Ps <---> D

According to my understanding of Bion, the mechanism of projective identification functions in terms of our need to have others process emotional material into a digestible (and communicable) form for us.

"I cannot tolerate this state of mind -- you have it," is the preconscious motive governing projective identification. Actually it is only a part of our mind that we require the other to have, the part that arouses anxiety. To complicate matters further, the specific (and often idiosyncratic) nature of our anxiety is itself a product of the way we have been nurtured -- our social conditioning.

So, we require that others use their minds, or sometimes their bodies, to process that which we fear we cannot. We require them to use their minds in such cases as when we are leaning upon them for support -- then they become the processing "container" for our undigested thoughts (or Beta elements, to use Bion's term). We require them to use their bodies to remove our anxieties from us when we treat them as a scapegoat, and label them with the negative qualities that are in us, actually or potentially, which we do not wish to face.

Projective identification needn't take an extremely severe or pathological form.   Rather, it is incredibly common in milder formulations, where people engage in deeper conversations than talking about the weather. Whenever we look to another to corroborate a feeling or perspective, we are requiring them to process more thoroughly our thoughts for us -- ie. turn Beta elements (unexpressed intuitions) into Alpha elements (ideas that make sense.) This involves projective identification of the other as one who can take on the burden of our intuitions for us, and make sense out of them.

In the exact same way, whenever we are in need of processing our Beta elements into Alpha elements, we are in the process of moving material from its undigested form in the Paranoid-schizoid to the Depressive field (the comparably less exciting state of mind that accepts that others have their own sensibilities, that may differ in many ways from yours).

Artists are the same as everyone else, in that they follow this pattern whereby the pendulum of their awareness swings between Ps D. The only difference is the swing of the pendulum, for artistically aware types is more extreme than is statistically normal. Also, rather than using others for their projective identification, the artist uses his or her art as "container" -- a means to give public form to his or her privately held questions about existence.

Kant and shamanistic journeying

According to Erich Rhode [On Hallucination, Intuition and the Becoming of "0"], who refers to the expertise of the psychoanalyst, Wilfred Bion, the psychological reduction of human experience to the contexts defined by space and time is a defence mechanism against knowledge (the gaining of which does not sit comfortably with the body’s sense of satisfaction) ( p 43):

The Kantian conception of experience as grounded in the grid of space and time is one of the systems by which mind defends itself against the impact of truth. People unable to use space and time as modes of defense, who keep slipping out of the skin of being a personality in “their own day and age” are most prone to catastrophic change and possibly to be creative. ( pp 43, 44)

a key component of my knowledge

The schizoid element in the personality [..] “dreads emotional experience” […].He/she asks, “What is the point of railing against your lot when it will (apparently) do no good, and when nothing will change?” This meeting [that Job endures] with what seems like the insuperable power of the other/reality is what destroys the individual. […]

[Later Job], has “stood up like a man”. It is not, a question, ultimately of right or wrong, winning or losing, Job has gained not because he triumphed over God – he has not (he “repents in dust and ashes”)—but because he has become congruent with, and has integrated, his emotional core. [Marcus West, Feeling, Being and the Sense of Self, p 229, 230]

I see this destructive encounter with "God" as shamanistic, for it renews the psyche/soul.

kicking it

I did a few rounds of padwork today and felt good about it. It was good to move around the ring, whilst kicking and hitting full force. I'm feeling good in general about things, although a little weak, due to seasonal allergies (which are just beginning to subside). I need to develop my general base of fitness more than ever now. I have been working hard and am consolidating my wins. I have new ideas of starting and living on a hobby farm. A part of me yearns for rural life. I read books about Kleinian theory today, and once again concluded that Wilfred Bion upholds the least static paradigm of the healthy human mind. My general sense is that those psychoanalytic approaches that view emotional states as suspect do not tend to promote a healthy constitution, but invite too many constitutional compromises with thanatos.

the madonna versus the medusa

It seems to me that the purpose of the psychological concept of "the feminine" (--I am always wondering what that is--) is to create a definite gestalt (foreground-background outline) for feminine figures. The conceptual characteristics of "the feminine" are initially sought for, in the preliminary wandering of the eye over the field. Finally, once they are alighted upon, the outline of a "feminine" character comes into view. This is reassuring, since one has found what one was looking for.

Supposing, however, one sets out in anticipation of discovering a feminine object. One perceives, in the field of vision, certain characteristics that roughly align with denotations of "the feminine". Yet, ultimately, the outline is not firm, the characteristics keep wavering, the object of vision seems to continue to shift. Would not the failure of the potential "feminine object" to stay within the lines of conceptual demarcation of femininity produce the sense of a "part object" rather than a whole object? The failure to encounter a "whole object" through the conceptual lens of "femininity" (the search for the feminine object) is likely to produce persecutory anxiety, as perception of part-objects refers the mind back to the paranoid-schizoid position of early childhood.

Is it possible that the inherent structural failure of the concept of "femininity" to return to the perceiver a pure enough feminine object, leading in turn to perscutory anxiety as one is left with only a "part object" (the parts of the object that remain feminine), is the cause of misogyny? The failure of the object to appear consistently with the characteristics expected of it produces a shattering of perception, which is threatening to the would-be perceiver of the complete feminine object. This is starting to sound a lot like castration anxiety, but I believe it is only partly related to that -- since here the mechanism of "castration" is in the faulty conceptualisation of "the feminine" as well as in the faulty anticipation of it.

Anyway, my experiences tell me that I'm onto something here. Those who do not encounter an outline of the object, which consistently represents "feminine" qualities, in a way that since the gestalt is firm, would be soothing, tend to encounter a Medusa instead, and this is not because of anything that women are doing, but due to a faulty conceptualisation of "the feminine".

YELLOW

You are very perceptive and smart. You are clear and to the point and have a great sense of humor. You are always learning and searching for understanding.

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Diving down low

Ehrenzweig speaks of those who cannot descend to a state of psychological dedifferentiation because they have an aspect of the self that has crystallized at the surface level of the psyche. He mentions the aesthetic "mannerism" that he perceives the schizophrenic to be dependent upon, for his sense of normality. A natural counterpart of this aesthetic mannerism would be the tendency to treat reality through a lens of stereotyping vision (we can raise such issues here of gender and race).

Maintaining predictability on the level of normal social discourse is key in preventing the tenuously stable person's descent into psychosis. It is as if such people wanted to dive deep into the psyche, but part of them remains buoyant, as if a leg-rope on a buoy tugs their ankle, forcing them to rise again (or risk going crazy by attempting refusal to come to the surface -- a brave position for some to take indeed).

Psychological formations can cause one to become attached to representational normality as if it were a matter of one's sheer survival to keep oneself anchored to them. In his book, The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Unknown, Christopher Bollas describes a condition of "Normotic illness", whereby people are out of touch with the subjective world. He quotes the following from Winnicot on page 135:

[T]here are [those]who are so firmly anchored in objectively perceived reality that they are ill [in the sense of] being out of touch with the subjective world and with the creative approach to fact (Winnicot 1971).

This is an extreme example of being trapped by surface accretions, whereby the surface "known" always stands in place of subjective possibilities governed by the sphere of the unknown (which could be made manifest via the intuitive imagination to the conscious mind).

In any case, the ability to dive down, to deflate ego as if it were a diving vest that needed to be emptied, is for the few.

I don't see why we cannot call these few the "shamans" of the intellectual subconscious.

great health

Here is the key to Marechera’s shamanism: It is to be found in his ability to gain astounding insights whilst cognitively undergo a level of ego deflation (which, of course, he relates to us in a state of mind that is moderated by cognitive maturity). This is a useful state of mind employed by artists, that Anton Erenhzweig terms “dedifferentiation” (and which pertains to the pre-oedipal field) -- whereby one thing melts into another, whereby male and female, black and white identities no longer seem to exist. Once all the solid elements of reality have been reduced as part-pieces of a primeval “oneness”, the hidden relationships between these elements can be explored.

NOTE: Unlike those of the Kleinian schools, Jungians don't use the term, "pre-Oedipal" to imply evil or pathology in an unambiguous way.  Jungians see this putative early childhood level of consciousness as being simply different from the rational, adult norm.  It's a realm of transformation and mystical consciousness.  We all have components of that  in us; the ability to see ourselves as part of life's  great oneness.

Facing them in their relatively molten state of cognitive “dedifferentiation”, Marechera is able to see new alignments of the dynamic forces that constitute identity, and to reintegrate the elements at will, into his artistic and Utopian political vision. What is shamanistic about this is that he appears to see, as it were, the spiritual counterparts of concrete social and historical identities, as being more than fixed in the solidity of the Rhodesian world, in terms, for instance of the crystalline identity of the white master and his black servant. Instead, Marechera’s viewpoint is inherently redemptive (politically and artistically), for he views those he comes across in terms of their unconditioned potentialities -- in Marechera’s terms, “all the souls that didn’t come out of the womb with you” and not just in terms of their limits within the historically contingent sphere of actually existing reality. Indeed the notion of “probabilities” (as per the waves versus particles idea of physics elucidated by Bohm and Bion), and a deepening awareness of group dynamics See: Bion) are employed very effectively by this writer. One’s identity in the pre-Oedipal field is also a product of probability – as in Black Sunlight. Wave theory is unto particle theory as the unconscious is to the conscious mind. I would also like to suggest a shamanistic turn: wave theory is to particle theory as is the “spiritual self” in relation to its actualised fact (and contextually limited actuality). Work produced on the basis of a cognitively dedifferentiated sense of the world, may be grasped by the reader not logically -- that is in terms of cause and effect, or in terms of a subject and his field -- but intuitively and holistically at a subliminal and visceral level.

Marechera’s contemporary shamanism is obviously very creative as well as being politically purposeful. Its construction evokes in the mind of the reader the three stages of artistic process defined by Anton Ehrenweig. There is first the breaking down of reality, by deliberate cognitive dedifferentiation, next is the rearrangement of the elements of cognition in a new artistic pattern (did the ancient rock painters engage in this same process?). Finally, Ehrenweig points to a stage of reassimilation of the features created in the work of art, under the guidance of unconscious processes, into the conscious awareness of the artist who created the work. This final stage is what lies behind the conventional acclamation of the shaman’s psychological “great health”, and the artist’s higher level of insight.

The lizard brain, and ideologies as political functions that stem from intolerable anxiety

Unless my studies have deceived me, our collective and individual intolerable anxieties are the progenitors of morality. Of course, viewed on an individual level, we all have different breaking points, different points whereupon anxiety becomes intolerable -- and we have different experiences, too, some bound to impress upon us a feeling that they are more or less tolerable that others.

Morality, however, tends not to be so much individually determined as it is conventionally instituted by various arms of society, governing social order. Convention thus creates "fault lines", or, if you prefer, predetermined 'paths of least resistance' within society, through which collective and individual anxieties can be discharged.

Convention has developed a system of patriarchy, which may have had practical value in earlier times, in terms of co-ordinating a division of labour based on gender lines. These days, there is little need for such a system of gendered division of labor -- nonetheless gender ideologies still prevail and there are still those who get to pull the strings, and those who must dance -- patriarchy now fulfils a role of permitting those who have the greater share of power to discharge their anxieties. Of course others will have to pay for proclivities of those who cannot tolerate a higher level of anxiety than they are used to.

Those whose nervous systems are relatively delicate will break-out in a fit of moral fervor after a very low level of outside stimulation. Others will be different and make a few guarded remarks only at the highest levels of anxiety whilst they seek to manage reality's effects.

Interesting how most modern day "Nietzscheans" choose to be insulated by patriarchy's little moral buffer, finding automatic reprieve from social anxiety through embracing a conventionalised system of morality aimed against women. I'm sure they feel no anxiety at all, because it is already pre-emptively dealt with for them, thanks to the predominant value systems of Judeo-Christianity that are, fortuitously for them, ready to be invoked. Yet one doesn't admire these latter day patriarchs for their particular mode of anxiety reduction.

***

Note:

1) It isn't wrong or even a sign of weakness to experience anxiety. It's what you do or do not do with that sensation that is telling.

2) It's not necessarily wrong or a sign of weakness to go to war if someone is constantly infringing on your space, which causes you ongoing anxiety. It is the best management of anxiety, sometimes, to use your nervous energy to defend your mind and body. Just don't do it in a way that pretends you are doing something different -- i.e. domestic abuse is a sign of inner weakness, so don't abuse others just because you are anxious.  

Free Roy Bennett and Jestina Mukoko

"Such feminine nonsense!"

One of the most preturbing phenomena one has to encounter in present day society is from those who would remove the elements of nourishment from a meal by a need to over-refine it. By "meal", I mean intellectual meal -- that is, the nourishment for the soul.

You can see what they've already done with Nietzshe's philosophy, with the philosophy of one who insisted on the plurality of "gods". They've reduced it to a blueprint for the male (however he might appear in the world) as the absolute default for godliness. "Let there be no god, other than this ideological default, the male who by virtue of being born male is the one."

It's a sorry state of affairs, because most males are entirely valueless on the basis of their simple maleness. Therefore, the blueprint that is supposed to produce the raised status to the level of being godlike is based purely on anatomical function. The male rises and falls on the basis of his anatomical function, according to these interpreters of Nietzsche. However, generally, his anatomical function can be disregarded as less than godlike. There is really little to it, in and of itself. This means that the one God that the present day Nietzsche- followers have set up for us to praise and worship is really a poor example of anything intrinsically interesting and worthwhile.

The ideology of "oneness" has a lot to answer for. It can also have a very negative effect when it comes to communicating the full complexity of human experience. It's very difficult to do so through the mediating screen that turns every idea into a feature of oneness (whether in terms of one identity, one "soul", or one system of values.)

Suppose I go bungee jumping and report the experience thus:

"I tell you, my feet felt as if to slip through my head. It was the most unusual thing!'

The idea of phenomenological strangeness ought not to be too difficult to understand, especially if the description is understood within its context of the adventure of the bungee jump, (along with the cultural understanding of what a bungee jump is, and the psychological understanding that some people do things just for the sense of thrill.)

Yet you will meet those who struggle to reconcile such a description with their own sense of what a human being is, within a postulated system of oneness.

"People's feet don't slip through their heads," they will pronounce, with a preturbed look upon their faces.

"Such feminine nonsense!"

The Hidden Order of Art

I learned from reading my book on The Hidden Order of Art, by Anton Ehrenzweig, that Marechera's art is certainly not "schizophrenic".

Ehrenzweig recognises that it is a feature of schizophrenic art that its makers can't let go of reference to certain surface quality, or form of aesthetic mannerism. They are afraid of the plunge into a state marked by the melting down of aesthetic and ideological preconceptions -- a "dedifferentiated" state, to use Ehrenweig's term. Since they can't take the necessary plunge into death (or ego suppression) that would produce an artistic awareness of an underlying aesthetic wholeness despite fragmentation (a state approaching the oceanic state -- ie. based on dedifferentiation between the background field and foreground image), their work is only superficially constructed -- fragmented for sure, but without the underlying aesthetic (and, one might add, philosophical) unity of the final piece, which would give it its underlying harmony even in the process of being fragmented (like the success of Stravinsky's music, which Marechera much admired).

So schizophrenics fear compromising the ego in order to produce art (it feels too much like annihilation or death to let go of established forms to the degree that is required of them to make good art), and as a they result struggle to produce art with any meaningful underlying unity. Interesting, then, that his underlying thematic and philosophical unity is exactly what I do find in Marechera's writing, again and again. The themes are interwoven aesthetically -- not fragmented, except on the surface level as is also the case with so much Modern art (as Ehrenzweig points out).

It is the critics, however, according to Ehrenzweig, who often lag behind in the perception of art. They lack the capacity to take in a deep breath and to plunge deeply.

three phases of creativity

From this book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520038452

Actually, I had already written down a note (before I read this book) exactly to the effect that for an artist such as Marechera, one's "art" becomes "the other" which restores the missing parts of one's self to the sense of the whole.

-----

"Good art teaching (and creativity itself) is dependent on a greater than usual tolerance of anxiety because of the need to work through one's total personality. This requires a more than average strength of the ego. It is wrongly thought that creative people thrive on neurotic illness. This is not so. The philistine can ignore his illness by living with only a part of his personality and can keep his illness from showing. The creative person faces his illness and its attending anxieties so that they noisily dominate his behaviour. But he is not more neurotic for this reason; rather the reverse is true. If satisfactory human relationships are proof of mental health, as is universally accepted, then the creative mind is healthy through establishing at least one good object relationship: with his own work acting as an independent being. He is able to accept what Adrian Stokes has called the "otherness" of the work of art. This acceptance requires the entire apparatus of projection, integration, and introjection, which is part of any good relationship." p 108--emphasis mine.

"Trust us"

Freud surely knew that the most essential part of psychoanalysis was in terms of its orientation towards the mastery (if not quite the overcoming) of anxiety. That is the reason behind his reprimanding of Jung, for ostensibly entertaining mystical ideas instead of dealing with "the difficult question of sexuality" [quote is from the book, Freud and His Mother]. The difficulty of the question of sexuality is because of its psychological relationship to anxiety -- and certainly strongly so for Sigmund Freud, who was of his time and place, and experienced his culture's extreme repression towards sexual issues.

Anxiety and how we cope with it seems to be the subject of psychoanalysis. Yet Freud himself stopped at a particular point in confronting the matter on a few occasions, not least in terms of the question of incest, from which he backed away, believing it to be a fantasy without its counterpart of concrete expression in the real world.

A pre-emptive denial of the basis for the sort of anxiety which could go beyond a certain point of stressing the psyche is built into Freud's system. Freud denied incest because the thought of it was too stressful. The elimination of incest in the world was henceforth to be based upon the principle of repression of its signs, an attempt to transcend its effects, rather than combating it as a pathological manifestation of desire (on the part of insane parents), within the world of concrete human relations.

Besides incest, are there other Freudian "unthinkables"? One might suggest among these the following empirically-verifiable possibilities, acknowledgment of which would produce the highest levels of anxiety in the human psyche: the leader who doesn't seek to serve his followers; and the parent who isn't wholesome and good.

The premature reduction of anxiety (by repression and denial) in the face of these possibilities is the path to the concentration camp ...  in a mode of blissful trust.

Wilfred Bion & Bataille versus Jacques Lacan

Key to Bion's work is the idea that people need to express what would become a "nameless dread" if it were to stay outside of the field of society and specifically, socially rendered intelligibility. Bion's is a dualistic model of the mind, just as Lacan's is, but there is much more of a direct metaphysical continuity between Bion's "unconscious" and the articulate, socially structured mind, than there is with regard to Lacan's viewpoint.

For Bion, the unconscious is experiential reality that hasn't been articulated. Indeed, the unconscious can never be fully articulated because it is multidimensional (has, in effect, more dimensions to it than we can simultaneously process with our rational minds). Articulation, therefore, is always a process of simplifying (indeed, oversimplifying for the sake of managing) that which is irreducibly complex. From my reading of Lacan, there is a complete transition from the prearticulate level of the infant's experience of the world, to the articulate social interpretation of the experience. His is a more complete mind-body dualism -- dividing  the rational from the irrational aspects of experience, in a way that is designed to be practically impossible and thus makes place for the Catholicism of "sin" as an automatic part of the human experience, since we must all fall short of the Ideal.

But for Bion, the unconscious is the damming up of experiential reality, and the work to be done is in the further interpretation -- the actually simplifying -- of memory, to make it manageable, and to reduce the feeling of "nameless dread" (as it were, by giving the dread a name and a social context and meaning). The naming of the "nameless dread" is the social contextualisation of it by means of  an objectively recognised form (in words). This is like opening the floodgates to allow the water to go through the wall of the dam.

But we can see the role of the artist in all of this -- to convert nameless dread into something that is socially meaningful. Thus the interpretive movement between the "paranoid-schizoid position" of disintegrated self and inarticulate experience, towards the "depressive position" (of simplified and linguistically reduced meanings, which, nonetheless "make sense" socially).

The Bion model is also shamanistic: the subject mediates between the multidimensional space of the unconscious field** (in some senses the "spirit world") and everyday, limited three-dimensional reality, which can be articulated and can be expressed rationally.

One might add to this understanding Bataille's perspective.  So long as one does not express oneself in language, one keeps hold of the unbroken whole of experiential reality:  this splinters as one speaks of it.

Bataille takes his understanding of the nature of subjective experience and its oftentimes antagonistic relationship to language from Nietzsche, who says:

Ultimately, what does it mean to be ignoble?—Words are sound signals for ideas, but ideas are more or less firm image signs for sensations which return frequently and occur together, for groups of sensations. To understand each other, it is not yet sufficient that people use the same words; they must use the same words also for the same form of inner experiences; ultimately they must hold their experience in common with each other. That’s why human beings belonging to a single people understand each other better among themselves than associations of different peoples, even when they themselves use the same language; or rather, when human beings have lived together for a long time under similar conditions (climate, soil, danger, needs, work), then something arises out of that which “understands itself,” a people. In all souls, a similar number of frequently repeating experiences have won the upper hand over those which come more rarely; people understand each other on the basis of the former, quickly and with ever-increasing speed—the history of language is the history of a process of abbreviation. On the basis of this rapid understanding, people bind with one another, closely and with ever-increasing closeness. The greater the danger, the greater the need quickly and easily to come to agreement over what needs to be done; not to misunderstand each other when in danger is what people simply cannot do without in their interactions. With every friendship or love affair people still make this test: nothing of that sort lasts as soon as people reach the point where, with the same words, one of the two feels, means, senses, wishes, or fears something different from the other one. (The fear of the “eternal misunderstanding”: that is the benevolent genius which so often prevents people of different sexes from over-hasty unions, to which their senses and hearts urge them—and not some Schopenhauerish “genius of the species”!—). Which groups of sensations within the soul wake up most rapidly, seize the word, give the order—that decides about the whole rank ordering of its values, that finally determines its tables of goods. The assessments of value in a man reveal something about the structure of his soul and where it looks for its conditions of life, its essential needs. Now, assume that need has always brought together only such people as could indicate with similar signs similar needs, similar experiences, then it would generally turn out that the easy ability to communicate need, that is, in the last analysis, familiarity with only average and common experiences, must have been the most powerful of all the forces which have so far determined things among human beings. People who are more similar and more ordinary were and always have been at an advantage; the more exceptional, more refined, rarer, and more difficult to understand easily remain isolated; in their isolation they are subject to accidents and rarely propagate themselves. People have to summon up huge counter-forces to cross this natural, all-too-natural progressus in simile [advance into similarity], the further training of human beings into what’s similar, ordinary, average, herd-like—into what’s common. [my emphasis]

**Godwin, Robert W "Wilfred Bion and David Bohm: Toward a Quantum Metapsychology. ." Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought 14.4 (1991): 625-54  

Marechera's underword: black orpheus

If Marechera’as self-exile from the world of conventional mores had a reason, then that reason was to repair an internal sense of loss. According to Alan Collier Ostby, H. Ellenberger (The Discovery of the Unconscious, 1970) says traditional healers saw psychological problems in terms of “soul loss” (Otsby p 166). Contemporary object relations thinking of the psychoanalytic school speaks, instead, in terms of “object loss”, however the qualities of sickness they are describing are, in phenomenological terms,  similar, one presumes, apart from the obvious cause of cultural differences, which contextualise this inner sense of loss in different ways. To place oneself into a mode of temporary exile facilitates an opportunity to recover the lost “object” that is experienced as a lost part of one’s self. The partially regressive return to the “womb” -- that is to a state of mind where reality is dealt with on simpler terms than those on which a healthy adult would normally be inclined to deal with it -- can facilitate healing. Restoration of the lost object would restore one’s hope in humanity, enabling re-integration into the social realm of everyday human relations.

Such psychological regression turns toward the psychologically receptive mode of the pre-oedipal field, wherein reality appears to be defined less by society and more by one’s internal object relations. This state of being involves the apertures of the mind narrowing to limit the data taken in from the outside world, to emphasise the particular nature of the internal dynamics of love, hate and knowledge (ref. Bion) that give one one's idiosyncratic design, thus make one who one is. Marechera’s refusal to adopt the mantle of social conformity, to fit into his society, was based on his need to continue his “soul journey” to find the lost parts of his being that would enable him to feel whole.

What were these parts in particular, that he felt he had lost? Indications from reading his book of Hararean exile, Mindblast, give the strong impression, through many different textual “clues”, that what he sought was to continue his life in a peaceful Zimbabwean society, from childhood on up, that would have nurtured him as part of it. The breakout of civil war (the Second Chimurenga), which began in earnest around 1966, around the time that Marechera’s father was suddenly killed in a road accident, destroyed the sense of normal everyday life for the teenage Marechera. This loss of internal security, a loss emphasized still more in his mind through the increasing intensity of war in the society at large, robbed him of the sense of security he required to feel “at one” with himself. Henceforth, he could no longer believe in “society” and had lost it as an object of love.

Having lost his belief in this object – society – he also lost his feeling of security that would have enabled him to be at peace with himself. In a shamanistic sense, Marechera was suffering from “soul loss”. His stint as a tramp on the streets of Harare was designed to simplify life in such a way that he would be able to focus his mind on finding something valuable and emotionally precious that would stand in as a replacement for that original loss, and would have enabled him to integrate himself more effectively into society.

In Mindblast, Harare is a “womb” for Marechera not just in the sense that it is the place with which he identifies as the core and origin of his Zimbabwean identity.  Like Orpheus, he is in search of his lost other half, and he hopes to find in the world of the dead. In Harare is both a place of psychical regression and a “hell” -- where the author struggles with a sense of the ethereal nature of his art against a countervailing reality of middle-class lifestyles, devoid of meaning or depth.

thesis on hallucinosis by Alan Collier Ostby

Now I am reading about gender in this thesis on hallucinosis by Alan Collier Ostby .

Apparently "Guntrip (1969) traces through the history of Western civilisations the strong pattern of denying human weakness and claims that the field of psychology has followed this pattern by using the depression model, following the Persian Zoroastrian dualism repeated in Plato, Greek intellectual life, St. Paul, Hegel, and Freud. In this model, the best that humans can do is to reign [sic] in our antisocial desires by choosing to follow the rules that many not fulfil us, but at least stop us from hurting others." ( p 144)

A few paragraphs later, the thesis goes on to say: "We would [prefer to] believe that we are bad, but strong, rather than weak."

It then states that "the feminine is the Western scapegoat." ( p 145).

Now what I see about this puzzle which revolves around Western metaphysical constructions, is that psychologically speaking, the "feminine" can function as a scapegoat only to the degree that it is connected to the masculine. It is the scapegoat of the masculine in the sense that it is derivative, practically, from the masculine, as a cast off bit (of the mind) that originates in the metaphysical conceptualisation (and psychological self-conceptualisation) of the masculine. Yet if one denies the connection of femininity to masculinity, if both "aspects" were to become absolute conditions in their own right (that is, if "femininity" were not the casts- off of male unwanted parts), then we would not longer have a unified system of meaning, made up of masculinity and femininity (as patriarchy presupposes), but rather, antinomy. I think this is very interesting, because accepting a status of femininity -- BUT ONLY IF IT IS DEEMED ABSOLUTE -- will logically produce antinomy in the psychological system of gender, causing it to auto-destruct.

paper for presentation to the humanist society

http://home.iprimus.com.au/scratchy888/PAPER%20FOR%20PRESENTATION.htm


This paper does not attack Nietzsche, but his contemporary followers, who are often just a different kind of Christian in their blundering hostility towards anything that isn't them.

http://home.iprimus.com.au/scratchy888/contemporary%20shamanism.htm

Mindblast

http://home.iprimus.com.au/scratchy888/MINDBLAST%20CHAPTER.htm

thus I set the captives free

In accordance with the myth of Oedipus, too much self-knowledge is dangerous, as it leads to self-blinding. What feeling or emotion specifically leads to this violent solution of turning upon oneself with such hostility? It is the feeling of guilt -- of having wronged the natural order of things, of having denied, destroyed or maligned the good intentions of one's parents without meaning to. The good intentions of one's parents, what were they? To be free from harm, the harm that would inevitably take place within their peaceful sphere if one were to arrive in full adulthood. Hence a decision to remain a child, so as not to fulfil the ghastly prophesy of the oracle would represent an ultimate commitment to morality as such. One destroys oneself as a matter of good will towards one's elders so as not to end up unwittingly destroying them.

Sometimes a facilitator, like Rix the giant cat [Prologue p 45], can help one to make the right choice:

"Well, Grimknife, we are in this together. I am here to help you. Help you become a useful citizen."
"What's that--a useful citizen?"
"Someone who does what he is told. Someone who says exactly what others say. Someone who is the splitting image of Duty, Responsibility and Patriotism." (p 45)

This is the meaning of becoming civilised rather than remaining a wild man. One cannot simply be a "natural" person who has "never thought" (p 46). One cannot simply mind one's own business. (p 47). "Your business should further the aims of the P.E. (p 47)" [Progressive Effort (p 45)]. If failing to meet this goal, much is at stake, for the morality of conformity is ultimately not a question of free will as it is represented as being. It is a matter of necessity:

"There is something I have been ordered to tell you." [Rix] dropped his voice into a legal monotone. "if by midnight tonight you have not experienced the transformation we demand of you then you will be taken from this place to a place of execution and there hanged by the neck till you are dead. That is all." ( p 49)

In the sections of the prologue that follow and take us to its end, the "mental delinquent who had been dragged here to be reoriented" ( p 45) dissociates from the threat of his imminent death, and becomes ... something else through an act of the imagination:

Even the youth's voice had changed. And the youth's eyes were glowing, luminous, brighter even than the blisteringly bright moon. (p 50)

It is the imminence of trauma that produces the spark of the imagination in such luminosity, facilitated as it is by a desire to be someone else, somewhere else. This is the quintessential shamanistic recourse to "soul journey" -- a capacity of the one who has been deeply wounded to the core of his being.

Psychological woundedness produces visionary imagination and a peculiar form of insight -- shamanistic vision -- that is unbeholden to authoritarian mores. Those who take heed of Rix's instructions to abide by standards imposed by others accept self-blinding (especially with regard to the fact that one abides by the law because one is coerced, and not of one's personal volition). However, the shaman's potential guilt is purged by the wounding he has received from society itself. The wounding balances the scales of justice, settling the score in terms of anything the initiate may have owed to society as a guilt-offering. It thus opens his eyes and frees him from the blinding contract that commands the fate of Oedipus. (Shamans of old are depicted in cave paintings with spears inserted into their sides.)

Psychological woundedness is the way out of psychological conformity.

Chapter Two (after a depiction of the poet wandering the streets, hungry) starts like this:

The knife slid into Buddy's side. He screamed, kicking out. Hewing with all his remaining strength a stunning blow at the face swimming before him.

What or who is this knife? It is surely Grimknife Jr, from the earlier part of the text, initiating another shaman, paying his psychological debt for him.

What is it exactly that a shaman can see? The rest of the story indicates that it has something to do with the extreme highs and lows of life, the products of extreme self-determination.

Patriarch

Ultimately, with those of a patriarchal persuasion (most of them unconsciously so), they key point is to get them to take responsibility for themselves -- for their own actions and behaviour. A committed patriarch is generally unable to do this one essential thing that would enable him to justifiably claim an ethical position. He is too used to leaning upon others, psychologically and emotionally, to have learned the kind of rugged independence of mind (through reflection upon personal experience) that would lead to self-knowledge.

POSTURE: Let us see how he boxes in the ring. He lunges forward with a crazy swing that decenters him, causing him to overcommit his punch. The obvious reason for this is that he expects not to be hit back. His whole movement and posture is constantly a little bit decentred. It is that lack of finding and using his own centre of gravity, located low and in the hips, that will easily undo him.

STRATEGY: Since the patriarch lacks grace of movement, the best approach with him is to become a moving target. Wait for the overcommited lunging punch, which is as inevitable as fleas on rats, and then subtly transfer your position to the left or right of him. He is unlikely to register that he hasn't hit his target until too late. From your position to the side of him, you may choose to counterattack. If feeling unusually sadistic, you may choose to simply watch him making the same mistake again, each time dodging the hapless fighter. If he keeps on doing the same thing, he will at long last tire himself out, at which point you can move in for the coup de grace.

winning

One of the sparring techniques that I'd always been aware of --but somehow never quite practiced-- is that of crowding in on the other person, your opponent. It was reinforced to me a few weeks ago in the private lessons. It is your task and duty to do precisely that, to dominate the centre of the ring, whilst pushing the other person to its peripheries, "against the ropes".

I'd known about this, but for some reason never practiced it, most likely because I felt that I still had a lot to learn about technique and so on without resorting to "mind games" (which could have been an easy forte).

Yet, 'mind games' have to take primacy when you are physically weaker, or when self-preservation is preferred to an outlay of maximum effort along with maximum risk. (My enjoyment of risk for its own sake means that I often don't see what should be palpably self-evident.)

The feeling of being crowded is something special in boxing. It feels like being overwhelmed to the point that you cannot think or intuit clearly how to respond. It feels like becoming that mythical gendered beast, the female hysteric. The point is to try to make the other person feel that way, whilst taking steps -- literal steps -- to evade the corners or the edges of the ring, where one can be made to feel this sensation.

It's a lot easier to evade the corners when one has a mind to do so --that is, when one sets this goal as a top priority. Evading the corners with great speed also means that one is moving quickly, which will enable one to find the interesting angles on the opponent -- the open jaw line coming in from the right, the exposed rib cage, the belly when crossing in with a roundhouse from the left.

In political battles, the stakes are about the same, and the feelings of either dominating or of losing one's mind are also to be encountered here. To stay cool when one is in the corner, "against the ropes" and the subject of mental crowding is what we train for. To be able to still the mind to look for an opening when the whole world is raining down upon one's head is the name of the game.

Those who take more blows than they hand out are often deemed "hysterics" in the world of politics and life -- however there is rarely consideration given as to whether those who dominate and those defending are actually going pound for pound. The "hysterics" of the world can have more courage per mass size than the clear winners do. Size in on the side of one, whilst mental strength is on the side of the other.

Encountering audacity in the works of Marechera

MINDBLAST

One of the most significant ways in which Marechera’s work has been misunderstood – and certainly underestimated – is in the sense that his “confessions” about his life have been interpreted within a primarily moral register (as, for instance, in David Pattison’s approach), rather than in terms of an epistemological register, exemplifying rigourous self-knowledge.

In Marechera’s life and the manner in which he reflected upon it, I do not see a Romantic Steppenwolf type of character, as Veit-Wild does. I can see how Marechera’s confessions concerning himself and his view of the world as “unreal” in the manner of the shamanistic experiences of “Don Juan” [ref] could lead to this impression, that he lived life recklessly and without concern for its reality. However, to assume that this was all there was to Marechera is to overlook the fact that a writer who uses himself as the subject of his writing does not remain the subject of his self-portrayal. That is, in the ‘act’ of portraying himself, he has transcended himself and his subjectivity, and is portraying that subjectivity in a light that is necessarily apart from the subjectivity that is being represented. This automatic doubling of the self is the methodological key to effective memoir writing. One never writes a memoir as “one’s self”, but always from a point of epistemological distance from that self, at a point from which one has already become “other”. To put this necessity concerning writing into a different perspective – Marechera writes Black Sunlight from a pre-oedipal perspective, whereby he apparently wallows in the immanence of his self-concepts. Nonetheless, the self that pertains to a very egoistic and very adult understanding of one’s own political self-interest frames and guides the structural development of this work. The self that experiences the world and the self that takes note of the experience and determines its value in an overall conceptual view of one’s relationship to reality are two very different selves. It is the latter self of Marechera that is wise. However, it has been the former definition of self – the merely experiential (but not necessarily reflective) self – that many critics have chosen to focus on, as if this were all there were to Marechera and his writing. Thus many critics have judged him superficially according to his “behaviour”, rather than in terms of the audacity of his self-knowledge, which was what actually led him to the destitution of the park benches of Harare.

Rigour

If there is an aspect of contemporary society that I'm allergic to, it is a consumerist orientation in the place of rigour.

Perhaps all of my previous wandering in the wilderness of the Internet has been in search of this particular fibre in my intellectual diet. I've needed to obtain a grasp on rigour -- what that is and how it functions. It has always dismayed me deeper than I can express when those whom I think should have known better betray a rigorous attitude for truth by opting for an approach that is simply showy or designed to give them rhetorical clout.

You can't, for instance, attack a group of feminists for their "ideology" and then gp crying to mummy when they insist on pointing out that the basis for your own "critique" is a lack of rigour (in this case, scientific). That is like jumping into the sparring ring and paddling the air with your fists (because you lack the skills that come from rigorous training) and then complaining that you got hit too hard because people -- especially feminists -- are unkind.

What is rigour? It is following a train of thought to its logical conclusions, even if you do not like the conclusions at the end. That is, you don't merely choose a conclusion, as it were from the 'supermarket of life' and go in to fight for it. Your conclusion itself has to be well formulated (like a good right cross) -- that is, well substantiated.

Intellectual rigour involves the ability to persist with something because it is right and true, and not because you feel you have found a method to get high returns for minimal investment. (If anything, the opposite is true. Rigour, in principle, goes against the grain of learned techniques of capitalist exploitation.)

To make a fetish out of what you've chosen from what seems to be the intellectual 'supermarket of life' could give minor intrigue to an otherwise boring and unpalatable existence. Yet in a field governed by rigour, one is outclassed, so beware.

Marechera (Scrapiron Blues) chapter notes...

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And now we hurry right along to start the next and last chapter.

My dream last night was enlightening. I need to make some changes to get out from the control of latching apron-strings -- the ties of mind-numbing propriety.

I'm going to attempt a horse-riding treck around parts of Zimbabwe. It will take a certain degree of planning, as well as money that I currently don't have. I will need a robust pony, a logistics plan and saddle bags. Nothing is undoable. Embrace it -- life.