a functional analysis of Marechera's shamanism

If the ego is strong enough, and one operates at a level of danger, anxiety may become a catalyst to knowledge and to thinking. Conversely, if the ego is weak, and one operates at a level of danger, anxiety may lead to ego disintegration and confusion.

That is why the shaman is one who walks a fine line: entering situations that provoke anxiety that he may learn from the experiences, on the one hand; and on the other, attempting not to be overwhelmed by those situations to the degree that his ego falls apart. To master "spirits", there must be at least some risk in mastering them, and the greater the danger, the greater the prestige that accrues to the one who conquers the unknown.

"Terror" is therefore indispensable to a shamanistic figure, as is is a "totem of truth". By the determined tolerance of anxiety in the face of terror, one sees more clearly that which others resist seeing (in resisting the anxiety of seeing more than is comfortable to see.) The capacity to see more is a burden that partly (or completely) submerges the viewer in a world of part objects. The "manfish" is himself only a part object in his role as seer, since he sees relationships between things (specifically, he sees "politics" as half-concealed forces of pressure, in the raw), but does not see the other aspects of people that make them unique. He must ascend from his Paranoid-schizoid position in this waterworld in order to make sense of his experiences below the surface. If he can, then the terror he has endured has been of use, as he has been able to tame threatening and disturbing spirits. The chance is always that he will not return, if the anxiety proves to be too much. Then he might succumb to a spirit that counsels disbelief in one's self, leading to death.

The "manfish" is the manifestation of the human who cannot bare to be such, having experienced too much violence (a reference to Marechera's post-traumatic stress syndrome). It is the primitive R-complex (colloquially known as the "reptile mind") that faciliates an experience of oneself in an altered form. The "reptile mind", concerned with ruthlessly surviving, not surprisingly turns the subject into a crocodile in defence against the possessive ferocity of his lover's father:

Yesterday I met Barbara's father in the valley:

"I'll get you in the end, you rascal!" he screamed.

But I bit the silver button and turned myself into a crocodile and laughed my great sharp teeth at him.

He instantly turned himself into the mist, and I could only bite chunks of air. When I was cursing him, a voice I did not recognise said:

"You thought it was all politics, didn't you?"

But there was no one there.

I sneered.

"Isn't it?'

And I sullenly turned myself back into human shape.

I have been a manfish all my life. Maria, you did well to leave me. I must go.

It is the acknowledgement that life isn't simply "politics" that causes the subject to return to human form. The dream, recorded by Marechera in one of his stories from The House of Hunger, depicts a shamanistic "crossing of the bridge" from death (as the schizoid, submerged form of humanity, where a different, shrewder kind of knowledge presides), back to life again. It is the idea of a woman that enables him to resume human shape, although begrudgingly (for he is least protected by his dissociation in the schizoid state). Yet the schizoid link to "politics" remains, so that each crossing of the bridge brings back with it some knowledge about what is hidden from conventional view in the subterranean depths.