New Directions in Media Ethnography Lecture Series

Debating Ethnic and Professional Identity in an Online Magicians' Forum

Graham Jones (MIT)

Friday, February 3, 4:00-5:00 

Classroom Office Building 100 (800 East Third St.)

Also, at 1:00-2:00, Classroom Office Building 272

Discussion with graduate students about his article

"Talking Text and Talking Back: ‘My BFF Jill’ from Boob Tube to YouTube”

In 2009, a young and virtually unknown magician of North African descent began making weekly appearances on a primetime French talk show, performing card tricks for invited guests. It is uncommon for magic to feature so prominently on television and, not surprisingly, magicians themselves watched closely, voicing their assessments in a thriving online forum devoted to Francophone magic culture. Eventually, this thread would swell to over 600 posts, becoming the longest, and arguably most divisive, in the forum’s ten-year history. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research among French magicians, I analyze this thread as a social drama that revealed tensions and precipitated schisms within this secretive community of entertainers. Debates about the significance of ethnic background in explaining this particular magician’s success reflected vexed attitudes towards ethnicity in contemporary France; they also articulated with questions of professional theodicy: why does anyone succeed or fail in this line of work, and what does this reveal about the cultural status of magic? In examining how considerations of ethnic and professional identity intersect within this thread, I also address the significance of the forum itself as a channel of communication with distinctive conventions and affordances.

Graham Jones is a cultural and linguistic anthropologist, whose research focuses on knowledge and rationality in practice, performance, and interaction. After studying literature at Reed College (BA, 1998) and anthropology at New York University (PhD, 2007), he was a postdoctoral member of the Princeton University Society of Fellows (2007-2010). Based on almost two years of field research, his first book explores the secretive subculture of entertainment magic in contemporary Paris, revealing how French magicians acquire the knowledge and skill necessary to produce their mystifying illusions. His related research explores the historical significance of magic in colonial spaces of intercultural performance, and the use of magic tricks as a medium for religious messages by Evangelical “gospel magicians” in the contemporary United States. He has also carried out extensive research on the linguistic dimensions of computer-mediated communication (particularly instant and text messaging), an area he continues to pursue. His new book is Trade of the Tricks: Inside the Magician's Craft (University of California Press, 2011).