still alive.

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Nabil kinda told the truth about O Muay.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

This is very good. Berardi on control. What this says of the liberatory potential of Trad Kaimuay Muay Thai.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

On 1/25/2025 at 9:45 AM, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

Watching this fight today. Two insanely skilled 9 year olds. The beating heart of trad Muay still alive.

 

Trad Muay Thai Not Dead Yet. This Incredibly Skilled fight between 9 year olds. Femeu spacing and timing, linking strikes with eyes & rhythm, not in memorized combos, rounds of Muay Khao fighting, fluid knees upon knees. Old School Ruup, Sanae, art & dominance. It's beautiful that this kind of developed muay can still happen in Thailand, it tells us that grassroots the art, style and knowledge is still living, despite the onslaught embrace of Entertainment values, mostly made for foreigners. Though, as can be seen in other young femeu fighters, as these young fighters grow into the Bangkok scene they will likely lose a lot of this art, as betting pressures and a general conservative, simplifying cultural force will rob much of the fluency and expression. At this age they reflect very significant aspects of Golden Age fighting, things very hard to find in the sport now, but the trends of the sport then strip away the freedom and continuity. We have a historical condition now where the art & really sophistication of the sport's legacy exists in the provinces, whereas in the Capital Thailand's Muay Thai has be contorted by capital interests, both in its Entertainment varieties (made for the non-Thai tourist/consumer) AND by the compressed, illiberal, online-fueled betting culture of stadium fighting. Entertainment Muay Thai dumbs down the vocabulary and expressive value of the sport, attempting to create a violence-oriented, casuals product (altering the sophistication of the sport, and its essential Thai dominance over aggression DNA); and stadium betting Muay Thai, because of the oversized power of gambler influence, drains away the complexity of the art, as fighters and small gyms are forced into stylistic straight jackets, avoiding risk-taking, and creative intricacy. Broadly speaking Entertainment fighters know, in the extreme, their job is to get knocked out (a notable Thai Entertainment fighter said this to me), and grass roots fighters in stadium Muay Thai know their job is to not lose face, leaving no room for the development of the kinds of skills and expression that we see in this fight.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

The grassroots of Thailand's Muay Thai, consistent of networks of small kaimuay gyms and local side-bet fight scenes in the provinces are left with two impotent choices: join the stream of endless labor supply to Entertainment aggression fighting, getting knocked out for content...or, enter Bangkok gambled stadia fighting, and lose to big gym name fighters the promoters are building, carefully sculpting your muay so fit within a conservative spectrum of fighting...ie, when you lose, it can't be blameable on a singular, pointed out mistake you have made. Blame has to be dispersive, because you and your gym have little social power. In either case, its the grassroot kaimuay who are feeding Capital Muay. The problem is that Capital, in its scissoring of the sport, pushing it towards rudiments, strips it of its complexity, a complexity that traditionally reached its apex in the Capital (in the 1970s-1990s).

The source of this complexity though likely resides in the provinces themselves. That argument:

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Honestly though, its shocking how many subtle skills these boys have, skills (or perhaps...qualities) that grown men (& women) who have devoted themself to the sport/art for many years, don't have.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

In reading Campagna Technic and Magic, which argues the metaphysical roots of the mechanization of the world, we can see where the replicable "combo" in a series fits even in pictures of representation. 

The subsumption and deprivleging of the specifity of the art.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Chartri has one fundamental problem. The magical fighter was created by traditional Muay Thai, and he is trying with all his might to destroy traditional Muay Thai. He is left with only the simulation of magic, a hocus-pocus of increasingly untenable hype and fragmentation, as the intial borrowing of mesmerizing talent and skill ftom the tradion bleeds out, ages out, of his product. As fighting dumbs down in his vision of endless knockouts, his sport heads toward Bangla Stadium level performativity, the putting on of shows for the visitor...a visitor who ultimately becomes only him and his distortive vision, something erotic to distract and extract...while the culture of the sport and art wastes away.

The magical fighter cannot be simulated. The human eye knows the difference. 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Muay Europe. A phrase Sylvie came up with the other day.

 

This runs adjunct to the fast commodification of Muay Thai.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

There is a decisive moment in Lynch's Mohulland Drive when Betty having aced her audition meets the director's eyes, as he is about to make his own decisive (necessary) compromise with his Desire, and she turns to run to the solipsism of her own Desire (refusing her own necessary compromise), only to head into the nightmare of her own Desire refusing her...that alternate reality which always runs parallel. 

 

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

There a beautiful story here, back in 2016. Sylvie was given a chance to win the Northern 105 Muay Siam belt, but she would have to beat Faa Chiang Rai, one of the best female fighters in Thailand for the 3rd time in a row in a month...and do it in her home province of Chiang Rai. We really thought that there was no way that they would give Sylvie the win on points, just because of circumstances, but Sylvie somehow pulled it out. She was awarded the belt, but then within the week (I believe) that she was stripped of it because farang could not hold the belt. It was given back to Faa. Sylvie wrote about the fight here. It was just such an incredible moment, being able to fight for a prestigious belt, a belt hermetic to Thailand itself, and even winning it, and then having it stripped, that in-between time before Thai name belts were starting to be made for Westerners, both in terms of audience and victory, the changing of rules, the opening up of the stadia. This was another time. 

But the beautiful part of it all is that even though Sylvie took Faa's belt in her home province, one way or another, 8 years later Sylvie arranged for Faa to fight for (and win for herself), the WBC World Title (I think at 105 lbs), I believe a title she still holds. This is the curious, beautiful gift of Sylvie, she weaves together Muay. Faa went from a Northern Muay Siam title to a WBC World Title, through Sylvie.

 

 

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Understanding Ruup

This remarkable account on how the abbot of the Doi Suthep wat in Chiang Mai (Wat Phra Thai Doi Suthep) circumvented the practice and theoretical barrier which prevented monks from becoming a spirit medium, as he importantly embodied the past Siam King Chulalongkorn. This account tells you just how important, and powerful, the lines of posture and expression are, and how past deities descend into this world, expressing themselves in Thai traditional circumstances, things that also communicate themselves through Muay Thai.

 

You can download the full article here:

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

I'm working on a 10 Principles of Golden Age (Old Tongue) Muay Thai project. I hope it will be interesting to a few.