A conceptual outline of contemporary magic practice

This paper offers a conceptual outline of contemporary magic practice that is applicable to magic performed, experienced, and commercialized as a form of entertainment. Magic is defined within a paradoxical dialectics of art and (the nonart of) work. Jacques Ranciere's ideas are used to conceive magic as (1) art: where magic is based around dissemblance (operations which alter the given) and theatrical spectacle (drama before an audience); and (2) work: where magic is embodied in the figure of the magician, which knots together ways of doing (practical knowledge; potentialities) and thinking (genealogical; teleological) in order to produce an effect of impossibility and the affect of astonishment. The paper concludes by making an argument for how theorizing magic requires thinking about and expressing paradoxical situations given that magic is enigmatic.