Derecho del estado y derechos de los pueblos

We have thus far seen magical realism as anchored inexorably in realism, in the illusion of representation, but as also displaying a movement towards counter-actualization, which thinks the virtual realm presupposed by the actual. How does this infl uence our readings of magical realism? As we considered earlier, magical realism presents particular problems to postcolonial critics. While most

Gilles Deleuze and Magical Realism 37

see the magic as a subversive element, there is still an uneasiness regarding the merits of magical realism in a postcolonial context. This stems from the very fact that the magic functions as a virtual object, or, in Peter Hallward’s terms, from the fact that magical realism tends towards the singular, rather than the specifi c.

In Absolutely Postcolonial and elsewhere, Hallward rethinks postcolonial theory and texts from the perspective of the singular and the specifi c.²⁹ It is important to note that Hallward posits both the singular and the specifi c against the specifi ed. The specifi ed should not be confused with the specifi c, although it also is a mode of individuation dependent on relationality. The specifi c is actively subjective: that is, a choice of relation by the subject itself. It is not inherently oriented towards a certain political or ethical position. The speci-fi ed, in contrast, is passive and objectispeci-fi ed: a relation imposed from outside.

It is ‘a way of thinking of individuals [. . .] as individuated by certain intrinsic, invariant and thus characteristic properties, innate or acquired, racial or sex-ual, national or cultural, physical or spiritual’.³⁰

The postcolonial movement, for obvious reasons, seeks to overcome speci-fi ed, determined identities (such as colonizer–colonized or oppressor–

oppressed), and the singular and the specifi c are both ways of thinking being as de-specifi ed in this sense, but in very different ways. The specifi c achieves de-specifi cation because it reveals the specifi ed object to be a ‘free subject’, able to make its own active relational choices. The singular on the other hand is de-specifying because it denies the existence of relationality as such. In the singular, the individual is determined neither by static categories, nor by active relations, but purely by the creative whole or the One of which it is a part. To Hallward, it is crucial to consider whether a text operates as singular, specifi c or specifi ed in the context of postcolonial literature. A text which expresses the specifi ed, expresses political, ethnic and sexual identities as rigid and essential.

A specifi c text, on the other hand, exposes these identities as fl uid, and ques-tions the relational processes that lead to identity in the fi rst place. The specifi c text, however, retains a political or social dimension: to Hallward it is ‘funda-mentally militant’, but as opposed to the specifi ed it deals with ‘how over what’

(AP 248). In contrast to the socio-political dimensions of both the specifi ed and the specifi c text, the singular text is ‘a productive autonomy’ (AP 15); denying even the existence of relationality, the singular text is entirely ahistorical, aso-cial and apolitical. Instead it is an impersonal affi rmation of the immediate presence of a univocal creative force (AP 15–18).

Hallward makes the observation that while the priorities of the postcolonial are mainly presented as specifi c, theories of the postcolonial are, in fact, more of an expression of singular thought (AP 20). In postcolonial theoretical texts Hallward notes the ‘ritual invocation of the ubiquitously specifying categories of gender, ethnicity, and community affi liation’ (AP 22). Indeed, we have seen that in postcolonial readings of magical realism the relation of the text to the

historical, social and economic situation from which it is seen to be produced is stressed. However, says Hallward, this invocation of the specifi c belies the fact that major works of postcolonial theory are committed to an explicitly deterri-torializing discourse in the Deleuzian sense: theirs is ‘a discourse so fragmented, so hybrid, as to deny its constituent elements any sustainable specifi city at all’

(AP 22).³¹ We can compare this to the deterritorialization of language in minor literature through the proliferation of series, to the extent that it becomes only an expression of the singular virtual.

Hallward analyzes the so-called ‘Holy Trinity’ of postcolonial theory as thinkers of the singular. He fi nds Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of hybridity an example of pure Deleuzian difference without binary terms. In Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s denial of the possibility of a retrieval of the subaltern sub-ject, he sees a singularization of the subaltern: making it the site of absolute difference and deterritorialization. He also argues that Edward Said’s concep-tion of cultural identity as a ‘contrapuntal ensemble’ is singular, as it is depen-dent on an idea of global totality; that is, again, a univocal creative agency. What unites all three theorists is ultimately the notion of a singular creative force beyond politics, nationality or culture that is presupposed by any political or cultural enunciation (AP 24–28, 51–58). It is not so much Hallward’s singular readings of these theorists that is the main point here, as his conclusion that this singular tendency, as he says about Spivak, ‘sits a little uncomfortably with the desperately urgent political issues [their] work so often evokes’ (AP 31).

Indeed, in Hallward’s own readings of postcolonial literary texts, by Eduard Glissant, Mohammed Dib and others, time after time the presence of the singu-lar comes at a price of denying the practically political, and he convincingly demonstrates how the singular mode of writing is not commensurable with con-sidering the practical trials and tribulations of human life, let alone political questions.

How, then, can we apply Hallward’s notions of the specifi ed, the specifi c and the singular to magical realism and a Deleuzian reading of it? As we saw, realism appears to be based on a particular way of thinking about reality, or rather, organized as a particular orientation of the actual, in Hallward’s own terms.

Hallward identifi es the specifi ed as a realm ‘where the demarcation of an indi-vidual (subject, object or culture) follows from its accordance with recognized classifi cations’ (AP 40) and where ‘what counts is the conformity of actors to a presumed nature, and the consequent supervision of the relative authenticity of this conformity’.³² Indeed, it becomes apparent that realism, with its structure of convergent series, is an example of the specifi ed. On the other hand, of course, the disjunctive synthesis that the magic as object = x causes is certainly a singular operation. Through the object = x all elements of the textual system relate only to the virtual. Representation is exposed as an illusion, and the text thus moves towards becoming a singular entity, an autonomous system creating sense or meaning only as an effect of its resonance with the virtual. It thus seems that realism is, potentially, despecifi ed through disjunctive synthesis.

Gilles Deleuze and Magical Realism 39

We can then position this analysis of realism and magical realism in a postco-lonial context using Hallward’s terms. Realism is generally seen as a type of narrative complicit with colonization. According to Bhabha, colonial discourse

‘resembles a form of narrative whereby the productivity and circulation of subjects and signs are bound in a reformed and recognizable totality. It employs a system of representation, a regime of truth, that is structurally similar to realism’.³³ Realist narrative in literature is thus ostensibly politicized: it is seen as a part of a ‘dominant discourse’, the discourse of the colonizer. Said, whose notion of Orientalism is central to ideas about colonialism and discourse, indeed refers to Orientalism as a ‘radical realism’: ‘rhetorically speaking, Orientalism is absolutely anatomical and enumerative: to use its vocabulary is to engage in the particularizing and dividing of things Oriental into manageable parts’.³⁴ Compare this ‘anatomical and enumerative’ discourse to the authenticating devices of realism we considered earlier. Therefore the relation of postcolonial literatures to realism is problematic: it is often felt that realism needs to be replaced with a new, liberating discourse in the fi ght against colonialism.

Indicative of the line taken by many surveys of postcolonial literature, Ashcroft et al. in The Empire Writes Back, identify the main strategies available to writers who want to replace a dominant discourse as abrogation and subversion through appropriation.³⁵ Clearly, magical realism, in the postcolonial context, would be an example of appropriation, since it uses realism. Indeed, it does also appear to subvert realism to a certain extent, insofar as it questions both its specifying characteristics and its representational mode.

However, if we view magical realism as a text which also tends to the singular, we must question what this subversion of realism as a dominant discourse actually entails. As we saw, the specifi c and the singular text move beyond the specifi ed in two very different ways. If we consider realism as specifi ed and com-plicit in the dominant discourse of colonialism, we fi nd that a subversion of realism through the specifi c or through the singular would have two very differ-ent effects. A specifi c discourse questions iddiffer-entities that are seen as essdiffer-ential or authentic by considering the relational framework behind these specifi ed iden-tities, while a singular text questions notions of essence and authenticity only insofar it moves away from a framework that allows such notions. Thus the specifi c, while subverting the specifi ed, remains in the fi eld of the relational, and therefore remains socio-politically oriented. In contrast, the singular text does not engage with the specifying discourse at all, and thus subverts the specifi ed purely because it subverts the relational, and therefore the social or political, as such.

We can thus see that if magical realism is an example of a singularizing text, it is problematic for those critics who wish to see it politically subversive. In fact, it seems to occupy a paradoxical position that is typical of the postcolonial, accord-ing to Hallward. It appeals to those who call for subversion of the dominant colonial discourse, because it is a subversion of realism. We have noted that the genre seems to encourage such readings. However, if magical realism is

singular, then it is not a subversion that is unproblematically political. Indeed, the magic does appear to be ‘sitting uncomfortably’ with a practically political agenda. Magical realism may therefore be typically postcolonial because of this double bind between the real and the magic, the specifi c and the singular, but this a double bind that cannot be adequately articulated by postcolonial theo-ries alone.

Chapter 3