Defining Magical Realism

[Jonathan David White]

Lots of interesting discussion about the definition of magical realism lately.
One other thing that might be added is that this recent Latin American literary
tradition relies often on the externalization of inner emotional experience. Think
of the enormous quilt of sorrows in *Like Water For Chocolate.*

The question of the relation of magical realism to the political troubles of the
last thirty years in Latin America (and especially in Colombia and the Southern
Cone, where the most famous practitioners of the form come from) is an especially
important one, and a lot of shrewd things have been said about in in the hallowed
halls of this ng, but an important caveat also is that magical realism does not
have an inherent politics. Garcia Marquez is viewed throughout South America as
the foremost leftist intellectual, and many of his most "magical" works engage very
forcefully and directly such phenomena as *la violencia* (essentially, the
centrality of death squads in Colombian political life) and, in his most recent
book, the tension in 1980s-90s Colombia between brutal mafia rule on one hand and
equally brutal state repression, often bolstered internationally under the rubric
of fighting against "narco-terrorism." On the other hand, Llosa, who has also been
frequently cited in the discussion here, is generally considered the foremost
novelist of the right in Latin America.

Magical Realism is most fundamentally a literature of conjunctive contradiction. A
few of the most fertile of these, IMHO:
Latin America's deeply problematic relation (as a result of political
economy) to "Western" epistemology;
The historical contradictions created by disillusionment with the
Cuban-proposed *foquismo* model of revolutionary politics;
The appearance of new kinds of dictatorships that are brutally repressive
and antidemocratic, but superficially resemble bourgeois democratic institutions,
enjoy the support of the U.S. and Europe, and are called "neoliberalism";
The increasingly uneven development of much of Latin America, and in
particular the political & cultural divide that continues to widen between
metropolitan and rural elements of the society.

An implicit question, though, in the original post seemed to be the relation of MR
to different sf forms. I think one short answer might be that science fiction and
fantasy also play "ontological games" with what is possible, but that the rules of
the genres require these interruptions with "things as everybody knows they are" to
be managed with *as little tension as possible*--hence all that classic advice
about suspension of disbelief, etc.--whereas Magical Realism demands that tension
be generated, but in an ironic way, never as part of the story where the characters
themselves can perceive it, but only in the reader's confrontation with her own
expectations.

IMHO, that is.

Jon
--
Jonathan David White
whi...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu

"Son, you ain't going nowhere."
--Manager of the Grand Ole Opry to Elvis Presley, 1954.