a note on magic realism

"...magic realism presents the very process of modernization (the arrival of machines, the disintegration of old social structures) from the standpoint of the traditional 'enchanted' closed universe - from this viewpoint, of course, modernization itself looks like the ultimate magic....And do we not find something similar in the New Age cyberspace cult which attempts to ground the return to old pagan wisdom in the highest technology? (perhaps aesthetic postmodernism as such is a desperate attempt to infuse pre-modern enchantment into the process of modernization.) Thus we have a double movement of reflexive mediation: (the return to) tradition itself becomes the object of modern expertise; modernization itself becomes the ultimate in (traditional) magic..."
-from Slavoj Zizek, "The Plague of Fantasies"