Magic Realism. Social Context and Discourse

Mi casa de los Espíritus (My house of spirits): Challenging patriarchy with magical feminism

“…Knowledge production from the South is continuously discounted because it is “not rigorous” in the eyes of the dominant standards for it relies on “superstitions, opinions, subjectivities, common sense” (Santos, 2016, p. 20). Since the age of ten, I have spent many nights reading authors from a literature genre that comes from the South (Angulo, 1996; Ganzin et al., 2020; Zamora & Faris, 1995), that of magical realism. And there is so much I learned from them… Magical realism is a narrative style that juxtaposes realistic depictions with the subjective perspective of actors who see reality through magical and spiritual forces (Ganzin et al., 2020; Hart, 1989; Zamora & Faris, 1995).…”

“…And there is so much I learned from them… Magical realism is a narrative style that juxtaposes realistic depictions with the subjective perspective of actors who see reality through magical and spiritual forces (Ganzin et al., 2020; Hart, 1989; Zamora & Faris, 1995). Its authors are an international movement (not only limited to Latin America), “a revitalizing force from the peripheral regions of Western culture” (McMurray, 1997, p. 105), who use magic as a vehicle for social protest (Angulo, 1996; McMurray, 1997). They have been acclaimed for their transgressive mode of writing (Ruiz Serrano, 2011; Selvarani & Hussain, 2019) and they use magic to stand against dominant power structures (Coddou, 1988).…”

“…Through this, he engages in a critic of religious colonialism which was one of the most important means of European colonial invasion (Bowen, 2019, p. 45). In another passage, he provides a harsh critic on gringo imperialism (Angulo, 1996) by providing a fictional version of the United Fruit company workers massacre which took place in Colombia in 1928.…”