Fighting Over Bruce Lee

This article responds to Kyle Barrowman’s polemic against my work on Bruce Lee (this issue). Part One of my response sets out the overarching problems with Barrowman’s misreading of my work and of poststructuralism. Part Two sets out some of the arguments I have actually made about Bruce Lee, as opposed to those Barrowman imputes to me. Readers principally interested in Bruce Lee or in my own take on Bruce Lee could skip Part One. However, in both sections, the difference between Barrowman’s caricatured representations and my actual arguments about Bruce Lee should become clear. In the end, the article assesses Barrowman’s call for a rejection both of poststructuralism and of the tendency to read Lee as a proponent of East Asian philosophy.