Magical Realism and Cosmopolitanism Strategizing Belonging - Kim Sasser

Speculative realism, visionary pragmatism, and poet-shamanic aesthetics in Gloria Anzaldúa—and beyond - AnaLouise Keating

Borderlands / Frontera - Gloria Anzaldua

The Shaman and the Infidel (interview with Isabel Allende

Magical Realism in Public Space - Phuket Thailand

Magical realism is a style and mode of engagement that can be engaging, exciting, and appropriate for Phuket Thailand. Thailand has a rich history of magic in folklore, festivals, religious rituals, and spiritual practices. Discussing the possibilities for socially and politically active theatre during an online conference, Amita Amrananda, a Thai writer and critic, mentioned utilizing traditional Thai styles, like Likay to open up dialogue around current issues, especially those of censorship. Elaborating on Likay theatre, Amitha explained that these plays were able to be openly critical of rulers or laws because the narratives are magical, not real, and therefore not a real threat. Similarly to magical realism, despite being ”unreal” the stories are no less real in how we experience them or in their ability to affect us. Magical realism as a style might be able to share critical thoughts and opinions of real societal issues, safely and respectfully in Thailand. 

I felt a calling to be an artist, but an artist in the sense of a shaman—of healing through words, using words as a medium for expressing the flights of the soul, communing with the spirit, having access to these other realities or worlds.

—Gloria Anzaldúa (Interviews/Entrevistas)

• First, the text contains an “irreducible element” of magic
• Second, the descriptions in magical realism detail a strong presence of the phenomenal world
• Third, the reader may experience some unsettling doubts in the effort to reconcile two contradictory understandings of events
• Fourth, the narrative merges different realms
• Finally, magical realism disturbs received ideas about time, space, and identity. 

This research attempts to identify commonly implemented literary techniques of magical realism because of its ability as a mode of storytelling to transcend social, cultural, or temporal realities. The recurrence of magical realism throughout different times and cultures demonstrates a collective need for sensorial, connective contact with forces or phenomena outside of our material reality. Magical realism is a narrative form, like a shamanic performance, creating a discourse that suggests the existence of other realities within or outside of our ordinary one. (Faris)

Although Faris provides a widely accepted version of a definition for magical realism, it does not entirely identify literary attributes or stylistic characteristics. In her text, The Question of the Other: Cultural Critiques of Magical Realism, Faris aims to establish criteria for inclusion into the magical realist genre and discusses common thematic attributes. We can look to thematic and stylistic connections to determine practical literary techniques or elements to test for application by a wider, unexpected group, possibly not familiar with the magical realist genre/mode. 

magical-realist process of artmaking because of its multisensory awareness, active participation in the environment and engaging the subject in a community. Or I will let Tzanelli, [illuminate] the presence of a ‘bios synaesthema-tikos’, in which both sensory firstness (aisthesis: sense: contact with the deep) and emotional secondness (aisthanomai: to feel: immerse myself in the deep) contribute to the making of the engaged subject in a community (Tzanelli, 51) 

Anthropomorphism/ Zoomorphism

The literary technique of anthropomorphism and it's counter part zoomorphism are common characteristics of magical realist storytelling, from Kafka's Metamorphosis, Murakami's Shinagawa Monkey to American Gods by Neil Gaiman, its feature in this mode of writing attests to it's captivating ability to affect readers. The use of these techniques is often linked to extended metaphors or symbols around identity or subverting the expectations of reality. In The Color of Summer by Reinaldo Arenas the extremity of the repression of sexuality and queer identities literally explodes when two lesbian public buses engage in hot and heavy intercourse. The only survivors of the destruction being the queer fairies, likened to indestructible insects that are able to float away on the winds of change. The juxtaposed use of both of these techniques creates an extended metaphor that attempts to subvert beliefs and perceptions around sexuality and identity. The buses sexual lust precedes its prescribed mechanical reality and servitude and it becomes a driving character in the narrative and social critique through human like description, history and actions. The human characters of the group of queers is dehumanized, both to confirm their inhumanity under Castro's repressive regime but also to demonstrate their resilience as outsiders through the magical abilities of non-humans. As devices for practicing magical realist writing they have the potential to highlight questions of agency, representation, and unvoiced or intangible concepts and present them in ways that are accessible to our anthropocentric world views. 

Myth/Hybridity

The use myth and hybridity are often directly referenced as common elements within canonical magical realist stories. Hybridity creates a new “way of seeing in which there is space for the invisible forces that move the world: dreams, legends, myths, emotion, passion, history. All these forces find a place in the absurd, unexplainable aspects of magic realism.... It is the capacity to see and to write about all the dimensions of reality” (Allende, 54). This ability to write about other dimensions and blend unexpected aspects of reality generates a unique critical multi-logicality (Tzanelli, 39) in the story that challenges or subverts the readers expectations. In The Man with the Compound Eyes, Ming- Yi weaves indigenous mythologies of Taiwan with their own hybridized magical rite of passage of an imagined uncontacted Pacific island to highlight the global effects of climate change, historical inequalities in Taiwan and the inevitable merging of past and present day. Nature, 'unknown' cultures and the memories of the past are no longer seen as disconnected phenomena but are adopted to form their own cosmology and critical understanding of the world. Hybridity and myth are devices that can be utilized as entry points into developing stories that disrupts perceived receptions of space, time and history.