Institutional kung fu: on the arts of making things happen

ABSTRACT

With its emphasis on establishing lines of connection between the multiple localities, historical experiences and social movements traversing and forming our region, the methodology of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies has always emphasized the need for intellectual work to engage in a serious way with activities and situations that initially lie “outside” our own immediate concerns. Today, however, the conditions of precarious labour and the brutal performance imperatives imposed by neo-liberal management in universities make it hard for academic workers in particular to risk any experiments that are not prescribed by their jobs. Arguing that it is possible to learn fighting skills that can help us find ways, at times, to get around these limitations, this article asks what practical measures might be able to help scholars thrive as well as survive in university contexts today. To explore this question it draws on Eleanor H. Porter’s novel Pollyanna, on Chan Koonchung’s discussion of “kung fu smarts,” and on the collective wisdom of colleagues.

KEYWORDS:

• Inter-Asian methodology
• kung fu
• techne
• Pollyanna
• optimism
• academic neo-liberalism
• precarity
• strategic planning
• institutions
• hope

Notes

1 As this Powerpoint-based image suggests, this paper is developed from my closing keynote to the 12th Biennial ACS Crossroads in Cultural Conference hosted in 12–15 August 2018, by the College of Liberal Arts and the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Shanghai University. A first version was published on-line in Chinese in Refeng Xueshu 14 (September 2019): 89–114: http://www.cul-studies.com/ArticleCat/internet/catid/53.html. My thanks to Professor Wang Xiaoming and Dr. Luo Xiaoming for their hospitality, and for their permission to revise the paper for English publication here.

2 “Anti-psychiatry” was an important social movement across the West in the 1960s and 1970s, influenced by the ideas of Thomas Szasz, R.D. Laing and David Cooper. Largely forgotten now, it regarded the “psy” disciplines as exercising political control over socially dissident people rather than helping the mentally ill and it militated quite successfully against confinement in asylums, electro-shock treatment and the use of drugs on patients. There was a close alliance with Gay Liberation activists against the use of “aversion therapy” to discourage homosexual desires.

3 “IQ” means “Intelligence Quotient” or cognitive capacity, while “EQ” means “emotional intelligence.”

4 This timing is why the term is lexicalised in English as “kung fu,” following the Wade Giles transliteration then in dominant use. On the complex connotations in English of saying “gong fu” or “gung fu” instead of “kung fu,” see Bowman (2017, 84–90).

5 All quotations in this paragraph are from these pages.

6 See Chen (1998).

7 See also the special section on “Teaching Cultural Studies” in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, volume 9, number 3 (2008), 429–517; and the “10th Anniversary” issue of the journal, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies volume 11, number 2 (2010).

8 On the flexible meaning of “local” as a mode of involvement extending to “transborder, regional, and even intercontinental” relations rather than a bounded area in space, see Chen (2010b).

9 On doing this in practice, see Massey (1994, 157–173).

10 The films are Stephen Chow Sing Chi’s Shaolin Soccer, Johnnie To Kei-fung’s Throw Down, Felix Chong Man-keung’s Once A Gangster, and Chapman To Man-chak’s The Empty Hands.

11 Apparently this phenomenon was first identified in 1978 by two female researchers, Dr. Pauline R. Clance and Dr. Suzanne A. Imes. See “Imposter Syndrome” (2019).

12 My deep gratitude goes to Paul Bowman, Christopher Connery, Catherine Driscoll, John Erni, Lawrence Grossberg, Mette Hjort, Kim Soyoung, Fran Martin, Tejaswini Niranjana, Nur Wulan, Gietty Tambunan, Andy Wang Chih-Ming, Handel Wright and Audrey Yue.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Meaghan Morris

Meaghan Morris is Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies, the University of Sydney, and former Chair Professor of Cultural Studies in Lingnan University, Hong Kong. Her current research is on martial arts cinema and her most recent book was Creativity and Academic Activism: Instituting Cultural Studies co-edited with Mette Hjort (2012).