Oposición y complementariedad entre derechos individuales y colectivos

In view of this Deleuzian theory of series, we can now return to magical realism.

As we have seen, a realist narration is central to magical realism. This narration was seen by many critics to make the magic of the genre appear real, while Chanady pointed out that it also, importantly, determined what was seen as real or not. We can now consider how a realist narration could be described in Deleuzian terms. Note that we are here concerned with specifi cally the realist element of magical realism and what has been seen as its key functions and characteristics. What is here referred to as realism is thus not to be seen as entirely synonymous with the general term realism, a term which has its own range of defi nitions.²⁴ However, the realism of magical realism shares some key components with realism at large, components which make it identifi able precisely as realism: a neutral, objective tone, a focus on empirical detail, in particular the detail of everyday life, a historical time and geographical setting.²⁵

We saw that the realist narration in magical realism was most often character-ized by critics as ‘matter-of-fact’ and that the main function of this tone was to make the magical events of the text appear as ordinary, natural or real. This brings to mind the ‘reality effect’ that Roland Barthes famously ascribed to realism. He noted that realist narratives include passages of detailed descrip-tion that seem without funcdescrip-tion within the structure of the text: they are not justifi ed by any role in the plot, action, or development of characters or themes.

They seem rather to take their cue from historical discourse, where ‘concrete detail’ has the function of authentication.²⁶ Philippe Hamon’s essay in Lilian Furst’s thorough overview Realism, provides a longer list of textual characteris-tics which contribute to this authentication process, in order to satisfy the demand of the empirically minded reader: ‘I believe only what I see’.²⁷ Hamon shows that the realist text is heavily structured according to this demand for authentication. The need for ‘concrete detail’ shapes a text that appears as a mosaic of frequent descriptive passages, and that privileges a content which is

Gilles Deleuze and Magical Realism 33

suited to such description: places, events and characters that are systematized or categorized. Hamon lists, for example, domestic interiors, ritualized events such as meals or feasts, ordered parts of society such as villages or towns. In addition, he suggests that the theme of family history within a socio-political context is favoured by the realist genre because it provides validation on both the level of character and of setting.

This appears to be a description fi tting the realism in magical realism identi-fi ed by Amaryll Chanady, a realism produced by a narrator who is ‘situating the story in present-day reality, using learned expressions and vocabulary, and show-ing he is familiar with logical reasonshow-ing and empirical knowledge’ (MRF 22).

Crucially, in Deleuzian terms this highly systematized detail of the realist narra-tive can be seen as structured by connecnarra-tive and conjuncnarra-tive syntheses. Series of items are coordinated by location, series of locations by social organization, series of characters are connected by family ties, and their actions are con-nected not only temporally, but also conceptually through socio-economic or psychological circumstances. Thus a heterogeneous series of events emerges through a conjunctive synthesis subject to coexistence in historical time and space, and forms a coherent plot.

In fact, the main structure of the realist text appears as two ‘super-series’, that of the narration and that of the events. These series are composed of

‘sub-series’, such as scenes, characters, settings and the narrative elements that relate to them, which are all convergent. In addition, the events of a realist text all conform to ‘the laws of nature’. Indeed, to Deleuze, such universal laws are part of a system of convergent series. Deleuze states that ‘the laws of nature’

are merely an ‘empirical principle’ governing a ‘domain’ of the actual, which

‘is a qualifi ed and extended partial system, governed in such a manner that the difference of intensity which creates it tends to be cancelled’ (DR 241). ‘The laws of nature’ are therefore part of a system that is not self-differing and not disjunctive. Furthermore, the two super-series seem to be convergent with each other, in the same way that the two series of language appear to refer to each other. As we saw, this ‘illusion of representation’ is false but inevitable if we only consider the actual part of language or narration. That is, without the divergence or difference of the virtual, the series of narrative and events will appear to resemble one another. This effect of the language system that Deleuze calls ‘the illusion of representation’ is in essence the same effect that Barthes names the ‘referential illusion’ in realism, and it is an effect inherent to a convergent system.

However, while this convergent system of the realist narration is central to magical realism, effectively providing the authenticating ‘matter-of-fact’ tone that makes both the magic and the real appear real, magical realism also includes a necessarily incongruent element: the magic. Chanady convincingly argues that the magic appears as different because it does not fi t into the world-view indicated by the ‘learned’ and ‘rational’ narrator, who can be identi-fi ed through a detailed and thus authenticating realist narrative. We can now

reformulate this idea using Deleuze’s thought: the magic appears as different because it is a divergent element in the otherwise convergent series of realism.

It does not fi t into a system of reality that follows empirical laws: it is divergent from the ‘domain’ of the ‘laws of nature’. This is why realism is key to magical realism. It sets up the ‘system of convergence’ against which the magic is different or divergent, but crucially, it is this divergence that makes things happen in a unique way in the magical realist text, a divergence that is virtual difference-in-itself. In the particular system that is magical realism, the virtual

‘becomes visible’, or thinkable, as the magic event, just like in Proust’s Combray passage it took on the ‘identity’ of the madeleine.

However, the narration, continuing to be realist, also appears to authenticate the magic: magical events are described in the same way as the real events, using the same authenticating detail. This creates a discrepancy between the way the magic is perceived as divergent from ‘the laws of nature’, and the way magic is described as if fi tting within these laws. Because of this discrepancy the illusion of representation is exposed. When both the series of narration and events were convergent, there appeared to be a relationship of representation between them. Now that the series of events includes a divergent element that is not ‘mirrored’ as a divergent element in the narration, this representation is put into question. That is, if the narration would indicate that this element was in some way strange or deviant, as it does in stories of the fantastic or uncanny, this discrepancy would not be apparent. We have to stress that what is seen as real and magic is set up by the text. Thus it does not actually matter if author, reader or even fi ctional characters (as opposed to the focalizer or narrator) believe or perceive the magic to be ‘true’ or as ‘actually taking place’. It remains divergent from the world-view, or system, established on the realist level of the text.

By means of this very textual discrepancy, it becomes obvious that, as Barthes would say, the supposed referent is ‘slipping away’: the narration is authenticat-ing somethauthenticat-ing which cannot be authenticated, that does not belong within the framework of thought that authentication per se indicates. Thus the magic exposes the non-correspondence of the narration and events. At the same time, it also exposes an excess in the signifying series: the authenticating devices of realism appear extraneous when used to describe magic, because authentica-tion is part of a ‘partial system’ that does not include magic, in which magic is a lack. In this way, magic appears as an object = x in the text. It is, in effect, an

‘esoteric’ unit in the text: non-referential and nonsensical. It becomes clear that the magic can take on any meaning, or rather, that it creates its own sense within the system of the text. Thus magic ‘superimposes’ a disjunctive synthesis on the connective and conjunctive syntheses of realism. The convergent series of realism are then able to take on new resonance, diverge and ramify. Magic therefore not only creates its own sense, but as a virtual object = x, creates the sense of the text, making its series ‘communicate with each other’. Practically, this resonance and divergence, this communication with the virtual, translates

Gilles Deleuze and Magical Realism 35

as new and multiple meaning. As we saw in the examples from Proust and Carroll, meaning created by the relationship or resonance between the series in the text itself, rather than the apparently representational meaning of realism.

The magic realist text thus seems to be counter-actualized, yet it also retains a realist narrative. This means that it retains the structure that underpins the referential illusion. It continues to authenticate its events, and thus continues to produce the illusion of representation, even in the face of the disjunctive synthesis that makes it resonate. In fact, there are two very different movements in magical realism: that of disjunctive synthesis and virtual resonance, and that of realism and representation.

Why, then, does the counter-actualization of the magical realist text not obliterate the illusion of representation completely? To explore this we can compare magical realism to minor literature. To Deleuze and Guattari, one of the main characteristics of a minor literature is ‘the deterritorialization of language’ (KM 18). A language is territorialized when it is ordered and codi-fi ed, conceptually, socially or politically. Such a ‘major’ language is appropri-ated by minor literature, in which ‘language stops being representative in order to now move toward its extremities or limits’ (KM 23). Language, when it directly reverberates with a virtual intensity, no longer has any referential meaning, but is only a ‘sequence of intensive states’, a ‘pure and intense sonorous material’

opposed to ‘all symbolic or even signifi cant or simply signifying usages of it’

(KM 21, 6, 19). This is an experimental language put to ‘strange and minor uses’, which prevents straightforward representational interpretation (KM 17).

Magical realism never reaches this stage of directly intense language, because of the dominance of its realism. Realism is exactly a territorialized language, because it refl ects a particular order of thought. While the magic in magical realism may make the text resonate in new ways, it never deterritorializes language completely in the way minor literature does. However, Deleuze and Guattari also consider literature which ‘doesn’t succeed in bringing itself into full effect – that is, in rejoining the fi eld of immanence’ (KM 87). To Deleuze and Guattari, although it starts out on the right path, Kafka’s ‘The Metamor-phosis’ is ‘blocked’. The ‘becoming-animal’ of Gregor Samsa is a deterritorial-ization of the human and his place in society and the family, which is a step towards counter-actualization. However, Gregor is reterritorialized by his family, forced back into a social order unable to accommodate him, and there-fore ‘goes to his death’ without ‘following a line of escape’. To Deleuze and Guattari, the story ends up being too much of a ‘metaphor’ – that is, a represen-tational rather than a minor type of text – because it is not ‘rich enough in articulations and junctions’ (KM 38).

If we compare this consideration of minor literature to the concept of serial structures, it seems that the counter-actualization of a text is a complete deterritorialization of language, through a disjunctive synthesis that causes a ramifi cation or proliferation of series, to the extent that language ‘takes fl ight’.

Texts of minor literature are ‘worth nothing except in themselves and [. . .]

operate in an unlimited fi eld of immanence’ (KM 86). The proliferation of series, or multiplication of meanings, is such that no meaning remains, apart from this fi eld of immanence; that is, the pure thought of the virtual. These texts are then entirely singular, as Hallward would say, and ‘an exemplary defi nition of the champ littéraire [. . .] which transforms the related, actual world into an immanent composition whose value is precisely that it has no worldly value’.²⁸

However, it also becomes clear that disjunctive synthesis can be stalled by a reterritorialization of the text. Magical realism is said to be characterized by, on the one hand, the differentiation of the magic and the real by a realist narration, and, on the other, by a resolution of the resulting contradiction between these two codes through that self-same realist narration. Thus, in con-trast to an entirely deterritorialized text, it would seem to be closer to writing which is a ‘blocked’ minor literature, such as ‘The Metamorphosis’. Indeed, recall that analogies have been drawn between Kafka’s story and magical realism. On the other hand, a disjunctive synthesis is without doubt present in magical realism; the magic element certainly does have an effect. Deleuze and Guattari say of ‘The Metamorphosis’ and other of Kafka’s ‘animal’ stories, in which they trace a similar partial line of fl ight, that they ‘show a way out that [. . .] [they] are themselves incapable of following, but already, that which enabled them to show the way out was something different that acted inside them’ (KM 37).

Furthermore, the reterritorialization of magic is only implied by the sup-posed resolution of the antinomy in the magical realist text. Perhaps, as sug-gested earlier, the differentiation of the magic and the real has to be seen as the primary characteristic of magical realism. If this is so, then the reterritorial-ization of the magic is not necessarily inevitable. In the next chapter we will explore this proposition further, considering the extent to which any resolution or equivalent coexistence of the real and the magic can actually be seen as present in some key magical realist texts. However, before we do, we will intro-duce some of the possible implications of a Deleuzian rethinking of magical realism for the prevalent contextual readings of the genre, by considering the link that Peter Hallward makes between postcolonial theory and Deleuze’s philosophy.