Wendy B Faris' "Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative" (Book Note)

 

In "Ordinary Enchantments," Faris emphasizes the global reach of magical realism by bringing together renowned authors like Günter Grass, Wilson Harris, Salman Rushdie, Carlos Fuentes, Toni Morrison, Patrick Süskind, Gabriel García Márquez, Ben Okri, and Isabel Allende, among others. Rather than delving into individual works, Faris employs a comparative approach across five chapters to support her arguments about magical realism. This method allows her to incorporate a diverse range of critical sources from various disciplines, enriching her literary and cultural analysis. While this fragmented examination underscores the transnational and transcontinental aspects of magical realism that Faris advocates for, it occasionally leaves the reader with a somewhat disjointed understanding of the significance of these works within their cultural and socio-historical contexts.

 

Chapter 1, titled "Definitions and Locations: Magical Realism between Modern and Postmodern Fiction," establishes the criteria for identifying a text as magical realist. Faris highlights elements such as the presence of magic that defies empirical explanation, the coexistence of the phenomenal and the magical, and the reader's uncertainty about the nature of events. Among these characteristics, the irreducible element of magic holds particular prominence in Faris's considerations of whether a text falls within the realm of magical realism. The chapter also traces the evolution of this narrative mode since Franz Roh coined the term in 1925. Faris extends its usage beyond its more prevalent association with a specific Latin American reality, as articulated by Alejo Carpentier in his concept of "lo real maravilloso." She positions magical realism as a force of decolonization and a postcolonial style. While acknowledging the limitations of the term in addressing the realities of the First and Third Worlds, Faris believes that recognizing "significant similarities that indicate a worldwide trend" outweighs the risk of reducing magical realism to a "monumentalizing category," as cautioned by Stephen Slemon, that erases the very distinctions it seeks to establish. For Faris, viewing magical realism as a global trend is closely linked to its role as a critical tool for addressing the neglect of the spiritual in contemporary theory.

 

Indeed, the connection between magical realism and the sacred is the overarching theme of the book, enabling Faris to draw comparisons across disparate texts in terms of geography and chronology. Chapter 2, "‘From a Source Within’: Magical Realism as Defocalized Narrative," delves into how magical realism reintroduces the sacred into Western discourse. Faris introduces the concept of "defocalization" to explain a narrative that emanates from two fundamentally different perspectives simultaneously. This defocalization both arises from and gives rise to what Faris calls "the ineffable in-between," a space where the realistic and the magical coexist. She emphasizes that this ineffable quality is not confined to the text; rather, it is generated by it. These ideas, far from existing solely within the textual realm and divorced from "real" needs, give rise to a cultural hybrid with shamanistic powers. This mystification of narrative, alluded to in the book's title, is a common trait in magical realist texts, which often emerge in the midst of cultural crises, as if their magic is summoned when rational approaches have proven inadequate.

Chapter 4 of Faris's book delves into the complex questions surrounding the potential reconciliation of tangible and imaginative worlds, or those based on science and those rooted in spirituality. Preceding this, in Chapter 3 ("Encoding the Ineffable: A Textual Poetics for Magical Realism"), Faris continues her exploration of the ineffable, elucidating how the text constructs a particular discourse through techniques like the accumulation of realistic details surrounding an implausible event, the ambiguity of space and time, a hallucinatory or dreamlike perspective, and the shifting references in reflective structures. These methods give rise to a form of verbal enchantment that, akin to postmodernism, highlights the role of language in shaping or reshaping our understanding of reality.

 

Chapter 4 ("'Along the Knife-Edge of Change': Magical Realism and the Postcolonial Dynamics of Alterity") grapples with contemporary debates surrounding magical realism, especially its effectiveness in expressing marginalized identities and alternative worldviews. Faris ultimately affirms its potency in this regard, aligning with critics who emphasize its involvement in transcultural processes. This capability arises from its hybrid nature, its subversion of narrative authority, and what Faris terms the "speculation about the way in which the spirit-based aura of magical realism as it combines the miraculous and the quotidian may contribute to its decolonizing function". The decolonizing function, a confrontation of overarching master narratives as termed by Foucault, stands as a pervasive aspect that unifies the production of magical realism across diverse geographic contexts.

 

However, divisions within magical realist literature become apparent as Faris acknowledges the challenges stemming from its use as a transcultural practice, which often involves appropriating someone else's voice. This manipulation, rooted in a fascination with a primitivist aesthetic, presents a significant concern. Yet, Faris regards most of these issues as a form of "collateral damage" in a literary practice whose merits outweigh its risks. While Alberto Moreiras sees the impossibility of finding transculturation in magical realism as a signal of its decline as a representation of an indigenous world, Faris celebrates what she views as "radically hybrid literary primitivism". This stance challenges the notion, articulated not only by Moreiras but also by anthropologist Michael Taussig (whom Faris extensively discusses), that the power of magical realist narrative is exclusive to shamans themselves.

 

The book's final chapter, "‘Women and Women and Women’: A Feminine Element in Magical Realism," centers on an exploration of the attributes in magical realism that enable the identification of a female spirit characterized by diffusion, polyvocality, and a focus on embodiment, an earth-centered spiritual realm, and collectivity, irrespective of authorship. Faris draws on the work of French feminists like Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray, as well as border feminists like Gloria Anzaldúa, to consider the tropes in magical realism aligning it with feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial thought, alliances that account for its boundary-breaking nature. This transgression is made possible by the magical capacities traditionally associated with the female body, though it also carries the risk of appropriation as a subaltern Other that "enables male writers to access the world of the second reality". Ultimately, Irigaray's concept of "la mystétique" allows Faris to situate her examination of representations of the sacred in magical realism within the realm of a female sensitivity. In Faris's view, Irigaray's notion positions a mystical discourse expressed through the female body as "a bridge to the beyond".

 

Faris provides a comprehensive exploration of the subject matter, meticulously dissecting both its textual and cultural dimensions. Her captivating comparisons in the analysis of the textual elements of the works, along with in-depth examinations of certain narratives, demonstrate her profound familiarity with the texts, some of which are less widely known than others. However, the poetics of magical realism don't always align with practical applications. This divide is not, for the most part, a flaw in Faris's analysis but rather underscores an inherent and irreconcilable separation at the core of this narrative style.