Genre Ideologies and Narrative Transformation
Project Leaders: Dr Wen-chin Ouyang (Near and Middle East, SOAS) and
Dr Stephen Hart (Spanish and Latin American Studies, UCL)
Workshop Three:
Ideology of Fantasy and the Transformation of a Genre:
Magical Realism
7-9 November 2002
Venue: Room 116, SOAS
In what ways do paradigms of knowledge inherent in narrative genres inform and shape
cultural and literary texts? Does narrative in turn generate new paradigms of knowledge?
These are the two broad questions the project on Genre Ideologies and Narrative
Transformation seeks to interrogate in an examination of the function of narrative across
cultures and disciplines. The first two workshops of the project looked at genre and its
relationship to ideology as an inherent or external paradigm of knowledge in instances of
cultural exchange and change. The workshops more particularly focused on the ways in
which stories transform and are transformed in time and across cultures.
The first workshop focused on The Thousand and One Nights, which continues to be an
important point of reference in our exploration of broader theoretical issues. The travels of
this corpus of stories geographically (East to West), historically (past to present), and
generically (literature to film) and subsequent transformations paved the way for looking at
the ingredients of change in stories as they migrate from one culture to another, form one era
to another, and from one medium to another.
The second workshop highlighted the role of genre ideologies in narrative transformations in
a broad range of texts. Genre is vague, shifty, indescribable, and often an abstraction from the
perspective of hindsight. An analysis of genre becomes possible when ideology is taken into
consideration. It becomes possible to speak of changes in an “approximated” genre when we
relate particular changes in a particular story to shifts in ideology. The stories scrutinised all
seem to anticipate what may be called the ideology of the audience, and to contain built-in
mechanisms for recognition. Generic expectations seem to be the meeting ground for the
“writer” and the “reader” of stories.
One of the most striking aspects of the project is the ways the “fantastic” keeps returning to
claim our attention. The lines between the “fantastic” and the “real” are extremely blurry. It
is possible to say that the “fantastic” place, imagined on a geographical locale or a fabricated
space, is the site onto which “real” ideological problems, be they related to identity or cultural
politics, are deferred. Narrative seems to be implicated not only in shaping the “fantastic”
and the “real” but also in creating and sustaining the blur between them. In narrative’s
insistence on this ambivalent link between the “fantastic” and the “real,” the oxymoron that is
“magical realism” suddenly begins to make sense. It becomes necessary to interrogate more
closely the ways the real shapes and is shaped by the imaginary in areas of story-telling in
which this ambivalence is heightened.
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How does magical realism revise the relationship between the “fantastic” and the “real”?
Is it possible to think of the “fantastic” as an articulation of ideology?
In what ways does the “fantastic” question, challenge and erode prevalent ideologies?
Can we speak of magical realism as postmodern reaction to modernism and realism, or
postcolonial rebellion against colonial harmonisation, or “third-world cosmopolitans’”
territorialisation or reterritorialisation of the “metropolis” and the “periphery”?
Do narratives of magical realism re-write history, recuperating from the master narratives
of Empire (hi)stories of the periphery? Are these (hi)stories informed by other
ideologies?
Does magical realism produce new epistemologies? Or is it a product of the “periphery”,
sanctioned by, sanitised for and marketed in the “metropolis”, reaffirming familiar
paradigms of knowledge?
In what ways has magical realism redefined the novel? Do narratives of magical realism
re-write the history of the genre?
Is magical realism the product of specific cultures in particular historical moments? Or
can we speak of magical realism as a universal literary phenomenon with a history beyond
the familiar temporal and spatial boundaries set by European and Latin American
practices?
Are there differences in the use of magical realism across cultures? Can we attribute these
differences to ideology?
Thursday 7 November
Within each regular session, half an hour is allocated for each speaker, 5 minutes for each
response and 20 minutes for round-table discussion.
Please note that some titles are provisional.
8.45
Registration/tea/coffee
9.15
Stephen Hart (Spanish and Latin American Studies, UCL)
Opening Remarks
9.30
Lois Parkinson Zamora (Comparative Literature, Houston)
‘The Visualizing Capacities of Magical Realism’
Chair: Stephen Hart
11
Stephen Hart (Spanish and Latin American Studies, UCL)
‘Arabian Story-Telling and Magical Realism in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist ‘
Respondent: Stephanie Jones
Stephanie Jones (AHRB Centre, SOAS/UCL)
‘Magical Realism and Amitav Ghosh’
Respondent: Stephen Hart
12.30 Lunch (Senior Dining Room, SOAS)
1.30
Jonathan Allison (English, Kentucky)
‘Paul Muldoon, Ireland and the Fantastic’
Respondent: Stefan Sperl
Stefan Sperl (Near and Middle East, SOAS)
‘Empire and Tribal Magic in a Tuareg Epic: Ibrahim al-Kuni’s Lunar Eclipse (alKhasuf)’
Respondent: Jonathan Allison
3
Michael Berkowitz (Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL)
‘Magical Realism’s Jewish Questions: The Undercurrent of Criminality’
Respondent: Humberto Núñez
Humberto Núñez (Spanish and Latin American Studies, UCL)
‘Magical Realist Elements in José Eustasio Rivera’s La vorágine (1924)’
Respondent: Michael Berkowitz
4.30
Break
5
Yangdon Dhondup (East Asia, SOAS)
‘Tashi Dawa and Magical Realism: Contemporary Literature in Tibet’
Respondent: Tsila Ratner
Tsila Ratner (Jewish and Hebrew Studies, UCL)
‘Not So Innocent - An Israeli Tale of Subversion; Dorit Rabinyan’s Persian Brides’
Respondent: Yangdon Dhondup
6.30
Gaber Asfour (Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Culture, Egypt)
Chair: Sabry Hafez (Near and Middle East, SOAS)
8
Dinner at Poons (£5 contribution)
Friday 8 November
9
Tea/Coffee
9.30
John Erickson (French, Kentucky)
‘Magical Realism and Nomadic Writing in the Maghreb’
Chair: Stephen Hart
11
Robin Fiddian (Spanish, Oxford)
‘The Origins of a Literary Style: Los funerales de la mamá grande’
Respondent: Helene Price
Helene Price (Spanish and Latin American Studies, UCL)
‘The Ideology of Fantasy in the Work of Alfredo Bryce Echenique’
Respondent: Robin Fiddian
12.30 Lunch (Senior Dining Room, SOAS)
1.30
Jane Grayson (SSEES, UCL)
‘Magical Realism in the Work of Mikhail Bulgakov’
Respondent: David Henn
David Henn (Spanish and Latin American Studies, UCL)
‘Fantasy, Reality, and Reason in José Saramago’s Fiction’
Respondent: Jane Grayson
3
Evelyn Fishburn (Spanish, North London)
‘“Los siglos pasan y la gente sigue escuchando la voz de Shaharazad”: Borges and the
Night of Nights’
Respondent: Richard van Leewen
Richard van Leeuwen (Independent Scholar, Netherlands)
‘The Art of Interruption (II): Jan Potocki, the 1001 Nights and the Fantastic’
Respondent: Evelyn Fishburn
4.30
Break
5
Philip Swanson (Hispanic Studies, Aberdeen)
‘California Dreamin’: The South and the East in Isabel Allende’s North-American
Narratives’
Respondent: Dolores Martinez
Dolores Martinez (Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS)
‘Cloning Kurosawa: From Japanese fantasy to American Science Fiction via Star
Wars’
Respondent: Philip Swanson
6.30
Drinks (Senior Dining Room, SOAS)
Saturday 9 November
9
Tea/Coffee
9.30
Mark Morris (Japanese, Cambridge)
‘Magical Realism as Ideology: Narrative Evasions in the Work of Nakagami Kenji’
Respondent: Sarah Sceats
Sarah Sceats (English, Kingston)
‘Flights of Fancy: Angela Carter’s Transgressive Narratives’
Respondent: Mark Morris
11
Alejandra Rengifo (Spanish, Central Michigan)
‘Beyond Magical Realism in The Red of His Shadow by Mayra Montero’
Respondent: Stephen Hart
12
Lunch (Senior Dining Room, SOAS)
1.30
Lorna Robinson (Greek and Latin, UCL)
The Golden Age Myth in 100 Years of Solitude and Metamorphoses”
Respondent: Terence Kawadza
Terence Kawadza (Africa, SOAS)
‘Phantasmagoric Dystopicism in Marechera’s Black Sunlight’
Respondent: Lorna Robinson
3
Jason Wilson (Spanish and Latin American Studies, UCL)
‘Alejo Carpentier’s Re-invention of América Latina as Real and Marvellous’
Respondent: Ato Quayson
Ato Quayson (English, Cambridge)
‘“Magical Realism: Fecundities of the Unexpected”
Respondent: Jason Wilson
4.30
Wen-chin Ouyang (Near and Middle East, SOAS)
Closing Remarks