Magic and the Regulation of Desire
Making Magic February 5, 2004 Randall G. Styers
Scholars have often portrayed magic as a product of disordered desire, whether reactionary or anti-social, and as a threat to productive social order. This construction legitimates two separate channels for human needs: a spiritualized religious realm for identity and internal tensions, and a rationalized scientific realm for material manipulation. Magic serves as a stigmatized mediator between them, reinforcing the secular separation and granting capitalism and Western science instrumental control over the material world. Even recent efforts to rehabilitate magic retain key elements of the traditional distinctions among religion, magic, and science, aligning rationalized religion and science with capitalist social relations.