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.