Image-magic in A Midsummer Night's Dream: power and modernity from Weber to Shakespeare

This article argues that the modern world is not only produced by, and\nis promoting, processes of rationalization and disenchantment, but is\nalso the site of ‘enchanting’ influences that are genuinely ‘charming’ or\n‘magical’. Such modes of influencing rely increasingly on the power of\nimages, and on theatre-like performances of words or discourses. The\nimpact takes place under conditions that, following Victor Turner’s\nwork, could be called ‘liminal’, and which can be turned through ‘imagemagic’\ninto a state of ‘permanent liminality’. A path-breaking analysis\nof such influences can be found in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s\nDream, written at a highly liminal moment in European history, the end\nof the Renaissance and the unfolding of the Reformation. It is argued\nthat the central problem of the play is the source of the power that\nmotivates, from the inside, human beings. Shakespeare attributes this\npower to images through which human beings can be incited to act, in\nparticular to fall in love, and assigns a decisive role in the manipulation\nof such images to the Trickster figure of folk-tales and myths. Such\nimage-magic makes its victims believe that they gained enlightenment,\nmaturing to reason, exactly when succumbing to its influence; while its\nlasting impact is the confusion of the senses, or the power to distinguish\nand discriminate.