Black Combat Arts Institute.
INTERNAL LOGIC
A Game Where Everything and Its Opposite Coexist
6 MIN READ
In the kaleidoscopic duels, all and its contrary live within one regulatory and spatio-temporal frame — to touch and not to touch, to fall and to stay upright.
WHY THIS ARTICLE
Competitive sport is built on symmetry at the start and unequivocal dissymmetry at the finish. The thesis defines the Black combat arts as the opposite — a kaleidoscopic structure crossed by an emotional polyphony.
The kaleidoscopic structure
Read through the technical focus, capoeira is an activity of kaleidoscopic structure — where horizontalities and verticalities interlace — crossed by an emotional polyphony and reinforced by paradoxical game-principles within one and the same space-time. This is almost unique in the well-ordered universe of competitive sport, where what counts is a perfect symmetry at the start and an unequivocal dissymmetry at the finish.
Surviving the Minotaur Coubertin
In the middle of that narrow sporting labyrinth, beside capoeira, a handful of opposition games managed to survive the 'Minotaur Coubertin'. These Black combat arts tell a story — that of a particular world, of a complexity rarely seen in the field of martial arts and combat sports, where, in the kaleidoscopic duels, everything and its contrary coexist within a single regulatory frame: to touch and not to touch, to fall and to stay standing.
Why it matters
Ordinary sport resolves ambiguity; these games sustain it. Their survival against the standardising force of modern sport is precisely what makes them worth a field of their own.
SOURCES
La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles (1905–1984), thèse de doctorat, Université des Antilles, 2020 (General conclusion: the kaleidoscopic structure and the survival of the games against the 'Minotaur Coubertin').
IN THE CORPUS
→ The Game That Is Played on Two Planes at Once
→ The Black Atlantic, Read Through the Body at Play
→ One Hundred and Twenty Ways to Read an Erased History
HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE
MALO, Olivier. A Game Where Everything and Its Opposite Coexist. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 97. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/a-game-where-everything-and-its-opposite-coexist. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.