The Need for a New Term: Diasporic Marvellous Realism

Abstract

The preceding chapter focused mainly on ethical and aesthetic motives of Boom authors for favouring a distinctive literary style. However, it would be premature to suspend discussion at that point; present chapter will therefore first concentrate on social and political stimuli that gave rise to magical realism as a literary tendency, and will then relate this boost to postcolonial writing. At same time, further attention will be given to evolution of dichotomy between lo real maravilloso americano and realismo magico, narrowing analysis down to Caribbean diaspora and its literary production. These observations will lead to reconsideration of homogenization of styles implied by Bhabha's celebration of magical realism as the literary language of emergent postcolonial world,1 which disregards contribution of rich shades of Boom-inflected narrative techniques still present in contemporary literature.In his article on post-Boom writing, Rory O'Bryen notes that term 'magical realism', apart from denoting a narrative technique, has also been treated as a marketing label, since it functions simultaneously as a positive marker of essentialised difference.2 Even in a Latin American context, simplification of amalgam of styles that flourished during literary experimentation from 1940s onwards is wrongheaded from outset. Despite assumption that distinctions between magical realism, marvellous realism, postmodern realism, neo-fantastic realism and so on might be unprofitable in contemporary writing, present study urges differentiation among them. 'Magical realism' as an umbrella term might be useful from a promotional angle and to make this kind of literature more marketable.3 However, it is imperative to create such a distinction from a critical perspective given that these literary techniques are driven by different interests, whether aesthetic, ethical or political. These different narrative styles might appear to be similar to unaccustomed eye, but they have become a rich source of discussion for scholars. Therefore, all these determining features should be considered seriously, since authors consciously employ them as expressions with a specific purpose that might be blurred by literary homogenization.There has been a special concern in recent decades about revising history and identity in Postcolonial Literatures in English4 through examination of folklore, which can be prompted by several factors:an emergent society's need for renewed self-description [which] displaces established categories through which West had constructed other cultures either in its own image or as alterity, questions western capitalist myth of modernization and progress, and asserts without nostalgia an indigenous preindustrial realm of possibility.5Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly also favoured by a political intention, subtle in some cases, to narrativize global empathy for postcolonial and displaced communities: for David Chariandy, feelings of belonging and unbelonging, together with disaffection towards host country experienced by diasporic communities - mainly second-generation immigrants - can be discussed and interpreted in more complex ways than by simplifying issue to threat that these communities might pose to nation-state, as used to be case.6 Literature might serve as perfect catalyst for this debate, inasmuch as recent decades have seen interest in fostering distinctive voices. Some of these voices have materialized in form of Boom and ethnic literatures, as well as in remarkable increase of academic departments devoted to postcolonial studies. It is because of this that I believe that what Bhabha calls literatures of an 'emergent postcolonial world' are probably abetted not only by internal pressure exerted by ethnic minorities and subaltern communities but also by external inception of a neoliberal view of world that implies another turn of screw towards globalization. …