magic in dissent

There is magic in unwitting, accidental or forced social dissent. That is Marechera's message to us in Scrapiron Blues. There are metaphysical principles at work: Chaos returns us to the primeval soup, which contains more possibilities than we can actually think, for regeneration. Thus, the competing social pressures that push us into a kind of madness actually open up a hole or gap within conventional reality for that which was previously unimaginable to appear.

Societies victims, therefore, occupy the privileged position of sitting upon the epicenter of socially destabilised meaning. They are bound to be mad; but they are also bound to be magical. They live beyond and between the regulating forces of rationality, beyond that which can be rationally imparted using regular language. Rather than screening their reality through a system of conventional norms and abstract concepts, they have touched unmediated reality itself -- (the noumena, in Kant's terms, or the traumatic Real as per Zizek and Lacan.) Such an experience can be felt as a visceral shaking, separating one from one's habitual modes of processing reality -- thus instigating different emerging perspectives.

This view underlies the approach of Marechera in Scrapiron Blues, whereby those who are economically, socially and physically under duress -- eg Jane in "Dreams wash walls" ( p 6, 7) and Tonderai's father (p 195 - 198) in "The Concentration Camp" -- have direct access to the spirit world. In actual fact, their imaginations take off, which enables them to perform superhuman feats of endurance (Tonderai's father under duress of torture) and defiance (Jane sees accidents that are not there, and in turn is seen as a ghost).

The other day [Jane] had a fight with a dream that refused to come. The dream was critically injured and when Jane took it to hospital she could not understand why the doctor and all the nurses could not see the severe injuries and gave her a sedative and phone Tony to come and take her home. But Tony said he was too busy washing the blood from the walls to be able to come and the doctor drove her home instead. Was there a one-plus-one somewhere?

And there was the other dream that had an accident and she had to phone the garage for the breakdown truch. The breakdown truck driver arrived within five minutes. Jane was delighted.

"You are very prompt," she said brightly.

The truck driver wildly looked around. He croaked: "But ma'am, where ... ?"

Jane pointed. The driver turned. There was nothing but the brittle, bitterly cold winter night. Hairs standing on end, the driver leapt back into his truck and with a scream of gears and shriek of tires backed away and was soon a glo-worm speck screeching down the road. Jane shook her head in disgust, puzzled. ( p 6-7)

It is clear that those who perceive a different than conventional reality, due to their traumas which cause them to have belief in their dreams, represent a destabilisation of reality for those who see only conventional things.

Tonderai's father stores up language as his "burial ship" by refusing to speak about what he knows, under torture. He is like dracular in his coffin in the basement of the ship, being carried away by the waters of life, to a future portended as death and rebirth as a liberation hero.

Sailing,
The sooty palm leaves its print
In the police stations of the galaxy;
The voice yet to sound already had echoed
In the streets of Soweto;
The sky's bullet-blue noon
Has tightened upon the trigger,
My burial ship, The Wordhorde,
Wrought from tough hardwood word ...
Sails... ( p 196)

The negative and frightening associations Marechera attaches to the qualities of his folk heros tilts the balance of power in their favour, and away from political and social conventionalism.