Emplacing Tasks of Magic: Hand, Land, and the Generation of Fantasy Taskscape in Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching Series

Abstract

This article studies the celebrated British fantasy writer Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching series in order to unpack its particular variety of the supernatural. It argues that Pratchett’s magic is decidedly “emplaced” in nature, in that it springs from a worked landscape where human and non-human actors play significant, mutually realized roles. Focusing on the agriculturally inspired roles of the shepherdess-witch protagonist Tiffany Aching, as well as the dynamic interplay of natural elements composing her beloved homestead of Chalk, the article pushes for a consideration of magic in terms of practiced and performed “tasks.” These tasks infuse a labored aliveness in the supernatural realm and create what the anthropologist Tim Ingold has termed as a “taskscape”—a domain of activities geared toward everyday dwelling. By regarding the fantastical literary terrain as a taskscape, we can arrive at a sophisticated understanding of magic whose ethical orientation is rooted in a concerted regard for geography.