The Sportification of Tai Chi and the Hegemony of Vision

The purpose of this paper is to enable a deeper understanding of modern sport through an examination of the sportification of tai chi (taijiquan) – its transformation from a folk tradition specific to local communities into a modern sport with global competition. While there is considerable literature on the sportification of tai chi (Li, 2008; Ryan, 2008; Zhang, 2010), this paper proposes to understand sportification as hegemony of vision (Levin, 1993) – the prioritization of the visible as the most important source of socially relevant meaning over what is perceived by other bodily senses. This was first made possible by the creation of the Simplified 24 Form in 1956 under the initiative of the New Chinese Government. Whereas traditional tai chi was, and still is, a martial art combined with internal “chi” cultivation techniques impregnated with Daoist philosophy, the Simplified 24 Form is sterilized of the martial, internal and philosophical aspects; it was rendered a standardized, easy-to learn health exercise for the masses, demanding only the correctness of visible movements. This prioritization of vision enabled objective rules for competition, which systematically allocated social meaning to the visible body. While competition has contributed to the global popularity of tai chi, it has invited the relative neglect of aspects that were not subject to visual appreciation, such as the internal cultivation of “chi” and its philosophical implications. By drawing on data gathered by fieldwork in a tai chi class in Xinxiang City, China, light will be shed on the rich sensory experience that traditional tai chi affords. This relativizes not only sportified tai chi, but also modern sport itself, as an activity obsessed with the externally visible out of the whole of human sensory experience.