Imagining Embodiment in Karate Kata

Abstract

This paper is an exploration of how a particular moment in time - the 2020 pandemic - created a paradigm shift that both has and has not affected the way martial artists train. I argue rethinking the concept of virtuality beyond the bounds of technology provides a lens through which to better understand certain aspects of embodied existence that both reinforce and go beyond the physical. I discuss the virtual effects on training in terms of a phrase I call embodied imagination via a phenomenological analysis using Gilles Deleuze, Edward Casey, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. I focus on karate kata and their bunkai, which serve to exemplify how embodied imagination is always already both virtualized and actualized in senses individual and communal. I end with a description of a combination of techniques that relies on narrow line work, utilizing creative interpretations of limited and liminal spaces.