Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Magic in Literary Works: From Enchantment to Re-enchantment of The World and to Hyperreality as the Postmodernist Aesthetics



Tulisan ini diterbitkan dalam Proceedings: International Converence on English Literary Studies and Cultural Studies (ICELSCS) 2018: Recent Trends in English Literary Studies and Cultural Studies 2018
October2-3, 2018 Surakarta Indonesia
Publisher: English Department, Faculty of Cultural Sciences Universitas Sebelas Maret, Surakarta
ISBN: 9786025318900

Magic in Literary Works:
From Enchantment to Re-enchantment of The World and to Hyperreality as the Postmodernist Aesthetics
Hat Pujiati
2 English Department, Universitas Jember, Jl. Kalimantan no 37 Jember, Indonesia

Keywords                : MAGIC, ENCHANTMENT, RE_ENCHANTMENT, HYPERREALITY, POSTMODERNIST FICTION

Abstract            : Magic has been part of literature since the early form of literature. Magic in literature transforms in the three levels of human civilization; traditional –modern- and postmodern era. Max Weber’s concept of disenchantment of the world to Berman’s re-enchantment of the world, Fedric Jameson’s postulation of late capitalism and Baudrillard’s hyperreality are framing concepts of the magic discussion in this article. However, the literary phenomena in the works I scrutinize to proof my arguments are analyzed by using Brian McHale’s Postmodernist Fiction. All the material objects are analyzed through their elements of literature to find out the dominants that show their positions in the era and the society’s perception upon the world. Finally I find out that magic in the literary works become one of the formulas of fiction in presenting rupture of readers’ consciousness through the fictional world constructed in the literary works. The postmodern men (whether as the writer nor the reader) celebrate the lost of significant-signified failure phenomena in hyper-realities as their aesthetics presentation.


1    INTRODUCTION

Poetry is assumed as the oldest form of literary work. The early civilization uses poems as a media of worshiping the holy spirits, or any other powerful ‘things’ than human being as their salvation. Also, Nature is taken as the representation of ‘god’s’ existence. Animism and dynamism as forms of the people’s beliefs in the greater power above theirs as human being show a bound between human-god-nature. Mantra or spell is in a composition of poetry, they are rhyming, using crystallized words, and also abstract ideas of things in it. Such forms of magic are spread in the ancient literary works. Fairytales is a genre that often inscribing spell or mantra in its formula of presenting magic or enchantment. Two famous fairytales such as Rapunzel and Snow White in their modern versions also keep the spell as the following quotations: Mirror, mirror, on the wall,Who in this land is fairest of all? (Grims translated by Ashliman, 2007) and Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair.
(Grims translated by Ashliman, 2007). Magic happens after the spells. In Snow White, The Mirror answers the queen and Rapunzel’s witch mother can climb the high tower using Rapunzel’s hair. The world become enchanting when things happen against the law of excluded middle proposes by Eco (McHale,1987).
However, the enchantment of the world decreases and then gone in modern era. The world is enchanting because people take everything for granted and things that they cannot understand are taken as magic. While in modern culture, everything must be rational, measurable and also empiric; can be traced in our experience. Furthermore, literary works that have been produced in this age erase magic as part of the main stream works. Those that still bring irrationalities in the text are explained as dreams or fantasy and finally they are stratified at the lower position than those that are rational because the rule of the game of modern age is rationality. If things cannot be explained rationally, then it must be erased or hidden.
                Later, when modernity with its rationality disappoints humanity; World War II proofs that rigidity of rationality has ignored the nature of human being. Human is a social creature with their subjectivity, while modernism demands for objectivity instead. Human being is divers, they cannot be uniformed. This fact makes thinkers think of solution, and they negotiate rationality and irrationality to present on the same plane; those paradigms known as postmodernism. Literary works also develop possibilities of broken borders between rationality and irrationality and bring magic back in literary works as a dominant. The disenchantment of the world as a consequence of rationality in modern age begins to bring back magic in a postmodernist formula that Bauman takes it as a re-enchantment of the world. How human being takes magic in their experience that represented by literary works is the focus of this paper.
I will discuss magic formula in literary works that emerge in Enchanted by Jasmine Jones, in Burning Chrome by William Gibson, and in Halim Bahriz’s selected poems: Ritual Penghapus Ingatan, Kematian Kedua and Gandrung Kepaten. Enchanted is an American adaptation novella under Disney licence, it is an adaptation from a film has the same title by Disney while Burning Chrome is a cyberpunk novel, and Halim Bahriz is Indonesian who is a novelist, playwriter, and also a poet who write the works in Bahasa Indonesia. Further discussion on magic presented in the works mentioned is in the following discussion.

2    magic and Literature in postmoder Era

As I mention magic in the previous broad explanation is something irrational and presenting a kind of enchantment of the world. Todorov has noticed the supernatural events in literary works as the uncanny and the marvelous genres. Moreover, a fantasy has presented in-betweeness of them marvellous. The uncanny takes the supernatural events as events that can be explained in the framework of the laws of nature. While the marvellous takes supernatural events as events that can be accepted and become the norm (McHale, 1987;74). Furthermore, March Schneider in his Culture and Enchantment has postulated enchantment as a state of being deeply delighted because of real and uncanny, weird, mysterious, or awesome experiences we face (Schneider, 1993: 2-3,15). What Schneider has explained about enchantment here is different from enchantment in fairytales that is experienced by adults that is gone when it is rationalized. Enchantment is indefinable through science because defining it depends on how we understand our world works or in other words, enchantment is relative in definition. 
Rationality as the key of modern’s rule of the game must be measurable. Therefore, modern works only present fathomable realities but the un-present-able as the other or even hide it (Lyotard, 2009:205-8).
Human rationality develops, technologies have got its rapid development and it changes human daily activities and then changes values, norms and cultures. The rapid invasion of information also relates to the technologies development. Fredric Jameson has predicted long time before internet is as massive as now used. In his Late capitalism, he has counted that the system of economy of the postmodern age has been constructed since 1950s. Commoditization of goods was flooding the market to find the consumer, spare parts made up to be new product with new technologies and packaging commodities created new sensibilities in 1960s.  Crisis in 1971 developed new economic and cultural structures that become multinational capitalism since the commoditization gave choices as if a real freedom is on the consumer’s side but it is not. People began to destruct from the nature, the use-exchange turned into value-exchange, reality revolved around capital. They have consumed goods but they have not seen the life difficulties of the labors in fulfilling their needs, they do not know for sure the natural resources of the goods they consume (Jameson, 1991). Advertisement of goods in medias are everywhere and offers reality that more real than reality itself, media capitalism is inevitable. Jean Baudrillard has noticed the consequence of consumer society that need to be decoded-- will create a schizophrenic society that is marked by the ruin of signifier and signified relationship. Reality presents simultaneously with imagination or fiction, both become ruptures that overlaps and incommensurable. Reality and meaning keep on rupturing that become simulation experiences until finally it turns into hyperrealities (Baudrillard, ). The societies have lost in the massive signifiers without significations so that magic and real as fact and fiction cannot be traced in their consciousness clearly. Furthermore, Mark Poster also read the same phenomena of what Baudrillard has proposed about simulations that become simulacra. The mode of information is also on its third stage when reality is controlled by capital as it has discussed by Jameson and Baudrillard before. From face-to-face mode of information to written and then finally electronically mediated exchanges. The first staged needs a direct relation between addresser to the addressee, on the next stage, a direct relation is replaced and information transmitted through signs, while the last stage the contestation of signs in media made the “informational simulations” (Poster, 1990, p.06).
Changes of the mode of information also change point of view of relations, records of information in social media replaces presentation and it disrupts the real and cyber world. Cyber world seems to be more real than the real one, and again; hyperrerality is inevitably in the age (Pujiati, 2018).
                Art of telling stories and making stories also change. The previous delivering story-techniques only telling-showing or showing telling, now interactive technique is also available; readers have choices to lead the story. Such techniques familiar in children literature and also stories that is adapted into game or vice versa.
                The emergence of magic in literary works is a long historical journey of human thought. When everything is taken for granted, magic relates to super power more than human’s reach. Then, the magic is hid in rational age since human’s rationality cannot explain magic. All consciousness about magic is pressed and left behind, magic is just an odd and abnormality, it loses the magic. However, the alienation of human from all the things they cannot explain urges to come out and takes roles in the rationality. Magic reforms from supernatural power into hyperpower of technologies as the product of hyper-rationality and becomes hyperreality. That cannot be explained is accepted simultaneously with those that is rationally-explained.
  
2.1     Limit-Modernist and Re-enchantment of the World in Enchanted
Enchanted is an adapted novella from a film that has the same title. The novella tells about a kind girl named Giselle who come from Andalasia, in another dimension of this world who can speak to animals and sing along when she is happy. The girl met a prince named Edward and they decide to get married soon, but Narissa the queen does not want the marriage run smooth because if her stepson married, he deserve the crown and be a king replacing her. Therefore, she pushes Gisselle into an old well on the day they should get married. The end of the well is three dimension world; NewYork and she meets Robert and his daughter, Morgan. Narissa never lets her to be happy, using his magical power, she hunts Giselle and makes sure that she cannot comeback to Andalasia (Jones,2007).
                Worlds are presented literally in Enchanted, they are New York and Andalasia. Both worlds are accessible by the main characters since Edward and Nathaniel, the prince’s guard also come to NY to take the queen to be back home. At the end, Giselle chooses to be Robert’s wife and a mother for his daughter, Morgan. Nancy as the previous fiancĂ© of Robert then in love with Edward, she goes to Andalasia with him and become a queen there. Beside the literal worlds that is presented in the story, the plural worlds that become indicators of postmodernist fiction in the story, there are also imperfect worlds constructed through the events that come as fragments of the world; Zones (McHale, 1987). The characters’s presentation come and fro another world through transworld identity. McHale defines this as a “way of foregrounding an intertextual space and integrating it in the text’s structure… with borrowing characters from other text (1987; 57)”. Once Giselle presents as Cinderella, while Morgan roles as the fairy Godmother with her gold credit card that make their dreams to be pretty come true without a magic wand. Once she turns into Snow White who is chased by Narissa, a witch mother who wants to kill her, and at the end of the fight between Narissa and the protagonist characters in the story represents part of Rapunzel, Cinderella, and Snow White at a time.
Pujiati in Novel Enchanted dalam Kajian Postmodernist Brian McHale (2009) has presented the transworld identity in diagram is as following;
 


















Diagram 1; Worlds in Enchanted relates to previous fairytales through transworld identity (Pujiati, 2009)

The diagram shows the structure of the worlds that overlaps with earlier fairytales embedded or inserted in a story of Enchanted. As Pujiati has proposed in her research before that Enchanted is a postmodernist fiction since its ontological dominant rules the story (Pujiati, 2009). However I would like to revise it in this article that Enchanted tends to be what McHale calls as Limit-Modernist. The presentation of plural worlds, hesitation of fact – reality in the story, the fragments of other worlds create intertextual zones finally ends in a betweeness. Magical events that are presented through fairytales formula emphasize the irrationality that is excluded by rationality presented by novel formula in the novella. Meanwhile, New York with a reform magic is also the rationality is an alien experience for those who come from Andalasia, but they take it for granted. They do not exclude New York and its rationalism. The more Andalasia is excluded, New York is also accepted as a magical world with its re-enchantment that is brought by technologies. The following quotation shows the magic of New York;
This room is magic!” Giselle said, shaking her red hair dry. “ Where does the the water come from?”
Robert thought for a moment before answering.
“Um..from the pipes.”
“Where do the pipes get it?”
“I don’t know,” Robert said. “From...wherever the pipes get it.”
Giselle smiled. “It is magical. (Jones,2007:49-50).
Magic by technologies is banalized in the rational world because it becomes a part of the daily life and the enchantment turns into disenchantment. How Giselle reminds Robert about magic in his world is an event that Jameson has explained in his late capitalism about distance of materials with reality (Jameson, 1991). Multinational and transnational corporation has grown replacing Lenin’s monopoly system that causing people only focus on capital value. Robert never thinks how the water comes into his apartment in NewYork, he just pays the bill and use it whenever he needs it. There is a disconnection to his consciousness about how people works for the water come to his high building apartment or where is the spring water. Giselle who used to be close with nature, and has lived in a use-value world has no background knowledge about the pipes so that become magic for her. The pipe is weird for her while the water and the spring water is something natural but its existence in a high building where trees do not grow around the place disrupts her consciousness, the water in the bathroom is a simulation of spring water in nature but just nature is absent there and it becomes only sign of spring without spring. Enchantment of the world comes back but it is not as what it was, background knowledge of modernism with rationality beyond it is inevitable, it is a re-enchantment of the world.  However, the emergence or magic and realism sustains in the whole story. The epistemological and epistemological dominants rise together in Enchanted. Therefore, Enchanted is at the point limit-modernist but it is using the postmodernist fictions formula in playing the dominants.

2.3     Redefining History, presenting Hyperreality and Magical Realism in Halim Bahriz’s Selected works
What I am to write in this article is to be focus on hyperreality and magical realism in the 3 of Halim Bahriz’s works. In order to trace magic in literary works, I recompile some previous works as examples on what I discuss in broader perspective in this article.
Banyuwangi as a town on the east coast of Java popular with its tradition and now come with its tourism sector that interpellates visitors in a jargon The rise of Java town. Banyuwangi is popular among the researchers for the last decade. There are many researches about culture of Banyuwangi and relate it with the political agenda beyond it and also the ecocriticism on the environment that tends to be capitalized (Saputra, 2017, Setiawan, 2017, Anoegrahjekti, 2017). I also have written Perubahan dan Agenda Kuasa dalam Hiper-Realitas Perayaan-Perayaan Budaya Banyuwangi dalam 3 Puisi Halim Bahriz in responding cultural dan political agendas in Banyuwangi (Pujiati, 2018).
Bahriz in his Ritual Penghapus Ingatan (Ritual of memory eraser) takes us to trace back Banyuwangi as Blambangan and rethinking the history in the new life of Banyuwangi people to day as he has proposed in the following lines:
Dari Ulu Pampang, VOC tiba-tiba datang membangun gerbang masa depan para penjajah, merampasi mimpi janin-janin, menanam ingatan baru pada tanah yang sama…
…Di sepanjang jalan itu, ingatan tentang Sritanjung makin hilang: dibawa lari kenyang yang pergi, diusir paksa lapar yang datang
…Di sepanjang jalan kereta yang sama, nama Sritanjung dipanggili lagi, mengalir bersama serangkai gerbong yang melewatinya… (Bahriz, 2014)
The poem starts with memory of V.O.C’s power upon Indonesian in the Dutch colonialization. Modern life in Indonesia was signed by the road construction that help economical growth since the access to many areas are open, the more it is accessible, the more it is explored. The historical wound in the colonial period leads to erase it from communal memory. This historical breakdown is not only because of the colonialization, the history of their social construction all the time around is also erased.  The social consciousness is slipped among the scattered of signs, ruptured by simulations of their identities, a bunch of doxa so that reality is no longer traced as reality but hyper-reality. The legend Sritanjung is just a name of a train, which the train tracks has been built by VOC but both of the historical events are meaningless. People come and go on the train to fight different things, it is all about stomach; full or hungry. Magical legend of Sritanjung is imposed in the memory of VOC’s tyranny to represent the hyper real of the nowadays society in Banyuwangi. The magic is not mentioned in detail, but represented by the name of the queen and the world “ritual”. Ritual is reification of belief and in a belief, there is a home for magic. Sritanjung as the queen who jump into a river so that the water become fragrant is magical, but when it is interpoled into realities of Banyuwangi people who go by sritanjung train is a magic by technology. Another magic is also presented in the following quotation:
Udara Alas Purwo telah disadap sinyal dari misteri lain. …
──kesibukan jari-jari menapak keyword depan layar monitor yang memayatkan kaki-kakimu── telah dihitung dengan mata uang, seharga bensin, …
…Seblang dan rapal mantra yang terseok di penjelang rasuk, juga telah selesai didamaikan bilas cahaya dari ledakan tombol shutter para wartawan.…
(Bahriz, 2014)
Alas Purwo is a name for a mysterious forest in Banyuwangi. The Forest is known with the mythical creatures and magical experiences which is experienced by those who entering the forest. In Kematian Kedua (the second death), it is started by the invasion technology of the modernity; ‘Udara Alas Purwo telah disadap sinyal dari misteri lain’ (The air of Alas Purwo is tapped by signal of another mystery). Mystery is something inexplicable in rationality and it is left to be questioned but it is tapped by signals that are presented in the poem to keep the mythical sense in it. Moreober, how people invade by technology through gadget turns to be hectic because layar monitor yang memayatkan kaki-kakimu (the monitor screen changes your legs into corpse). The technology has a magical power to change habits of the society and than their culture. When they use gadget that is not free, they become money oriented. A sudden change because of technology backwards is shocked the society; they are destructed by distance of history and culture. Seblang (a magical traditional dance in Banyuwangi) loses its magic even though mantra is spelled since the shutter flash of cameras spell them in a celebration spirit. Carnivals of their culture are packed as the needs of the outsiders; for those who are thirsty of entertainment. Finally, they are busy in preparing festivals and missing attention on capitalist’s desires that has been waiting it to happen for long. Tumpang Pitu akan digali (Tumpang Pitu is going to be dig) is a sign of their second death after the ruin of Blambangan in the history. The mythical mountain Tumpang Pitu is mined which threatens ecology of Banyuwangi and all of the area along the river flow from the mountain. Pujiati (2018) notes the lost of the society of their precious mountain is a kind of symbolic power. The poem reminds the society’s consents on the takeover upon the mine since they are culturally defeated through the festivals and carnivals that commodify everything they have. Again, magic in this poem functions as a tracer on a society’s consciousness historically and culturally.
Gandrung kepaten (the death of Gandrung – a traditional dance) as the third poem of this series is emphasized on the ruin that may happen in the future if the society is still lulled by the various celebrations. Magic emerges only in the following line: And your dance keeps spelling the mantra.. (Dan tarianmu terus mengucap mantra tubuh pemanggil ajal)(Bahriz,2014) is a figurative language but it uses magical sense because of the mantra. The mantra calls death for the dancer’s body so that death. In other words, the spell is a suicide without any weapon or poisson, but magic for it comes from no logical reason.The rest is in logic style but it is a simulation that is not happen yet. Gandrung Kepaten is a prediction that uses proofs of past events and simulated in to the characters in the poem. Therefore, the poem is magical but logical ideas are also embodied it; again magic and logic are presented simultaneously.

2.4 Hyperreality as a Come to Life Magic
Burning Chrome is a short story written by William Gibson published in 1982 but using a futuristic setting in 2010. The genre of this story is cyberpunk. According to Wadoya et al, cyberpunk novel is a kind of literary work that presents a life in ‘the technologically advanced society’ (2017). Moreover, Sumarsono, based on Cavallaro ideas, highlights cyberpunk as a literary work that portrays no longer any separation between technology and human since the virtual reality is the main plane of the world in the story (2018). Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction, and this short story is one of the research model of cyberpunk novel. Burning Chrome tells about two hackers named Bobby Quine and Automatic Jack who steal data from Chrome wall and its intrigues follow. The cyber world they live in is a program in computer but what happen inside the virtual world affects their life in reality. They get money from that, they can buy tickets to travels their real bodies in real world, but they also can buy software to go further in the cyber world. Computer program where the characters live in the story is what the real life science defines as hallucination space but it is commonly accepted by the society (Gibson in Astutiningsih, 2016).
Hallucination is imaginative, out of real and can be a world that is law of excluded middle but it is more than real for the characters. How the technology is combined with the real life and become a virtual reality is a come true magic. Those people in the story is being, Rikki is a female character to whom Jack falls in love, uses a bionic eye that can see something more than that an eye can see, it is computerized eye.
At this point I just want to show that magic in this kind of work is supported by technology. Technology is like amulet or charm that brings magic to life. The characters can go beyond the human limit by using technology, like Rikki in Burning Chrome with her bionic eye, or Lux in Free to Fall as a program that can decide what best for people so that they are free of stress. Romeo and Juliet in Shakespeare’s work also add magic that seems normal since science is getting believed as salvation of human life, they drink possion that make them look like died for 24 hours. Simulation of simulation in developing plots in the stories turns into simulacra. At the end, I can say that cyberpunk novel that belongs to subgenre of sci-fi, while McHale also calls sci-fi this as a sister genre of postmodernist fiction, is a transformation of magic in the technological era. If magic in fairytales or in traditional form becomes something that is left unexplained, in techno-magic, everything is explicable through rational science.
4    Conclusions
After all, I conclude that literary works in this postmodern era summarize the world with technology. Magic that is never really gone from human civilization is back in real to postmodern man. They transform into a simultaneous presentation between real and dream, fact and fiction, natural and artificial world. Before the technology rules the game, supernatural was compared to natural, but now we can see it as natural vs artificial. The artificial things are realized as something more than real in simulations that present simulacra. Hyper-reality is banal since its existence in daily phenomena. Furthermore, the re-enchantment of the world is celebrated in crowded signifiers which have lost among other signifiers. Finally, the return of magic in this postmodern age is liven the postmodern man after rigidity of the modern age that also inscribed in their consciousness so it keeps emerging in their aesthetic representation.
Acknowledgements
My colegues in English Department, faculty of Humanities Universitas Jember; Dr. Ikwan Setiawan, Irana Astutiningsih, thank you for the discussion. Also colegues from Matatimoer Institute; Ganesha Hari Murti and Yongky Gigih P, thank you for the discussion and books you’ve shared. And last but not Least, my students under my supervision who encourages me to learn more about Postmodernist fiction and its aesthetics so that this magic writing is publish.
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