Doing a Ph.D. in the Spanish and Portuguese Department, I have learned, does not necessarily get you that far at cocktail parties with your average professionals -- doctors, lawyers, or jackass business men. While you are sipping on a Corona and they are swilling their froufrou $15 manhattans, if you elaborate on the fact that you study Latin American literature, or even more specifically, South American literature, they either say, "Oh. Cool. So, have you like been to Cuba? What's up with Castro?" or they say, "Oh. Cool dude. I read Gabriel García Márquez once. What's up with magical realism?"
As we have all been told at some point during the MA, the term lo real maravilloso was first used by Alejo Carpentier in the prologue to El reino de este mundo (1949). He claims he became aware of the mythological underpinnings to America on a visit to Haiti, a visit that is recapped in the novel. And at the end of the prologue he specifically poses the question: "¿Pero qué es la historia de América toda sino una crónica de lo real-maravilloso?" Well, Alejo, I think the answer is "Much more."
What exactly does he mean by a chronicle of the marvelous-real? Or, as expounded upon post-Carpentier, the magical-real? First of all, the word chronicle itself is entirely problematic in terms of the "telling" of the "history" of Latin America. See the Introduction and first chapter to Hayden White's Metahistory for some context on chronicles and narrative time. Does he consider that the written emphasis of the word crónica excludes temporalities outside of an occidental-based philosophy? And does he consider that perhaps what he wants to make nameable, what he wants to center within the logosphere, as in his invention of the term "lo real maravilloso" is precisely what it is because it is not narrated fully, not named, not existent with the confines of rational Occidental reason, and by naming it as such he is simply pulling it into a system to which in precisely does not belong? Ever since the existence of the term, people hem and haw over whether or not such and such a text, for instance, an JMArguedas one, is or is not magically real. Classify classify classify, then you will understand.
It seems like the intention of too many literary critics is to understand everything. This entails going to archives where we dig and dig and try to find the perfect document that answers all of the questions we have always wanted to know about a certain text, a certain author, a certain reference on a certain page in italicized font. And this is a hugely important part of what we do. However, what we fail to often too often is that half of the reason why we study what we study is because it helps us see what precisely we will never understand; what we will never answer; what door we will never open. We don't think enough, I don't think anyway, about the confines of our own writing, our own learning, our own ways of understanding.
I finally, philosphically speaking, think I get it (or maybe I just continue to contemplate the small epiphanies I have every day with too much exuberance). A friend told me to think about not knowing a long time ago, but my mind was not quite ready. Now, I think I get it. At the moment, I think I'm going to redo magical realism, reunderstand it, but this time, it's not going to be named on terms that make sense to me based on my academic training. It's going to make sense on terms that reveal the limits of the names, the limits of the spaces, and the limits of the temporalities in which I/we (?) live.
Don't name what you want; that's the only way you will ever arrive to it. Otherwise, it's a slippery fall all the way to nowhere.