Indigenous illusionism and the global magic system

Abstract

ABSTRACTA spectacular commodification of pure illusion, the modern magic of conjuring’s golden age was also part of a loose assemblage of cultural industries – including colonial anthropology – involved in visualizing ethnic differences in ways that tended to naturalize imperialist models of globalization by denying coevalness to cultural others. Inspired by the work of scholars who emphasize multiple, alternative and indigenous forms of global modernity, I ask whether it might be possible to decenter modern magic as a category and genre, writing its history from geographical and cultural margins, and speaking in the plural about contemporaneous, but not necessarily contiguous, ‘golden ages’. Shifting attention from the metropolitan theater as the iconic site of golden-age magic performance to other synchronic settings of visual display and cultural production more closely linked to colonial peripheries, I focus on the elaboration of intercultural magic performance as a form of tourist attraction and imperial spectacle in colonial contact zones. The resulting interpretation underscores the importance of power, conflict and resistance in magic performance.