revise the manuscript

Putting the paradigm of shamanism in a completely different way, the shaman is more than just like the following but is the literal expression of the idea that I will relate. His or her life has been ‘shipwrecked’ at some point.  The fact that the ‘tragedy’ of one’s life produced unexpected benefits is harder to speak of in direct, everyday language, since it goes against the grain of rational expectations. This knowledge pertains to the ‘shamanic” aspect of the self, which gives the subject access to a level of reality that is generally denied by those who are uncomfortable with the notion of being shipwrecked.
In chapter one of this thesis, I will look at Marechera’s novella and 11 entitled The House of Hunger. Here, we encounter, for the first time, what I shall take to be his “shamanic initiation”. And it is worth mentioning, at this very early point, that there is a world of difference between this kind of initiation into knowledge of one’s own psychological resourcefulness and traditional Shona spiritual ‘mediumship’.  The former has its basis in the universal structures of the mind, which the shaman comes to know inside out and like the back of his hand.

In the latter case, there is much more of a specifically cultural mediation of the message at hand. Whereas a traditional shaman – such as one of the San, in a recently bygone era – would convey ideas from the ‘spirit world’ in order to enrich and enhance his communitys’ belief in itself, the process was based on the appearance of visions in isolation, that were later interpreted for the community’s edification. Thus there has always been a highly individualistic nature to shamanism and the production and interpretation of its visions. In the case of mediumship, the context for the interpretation of an event of “spirit possession” is already very social, rather than being individualistic. The medium becomes “possessed” in response to some political or historical question mark that urges for a solution. By contrast, when a shaman goes on a “journey”, his quest is not to be related to matters of epistemology, but to discover hidden psychological resources that relate to ontological matters, which concern the nature of existence.

The shaman – although he may come up with answers both historically and politically related – is specifically on the search for ways to revitalise existence. It is this that matters overwhelmingly, and not the specific meaning as such, that is given to everyday existence. So the stories within The House of Hunger ought to be read in the light of using shamanic resources of doubling the self in order to enhance the sense of vitality and intensity that the author experiences in his everyday existence. There are also elements of tragedy in the novella and the shorts stories, but as I have mentioned this is part of shamanic doubling – that one does not divorce oneself completely from the mortal coils of everyday existence and its pitfalls.

In chapter two, I will look at The Black Insider, from the point of view of shamanic insight into the structural turmoil of a divided nation – that is Zimbabwe-Rhodesia of 1979-1980.

Chapter three will focus on one of Marechera’s books that seems to best exhibit the structure of his shamanism. I have already given much indication of how Black Sunlight makes us plunge into a state (or states) of ontological shatteredness, in order to require us to be reconstituted again. Although the apparently chaotic nature of this book may belie what I am about to suggest, this is one of Marechera’s most philosophical books, for it exhibits an understanding that society will always reproduce itself in a conservative way (that is, preserving all the authoritarian and prejudicial elements of racial and sexual inequality) so long as we are all readily formed and developed through the universal psychological dynamic of the Oedipus complex. Black Sunlight furnishes a very complete answer as to how we can avoid what otherwise seems to be inevitable – the reproduction of society as it already is. The psychological structure of the book is patterned on the author-persona’s regression to the stage or field of the pre-Oedipal – albeit that this is not a complete regression as it incorporates the author’s adult point of view.

Does such a deliberate and structured regression – in shamanic terms a ‘soul-journey’ – produce redemption from biologically determined and socially prescriptive norms? The author’s encounter with the infantile dynamics of the mind – projective identification, splitting, dissociation, and magical thinking – does in fact spell out a partial “ego death” for the adult self. Ego death is one of the key motifs of “shamanic journeying”, and the emblem of the author’s suicide at the end of the book spells out ego death, whereas his perception of his whole, embodied self in the mirror, which is right at the end of the book, includes a motif of ego restoration, which is not present earlier on in the novel. The author’s project in writing Black Sunlight has been to explore sources of origin for the anarchistic psyche. Marechera’s solution regarding this type of psyche is to produce examples that are suggestively shamanistic, in my view. For shamans, just exactly like his anarchistic characters in the book, do undergo destruction of their currently existing and conventional personas, and end up experiencing self regeneration in a way that gives them much stronger personas, more socially active and aware of how society actually works in general (rather than how it seems to function from a psychologically superficial perspective). There is also present the shamanic motif that I have taken care to mention --the link between destruction (of society, for instance), and the idea of the result being a better form of society. Marechera seems to be enquiring about this dynamic, rather than simply prescribing a recipe for society’s destruction. The statement that the Black Sunlight organisation was “shit” (about three-quarters of the way through the book) seems to be a caution against any too crude political response in terms of engagement with actual anarchism. Rather one’s anarchism must be deeply psychological – that is, shamanistic.

In the fourth chapter, I will look at two of Marechera’s shorter and poetic texts. They are “A portrait of a Black Artist in London” and “Throne of Bayonets”. Each has a rather different structure, with the former acting as a prophetic warning against the political abuse of the black migrant and vagrant population in Britain. The latter concerns the superficial nature of the socialism in what was the recently born Zimbabwe of the early 80s. Marechera’s insights might also, in the latter case, be considered prophetic. In both cases, it is being close to “death” that enables the author to see into the political machinations of the two societies as much as he does. It is a shamanic notion that one must “face death” in order to become a shaman. Does “facing death” perhaps also activate parts of our long repressed survival instincts that would enable the human mind to ‘read between the lines’ and come up with insights that would pass others by? I’m suggesting that this is so. Beyond this, it is this kind of sensitivity that enables a poet and seer such as Marechera was, to attempt to change the course of fate by his writing that critiques the rather negative state of two political realities.

Chapter five brings us to Scrapiron Blues, and here I am looking at several ways in which Marechera as a writer acts as a bridge of consciousness between two worlds of being. They can be conceptualised as “the spirit world of the dead” and “the world of the living”. I will look at several extracts from different works throughout the book  that show how Marechera used his shamanic knowledge to enhance his writing skills, and to reveal to us the psychological dimension that is difficult to speak about in other ways – the silent cries of the oppressed.

Lastly, the thesis comes full circle, to Mindblast, where Marechera is battling out the last days of his life on a park bench in Harare. Although the collected works in this book were written at different times, before 1986 when they were published, the shamanic elements in them are still very strong. The everlasting concern with a way of living that takes into account the unseen dimensions of that pertain to the human psyche is present. Marechera tackles ontological questions concerning ways to retain one’s vitalised sense of selfhood, when the whole of social organisation seems to conspire against our retention of ourselves as our most prized possession. He cracks jokes amidst destitution. He bemoans his sense of having lost his “self” and fallen into a state of hollowness – although the vitality of much of his writing testifies against this as being the whole truth of the matter. “Soul loss” is a recurrent shamanistic motif – and Marechera tackles it here with regard to his self.