Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 11 Number 3, December 2010
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Benito Jesus, Manzanas, Ana Mª, Simal Begona, Magical Realism in US Ethnic Literatures. NY: Rodopi. 2009. 276 pages. ISBN-10: 9042026006. ISBN-13: 9789042026001. $52.25
Reviewd by
University Malaya
Islamic Azad University, Garmsar Branch
Uncertain Mirrors, delicately selected by the authors as the title of the book, inclusively embraces the content of the whole book. The cover design is also in a complete harmony with the emblematic title and content.
This book opens a new horizon of possibility before the eyes of the readers for the authors maintain that “the impossible world becomes possible in magical realism.” Magical realism originated from a distinct approach of culture in line with the principles of postmodernism and postcolonialism offers an innovative view toward aesthetic works by flying over the obstacles of realities produced by power systems.
The sequence of seven chapters accurately guides you through the course of the content which sophisticatedly explores the essence, location and implication of magical realism with all its constituents, features, influences, and implications in the existing theories of post realism, post modernism, post colonialism, identity psychoanalysis and eco-criticism as illuminated in the ethnic literatures of the United States.
The book launches with a foreword which provides a succinct introduction to the content of the whole book on chapter-by-chapter basis. It initiates to introduce the oxymoronic nature of magical realism in Louise Edrich’s Father’s Milk in the collection of The Red Convertible where the novelist is mostly concerned with the elements of faith, wish and occurrence. It then moves chapter by chapter to briefly unveil the concept of magical realism amidst different theories and schools.
In the first chapter titled as “Mimesis, Realism, and Counter-Realism” Ana Maria Manzanas provides a meticulous and rich literature review on the conceptual development and artistic representation of mimesis and realism with a comprehensive account of old and new definitions, justifications and controversies from Aristotle onward.
She also maintains that realism targeting an ethical outcome and a truthful treatment of life shares textual characteristics with magical realism. Investigation of the unconscious is the fundamental component of realism in which human imagination escapes fatalism and subjugation. Realism infiltrates the mind, life, and artifacts through its own practices, devices, and styles.
In the last part, she argues that mimesis is indispensable when one is trying to comprehend the essence of fiction but not sufficient when one is concerned with the function of fiction. Downgraded as an antiquated concept with the intention to reflect and imitate, mimesis and realism are not much in harmony with the pioneering movements of futurism and surrealism.
Chapter two titled as “Romance, the Imaginary, and Magical Realism” depicts the challenges the concept of “mimesis” generates as “world-reflecting” and “world- creating”. It chapter deals with “romance and imaginary; terminological and territorial confusions; overlapping, coexistence, possibilities and history of magical realism”, and its concern with post colonialism. Manzanas argues that a literary piece is the illustration of the images encumbered with the scent of romanticism surviving realism through the recreation of the inner reality of experience. Magical realism comprising of loads of images and intertwined with the world of imaginary, functions as a shield against devastation and dejection which are created by the social settings of colonialism.
While magic and realism are harmoniously clustered together in a unifying term, she maintains that magical realism as the product of imagination tied with romance is contended to be an artistic and possible realm in literature; a genuine representation of pure imagination of impossibilities sliding toward possibilities. Avant-garde schools consider romantic principle of imagination as the key power of human mind for the realism formula “this is so and so” is not appropriate for the dynamic and changing world. Magical realism is capable of giving a diverse and hybrid sense to the reality by penetrating into the different versions of real world and engaging in a deeper cross-cultural concept.
She also asserts that magical realism subverts the ideologies of power systems which are mainly focused on the notion that reality is predictable and controllable. Magical realist writers attempt to depict new world views of living and thinking far removed from the western hegemony and supremacy. She claims that Toni Morrison has repeatedly acknowledged that the magic in her fictions is originated from the reality that inspired her to write.
Chapter three titled as “The crisis of Representation: Post-realism, Post Modernism, Magical realism” deals with the relationship between magical realism and different schools like post modernism, experimentalism, western imperialism, primitivism, myth and folklore targeting social transformation. It also discusses the relocation and progression of magical realism far beyond geographical borders into a global space from Kafka’s Metamorphosis in modern central Europe to Marquez in third world Latin America.
Here Benito discusses the issue by analyzing the elements of post modern and magical realist narration of odd and unnatural phenomena existing in the post colonial world in Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange, Gerald Vizenor’s Bearheart and some other narratives such as those of Toni Morrison’s.
He contends that culturally and historically magical realism is different from postmodernism but they are similar in the sense that they both display a distorted image of material world.
Chapter four titled as “Juxtaposed Realities: Magical Realism and/as Post colonial Experience” searches for the footprints (of subversion or transgression kind) of magical realism in post colonial world. Benito illuminates that in American literature exist novels of aesthetics that include complicated illustrations of magical realism interlaced with rudiments of culture.
To manifest diverse versions of magical realism, Benito analyzes Mama Day by Gloria Naylor and Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King as prominent novels of versatile imaginary spaces illustrating traces of other versions of magical realism offering some space to the “other” to experience power and individuation.
Employing magical and semiotic interventions, Gloria Naylor creates a new geographic space in “Other place” removed from western ideologies. The same conception also exists in Thomas King’s novel because his imaginary spaces are far beyond the reach of western supremacy and hegemony. Both novels fulfilling a course of a wish and giving it a sense of reality create a third space offering authority, voice and identity to the ethnic “other” by applying magical realism as supernatural agency.
Chapter five titled as “From Identity to Alter-Entity: Trans- Selving the Self in Magical Realist Narratives” delves into the diverse traditional definitions and meanings of magical realism through a levinasian reading of self which fosters the juxtaposition of contradictory pairings. It deals with the creation of selves inside one particular identity when self constitutes itself in responsibilities to the other. Trans- selving the self is bound to the time of disarticulation of the uniform self; it occurs when a transformation within a person leads to a completely different identity.
Simal contends that it is a simple interpretation of Levinas’s philosophy of substitution. The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan illuminates the process of body haunting moving from incarnation to substitution, Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller simply displays the concept of substitution as survival, and Tracks by Louise Edrich illuminates magical realism’s contribution to self and Levinasian ethical theory in which the processes of disintegrating, overriding, separating and reunifying selves penetrate narratives of magical realism. Magical realism is utilized most by writers who felt obliged to express their melancholy and traumatic experiences where “alter – entity” best fits “self- identity”.
Chapter Six titled as “Of a Magical Nature: The Environmental Unconsciousness,” deals with environmental utopia and dystopia, the interrelatedness of human social, political, and economical issues with natural disasters or in other words the entwined essence of human issues with environmental phenomena. It investigates the relationship between features of eco-criticism and magical realism and the way they blend together. In fact, magical realism criticizes the conventional binary notions of natural versus unnatural, and human versus unhuman. Magical realism goes beyond all the man-made restrictions and obstacles of the material world and unveils all the hidden interconnections of man-made conventions. The novels Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko and Through the Arc of the Rain Forest by Karen Tei Yamashita depicts the way magical realism gives a new sense, image, and shape to the reality whose meaning seemed challenging. Moving from the tangible notions of the material world to the intangible utopia seems logically far-fetched.
Chapter seven titled as “ Negative Sense of Reality” argues that imaginations and idealistic entities of utopia are irrationally rejected for they are not supported by standard global system. Benito claims that these separation and difference with the conventionally defined norms are believed to be a negative attribute or what Theodor Adorno calls as “negative Realism”. Magical realism upsets the bourgeois way of perceiving reality for it is in conflict with conventional social structures and establishments. The totalitarian power of realism is nested upon the difference between word and world, symbol and concept, array and disarray, interpretation and the interpreted.
In the end, I need to highly acknowledge that this book can abundantly benefit those who are doing a study on mimesis, realism and particularly magical realism.
The authors( Jesus Benito, Ana Mª Manzanas, Begona Simal) have substantially contributed to the research on the notion of “Magical Realism”. Their multifaceted exploration of the theme of “Magical Realism” as depicted in the US ethnic literature is vastly worth of admiration and commendation.