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Magical Criticism: The Recourse of Savage Philosophy
During the Enlightenment, Western scholars racialized ideas, deeming knowledge based on reality superior to that based on ideality. Scholars labeled inquiries into ideality, such as animism and soul-migration, “savage philosophy,” a clear indicator of the racism motivating the distinction between the real and the ideal. In their view, the savage philosopher mistakes connections between signs for connections between real objects and believes that discourse can have physical effects—in other words, they believe in magic.
Christopher Bracken’s Magical Criticism brings the unacknowledged history of this racialization to light and shows how, even as we have rejected ethnocentric notions of “the savage,” they remain active today in everything from attacks on postmodernism to Native American land disputes. Here Bracken reveals that many of the most influential Western thinkers dabbled in savage philosophy, from Marx, Nietzsche, and Proust, to Freud, C. S. Peirce, and Walter Benjamin. For Bracken, this recourse to savage philosophy presents an opportunity to reclaim a magical criticism that can explain the very real effects created by the discourse of historians, anthropologists, philosophers, the media, and governments.
Christopher Bracken’s Magical Criticism brings the unacknowledged history of this racialization to light and shows how, even as we have rejected ethnocentric notions of “the savage,” they remain active today in everything from attacks on postmodernism to Native American land disputes. Here Bracken reveals that many of the most influential Western thinkers dabbled in savage philosophy, from Marx, Nietzsche, and Proust, to Freud, C. S. Peirce, and Walter Benjamin. For Bracken, this recourse to savage philosophy presents an opportunity to reclaim a magical criticism that can explain the very real effects created by the discourse of historians, anthropologists, philosophers, the media, and governments.
- GenresPhilosophy
276 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
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January 4, 2026
Caveat: for some reason I lost a ton of highlights from my e-reader so my review is only a partial reconstruction of a very complex argument.
This book sheds yet another light on the process of marginalisation in the West of what I call an expressive ontology. This is a conception of the world in which reality does not stand apart to be mirrored; it reveals itself through emergent forms. This standpoint sits uneasily with a dualist, scientific paradigm. Whereas the representational model situates the human as an observer before an external world, the expressive model places the human within the very event of appearance. An image or a text, in this sense, is not a depiction of something; it is the occurrence in which something comes to presence. Hence criticism as a magical act, as Benjamin proposed: it is not enough to understand a work of art or a case study; one must awaken it, allow it to speak in ways that were previously invisible. Bracken qualifies this as a form of savage philosophy. The savage believes that discourse not only communicates, but also conveys forces and influences reality. This idea is taboo in the Western tradition, where signs are usually seen as neutral representations. The image of ‘the savage’ is a mirror image of the Western intellectual. By describing ‘the other’ as someone who believes in the magical power of words, the West projects its own repressed desires for a world where discourse has direct influence. At the same time the projection offers an alibi for the colonial project: the savage is framed as 'presentist' (living in the now, without a vision of the future), while ‘civilised’ people are associated with accumulation, progress, and deferred gratification, in short as a future-oriented being. The book closes with a meditation on Stanislaw Lem's Solaris: the ‘ocean-brain’ becomes a living, mimetic creature that materialises people's repressed desires and memories. Lem shows how science fails where magic (or poetry) succeeds: Solaris ‘reads’ people like books and makes their dreams concrete. It reveals that what cannot be (the impossible, the repressed) is just as real as what can be. This is a fine critique of the limitations of the Western obsession with control and causality and a key epistemic pattern of 'racialisation'. Bracken shows throughout that savage philosophy has been practiced obliquely or inadvertently by many influential Western thinkers including Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and C. S. Peirce. For instance, Marx reveals the ‘magic’ of capitalism through commodity fetishism, but does so using the same way of thinking that he rejects in ‘the savage’.
This book sheds yet another light on the process of marginalisation in the West of what I call an expressive ontology. This is a conception of the world in which reality does not stand apart to be mirrored; it reveals itself through emergent forms. This standpoint sits uneasily with a dualist, scientific paradigm. Whereas the representational model situates the human as an observer before an external world, the expressive model places the human within the very event of appearance. An image or a text, in this sense, is not a depiction of something; it is the occurrence in which something comes to presence. Hence criticism as a magical act, as Benjamin proposed: it is not enough to understand a work of art or a case study; one must awaken it, allow it to speak in ways that were previously invisible. Bracken qualifies this as a form of savage philosophy. The savage believes that discourse not only communicates, but also conveys forces and influences reality. This idea is taboo in the Western tradition, where signs are usually seen as neutral representations. The image of ‘the savage’ is a mirror image of the Western intellectual. By describing ‘the other’ as someone who believes in the magical power of words, the West projects its own repressed desires for a world where discourse has direct influence. At the same time the projection offers an alibi for the colonial project: the savage is framed as 'presentist' (living in the now, without a vision of the future), while ‘civilised’ people are associated with accumulation, progress, and deferred gratification, in short as a future-oriented being. The book closes with a meditation on Stanislaw Lem's Solaris: the ‘ocean-brain’ becomes a living, mimetic creature that materialises people's repressed desires and memories. Lem shows how science fails where magic (or poetry) succeeds: Solaris ‘reads’ people like books and makes their dreams concrete. It reveals that what cannot be (the impossible, the repressed) is just as real as what can be. This is a fine critique of the limitations of the Western obsession with control and causality and a key epistemic pattern of 'racialisation'. Bracken shows throughout that savage philosophy has been practiced obliquely or inadvertently by many influential Western thinkers including Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and C. S. Peirce. For instance, Marx reveals the ‘magic’ of capitalism through commodity fetishism, but does so using the same way of thinking that he rejects in ‘the savage’.
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