Magic Realism vs. Surrealism vs. the Fantastic vs. Science Fiction
§ Magic Realism vs. Surrealism
Surrealism was an organized movement in both art and literature, finding its impetus in "The Surrealist Manifesto", published by poet and art critic André Breton in 1924. Here are some of the tenets of this movement:
- I believe in the future resolution of these two states which are dream and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, a surreality.
- Surrealism…is a pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express… the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral control.
- Surrealism is not a new means of expression…It is a means of total liberation of the mind and everything resembling it.
- Automatism…remains one of the two major trends of surrealism.
- Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions.
- The well-known lack of frontiers between non-madness and madness does not induce me to accord a different value to the perceptions and ideas which are the result of one or the other.
Surrealist writers under the influence of the theories of Sigmund Freud probed into the realm of the unconscious for their subject matter and employed automatism in their writings for their accounts of dreams and trances. The purpose of this art was an approach to find ways to methods of uniting the conscious and subconscious realms of experience. The world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in "an absolute reality, a surreality". Some of them were interested in abnormal behaviors and sexuality.
Realism is the faithful representation of reality or verisimilitude evoking the sense that such events and characters might well exist. It is constructed out of what is (discursively) familiar. This approach to literary realism is the most relevant to magical realism, as magical realism relies upon the presentation of the unreal, the imagined or the magical as if they were real. A magical realist narrative is constructed in order to provide a realistic context for the magical events of fiction.
Both Surrealism and Magic Realism use a mixture of realism and fantastic elements. The objective of the Magic Realist is to bring us a fresh presentation of the everyday world we live in. Magical elements are presented in the matter-of-factness of material reality. Therefore, everything we see in a magical realist work is within the realm of the possible, although sometimes unlikely. Surrealism takes us to another world, one which is unreal and exists only in our mind. It presents the impossible, using both traditional and experimental artistic techniques, sometimes surprising or even shocking us.
Surrealism is most distinct from magical realism since the aspects that it explores are associated not with material reality but with the imagination and the mind, and in particular it attempts to express the ‘inner life’ and psychology of humans through art. Surrealists considered that conscious states of man’s being are not sufficient to explain him to himself and others and therefore sought to express the sub-conscious and the unconscious. The extraordinary in magical realism is rarely presented in the form of a dream or a psychological experience because to do so takes the magic out of recognizable material reality and places it into the little understood world of the imagination. The ordinariness of magical realism’s magic relies on its accepted and unquestioned position in tangible and material reality.
Both surrealist and magic realist writing and art are revolutionary in their attitudes: while surrealists attempted to write against realist literature that reflected and reinforced bourgeois culture, magical realism holds immense political possibilities; some scholars have posited that magic realism is a natural outcome of postcolonial writing, which must make sense of at least two separate realities—the reality of the conquerors as well as that of the conquered. Surrealism explores non-realist, non-pragmatic aspects of human existence whereas magic realism is radically pragmatic and political in its application. While the surrealists draw on paradigms of the Freudian Unconscious and its fantasies, magic realists, with their gaze typically turned outward rather than inward, generally prefer the Jungian Unconscious and its collective archetypes. Both movements use the word play and collage/montage techniques of Dadaism, but for the magic realists the mimetic function remains primary. Another critic suggests: “The difference is that the irrational world view in magical realism represents the primitive American mentality, while in the other corresponds to European superstition.”
§ Magic Realism vs. the Fantastic
Another term that is frequently associated with magical realism is that of the fantastic. It is often mistakenly assumed that magical realism is forms of fantastical writing. Todorov’s epistemological account is divided into two genres: (1) the uncanny, in which apparently supernatural events are ultimately explained in terms of the laws of nature (for instance as deceptions or hallucinations), like Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”; (2) the marvellous, in which the supernatural events are ultimately accepted as such—where, in other words, the supernatural becomes the norm. The fantastic proper, hesitates between the natural and the supernatural, between the uncanny and the marvellous. Hesitation, the constant faltering between belief and non-belief in the supernatural or extraordinary event, or ‘epistemological uncertainty’ is thus the underlying principle of fantastic literature according to Todorov. This may be a hesitation that is shared with a character in the novel, or it may be emphasised in the text to produce a theme of ambiguity and hesitation. He refers to Henry James’ Turn of the Screw as clear example of fantastic literature. The story is told from the governess’s perspective to give the impression that the ghosts do exist but there is adequate additional comment to suggest that she may in fact be delusional, and even perhaps simply attention-seeking. This element of doubt and the governess’s own fear of the unknown, of the supernatural, stop the text from being magical realist, but it is exactly this hesitation between the two explanations—there are really ghosts or she is really mad—that affirms its fantastical nature. On the other hand, magic realist writing should stand outside the fantastic genre proper. A critic pinpoints that “in contrast to the fantastic, the supernatural in magical realism does not disconcert the reader, and this is the fundamental difference between the two modes. The same phenomena are presented in a matter-of-fact manner by the magical realist.”
Kafka is usually considered as a major influence on magical realist writers, but he is not considered a magical realist writer himself. As Georg Samsa wakes up and finds himself to be an insect and does not seek an explanation for what happened to him, he is expressing his condition in a matter-of-fact magical realist manner. However, if one looks more closely, one realises that Georg is afraid to admit to his family what has happened to him, and his family are shocked upon discovering him. While he considers his condition to be his fate, he does not consider it to be a part of everyday reality. In fact, the tragic ending, when he is killed by his own family, is rather more an affirmation of his and his family’s rejection of the extraordinariness. That is to say, it is possible to have magical realist elements in a text that is not consistently magical realist in its approach. Unless the magical aspects are accepted as part of everyday reality throughout the text, the text cannot be called magical realist.
§ Magic Realism vs. Science Fiction
Many people assume that science fiction is a form of fantasy fiction involving things to do with space and the future. However, it is as difficult a term to define as magical realism. One of the characteristics that distinguishes science fiction from magical realism is its requirement of a rational, physical explanation for any unusual occurrences. Things which happen in a science fiction world are different from our own world, but those things are explicable within or by extension of known science. Its distinct difference from magical realism is that it is set in a world different from any known reality and its realism resides in the fact that we can recognise it as a possibility for our future. Unlike magical realism, it does not have a realistic setting that is recognisable in relation to any past or present reality.
§ Conclusion
Not only must the narrator propose real and magical happenings with the same matter-of-factness in a recognisably realistic setting but the magical things must be accepted as a part of material reality, whether seen or unseen. They cannot be simply imaginings of one mind, whether under the influence of drugs, or for the purpose of exploring the workings of mind, imagining our future, or for making a moral point.
§ References
Bowers, Ann Maggie. Magic(al) Realism: The New Critical Idiom. London: Routledge.
Jump, D. John. Dada & Surrealism: The Critical Idiom. London: Routledge.
McHale. Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. London: Routledge.