The Shared Structure Nobody Could See

WHY THIS ARTICLE

The kinship of the Black combat arts is usually read as merely historical and socio-political. The thesis locates a deeper, unseen bond — a shared ludo-motor structure — and explains the four reasons it went unnoticed.

A shared foundation

Capoeira and the Caribbean or Réunion wrestlings share common foundations and game-principles, without equivalent in the field of martial arts and combat sports. Yet until now this singularity has stayed invisible. Several reasons explain it.

Four reasons for the blindness

First, most observers are specialists of a single activity, approaching the others only through secondary sources or a novice's eye. Second, the body is a recent object of study, and research centres mainly on how it is shaped by socio-political stakes that exceed it — the 'seriousness' of the game, the sense it holds for its actors, is little described. Third, in Brazil, to analyse capoeira from a ludo-motor standpoint is often perceived as reducing it to biology and occulting its cultural richness. Fourth, where technical study exists, it centres only on the formal, directly observable aspects.

Why it matters

What most different from Brazilian capoeira than the Guadeloupean stick-duel, the mayolè? And yet — read through their internal logic rather than their surface — they belong to one family. The blindness was methodological, not natural.

SOURCES

La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles (1905–1984), thèse de doctorat, Université des Antilles, 2020 (Part III, on the shared ludo-motor structure and the reasons for its invisibility).

IN THE CORPUS

→ Reading the Game from the Inside

→ The Three Biggest Capoeira Groups Were Founded by White Men

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. The Shared Structure Nobody Could See. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 65. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/the-shared-structure-nobody-could-see. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.