There is perhaps no need to reiterate that magical realism is inherently political concerned not only with the continuing influence of empire in the postcolonial world but also with the corruption of political authority set up in the postindependence nation-states, not to mention the attendant cultural politics that partake in the formulation of a plausible postcolonial national identity. But there is politics and there is politics. All roads may lead to empire and nation, but not all forms of power politics chip at the grand narratives in the same way. For one thing, there is that mysterious discourse driving ideology that determines the direction of identity politics and the position from other discourses, and, for another, there are those numerous articulated categories of knowledge embedded in any grand narrative that require dismantling one by one. And then there is the style of discourse and the genre in which the discourse is cast. The minute differences in the selection for engagement of one or any number of articulated categories of knowledge subject to interrogation can produce subtle nuances in producing and apprehending cultural and identity politics. The literary texts analyzed in this Section may be situated within the broader context of postcolonial national politics on culture and identity, but each of them identifies its own interlocutor and participates in cultural and identity politics in a unique fashion.

Evelyn Fishburn takes a familiar text and casts new light on it in ‘Humour and Magical Realism in El reino de este mundo’. Humour in Alejo Carpentier's famous novel, The Kingdom of this World, Fishburn argues, is political and, more importantly, it ‘provide[s] the space for the unsayable to be said’, whether that pertains to culture, religion or race.