The Fifth World:Magical realism (Feel)

From The Fifth World

Magical realism describes a maner of writing (or storytelling), wherein magic appears in a realistic setting. Magical realism usually takes such elements for granted, without feeling compelled to comment or explain the magic involved. In literature, magical realism often combines the external factors of human existence with the internal ones: it presents a fusion between scientific physical reality and psychological human reality; it incorporates aspects of human existence such as thoughts, emotions, dreams and imagination. This phenomenological presentation of the world fundamentally rejects the foundation of modernist thought, rooted in Cartesian dualism, and instead presents a phenomenological depiction of reality, where reality as experienced takes precedence over any attempt at discerning what "objective" reality might seem. In this, magical realism echoes the perspective of Fifth Worlders.

The related term, animist realism, comes from Henry Garuba.^[1] It describes literature in which supposedly "inanimate" objects react and relate as people. This, too, reflects the experience of Fifth Worlders. The tone and style of magical and animist realist literature fits the Fifth World perfectly, and keeping that tone and style in Fifth World stories helps make the Fifth World more immediate, and reflects the feel of the story through the language used.

Maintaining the feel of the Fifth World means accepting magic and animism just as Fifth Worlders do. But the Fifth World remains our own world, with the same laws of physics. Fifth World magic does not mean the ability to hurl magical fireballs; Fifth World magic could seem to an outsider like nothing more than coincidence, serendipity or synchronicity. An outsider could understand it in terms of expertly manipulating states of consciousness to access information or levels of analysis generally impossible in conscious thought. The shaman who goes off to meet Deer in the forest and negotiate how many deer the tribe can take might simply use trance techniques to access unconscious, "thin slicing" that takes account of the subtle clues he's noticed all year long telling him about the health of the local deer population. Magical realism leaves that explanation open, but it also doesn't care about that level of understanding. It cares about the magical experience itself; the underlying, scientific principles behind the shaman's meeting with Deer seem much less interesting in that perspective than the meeting itself. Magical realism thus echoes an important theme in Fifth World life: a deep, abiding trust in one's own experience.

1 Related fiction
- 1.1 Film
- 1.2 Literature
2 Examples
3 References
4 See also
5 Further reading
6 External links

[edit] Related fiction

[edit] Film

Pan's Labyrinth (2006) (IMDB, Wikipedia)

[edit] Literature

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (Wikipedia)
Men of Maize by Miguel Ángel Asturias (Wikipedia)
The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier ([Wikipedia:The Kingdom of this World|Wikipedia]])

[edit] Examples

The story takes magic for granted, rather than treating it as something extraordinary that requires explanation. Supposedly "inanimate" objects react and relate regularly, just as animists experience them.
Enough ambiguity exists that a listener or reader could understand such magical experiences as differences in perception, or even "tricks," but the style makes such an understanding irrelevant by emphasizing the primacy of personal experience: in other words, trick or not doesn't matter, because what matters comes down to one's experience.
Lines dividing "objective" reality from subjective experience become blurred by emphasizing experience. For instance, affect geography clearly maps territory in terms of emotions.
Differences in perspective put insiders and outsiders very much in completely different worlds, which underlines and reinforces the importance of cultural and group identifications.
But people can still overcome those boundaries by adopting the viewpoint of the insider—i.e., by shapeshifting. This also underlines the common animist theme that personal power comes from a multitude of perspectives. Magical realist literature often challenges the reader to undergo just such a process in order to "decode" the text.
Magical realism emphasizes culture, history and geography: family and land.
Use of cyclical, non-linear time leads to an emphasis on dreams, foreshadowing, flashbacks, and other devices that lend themselves to a "time out of time."
Miscellaneous use of myths, legends, fairy tales, the oral tradition of storytelling, folkloric customs, magic, the obscure, astrology, mythology, spirituality and, naturally, religion. Elements of the human experience of reality often find emphasis: dream, imagination, sentience, feelings and emotions, the subconscious and the spiritual.
Heavy reliance of synaesthesia in description: hear colors, see music, smell emotions, and so on.
Magic arises from coincidences, serendipity and synchronicity.

[edit] References

↑ Garuba, Harry. "Explorations in Animist Materialism: Notes on Reading/Writing African Literature, Culture, and Society," Public Culture 15(2): 261–85.