Magical Thinking

Magical Thinking is a reader departing from the often-denigrating phrase "magical thinking", a phrase that signals to skeptics an impossibility or distortion in the connection between beliefs and reality. The compiled contributions from artists, scholars, and curators resist Western frameworks and their historically dominant visual and political regimes, instead offering invitations to see signs, relationships, and links between the material and spiritual worlds in knowledge systems from across the Global South. The reader builds upon an experimental symposium realized in November 2023 at MASS MoCA, co-convened by Laurel V. McLaughlin and manuel arturo abreu and features essays, scripts, poems, and experimental writing from abreu, DB Amorin, Jonathan Gonzalez, fields harrington, McLaughlin, Africanus Okokon, sidoney o'neal, M. NourbeSe Philip, Emilio Rojas, Rebecca Scheider, and S*an D. Henry-Smith, designed by Common Space Studios, founded by Jon Santos.