1

This is a pre-print of

"Magic Realism and Postmodernism: Decentering Privileged Centers," in

Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community, Zamora, Lois Parkinson and
Wendy B. Faris, eds., Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995,
191-208.

When quoting please refer to the published version.

See also

Dhaen, Theo, "Postmodernisms: from Fantastic to Magic Realist," in

International Postmodernism: Theory and Practice, A Comparative History
of Literatures in European Languages Sponsored by the International
Comparative Literature Association, Vol. XI, Bertens, Hans and Douwe
Fokkema, eds., Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1997, 28393.

MAGIC REALISM AND POSTMODERNISM:

DECENTERING PRIVILEGED CENTERS

Because the term "magic" or "magical realism" has persisted for over
half a century, and yet is not entirely current, it is useful to trace
its origins and use briefly before situating the mode with regard to
postmodernism.i Most commentators

agree that it originated with the

German art critic Franz Roh, who in 1925 coined the word to, and here I
am quoting the Oxford Dictionary of Art, "describe the aspect of Neue
Sachlichkeit characterized by sharp-focus detail ... in later criticism
the term has been used to cover various types of painting in which
objects are depicted with photographic naturalism but which because of
paradoxical elements or strange juxtapositions convey a feeling of
unreality, infusing the ordinary with a sense of mystery."ii Mutatis
mutandis, I will take the same definition to apply to the literary
movement of the same name.iii From the example the Oxford Dictionary of
Art offers, viz. the

paintings of the Belgian Ren Magritte, the

relevance of the term to Surrealism and its environment can be deduced.

It is also in this environment, and more specifically with Miguel Angel
Asturias

and

Alejo

Carpentier,

who

both

frequented

Surrealist

circles,iv that Jean Franco, in her An Introduction to Spanish-American

Literature,v situates the emergence of that particular Latin-American
prose most commentators include under the rubric of magic realism. Both
Asturias and Carpentier discussed the idea of magic realism in their
own works, linking it explicitly to Surrealism, Asturias using the very
word "ralisme magique" in a 1962 interview in Les Lettres Franaises,
while Alejo Carpentier chose to rechristen it in his influential essay
"De lo real maravilloso americano," originally prefacing El reino de
este mundo, and collected in his 1967 volume Tientos y diferencias.vi
It

should

immediately

be

stated, though, that even before it was

generally applied to Latin American literature the term had already

been used with regard to particular tendencies or movements in GermanAustrian and Flemish literature.vii In fact, although also in Spanish
the term was already firmly established well before the 1960's, as
Brotherston, referring to earlier publications by Angel Flores and Luis

Leal, noted in 1977,viii

Franco in her 1969

Introduction

apparently

still found it necessary to apologize for her use of it by a note

stating that "this term has recently been coined to categorise novels
which use myth and legend" (p. 374), and in her slightly earlier The
Modern Culture of Latin America (1967) she had not used the term.ix
However, in her 1973 Spanish American Literature since Independence she
freely and unreservedly uses Carpentier's "real maravilloso," at least
if I am to go by the 1987 edition of the Spanish translation of that
book.x

So

does

Cedomil

Goic

in

his

1972

Historia

de

la

novela

hispanoamericana, though he prefers the term "superrealismo" for the

entire tendency to which
forming only a part.xi

he sees Carpentier's "real maravilloso"

In

the intervening years, of course, the

appearance of Gabriel Garca Mrquez's Cien aos de soledad (1967),

with in its wake the worldwide attention given to the so-called LatinAmerican boom, much of which fits the category we are here concerned
with, had ensured the international literary-critical success of the
term "magic realism" also in non-Spanish critical writing, though still
with

almost

exclusive

reference

to

contemporary

Spanish

American

fiction.xii
Like magic realism, the term "postmodernism," though even now it
may seem new to some, goes back several decades, as has been amply
illustrated by Michael Khler and Hans Bertens in their survey articles
of 1977 and 1986 respectively.xiii Again like magic realism, the term
"postmodernism" has gained wide recognition and acceptance only since
the 1960s, and particularly so in the 80s in which it has come to stand
for a general movement in the arts, and even in forms of behavior and
daily life.xiv From a literary-critical perspective, particularly with
regard to prose -- the genre which has figured most prominently in

recent literary discussions of postmodernism -- the term primarily

stands for a combination of those technically innovative qualities most
highly

regarded

by

contemporary

critical

movements

such

as

post-

structuralism. Drawing on discussions by Douwe Fokkema, Allen Thiher,

Linda Hutcheon, Brian McHale, Ihab Hassan, David Lodge, Alan Wilde, and
others, and simplifying matters a great deal, I would argue that the
following features are generally regarded as marking postmodernism:
self-reflexiveness, metafiction, eclecticism, redundancy, multiplicity,
discontinuity, intertextuality, parody, the dissolution of character
and

narrative

instance,

the

erasure

of

boundaries,

and

the

de-

stabilization of the reader.xv Most commentators seem to agree that the

very term "postmodernism" originated in the 1930s in Latin America,
with the critic Federico de Ons, and was re-invented or re-used,
covering different fields and carrying different meanings, throughout
the 40s and 50s both in Europe and the United States. Yet, most
commentators would also agree that in its present meaning and with its
present scope the term gained acceptance primarily with reference to
American, i.e. U.S., prose fiction.
In the period in which "postmodernism" and "magic realism" gained
their present meanings, then, their use was restricted, respectively,
to North- and South-American prose developments. Only recently, and
primarily since the early 80s, have these terms allowed for spillage
into other linguistic or geographical areas. However, I think few would
deny that since they have started doing so they have come to divide not
just the New, but also the "Old" World between them. They now seem
almost

the

only

shorthands

available

to

categorize

contemporary

developments in western fiction. Increasingly, though, it has proved

difficult to distinguish the categories covered by these terms clearly.

"Postmodernism"
spreading

to

has
cover

been

undeniably

developments

the
in

more
other

successful
technically

term

in

highly

sophisticated western literatures. Often, this has not happened without

considerable hesitation, as witnessed to by the ongoing discussion with
regard to the French nouveau roman and nouveau nouveau roman. Still,
Gnter

Grass,

Thomas

Bernhard,

Peter

Handke,

Italo

Calvino,

John

Fowles, Angela Carter, John Banville, and Michel Tournier, as well as

Dutch authors Willem Brakman and Louis Ferron, all of whom during the
60s and 70s were considered sometimes highly idiosyncratic authors, or
representatives of purely national movements or tendencies, during the
80s have increasingly come to be annexed by postmodernism.xvi Indeed, on
the basis of the catalog of features I listed before, such inclusion
seems fully warranted. Yet, judging from the definition I quoted at the
beginning of this essay, it would be hard to deny that much of the work
of many of these authors might just as easily be categorized as magic
realist. This, in fact, is what has been happening. Richard Todd, in an
essay called "Convention and Innovation in British Fiction 1981-1984:
The Contemporaneity of Magic Realism," discusses Angela Carter's Nights
at the Circus, Salman Rushdie's Shame, and D.M. Thomas's The White
Hotel.xvii He sees these novels as challenging, in a magic realist way,
both the earlier modes of historical and documentary realism prevalent
in post-War British fiction and the more conventional forms of romance.
At the same time, though, he sees these novels as achieving their magic
realist program by way of the very same techniques usually singled out
as marking postmodernism. Geert Lernout, in an essay on "Postmodernist
fiction in Canada," claims that "what is postmodern in the rest of the
world used to be called magic realist in South America and still goes
by

that

name

in

Canada."xviii

His

list

of

Canadian

magic

realists

includes

Robert

Kroetsch,

Jack

Hodgins,

Timothy

Findley,

and

Rudy

Wiebe, all of whom he considers to be writing in a tradition that would

also include Borges, Grass, Nabokov, Rushdie, and Calvino, but that
would exclude Beckett, Robbe-Grillet and Ricardou. All these authors
are postmodernists, he concludes, but "maybe we do need a more specific
term for the first kind of postmodernist works than `metafiction' or
`surfiction,' and `magic realism' may in the end not be all that bad."
It

would

seem,

then,

as

if

in

international

critical

parlance

consensus is emerging in which a hierarchical relation is established

between postmodernism and magic realism, whereby the latter comes to
denote a particular strain of the contemporary movement covered by the
former. Such, for instance, is already the attitude taken by two late
80s survey works on postmodern writing: Brian McHale's Postmodernist
Fiction (1987) and Linda Hutcheon's A Poetics of Postmodernism (1988).
Looking at it from the other side, from that of Spanish American
literature, a similar development can be deduced from a recent article
by

Julio

Ortega

on

"Postmodernism in Latin America," in which he

considers the work of a number of authors that until recently would

have

been

framework.xix

discussed

almost

exclusively

within

magic

realist

Obviously, to anyone even minimally acquainted with the

narrative pyrotechnics of a Garca Mrquez, a Cortzar, a Fuentes, a

Donoso, or the early Vargas Llosa, this possibility must have suggested
itself immediately from the catalog of features I listed earlier as
distinguishing postmodernism. If magic realism, then, at present seems
firmly established as part of postmodernism, the question remains as to
what part it plays in this larger current or movement, and where and
why.

Carlos Fuentes, in an article in which he describes how he came to

write about Mexico the way he does, says that one of the first things
he learned --from Octavio Paz--, is that "there were no privileged
centers of culture, race, politics."xx It is precisely the notion of
the ex-centric, in the sense of speaking from the margin, from a place
"other" than "the" or "a" center, that to me seems an essential feature
of that strain of postmodernism we call magic realism. In literarycritical terms, this ex-centricity can in first instance be described
as a voluntary act of breaking away from the discourse perceived as
central to the line of technical experimentation starting with realism
and running via naturalism and modernism to the kind of postmodernism
Lernout assigned to his second group of authors, the "metafictionists"
or

"surfictionists"

though

these

various

la

Beckett,

movements

Robbe-Grillet

may

have

or

thought

of

Ricardou.

Even

themselves

as

critical or subversive of one another, and of the respective societies

they stemmed from, their issuing from "privileged centers" made their
discourse suspect to those marginalized -- geographically, socially,
economically -- by these same societies. To write ex-centrically, then,
or from the margin, implies dis-placing this discourse. My argument
would

be

that

magic

realist

writing

achieves

this

end

by

first

appropriating the techniques of the "centr"-al line and then using

these

not,

as

is

the

case

with

these

central

movements,

"realistically," i.e. to duplicate existing reality as perceived by the

theoretical

or

philosophical

tenets

underlying

said

movements,

but

rather to create an alternative world correcting so-called existing

reality, and thus to right the wrongs this "reality" depends upon.
Magic realism thus reveals itself as a ruse to invade and take over
dominant discourse(s). It is a way of access to the main body of

"western" literature for authors not sharing in, or not writing from
the perspective of, the privileged centers of this literature for
reasons of language, class, race, or gender, and still wanting to
escape epigonism with all that mode would entail in terms of adopting
the

views

of

the

hegemonic

forces

together

with

their

discourse.

Alternatively, it is a means for writers coming from the privileged

centers of literature to dissociate themselves from the concomitant
discourses of power, and to speak on behalf of the ex-centric and unprivileged (with the risk of being judged "patronising" by those on
whose behalf such writers seek to speak).
That magic realism implicitly proposes this decentering, and that
it does so also in other literatures than Spanish American ones, I will
try and illustrate with regard to some recent English language novels
that all single out some "privileged center" as embodied in traditional
literary

discourse,

and

then,

via

postmodernist

and

magic

realist

means, "dis-place" it. I will deal in some detail with John Coetzee's
Foe

(1986),

and

then

briefly touch upon John Fowles's

The French

Lieutenant's Woman (1969), Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981),

and Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus (1984).xxi
Foe, in typical Postmodern fashion, is a re-write of an English
"classic": Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. In the autobiographical tale of its
protagonist, Robinson Crusoe literally is the story of white male
western colonialism, and thus serves an important symbolic function in
the West's cultural conception of itself and its world: it is the epic
of that hero of middle class ideology, homo economicus.xxii

Coetzee's

novel is not told from the perspective of Robinson Crusoe, but from
that of Susan Barton, a woman shipwrecked on Crusoe's island. She tells
Crusoe's story to the hack writer and journalist Foe, hoping to sell

it. He is only moderately interested in her story of a morose, surly,

and inept old man, uneasily and uncomfortably living on his island with
an unruly and disgruntled slave. He is more interested in Susan's own
past, and especially in her sexual experiences. Of course, we know that
Robinson Crusoe as we now have it presents us with a totally different
Crusoe and Friday, and makes no mention of a woman. As Susan's story,
in Coetzee's text, is the authentic or true version of Defoe's later
fiction, we have to conclude that, from the perspective of Coetzee's
novel, the English author removed Susan from the story, and re-imagined
Crusoe and Friday for commercial purposes, thus adapting it to the
ideological horizon of expectations of his public.
Looking at it from the opposite end, of course, the question is
why Coetzee added Susan Barton to the classic story, and why he had her
give her view of Crusoe, Friday and Foe. Here, a passage from the end
of part three of Foe can prove helpful. Friday is, literally, dumb: his
tongue has been cut out. As Susan realizes that Friday's story is
central

to

whatever

happened

on

the

island,

she

agrees

to

Foe's

proposal that she teach Friday to write. Her efforts remain largely
unrewarded. Still, at the end of part three Friday is able to write a
whole page of "o"s. Foe comments that next day she has to teach him the
"a". This passage can be explained in two ways.xxiii First, the "o" can
be read as zero. Friday is thus made out to be functionally illiterate
in eighteenth-century English society. Alternatively, the "o" can be
read as the Greek omega, and thus as a very pointed comment on the
civilisation he has found himself landed in. As far as he is concerned,
this civilisation is a "reverse" one, starting at things from the wrong
end. Wittingly or unwittingly, Friday is condemned to remain outside
the pale of white civilisation in which, as Michel Foucault has argued,

10

language is power.xxiv And Robinson Crusoe, as intimated earlier, is a

linguistic codification of the complex of metanarratives legitimizing
western

middle

class

society

in

its

own

view.

Now

we

can

also

understand the symbolism of Friday's cut-out tongue: the civilisation

that

Crusoe

embodies

literally

reduces all that do not speak

its

discourse to silence. To learn to write starting with the "a" or alpha

of

Foe's

discourse,

alphabet
and

the

would

then

mean

corresponding

for

Friday

to

world

view,

of

also
white

adopt

the

colonial

civilisation. Mutatis mutandis the same thing holds for Susan Barton.
She, of course, is not illiterate. Both orally and in writing, she can
tell her own story, and she does so in Foe. Yet, history -- in first
instance literary history, but by implication also history in general - has written her out of the story. Thus, she fares even worse than
Friday who, in the story sanctioned by history, was at least allowed to
linger on as a minor character. Now we can also turn our attention to
the title of the book. "Foe" means "adversary," or even "enemy," and it
is clear that the implied author of the fiction that will result from
Susan Barton's true story (always in the context of Foe, of course),
viz. Robinson Crusoe, is both her and Friday's enemy, according to the
dictates of a society that evaluated human beings in terms of their
economic value, and for which blacks, indians, or members of any other
race were useful as slaves, but for which women held no economic
interest whatever.
Irony, of course, has it that "Foe" is the real name of the author
we know as "Defoe," and that he was one of the first purely commercial
writers in English literary history.xxv If Robinson Crusoe, then, turns
out to be an ideological re-write of a very different and much more
untractable reality, the name "Defoe" turns out to be fully as much an

11

idological re-write, itself an objective correlative for the commercial

idology of capitalism. By opting for the real name of the writer of
Robinson Crusoe as the title for his own re-write, Coetzee indicates
that he is not so much concerned with the figure of "Robinson Crusoe"
but rather with the eponymous book as linguistic codification of a
particular privileged center's world view. Obviously, it cannot be a
coincidence that it is a white male South African, of Afrikaner stock,
that writes both woman and the negro back into this story. His Foe is a
linguistic

reaction

to

the

likewise

linguistic

codification

of

an

ideology that lies at the very basis of his own country's origins and
way

of

invades,

life.

From

subverts,

his

own

wilfully

and

corrects

that

ex-centric

vantage

codification,

and

point,
hence

he
its

underlying ideology. To now circle back to my original argument: the

only way for Coetzee to write woman, and via her the negro, back into
the classic story is by means of magic realist devices. Especially the
fourth and last section of Foe is revealing in this respect: as the
privileged center discourse leaves no room for a "realistic" insertion
of those that history -- always speaking the language of the victors
and rulers -- has denied a voice, such act of recuperation can only
happen by magic or fantastic or un-realistic means.
Similar arguments could be developed with regard to the other
three novels I wish to analyze briefly. The French Lieutenant's Woman
situates itself in the context of nineteenth-century English realism.
As Fowles himself has stated, the novel is a partial re-write of
Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes, and takes as its starting point what was
marginal

and

ex-centric

to

the

nineteenth-century

English

novel:

sexuality, and particularly female sexuality.xxvi The book appeals to

the realist tradition in its form, style, and tone, but at the same

12

time undermines that tradition in the way it handles its characters,

and by its metafictional use of the narrator's voice. In combination
with the multiple endings to the novel, these elements face the reader
with his own freedom as reader, complementary to the freedom the female
protagonist -- the "French Lieutenant's Woman" from the title -- claims
for herself, and which is totally opposite to the determinism implicit
in

Hardy's

already

almost

naturalistic

view.xxvii

Important

to

my

argument is that the multiple endings, upon which the effect of the
book to a large extent hinges, are accounted for in a magic realist
way, via the intervention of Fowles's "foppish impresario."xxviii This
impresario -- obviously a double for Fowles himself -- is present
throughout the novel as observer and metafictional commentator. When in
the penultimate chapter the story has reached a "realistic" happy end
in line with the meliorative intentions of many English and American
(William Dean Howells, for instance) realists, the impresario appears
and puts back the hands of his watch, and thereby also the narrative
time of the novel. This allows for an alternative ending, highlighting
the existentialist freedom-theme of the novel, and forcing the reader
to make his own decision as to which ending he prefers, facing him with
his own freedom.
Rushdie's

Midnight's

Children

both

invokes

and

subverts

the

typically English tradition of the colonial novel as written by Kipling

or Forster (however divergent in other respects these two authors may
be). In this tradition the white man's view of the land, and of its
inhabitants, holdss a central position. Colonial nature and society
thus assume the role of the "other," the exotic, the strange. At
variance with this tradition, in Rushdie's novel the focus lies with
the Indians themselves, and with their views of their country and

13

society. From this perspective, the exotic becomes something the West
has projected upon India.xxix Here it is the Westerner that becomes
"other." Magic, which in the colonial novel often functions as the sign
of the other-ness of non-Western society and civilisation,xxx

with

Rushdie becomes daily reality, and hence magic realism in the sense of
Carpentier's "real maravilloso": indigenous magic. All together, the
children born in India at the very moment the country gained its
independence from England, communicating with each other in such a
magic realist way, literally give voice to an entire subcontinent; a
proper voice this time, as the subjects of their own story, and not as
the objects of an English colonial novel.
Finally, we notice something similar with Angela Carter's Nights
at the Circus. In the first few lines of this novel the Greek myth of
Leda and the swan is alluded to. Indirectly, the rape of Leda by Zeus
engendered the oldest western work of literature known to us: Homer's
Iliad.

Throughout

the

book,

this

myth,

in

the

various

guises

it

received in the course of literary history, is referred to again and

again. At the end of Nights at the Circus, though, in contrast to the
original myth, the woman in the guise of a "swan" will gently -- though
passionately -- make love to the male protagonist. The outcome of this
act remains to be seen, but we may speculate that it will be very
different from what happened "the other time": whereas Homer founded a
male line in western literature, Carter offers us a re-write of Homer
that re-defines the future of humanity from a feminist ideology. And
once again, such a re-write only proves possible with the help of magic
realist means: the female protagonist, "Fevvers," is a "bird," not just
metaphorically but also literally. And the novel is replete with magic
realism in its numerous manipulations of time, place, scenery, and

14

character. To give just one example: during a visit to his palace in

St. Petersburg, the Grand Duke shows Fevvers his collection of toy eggs
containing all sorts of miniatures. Fevvers is invited to choose one
egg as a present, obviously in return for sexual favors. She is tempted
to choose a miniature train, but the Duke tells her the next egg is
meant for her. This egg contains a gilded, but empty cage. Fevvers, who
has been trying to keep the Duke from physically engaging her by
instead caressing his male member, realizes (p. 192) she is about to be
trapped:

The bitter knowledge she'd been fooled spurred Fevvers into action. She
dropped the toy train on the Isfahan runner - mercifully, it landed
on its wheels -- as, with a grunt and whistle of expelled breath, the
Grand Duke ejaculated.
In those few seconds of his lapse of consciousness, Fevvers ran helterskelter

down

the

platform,

opened

the

door

of

the

first-class

compartment and clambered aboard.

"Look what a mess he's made of your dress, the pig," said Lizzie.

Obviously, it is not a coincidence that the three novels I have

briefly discussed here argue the emancipation of those categories -women and non-Western peoples -- that were also central to Foe. It is
precisely these categories that were traditionally excluded from the
"privileged centers" of culture, race, and gender, and therefore from
the operative discourses of power. Not for nothing Carter refers to
feminism in terms of "decolonization."

15

If we account for magic realism's function within postmodernism

along

these

lines,

this

might

also

furnish

us

with

possible

explanation for the pioneering role of Spanish American literature in

this mode. During the period under consideration Latin America was
perhaps the continent most ex-centric to the "privileged centers" of
power. At the same time, though, it was nominally independent enough
early enough to utter its "other"-ness in the way I have suggested
above. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that precisely the
discrepancy

between

its

nominal

independence

and

its

continuing

cultural dependence exacerbated the feeling of ex-centricity of many

Latin American authors, and thus alerted them to the problematics of
centers and margins in literature, and hence to the possibilities of
magic realism, at an earlier stage than authors from other continents
or countries, or from other groups, races, or genders.xxxi Still, these
would follow soon enough, as often as not specifically appealing to
Latin American examples, as Rushdie does to Garca Mrquez.
This brings me to a final point. Garca Mrquez himself frequently
mentioned

Faulkner

as

his

example.

The

Southerner

Faulkner

is

undoubtedly one of the most ex-centric, in the sense we have here given
to that word, of American authors. Of late, of course, Faulkner has
been claimed for postmodernism. Should we now also start calling him a
magic realist? The very fact that this notion probably strikes most of
us as extravagant still might well say more about the resistance of
American

scholarship

to

applying

this

particular

term

to

American

literature than about that literature itself. And this regardless of

the fact that John Barth, many of whose texts would surely qualify as
magic realist, has expressed unreserved admiration for Borges, and for
a number of Latin American magic realist authors. In "The Literature of

16

Replenishment" he proclaims Gabriel Garca Mrquez's One Hundred Years

of Solitude his supreme example of postmodernism: "the synthesis of
straightforwardness and artifice, realism and magic and myth, ..."; yet
this article, and its equally famous predecessor "The Literature of
Exhaustion," are invariably only adduced to buttress the use of the
Postmodern.xxxii

term

resistant
products

to

The

applying

is

perhaps

reason

the

why

U.S.

scholarship

seems

most

term magic realism to its own literary

that

the

United

States

has

been

the

most

"privileged center" of all in our post-War world. The preference U.S.

scholarship shows for the term "postmodernism" emphasizes to an almost
extravagant degree the technical side of literary achievements, at the
same time often insisting on the play-character of the text. Of course,
this is one way of de-fusing the possible political repercussions or
implications

of

contemporary

texts.

Ironically,

marxist

and

neo-

humanitarian critics, inside and outside the U.S., here find a common
ground to decry postmodernism: for its supposed lack of ethical or
materialist concern.xxxiii However, by stubbornly restricting the term to
a

geographically

limited

segment

of

literature

and

by

moreover

exclusively fixating upon one aspect of this literature these critics

fail

to

see

that

the

really

significant

resistance

within

the

international postmodern movement is being put up by magic realism. In

their

blindness,

in

fact,

they

fall

victim

to

the

same

kind

of

"privileged center" ideology that they claim to combat: a rare case of

bad faith indeed!
To my mind, then, the cutting edge of postmodernism is magic
realism.

As

Douwe

Fokkema

remarks,

the

postmodernist

device

of

"permutation" -- which he circumscribes as "permutation of possible and

impossible,

relevant

and

irrelevant,

true

and

false,

reality

and

17

parody,

metaphor

and

literal

meaning"

--

is

"probably

the

most

subversive one with regard to earlier conventions."xxxiv Significantly,

it is also this device that is central to the definition of magic
realism I quoted at the very beginning of this article. And obviously,
I would see the subversion being worked here as not just reflecting
upon

earlier

conventions,

but

also

upon

the

metanarratives

or

ideologies these conventions uphold. In this, I feel supported by most

of the critics I have hitherto had occasion to mention. Todd sees the
three

magic

realist

novels

he

discusses,

Nights

at

the

Circus,

Rushdie's Shame, and D.M. Thomas's The White Hotel, as respectively

putting forth a feminist program, and showing up the ill effects of
political

and

psychological

repression.

Linda

Hutcheon,

in

her

Poetics of Postmodernism, devotes an entire chapter to "Decentering the

postmodern: the ex-centric," claiming that "the theory and practice of
postmodern art has shown ways of making the different, the off-center,
into

the

vehicle

for

aesthetic

and

even

political

consciousness-

raising" (p. 73). And in her more recent The Canadian Postmodern: A
Study of Contemporary English-Canadian Fiction, she insists at length
upon the ex-centricity of Canadian literature, stating that "[Canada's]
history is one of defining itself against centres," and linking the
Canadian

experience

to

that

of

repressed

"minorities,"

approvingly

quoting Susan Swan's The Biggest Modern Woman of the World (1983) as
saying that "to be from the Canadas is to feel as women feel -- cut off
from the base of power".xxxv For her too, "the ex-centrics, be they
Canadians, women, or both, ... subvert the authority of language," and
-- echoing Angela Carter -- "not surprisingly, language has been called
the major issue in the general history of colonisation, whether in
terms of gender or nationality" (p. 7). Speaking of magic realism as

18

"an

internalized

challenge

to

realism

offered

by

Latin

American

fiction," she argues that "this kind of realism was less a rejection of
the realist conventions than a contamination of them with fantasy and
with the conventions of an oral story-telling tradition" (p. 208). As
Canadian heirs to Gabriel Garca Mrquez she mentions Robert Kroetsch,
Susan Swan, Jack Hodgins, and Michael Ondaatje. Elsewhere I have argued
a similarly "subversive" case for Timothy Findley,xxxvi and, shifting
from Canada to Europe, and particularly to Ireland, for John Banville
and Desmond Hogan.xxxvii Even earlier, Wendy Faris had linked magical
realism,

postmodernism,

and

emergent

literatures

in

paper

she

presented at the 1985 ICLA Conference in Paris.xxxviii Unfortunately, the

proceedings of that conference remain unpublished.
Elsewhere too, I have also argued for the aesthetic consciousnessraising function of all of postmodernism;xxxix here, obviously, I would
specifically argue for the political consciousness-raising powers of
magic realism within postmodernism. With Julio Ortega, I discover in
the great novels of Rulfo, Arguedas, Garca Mrquez, Cabrera Infante,
Fuentes and Lezama Lima, a

Latin American groundtone [that] reveals itself as an artistic and

cultural practice that re-shapes the traditional models and the need
for

innovation

into

new,

unique,

and

powerful

articulations

of

historical necessities, into penetrating statements of critical and

political convictions. These novels have their roots in the common
scene

of

international

Postmodernism,

while

at

the

same

time

confronting it with its own needs, problematizing it, and parodying

it. They likewise go beyond existing definitions and frameworks by

19

giving

their

postmodernity

an

even

more

critical

accentuation,

voicing yet new aesthetic needs and social revindications.xl

From the list of authors Ortega offers, and to which many other names
could be added, foremost among them I think that of the Vargas Llosa of
La Casa Verde (1965), Conversacin en La catedral (1969), and La Guerra
del

Fin

del

Mundo

(1981),

it

is

clear

that

this

Latin

American

groundtone of an artistic and cultural practice voicing aesthetic needs

and

social

revindications,

is

also a magic realist one. And this

groundtone, it seems to me, is also there in magic realist works by

non-Latin American writers.
In order to come full circle, and thus to briefly swing back to my
opening remarks:

magic realism, as I have now discussed it, in its

artistic and cultural-political practice clearly is continuing in the

tracks of its earliest progenitor, Surrealism. As such it also marks
the return, in the discussion about postmodernism, of that "half" which
Helmut

Lethen

still

relatively

recently

regretted

as

having

been

excluded from earlier theoretical discussions of this phenomenon by

Anglo-American critics, viz. the heritage of the continental European
avant-garde as complementary to that of (predominantly) Anglo-American
Modernism,xli and in which the exclusive attention given to the latter
is in itself an indication of "privileged center" discourse. In this
respect,

then,

postmodernism

merely
is

to

to

talk

contribute

of
to

magic

realism

decentering

in
that

relation

to

privileged

discourse.

Theo D'haen
Leyden University

20

i. For what is probably still the most comprehensive survey, see Jean
Weisgerber, "La locution et le concept," in Jean Weisgerber, ed., Le
ralisme magique: roman - peinture -cinma, Genve: l'Age d'Homme,
1987, pp. 11-32.

ii. The Oxford Dictionary of Art, Ian Chivers and Harold Osborne, eds,
Dennis Farr, consultant ed., Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1988, p. 305.

iii. The clearest discussion of the precise nature of magic realism in

literature is probably to be found in Amaryll Chanady's Magic Realism
and the Fanatastic: Resolved versus Unresolved Antinomy, New York and
London: Garland, 1985.

iv. See Joaquin Soler Serrano's interview with Alejo Carpentier in

Escritores a fondo, Colleccin documenta, Barcelona: Editorial Planeta,
1986, in which the latter (p. 156) remarks upon his friendship with
Robert Desnos, the surrealist poet who in his works combined dream and
reality, and where he states that (p. 163) "a travs del movimiento
surrealista empec a ver Amrica. Vea que los surrealistas buscaban en
su vida diaria elementos maravillosos que conseguan muy difcilmente,
y

en

ocasiones

haciendo

trampa,

muy

menudo

reuniendo

elementos

diversos para crear una realidad maravillosa prefabricada. Y all, en

Pars,

me

di

cuenta

de que todos esos elementos maravillosos los

tenamos realmente en Amrica, y empec a cobrar conciencia de Amrica

Latina

del

fenmeno

barroco."

Finally,

Carpentier's

Tientos

21

diferencias, Montevideo: Arca, in an appendix contains two previously

unpublished texts by Desnos.

v. Jean Franco, An Introduction to Spanish-American Literature, London:

Cambridge University Press, 1969, pp. 309-19.

vi.

See

in

this

respect

also

Donald

L.

Shaw,

Nueva

narrativa

hispanoamericana, Madrid: Ctedra, 1981, pp. 18-19.

vii. See Weisgerber, Le ralisme magique, but also Michael Scheffel,

Magischer Realismus: Die Geschichte eines Begriffes und ein Versuch
seiner

Bestimmung,

Stauffenburg

Colloquium

Band

16,

Tbingen:

Stauffenburg Verlag, 1990.

viii. See Gordon Brotherston, The emergence of the Latin American

Novel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977, p. 15 and the
footnote references to Angel Flores, Hispania 1955, and Luis Leal,
Cuadernos americanos 153 (1967).

ix. Jean Franco, The Modern Culture of Latin America: Society and the
Artist, London: Pall Mall Press, 1967.

x. Jean Franco, Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana, traduccin

de Carlos Pujol, 7a edicin revisada y puesta al da: junio 1987,
Barcelona:

Editorial

Ariel,

1987,

originally

published

in

1973

as

Spanish American Literature since Independence in the multi-volume A

Literary History of Spain put out by Ernest Benn, London.

22

xi. Cedomil Goic, Historia de la novela hispanoamaricana,

Valparaiso,

Chile: Ediciones universitarias de Valparaiso, 1972.

xii. In this respect the date of appearance - 1972 - of Jos Donoso's

Historia personal del "boom", Barcelona: Anagrama, is instructive.

xiii. Michael Khler, "`Postmodernismus: Ein begriffsgeschichtlicher'

berblick,"

in

Postmodern

Amerikastudien

Weltanschauung

and

Introductory

Survey,"

Appproaching

Postmodernism,

Comparative

in

Literature

22:8-18;
its

Douwe

21,

and

Hans

Bertens,

Relation

with

Modernism:

Hans

Bertens,

Fokkema

Utrecht

and

Publications

Amsterdam/Philadelphia:

in

"The
An
eds,

General

John

and

Benjamins,

1986, 9-51.

xiv. To cite just some of the more recent and ambitious attempts:
Steven Connor, Postmodernist Culture: An Introduction to Theories of
the Contemporary, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989; David Harvey, The
Condition of Postmodernity: An Inquiry into the Origins of Cultural
Change,

Oxford:

Basil

Blackwell,

1989;

Scott

Lash,

Sociology

of

Postmodernism, London: Routledge, 1990; Mike Featherstone, Consumer

Culture

&

Postmodernism,

London:

SAGE,

1991;

Barry

Smart,

Modern

Conditions, Postmodern Controversies, London: Routledge, 1992; Steven

Connor, Theory and Cultural Value, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993; and
of course the many analyses inspired by Fredric Jameson's 1984 essay
"Postmodernism,

or,

The

Cultural

Logic

of

Late

Capitalism,"

now

collected in the 1991 Duke University Press volume with the same title.

23

xv. Obviously, as the catalog of works on Postmodernism by now is

almost endless and still grows every day, I can list only some of the
better known works here: Ihab Hassan, The Dismemberment of Orpheus:
Toward a Postmodern Literature, New York: Oxford Univerity Press, 1982
(1971);

Paracriticisms:

University

of

Imagination,

Seven

Illinois

Science,

Speculations

Press,

and

1975;

Cultural

The

Change,

of

the

Right

Times,

Promethean

Urbana:

Urbana:
Fire:

University

of

Illinois Press, 1980; The Postmodern Turn: essays in postmodern theory

and culture, Ohio State University Press, 1987; David Lodge, The Modes
of Modern Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Typology of Modern
Literature,

London:

Arnold,

1977;

Alan

Wilde,

Horizons

of

Assent:

Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Ironic Imagination, Baltimore/London:

John Hopkins University Press, 1981; Douwe Fokkema, Literary History,
Modernism, and Postmodernism, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins,
1984;

Allen Thiher, Words in Reflection: Modern Language Theory and

Postmodern Fiction, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1984;

Douwe

Fokkema

and

Hans

Amsterdam/Philadelphia:

Bertens,
John

eds,

Approaching

Benjamins,

1986;

Postmodernism,
Brian

McHale,

Postmodernist Fiction, New York/London: Methuen, 1987; Matei Calinescu

and
John

Douwe

Fokkema,

Benjamins,

Exploring

1987;

Linda

Postmodernism,
Hutcheon,

Amsterdam/Philadelphia:

Poetics

of

Postmodernism:

History, Theory, Fiction, New York/London: Routledge, 1988; Marguerite

Alexander, Flights from Realism: Themes and Strategies in Postmodernist
British and American Fiction, London: Edward Arnold, 1990; Alison Lee,
Realism and Power: Postmodern British Fiction, London: Routledge, 1990;
Jerry A. Varsava, Contingent Meanings: Postmodern Fiction, Mimesis, and
the Reader, Tallahassee: The Florida State University Press, 1990;

24

Brenda Marshall, Teaching the Postmodern: Fiction and Theory, New York
and London: Routledge, 1992.

xvi. For instance, see Elrud Ibsch, "From Hypothesis to Korrektur:

Refutation as a Component of Postmodernist Discourse," Douwe Fokkema
and

Hans

Bertens,

eds,

Approaching

Postmodernism,

Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1986, pp. 119-33; Ulla Musarra,

"Duplication and Multiplication: Postmodernist Devices in the Novels of
Italo

Calvino,"

ibid.,

pp.

135-55;

Hans

Bertens,

"Postmodern

Characterization and the Intrusion of Language," Matei Calinescu and

Douwe Fokkema, eds, Exploring Postmodernism, Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
John Benjamins, 1987, pp. 139-59; Jerome Klinkowitz and James Knowlton,
Peter Handke and the Post-modern Transformation: The Goalie's Journey
Home, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1983; Theo D'haen,
Text to Reader: A Communicative Approach to Fowles, Barth, Cortzar,
and Boon, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1983; Theo D'haen,
"Popular Genre Conventions in Postmodern Fiction: The Case of the
Western,"

Matei

Postmodernism,

Calinescu

and

Douwe

Amsterdam/Philadelphia:

Fokkema,

John

eds,

Benjamins,

Exploring
p.

161-73;

Alfred Hornung, "Reading One/Self: Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard,

Peter Handke, John Barth, Alain Robbe-Grillet," ibid., pp. 175-97; Hans
Bertens

and

Theo

D'haen,

Het

postmodernisme

in

de

literatuur,

Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1988.

xvii. Richard Todd, "Convention and Innovation in British Literature

1981-84:

The

Contemporaneity

of

Magic

Realism,"

Convention

and

Innovation in Literature, Theo D'haen, Rainer Grbel and Helmut Lethen,

25

eds, Utrecht Publications in General and Comparative Literature 24,

Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1989, pp. 361-88.

xviii. Geert Lernout, "Postmodernist Fiction in Canada," in Theo D'haen

and Hans Bertens, eds,

Postmodern Studies 1: Postmodern Fiction in

Europe and the Americas, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988, pp. 127-41. This
quote p. 129, the next quote p. 140. Lernout here also draws on an
earlier article by Geoff Hancock in Canadian Forum 65, no. 755, pp. 2335.

xix. Julio Ortega, Postmodernism in Latin America," Theo D'haen and

Hans Bertens, eds, Postmodern Studies 1: Postmodern Fiction in Europe
and the Americas, Amserdam: Rodopi, 1988, pp. 193-208.

xx. "Discovering Mexico," The Wilson Quarterly, Autumn 1988, pp. 148159; this quote p. 157.

xxi. John Coetzee, Foe, London: Jonathan Cape, 1986; John Fowles, The
French Lieutenant's Woman, London: Jonathan Cape, 1969; Salman Rushdie,
Midnight's Children, London: Picador, 1981; Angela Carter, Nights at
the Circus, London: Picador, 1984.

xxii. For the classic statement of this position, see Ian Watt, The
Rise of the Novel, London: Chatto and Windus, 1957.

xxiii. Of course, it can be explained in many more ways -- as the

editors of the present volume kindly pointed out to me, Susan might

26

here be trying to teach Friday to write the body in a feminine mode.

Obviously, the explanations I focus upon are those that fit my line of
argument -- though I think that to interpret the passage here analyzed
along

the

lines

suggested

by

Faris

and

Zamora

might

well

go

to

strengthen my own conclusions.

xxiv. See his Les mots et les choses, Paris: Gallimard, 1966; and
L'archologie du savoir, Paris: Gallimard, 1969.

xxv. See Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel.

xxvi. See "Notes to an Unfinished Novel," in Malcolm Bradbury, ed., The

Novel

Today:

Contemporary

Writers

on

Modern

Fiction,

Glasgow:

Fontana/Collins, 1977 (original edition 1969).

xxvii. See D'haen, Text to Reader, pp. 25-42.

xxviii. It would take me too far to argue the point in detail, but the
idea of magical manipulation of time and plot is central to all of
Fowles's work; see also Malcolm Bradbury, "The Novelist as Impresario:
John Fowles and his Magus," in Possibilities: Essays on he State of the
Novel, London: Oxford University Press, 1973, pp. 256-71.

xxix. For a comparable approach, but from a scholarly stance, see

Edward Said's celebrated, but also much debated, Orientalism, New York:
Pantheon

Books,

1978;

for

discussion

of

Rushdie's

work

from

"Saidian" perspective, see Aleid Fokkema, "Indianness and Englishness:

27

Aspects of a Literary and Critical Discourse," Unpublished M.A. Thesis,

University of Utrecht, 1985.

xxx. And this not just in English literature. See e.g. the Dutch author
Louis

Couperus's

powerful

De

stille

kracht

(1900),

translated

by

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos as The Hidden Force, London: Jonathan

Cape, 1922, and recently (1985) re-issued, revised and edited, and with
an introduction and notes, by E.M. Beekman, in the
twelve-volume

series

of

Dutch

colonial

latter's superb

literature

classics,

the

Library of the Indies, published by the University of Massachusetts

Press, Amherst.

xxxi. Of course, there may have been other reasons as well -such as
strong indigenous narrative traditions, next to narratives of discovery
and exploration, all of which to a greater or lesser extent stressed
the strangeness, the wonder, of the Latin American reality.

xxxii.

"The

Literature

Replenishment,"

both

of

of
which

Exhaustion"
appeared

and

"The

originally

Literature
in

The

of

Atlantic

Monthly (in 1967 and 1980 respectively), have now been collected,
together with Barth's other discursive writing, in The Friday Book:
Essays and Other Non-Fiction, A Perigee Book, New York: Putnam, 1984,
pp. 62-76 and 193-206. This quote p. 204.

xxxiii. See for instance Charles Newman, The Post-Modern Aura: The Act
of Fiction in an Age of Inflation, Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1985; and articles by Fredric Jameson, e.g. "Postmodernism and

28

Consumer Society," in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on

Postmodern Culture, Port Townsend, Wash,: Bay Press, 1983, pp. 1111-25;
and

of

course

"Postmodernism,

or

the

Cultural

Logic

of

Late

Capitalism," in New Left Review 146, pp. 53-92; but also by Terry
Eagleton.

xxxiv.

"The

Semantic

and

Syntactic

Organization

of

Postmodernist

Texts," Douwe Fokkema and Hans Bertens, eds, Approaching Postmodernism,

Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1986, p. 95.

xxxv. Linda Hutcheon, The Canadian Postmodern: A Study of Contemporary

English-Canadian Fiction, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 4
and 120 respectively.

xxxvi. "Timothy Findley, Magic Realism and the Canadian Postmodern," in

Multiple

Voices:

Recent

Canadian

Fiction,

Proceedings

of

the

IVth

International Symposium of the Brussels Centre for Canadian Studies 29

November 1 December 1989, Sydney/Mundelstrup/Coventry: Dangaroo Press,
1990, pp. 217-33. I have used some paragraphs from the Findley essay in
the present article, and also in the Irish Regionalism paper mentioned
in a next note.

xxxvii.

Theo

Postmodernism,"

D'haen,

"Irish

paper

delivered

Regionalism,
at

the

Magic

1990

Realism

meeting

of

and
the

International Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature in

Kyoto, and to be published in the proceedings; also in Theo D'haen and
Hans Bertens, eds, British Postmodern Fiction, Postmodern Studies 7,

29

Amsterdam/Antwerp: Rodopi/Restant, forthcoming.

xxxviii. "Replenishment from the Peripheries: Magical Realism, Emergent

Literatures,

and

Postmodernism";

cf.

for

instance

the

following

passage: "In any case, a strong replenishing impulse seems to come from
the outer edges of western literature toward the center rather than the
other way around. A postmodern poetics may now demand a geographical as
well as a conceptual decentering of literary culture, a recognition of
the

force

of

marginality

as

an

ideological

and

an

aesthetic

phenomenon," (typescript p. 3).

xxxix. See Text to Reader.

xl. D'haen and Bertens, eds, Postmodern Fiction in Europe and the
Americas, p. 206.

xli. "Modernism Cut in Half: the Exclusion of the Avant-garde and the
Debate

on

Postmodernism,"

Douwe

Fokkema

Approaching Postmodernism, pp. 233-38.

and

Hans

Bertens,

eds,