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SharprileyIntroduction: Magical Realism 3
contemporary views of magical realism, as we can see in the typology of the
genre proposed by William Spindler in 1993.
Spindler suggests three variants of magical realism. ‘Metaphysical magical
realism’ is characterized by the technique of defamiliarization, creating an
uncanny and disturbing atmosphere, but without an element of the super-
natural. Spindler cites Kafka’s The Trial, Borges’s story ‘The South’, and even
James’s The Turn of the Screw as examples.11 ‘Anthropological magical realism’,
to Spindler, corresponds to the most current definition of the genre. It is char-
acterized by the use of ‘two voices’: one rational and realist, and the other
indicating a belief in magic. The implied contradiction or antinomy between
these two voices is resolved by the presence in the text of a specific cultural
world-view, a Weltanschauung where the mythical and the rational coexist.
Spindler links this type of magical realism to a postcolonial search for national
identity, and the struggle to reverse the hierarchy between Western and non-
Western cultures. Among the examples he gives are works by both Latin
American ‘greats’ such as Gabriel García Márquez, Alejo Carpentier, and
Guatemalan Miguel Ángel Asturias, and by writers from other parts of the world
including Guyanese writer Wilson Harris and Salman Rushdie. (MRT 80–82)
Finally, in ‘ontological magical realism’ the supernatural also appears, but the
contradiction between it and the real world is resolved through a matter-of-fact
presentation rather than by the presence of a particular Weltanschauung. The
magic is not explained in any subjective, psychological way; but rather ‘the
unreal has an objective, ontological presence in the text’ (MRT 82). Spindler’s
examples are Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’, Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar’s
story ‘Axolotl’, and Carpentier’s Voyage to the Seed (MRT 82–83).
We can easily map Spindler’s metaphysical magical realism onto Gonzáles
Echevarría’s phenomenological magical realism, where there is no supernatu-
ral as such, but rather a ‘magical’ consciousness of reality. In addition, what
Spindler seems to have done is to divide what Gonzáles Echevarría’s calls onto-
logical magical realism according to whether the magic originates in a specific
Copyright © 2013. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. All rights reserved.
extra-textual reality, or within the text itself. Notably, however, in both anthro-
pological and ontological magical realism, the main characteristics – the ethnic
Weltanschauung or the matter-of-fact narration – perform the same function:
they resolve the implicit contradiction between the natural and supernatural.
However, this division points to the fact that in approaches to the genre a
dichotomy has remained between attempts at defining magical realism through
socio-geographic factors on the one hand, and specific textual features on the
other. The vast majority of current Anglophone literary criticism of the genre is
concerned with what Spindler calls anthropological magical realism, which he
links ostensibly to postcolonial literature. Indeed, many critics read magical
realism primarily in this context, some defining it as a type of literature emerg-
ing exclusively in a postcolonial situation. The fact that magical realism can be
concerned with different cultural versions of reality potentially allows it to deal
Aldea, Eva. Magical Realism and Deleuze : The Indiscernibility of Difference in Postcolonial Literature, Bloomsbury
Publishing Plc, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/usask/detail.action?docID=634559.
Created from usask on 2023-06-29 16:03:06.
