The Magic Belongs to the Community: Magical Realism and Resistance
N/A
Organization: NeMLA
Originating as a European art movement, magical realism evolved as a genre during Latin America’s El Boom, which marked its worldwide recognition. Authors today, including Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez, have adapted the genre to form a community that validates non-Western worldviews on the page, stripping imperialist logic of its claim to absolute truth. The genre, in this way, functions as a challenge to authoritarianism, enacting the shift NeMLA's 2027 theme articulates: from passivity to active, collective agency. This panel is interested in investigating how the genre’s use of authorial reticence, disruption of linear timelines, use of collective protagonists (family, village, community) serve as a powerful tool to empower communities.
We welcome proposals that explore the topics mentioned below, but are not limited to:
- The genre’s role in preserving indigenous myths and oral traditions
- Magical realism and the recovery of suppressed histories and collective memories
- Magical realism as resistance to colonialism, imperialism, and authoritarianism
- Magical realism and the representation of political violence, dictatorship, and state oppression
- Magical realism and postcolonial identities
- Magical realism in South Asian, Latin American, African, and Indigenous literatures
- Migration, diaspora, exile, and transnational experiences in magical realist writing
- Magical realism and the imagination of alternative social or political futures
- Magical realism in relation to memory studies, trauma studies, and postcolonial theory
Description: This panel is interested in investigating how magical realism and its use of authorial reticence, disruption of linear timelines, and collective protagonists (family, village, community) serves as a powerful tool to empower communities.
Modality of the session: Virtual Only
https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22661
Samreedhi Shree