Respecifying Body Techniques : Via a Rereading of Mauss' 'Les Techniques du Corps' and a Case Study at a Martial Art School(<Special Theme>Body as the Resource for Culture)

In the process of learning new body techniques, we often experience a change in our recognition of them. In many cases, we discover misconceptions we may have entertained about the techniques to which we aspire, and consequently rest our goals. The purpose of this paper is to provide an epistemological foundation from which such experiences can be adequately described. In the opening part of the paper, I will spell out the difficulties inherent in capturing those experiences. First of all, the subjectivity of neither the learner nor the instructor of the technique will provide an adequate standpoint for an objective description. That is because both learner and instructor have experienced repeated changes in the recognition of the technique that the former is about to acquire, with the implication that neither of them have a "final" recognition. Nor is it possible to resort to objective indices-as may be set by physiology, psychology or sociology-since none could possibly register the entire range of changes in the recognition of techniques that the learner might experience. Next, I will turn to Marcel Mauss' 'Les Techniques du Corps' to clarify the epistemological basis that enabled him to describe various body techniques. When he compares an old swimming style to a modern one, he describes the difference of the two techniques in three different ways; physiologically, psychologically and sociologically. However, that does not make the depicted techniques appear arbitrary in any way, owing to the fact that despite the logical independence of the three differences-each being neither derivable from nor reducible to the others-they nevertheless share a common reference: namely, the same two techniques. That intersection of three logically unrelated differences is only possible by experiential reference to real objects. Thus, insofar as they are objects of experiential reference, the experiential reality of the two techniques is unquestionable. I shall propose that the experiential reality, thus negatively attributable to the techniques, is what provides the foundation for Mauss' experiential description, and also what he refers to as the "efficacy" of technique. Such an understanding of the concept of efficacy necessitates a reconsideration of the well-known concept of "prestigious imitation." That is because Mauss stipulates that a necessary condition for the commencement of prestigious imitation is for the learner to acknowledge the efficacy of the instructor's technique. In order to investigate how that might occur in practice, I will consider the 'S' school of martial art in Kyoto, a target of fieldwork of mine from 1999 to 2005 (and still ongoing at time of writing). By way of drawing upon the experiential reality of the techniques, I have described in three different weys-physiologically, psychologically and sociologically-the difference between the techniques I have acquired in the course of training and that of the instructor. As a result, I have discovered that the recognition of the experiential reality of the instructor's techniques-hence their efficacy-occurs not only at the onset of prestigious imitation, but repeatedly during its process, thus continuously transforming their efficacy under their nominal identity.