Randall Styers seeks to account for the extraordinary vitality of scholarly discourse purporting to define and explain magic

Engages one of the liveliest theological debates at the turn of the last century

The first sustained treatment of the metaphysical picture that grounds and motives the Comedy

Is moral life inherently creative?

In Making Magic , Randall Styers seeks to account for the extraordinary vitality of scholarly discourse purporting to define and explain magic despite its failure to do just that. He argues that this persistence can best be explained in light of the Western drive to establish and secure distinctive norms for modern identity, norms based on narrow forms of instrumental rationality, industrious labor, rigidly defined sexual roles, and the containment of wayward forms of desire.