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Ordinary Enchantments
Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative
Faris argues that by combining realistic representation with fantastic elements so that the marvelous seems to grow organically out of the ordinary, magical realism destabilizes the dominant form of realism based on empirical definitions of reality, gives it visionary power, and thus constitutes what might be called a "remystification" of narrative in the West. Noting the radical narrative heterogeneity of magical realism, the author compares its cultural role to that of traditional shamanic performance, which joins the worlds of daily life and that of the spirits. Because of that capacity to bridge different worlds, magical realism has served as an effective decolonizing agent, providing the ground for marginal voices, submerged traditions, and emergent literatures to develop and create masterpieces. At the same time, this process is not limited to postcolonial situations but constitutes a global trend that replenishes realism from within.
In addition to describing what many consider to be the progressive cultural work of magical realism, Faris also confronts the recent accusation that magical realism and its study as a global phenomenon can be seen as a form of commodification and an imposition of cultural homogeneity. And finally, drawing on the narrative innovations and cultural scenarios that magical realism enacts, she extends those principles toward issues of gender and the possibility of a female element within magical realism.
Wendy B. Faris is professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Texas at Arlington. She is the author of Carlos Fuentes and Labyrinths of Language: Symbolic Landscape and Narrative Design in Modern Fiction , as well as co-editor of Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community .
For over twenty years, Wendy Faris has meditated deeply on the paradox of magical realism. And now the rabbit is out of the hat. Ordinary Enchantments brings critical clarity to a fictional world whose organizing principle is radical incongruity. It discovers a textual poetics for the grounded imagination. And it shows us why fiction that astonishes is inherently political fiction--a way of envisioning social equity within an overwhelmingly unequal world.
--Stephen Slemon