After the Prestige: A Postmodern Analysis of Penn and Teller

By mocking the magic community and revealing the secret behind some of their tricks, Penn and Teller perform a kind of parodic and post-modern “anti-magic.” Penn and Teller display an artful use of rhetoric; in exposing the secrets and shortcomings of conjuring, they are revolutionizing the way people think about both the art of magic and the magic community. Individuals such as Penn and Teller may use parody to subvert the hegemonic interpretations. However, we also know that it is difficult to bring down a system while operating within that system. Thus, this article explores the way Penn and Teller are challenging the metanarrative of the magic community, using several of the duo’s more popular illusions as examples for analysis. Ultimately, this paper should help us gain a better understanding of the way parody can be used to challenge hegemonic conceptions, and the limitations of this type of rhetorical approach

The Rhetorical Goddess: A Feminist Perspective on Women in Magic

Although female magicians have existed since the rise of entertainment magic, women have faced difficulty in entering the “fraternity” of the magic community. As an art form largely based around persuasion, it is useful to study the performance of magic as a text. It is additionally useful to study female magicians within this context of rhetoric. Not only will examining the rhetoric of female magicians provide insights on the rhetoric of women in this unique arena, but also of women in a historically gendered and underrepresented field. Research into this area may disclose other details regarding the communicative differences between women and men and how communication is adapted within a gendered communication paradigm

Kritiking as Agrumentative Praxis

Controversies in the realm of academic debate are often assessed with the standards used for other social science confrontations. The notion of paradigms, introduced by Thomas Kuhn (1970) to describe scientific revolutions, provides a starting point for analyzing the current conflict over kritiking. Despite this, previous discussions concerning the so-called “kritik” have focused mainly on whether it should be considered a legitimate argument form in contemporary policy debate (Berube, 1996; Katsulas, 1996/1997; Morris, 1996/1997). In this way, these discussions have become embroiled in a back-and-forth squabbling. Overcoming the tendency to steadfastly proclaim the legitimacy/illegitimacy of kritiks as an argument form is necessary if we are to extend argument theory in relation to the kritik. In an effort to explore and extend argument theory, we offer three main positions in this essay. First, we argue that there is an emerging paradigm, which we call the “questioning-assumptions paradigm” that is evolving out of a conflict with the current policy-making paradigm. After describing the current controversy between these paradigms in debate, the major arguments lodged against kritiking (as a way of viewing argument rather than as an argument form) will be explained as a way of analyzing the paradigmatic differences, especially with the concept of fiat. Second, we suggest that there is room for dialogue among these two paradigms that lies within the concept of fiat. Policy-making is concerned with what the judge does when adjudicating a “policy.” The questioning assumptions paradigm is concerned with how a judge endorses a “process,” which we call “fiat kritiking.” We argue that a bridge of compromise can be forged between these two concepts of fiat. Finally, we offer this conception of kritiking as a means of argumentative praxis, whereby argument theory is coupled with a unique experience of debate “action.” In this way, we suggest that kritiking is an exciting area for both argument theory and contemporary debate practice that, at the very least, deserves an investigation which transcends the already stale “legitimate/illegitimate” dispute that has characterized previous kritik discussions