DANCING WITH DANGER

MINDBLAST


Marechera has notably stated that his purpose in his writing is to ‘short-circuit” the ways in which people think, to get them to see themselves in their full human potentiality when they look at themselves in the mirror. In terms of the patterns of conventional psychological development, [as described in terms of the Lacanian “mirror experience”, which occurs during the pre-Oedipal phase], one looks into the mirror and encounters a unified self for the first time. Yet this self-recognition, which allows one to transcend the chaos of a selfhood that is intra-psychically mingled with others also represents an ultimate danger – that one will come to identify the “true self” as being the one represented in the mirror, whilst the truly genuine inner self (that is, the one capable of experiencing the deeper levels of pain and joy and the anguish of human existence) languishes on the side-lines of existence. (In terms of post-Kleinian theoretical postulates, the true self can end up languishing in the recesses of the psyche as a vestigial pre-Oedipal psychological development, and not engaging with the present in a fully conscious way.)

If one looks in the mirror and sees only the ego ideal – the self that one feels it is necessary to present to the outside world in order to gain approval from it – then one will not have access to the actual self, which according to Marechera, is “beautiful”. Once we see it, a different kind of self-knowledge will give us access to our buried emotional and intellectual potential. Marechera’s last work to be published whilst he was still living is called Mindblast, Or the Definitive Buddy. The meaning of “Mindblast” is explanatory in terms of the description I have given above. The “Definitive Buddy”, however, needs a little more explanation. It is the spiritual double of the typical inauthentic self, whose institutionalized ways of thinking Marechera wants to “short-circuit”. This self (like our theoretical pre-Oedipal self) also languishes under the skin of society at large, and beneath the surface of its consciousness – for the post-Oedipal self is one that functions on the basis of repression of self-knowledge, including knowledge of this prior self, who still exists but whose self expression has also been repressed.

In his work, Mindblast, Or the Definitive Buddy (henceforth referred to as Mindblast), Marechera takes to the Harare Streets to live out a life that seeks to be in tune with the authentic self. To the degree that we, as readers, are living inauthentic lives based on credulity towards our false mirror selves, Marechera’s role in Mindblast is revealed as our Doppelgänger and “definitive buddy”, in living out a vital and spontaneous existence, at the cost of the warmth and comforts of “civilisation”. He is in this sense our alter ego, the living embodiment of the normatively repressed “inner self”, living out its spontaneous notions in concrete reality.

Certainly this is a project that had to be tackled by somebody in human history, and it is one that requires courage. Like the manner of the French stylists of high fashion, who regularly produce their season’s styles in representational forms that are far too sheer or far to short for regular consumption, Marechera tends to tackle his projects in the most extreme manner, perhaps to delight us and seduce our senses as to other possibilities of living, as well as to prove his point about what he means by psychologically “short-circuiting” our sense of what is acceptable and necessary for existence. He lived on the streets for two years [check length] when he was refused a visa to exit the country, and had nowhere else to go and no job.

This experience seems to have perpetuated his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, rather than benefited him by developing his self-possession, which is what shamanistic experiences are constructed to do. It seems, therefore, that Marechera’s attention had turned away from healing himself, towards an attempt to heal society, instead. Whereas his past works look at the world from the perspective of the maze that is Marechera’s own psyche (and which includes potent elements of his psychological history and upbringing), in Mindblast, the has turned his way of thinking towards an absolute identification of himself with the city of Harare and to its half psychologically submerged political and cultural qualities (psychologically accessible only to a writer or a seer). Here is how Marechera describes a typical experience he has on the streets:

There are a lot of guys right here who've got the maddest notions in the world and each day all they are waiting for is to act out their weird descriptions. Just like I am doing. You look them in the eye and that's that. You've had it. It's like looking the Ancient Mariner in the eye. Afore ya know the yarn you already It. No escape from their mazes. No exit from Brooklyn. [a reference to Sartre's "No Exit"?] Only the Sartre nausea. Only the mesmerizing outsideness with Albert Camus shouting: "Seconds out. Round twenty-first century!" and you know you gotta fight and fight till you're down and the chips and the odds and the neuroses are hanging out like your intestines after the knife fight. There they are hanging out like nothing in the bloody world. [...]

How enticing, the notion of uniqueness -- suddenly dispelled by the raucous voice, the shrieked insult, the horrible truth under the fine skin of humanity. Were I a pathologist, a forensic scientist in the police murder laboratory ... What the means? Why the irrevocable? How the exit of these Hararean mazes?"

The “Hararean mazes” that the author enters are the states of mind and experience that he must encounter in order to discover how to “get through” to Zimbabwean readers, by speaking to them where they are. They are mazes as they consist of the contradictory and jarring sensations of the streets, the hypnotically one-eyed visions and ambitions of those who are also living out these pre-Oedipal fantasies (although not in the same way as the author, but with enough in common to cause him to identify himself with them—p 147), the manifestation of a departing and yet still alluring notion of personal uniqueness, and the competitive looks of the spirit mediums or “n’angas” of Harare, who sense something peculiar about the author’s vocation. (p. 147). One can add to the nature of the Hararean labyrinth, a certain destructive potency, since CIO agents (government spies) also lurk in the mix, creating the potential for paranoia – a state of mind to which Marechera was already prone.

To get out of the maze, the author has to encounter and overcome his worst fears. Living out in the open – that is to say, outside of the framework of civilisation and its mores – is to risk regression to a state developmentally defined as “pre-Oedipal”. (Note: This is not a total regression, since one can never fully be what one was before the oedipal resolution, and instead brings to the situation one’s adult’s sensibilities.) Pre-Oedipal states facilitate a level of communication that occurs “beneath society’s skin”. This communication style is more immediate and urgent than is regular communication. Also, the content of such communication is indicative of how any subject is situated in relation to broader schemes of power. Hence, Marechera speaks of what he finds here: “the horrible truth under the fine skin of so-called humanity.” (p. 147.)

The encounter with truth at this level is hardly promising in terms of giving the author a way out of his existential dilemma of having to stay in Harare. It may not produce the sought for book, that will allow him to break through and speak to Harareans in a way that resonates with them. Marechera’s books in general, though, have always presented the issue of power over others as a problem, to which there is no ready solution or easy way out. Intellectually he tackles the problem of having to submit to power by pointing it out. In lived experience he embraces the existential danger entailed in going against the grain of societal expectations. Risking too much and risking too little both entail their respective sorts of danger, as Marechera knew. Was it more rational to gamble one way rather than in the other way? To put one’s whole life on the line, however, in an attempt to write a break-though book, was foolhardy. One needs psychological energy in reserve if one is to preserve one’s sense of self value, for writing a book is a hugely emotionally exhausting enterprise. One’s fundamental psychological focus can become shattered. There are signs of this “soul loss” in the final story published about Buddy, who cannot sustain the pain of responsibility of the shamanic wound, and loses his ability to distinguish between his own writing and that of a young woman with poetical aspirations but no talent.

During the time he was still homeless, the writer has a sporadic affair with a German school teacher working in Zimbabwe. She finally abandons him and the writer of Mindblast sees task in facing his sense of loss as finding out how “to spit the atom of the story and in the mindblast survive the theme [that is] psychological holocaust.” ( p 144). The question could be addressed to the process of writing generally, and simply restructured: “How much energy must one use in order to get through to others without entirely destroying one’s self?”