Jennifer Armstrong 12 February at 07:17
Well, most people CANNOT understand that it is possible for a person's sense of vitality to be radically increased through shamanistic practices. There are many more superficial versions of shamanic practice. Unless you feel the void, however, you will not discover the parts of your character that you had repressed or denied. Real shamanism works at the level of an existential threat, forcing you to dig more deeply into your personal (emotional, intellectual) resources, in order to come to terms with the threat to being that "facing death" causes.
So, there are degrees of shamanism. Nietzsche's is deep, but not nearly deep enough as, were he to experience the void in a more extreme way than he did, he would not have been so keen to reinforce radical gender polarities along the lines he did. He would have seen the aspects of "femininity" that he condemned in women as being part and part of his own psyche.
Bataille, it seems, had much more of an intuitive sense of this, in terms of his own practice. He wanted to cross the gender divide in order to experience a different level of knowledge about himself.
The problem with any contemporary (or 'bourgeois') shamanism is that it will inevitably be too comfortable, too reassuring -- which is not what shamanism is about. It also has to contend against the bourgeois ideology that we cannot change our essential characteristics (this bourgeois pessimism that is found in people like Freud and other conservative thinkers).
So, there are degrees of shamanism. Nietzsche's is deep, but not nearly deep enough as, were he to experience the void in a more extreme way than he did, he would not have been so keen to reinforce radical gender polarities along the lines he did. He would have seen the aspects of "femininity" that he condemned in women as being part and part of his own psyche.
Bataille, it seems, had much more of an intuitive sense of this, in terms of his own practice. He wanted to cross the gender divide in order to experience a different level of knowledge about himself.
The problem with any contemporary (or 'bourgeois') shamanism is that it will inevitably be too comfortable, too reassuring -- which is not what shamanism is about. It also has to contend against the bourgeois ideology that we cannot change our essential characteristics (this bourgeois pessimism that is found in people like Freud and other conservative thinkers).
Cedric Beidatsch 12 February at 22:51 Report
Yes that is how I read Freud too. There is an interesting overlap with Camus here is the Myth of Sisyphus where he says people have to enter the desert of meaninglesness and come out the other side and then still keep living. I say an overlap, not an identity ok? The other alternative is the face real death at a fairly youthful age and then lose all fear and not see it as a threat.
Jennifer Armstrong 13 February at 06:15
Yeah.
The facing of death is not to overcome your fear of death, though. This would be an assumption that is all too Western, that shamanism is about self-mastery. It is that in Nietzsche, but only because Nietzsche is Western and chooses to give it that slant.
Rather, I think, shamanism is the means by which one loses one's fear of the social. In other words, one can gain the power to be more fully oneself, rather than being concerned with how one appears to others. At the same time, one falls back on one's own inner resources, and does not rely on others to support one, so much. One gains the power to think about reality on one's own terms.
In a way, death (and one's awareness of it) occupies the psyche rather more AFTER being shamanised, because compared to the social, death is by far the more formidable enemy. So, one becomes more aware of this enemy, in a sense, more profound.
The facing of death is not to overcome your fear of death, though. This would be an assumption that is all too Western, that shamanism is about self-mastery. It is that in Nietzsche, but only because Nietzsche is Western and chooses to give it that slant.
Rather, I think, shamanism is the means by which one loses one's fear of the social. In other words, one can gain the power to be more fully oneself, rather than being concerned with how one appears to others. At the same time, one falls back on one's own inner resources, and does not rely on others to support one, so much. One gains the power to think about reality on one's own terms.
In a way, death (and one's awareness of it) occupies the psyche rather more AFTER being shamanised, because compared to the social, death is by far the more formidable enemy. So, one becomes more aware of this enemy, in a sense, more profound.
Think 'the wild man' -- or Rambo, battling in a jungle. I know these are rather hilarious examples, but shamanism is nothing if not irreverent.
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