Marxist cultural theorist Frederic Jameson once said of 'post modernism' that it is something that needs to be defined after our discussion of it, not before. This is because it has no essential meaning, and a process of roundabout consideration of multiple factors is required to see what the idea is really getting at. One cannot, therefore, give a simple, clear definition as a starting point of the discussion. 'Yiquan', which is based on Marxist historical and dialectical materialism, is a very similar phenomenon. I read a post on Facebook recently, from someone I have no respect for, who is a student of someone I have no respect for, claiming that 'Yiquan contains everything that is in wing chun, but wing chun does not contain everything that is in yiquan'. This is such a stupid thing to say, and so obnoxious and childish. 'Yiquan' is a dialectical phenomenon, meaning that it has no essential meaning, no essential content, and certainly no essential 'level' or level of ability. Yiquan's primary dialectic is between theory and praxis - such that each individual who practices yiquan is a unique product, with a unique expression and level of the art. 'Praxis', which means 'practical as opposed to theoretical skill', includes training methods - and training methods too are dialectically conditioned by historcial, cultural and technical variables, such that the yiquan of the MMA age should look very different to the yiquan of the 1930s. There is no 'one' yiquan, therefore - as each person, and each historical situation in which it is practiced, is very different.

One of the most interesting things about yiquan, however, is just how many totally - I mean totally - obnoxious frauds it produces. By which I don't mean people who are low level - there's no shame in being a hobby level practitioner. I mean people who have actually totally ignored 'praxis', and parasitised yiquan theory to pretend to have the kinds of skills, and to do the kinds of things, that Wang Xiang Zhai spent his life fighting (literally) against. This is the other side of the dialectical method - the danger of the total over-emphasis of one part of the dialectic over the other. Or rather, the danger of the most obnoxious frauds parasitising the phraseology of the method, turning 'yiquan' in to an open sore of corrupt practice, such that yiquan is if not now actually totally far worse, then at least quite as bad, as the practices that Wang despised. The ideology of this corruption is 'Those who know, know' - i.e. the corrupt nod and a wink of the hoaxer, whose entire basis for claiming knowledge is arcane theoretical nonsense. Fortunately, what they are is its own reward.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48CPY7hWnW8