How to Be a Good Disciple (to a Martial Arts Master): Critical Reflections on Participation and Apprenticeship in Indonesian Pencak Silat Schools

Abstract

Apprenticeship and embodied participation are suitable methods to trace the ways martial arts are mediated—through body practices, discourses, and institutions. Specific demands, opportunities, and risks of “performance ethnography” in martial arts studies have only partially been addressed so far. A major difficulty lies in adequate representation, in the transformation of embodied knowledge gained through martial arts practice into scientific knowledge, but also and foremost in the management of this knowledge with respect to the intention of the preceptor. For the researcher and practitioner engaging in martial arts studies, this field of tension provides a wide range of conflicting feelings, interests, commitments, and obligations. Personal, physical experience of extraordinary powers and phenomena challenges the rational and intellectual comprehension the “Western scientist” is supposed to be grounded in. In the reciprocal relationship between a martial arts master and a researcher as his disciple, “classic” structural power relations are inverted, which is challenging for both sides. Thus, methods of participation and apprenticeship in martial arts touch upon questions of research ethics and epistemology, during the research process and beyond.