Note the constriction of the social, the transcendent, into the workaday (profane, routine, alltäglich) language of hiring an employee, which is certainly not all we did. Perhaps more importantly, note the elision in which Appadurai’s invocation of the magic of the election becomes, in the hands of the libertarian thinker (I use the word advisedly) a claim about the magic of the person. That’s because it is not only wrong but literally unthinkable in this paradigm that the collective imaginary might be anything more than the collection of individual imaginaries. If there’s magic, it follows, an individual person must be magical.

Perrin follows this with a reply to Kuznicki’s subsequent suggestion that “for at least a few liberals, when their guy wins, ‘reason’ is out the window, and ‘magic’ is what it’s all about”:

Not that this position is unique, but it’s hopelessly outdated and frankly empirically indefensible to hold religion and reason to be at odds, or even in a zero-sum competition. But committing this error allows the author to ignore the complexity of the analysis and revert to comfortable, individualistic, and disingenuous claims, entirely without evidence, that the analysis is driven by crass partisanship.

There’s more. Read Andrew Perrin’s full post here.

Calling acts of government “magic” gives our political leaders way more credit than they deserve. Our leaders may be intelligent, or charismatic, or honest, or judicious. But even the best of them are not magic. To tell the truth, I hadn’t thought this a controversial idea.

… It’s a bit silly to think that because I won’t call Barack Obama “magic,” I must have some deep-seated problem with 80% of the American electorate. I’d think, rather, that Christians would be on my side: Obama is a man and a sinner like any other, and all magic — excuse me, all glory — belongs to God.

In fact, the only thing I object to here is magical or mystical thinking about the government. The government has to serve people of all religious faiths, and of none. It can’t play favorites, and it can’t be some strange mysticism unto itself. If it were, it would alienate much of the public, and make tyrants of the rest. That’s what I object to.

A government of, by, and for the people is a huge advance over the divine rule of kings, kings who in former ages claimed that they really were magical, and whose touch was said to cure scrofula. Our leaders are human like the rest of us, and they should be open to our criticism, just like the guy at Kinko’s if he ruins our copies. That’s the genius of America: having a government we’re not afraid to criticize.

Read Kuznicki’s full post here.

Perhaps my second objection isn’t philosophically sound. After all, if we define “magic” as Appadurai does, as a tool for risk management, there’s no reason to assume that the tool can be used solely for moral purposes. (This line of thought could lead one to talk about “white magic” and “black magic”, but those terms would get far too confusing in the context of Barack Obama.)

Two final questions: how would you relate this concept of “magic” in the national and political sphere to civic religion? Is it appropriate to say that in the context of American civic religion, the election of Barack Obama (not Obama himself, but his election and the “magic” quality surrounding it) is a kind of theophany?

Mr. Kuznicki is keen to remind me that the United States is a Lockean republic, that Barack Obama is not a priest or magician, that the Presidency is just a job (presumably like employment at Kinko’s) and that Obama was elected and not crowned. Well, where do I begin? I do know these facts. My essay was an interpretation of what seemed to us (not to Mr. Obama) so special about this election. My comment is primarily about the distinctions between magic and religion in the history of Western social thought since the seventeenth century: alas, these are two sides of the same coin for Mr. Kuznicki (priests and magicians, lightning bolts and toads, theocracies and magic wands). Well, this is a picture based on Harry Potter and not on Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, thinkers who had the gumption to look at the entire history of human efforts to deal with evil, injustice, uncertainty and disaster with a modicum of empirical interest and intellectual sympathy.

Mr. Kuznicki is the kind of “secular” libertarian to whom the entire world of non-secular feelings, sensations, experiences and actions makes no sense, indeed it makes him sick. Well, in that case, 90% of humanity makes him sick, and perhaps 80% of the American electorate, including those who believe in faith-based philanthropy, religious calls to dialogue between faiths, and I assume the entire family of words from grace and charisma to hope and redemption also makes him sick. I am afraid there is no easy cure for this ailment.

As an anthropologist, I am interested in those situations in which words defeat us, when events make us feel we are in the presence of special people or events, when either suffering or sudden change make us wonder about what makes the world tick. Mr. Kuznicki knows the answers already and is sure that what makes the world go around are: “reason, hard work, rectitude, compassion, courage, and thrift.” I assume that when things go wrong, it is due to a deficit of these things. Well, there’s his answer to global warming, the biggest financial meltdown in the world’s wealthiest economy, military failure in Iraq and Afghanistan for the world’s most sophisticated army, not to speak of Avian flu, sudden infant death and Katrina.

Since I wrote my original comment, Barack Obama has made it amply clear that he understands quite well the scope of the problems we face, the sobriety that our challenges demand, the calm, deliberative style that the world expects and that our skittish markets need. So he is not stirring some new age pot with a nearby coven of liberal witches. But that does not mean that history has no surprises and that our anaemic secular vocabularies are entirely adequate to either the miracles or the disasters which we see around us. The best kind of rationality is the rationality that knows when it’s running on empty. Unless Mr. Kuznicki has already discovered the 100% air-fueled brain.

Ainslee, its good hear from you and I am glad you find these thoughts worthy of use in the classroom!

Scott Dill is right: I did not go back to this great novel: in fact, there are even more questions about Dostoyevsky’s actual position, which is probably not identical with the one of Zossima or the Grand Inquisitor, but let the Dostoyevsky experts sort that one out.

The debate between the Pfeiffers (father and son) seems to have merit of creative intra-familial debate so I will leave it alone for now!

With Lynn Brooks, yes, that’s right and that’s what I meant when I said magical was still credible: credible enough for someone to be hanged for it. I did not mean to equate “credible” and “approved”.

Jason Kuznicki deserves a fuller response since he clearly disapproves of my views, insofar as he understands them correctly! I will do that in my next comment.

No search of the language, even if carried out under infinitely stretchy academic cloaks, can describe the iconic U.S. election of November 4, 2008. Many may take refuge in cliches, but the event can best remain a vessel in which each us finds our own refreshment. It is true that “the heart has its reasons that the reason knows not of”. Language must be reasonable, if it hopes to communicate. We could call anything magic, but the baggage that comes with a term whose time has passed stands in the way of cogency, and contributes nothing to descriptions, especially of iconic events.

Thanks for cooking up your descriptive offering, but it is a struggle to imagine, much less follow, the magic recipe.