Interestingly, shamanism and oral history go together in their enshrinement of subjectivity as ‘presence’. Remember that Derrida sees the written language as a potential mode of liberation from the traditional metaphysics of presence? However, this decentering of the subject specific to late industrial societies is not part and parcel of traditional societies, which still have modes of oral history, and a view that subjectivity at the ground level is a primary source of meaningfulness. Actually, it seems to me that Derrida is merely trying to find a way to accept reification (the reversal of the subject-object relationship in terms understanding the source of meaning) as inevitable – and to find a way to make it fun and endurable. The means by which shamans have fun is, however, counterposed to this: by the enshrinement of deep subjectivity as a mode of experiencing that one is real.
In Marechera’s stream of consciousness novel, Black Sunlight, there is a hybrid mode of writing, since we encounter a mixture of an oral history approach and a more writerly style in the same book. The oral history approach, with its metaphysics of presence, is evident in the spontaneous – indeed, impulsive -- nature of some of the humour in it. You get the distinct impression that Marechera is making reference, here or there, to people he actually knows or has known in his life, and to his attitudes toward them. At other times, there is a more self-conscious effort to deconstruct binaries – especially those of black and white identities, and of high and low society. So the writing both takes into account the factor of reified thinking (in terms of classes and identities)but at times also asserts a metaphysics of the author’s presence.
In Marechera’s stream of consciousness novel, Black Sunlight, there is a hybrid mode of writing, since we encounter a mixture of an oral history approach and a more writerly style in the same book. The oral history approach, with its metaphysics of presence, is evident in the spontaneous – indeed, impulsive -- nature of some of the humour in it. You get the distinct impression that Marechera is making reference, here or there, to people he actually knows or has known in his life, and to his attitudes toward them. At other times, there is a more self-conscious effort to deconstruct binaries – especially those of black and white identities, and of high and low society. So the writing both takes into account the factor of reified thinking (in terms of classes and identities)but at times also asserts a metaphysics of the author’s presence.
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