Further Notes on Literary Uses of Magic and Anti-Globalization in Harry Potter

[tbernhard2000]

No: HPFGUIDX 168142

So, if magic in Rowling serves to put into kids hands the tools kids
in the real world don't have, tools to change things in their world,
to influence society at large, especially when the grown-ups are
powerless to do so themselves, when their Order of the Phoenix has
fallen behind the times, and cannot influence the powers that be, from
within or from without - at least, to our eyes, and in spite of how
vigilant the theOrder is - this particular development in the
narrative coincides, when Rowling was writing the book, with large,
newsworthy anti-globalization protests in the real world, then 9/11
and so forth. The Canadian Naomi Klein writes closest to the idea I
identify in Rowling - it is leftism at its least scary and most
attractive to the mainstream.

The DA begins as an educational organization - practicing arts
forbidden them, all with the purpose of teaching students how to
defend themselves from dangers they know are real, and many of their
families know are real, but which the state denies - just as the state
denied for decades global warming and so forth. In Harry Potter, the
evil of segragation, nationalist chauvanism, racism and extremism, as
signified by the DE, sharing as it does elements of all these, all
elements practiced in the rest of the witchwizard world to a lesser
extent - as demonstrated in the history of creature rights, for
example, in OotP - are tackled head on by the students. Their story is
the story, again I say, of the raw emotional integrity of youth, which
stumbles in its unpracticed way toward verity.

Magic in Rowling provides the potential for the author to talk in an
exceedingly partisan manner about the banality of denial, the
inadequacy of normal, static institutions to deal with abuse of the
system itself, and the need for more than just vigilance, the need for
direct, uncompromising action.

dan