1. Shamanistic usages of language Shamanisms learn to speak very indirectly about reality. As Georges Bataille points out in his Unfinished System of Nonknowledge verbal communication sets itself at odds with the physical body and its vicissitudes. To communicate completely, one does not communicate with language, but non-linguistically. "We feel each other through our wounds," he said, thus suggesting shamanic access to another dimension of knowledge, not through suffering as such, but through the internalization of knowledge as a result of wounding. To draw a distinction here between two levels of communication is vital.
Crude psychoanalytic interpretations would tend to make out the shaman to be one who whines about wounding whilst justifying false ways of seeing the world, to make himself feel better. So, psychoanalysts may set out to defeat what it sees as a competing system of interpretation of the world, by distorting its claims. The willful nature of this misunderstanding is obvious because it does not distinguish between a wound and the person who has it. Whereas psychoanalytic distortions would have the wound seem to speak for and on behalf of itself, in shamanism, the shaman masterfully speaks on behalf of his wounds and furthermore uses his incidental wounding and the understanding it brings to heal others.
In the case of Bataille's form of shamanism, the "wounds" are the sexual organs, which he considered a wound to language itself, as a system that aims to be closed and complete, capable of accounting for everything and making all of reality seem rational. The physicality of the body itself prevents the formal dimensions of language to close the circle of meaning, in terms of giving a full account of everything in the world.
This suspicion of language is expressed in all forms of shamanism, which attempt to address the problems associated with the body in a more direct way than via language. To the end of addressing the body and not the mind, language may be "twisted" so that the shamanic seer can use it to "look around corners". Marechera uses this expression in The Black Insider, where he criticizes logical formulations for degrading the more human dimensions of reality.
2. When shamans work with "energy fields", they are referring to the ability one needs to have to defend oneself against projective identification. This term has gained meaning in psychoanalysis as implying that someone has injected their own needs and values into another person to get them to play a particular function on their behalf. These functions are to express emotional attitudes that area already in another person but which he doesn't have the confidence or the courage to express.
Shamans work to develop a strong "energy vest" for the one who has become ill, to enable her to resist future attempts to control her. A shaman's incantations are sung to create a sense of wholeness about identity, defined as integral bodily sensations. Future assaults against the integral wholeness of the victim will from now on be understood by her in terms of what they are, and not being unconsciously accommodated.
Having developed a sense of energy fields, one is cured, since one now understands when one's own energy field has been violated. Should a "dart" be fired in one's direction, one can choose to ignore it, or to return the dart to the original owner. There is nothing mysterious about the fact that darts and energy fields exist, except for the terminology. The means by which assaults take place, as well as their psychological meanings, can be accounted for in the earlier mentioned term of projective identification.
Shamans take knowledge of energy fields a step further than others do in psychoanalysis, however. An advanced shaman will conduct effective ideological warfare by observing another's energy field and sending "darts" into the field of another to disrupt their mental ability to work. It was said that shamans used to lob mountains at each other.
Crude psychoanalytic interpretations would tend to make out the shaman to be one who whines about wounding whilst justifying false ways of seeing the world, to make himself feel better. So, psychoanalysts may set out to defeat what it sees as a competing system of interpretation of the world, by distorting its claims. The willful nature of this misunderstanding is obvious because it does not distinguish between a wound and the person who has it. Whereas psychoanalytic distortions would have the wound seem to speak for and on behalf of itself, in shamanism, the shaman masterfully speaks on behalf of his wounds and furthermore uses his incidental wounding and the understanding it brings to heal others.
In the case of Bataille's form of shamanism, the "wounds" are the sexual organs, which he considered a wound to language itself, as a system that aims to be closed and complete, capable of accounting for everything and making all of reality seem rational. The physicality of the body itself prevents the formal dimensions of language to close the circle of meaning, in terms of giving a full account of everything in the world.
This suspicion of language is expressed in all forms of shamanism, which attempt to address the problems associated with the body in a more direct way than via language. To the end of addressing the body and not the mind, language may be "twisted" so that the shamanic seer can use it to "look around corners". Marechera uses this expression in The Black Insider, where he criticizes logical formulations for degrading the more human dimensions of reality.
The tyranny of straightforward things is more oppressive and more degrading than such idle monstrosities as life and death, apartheid and beer drinking, a stamp album and Jew-baiting. One plus one equals two is so irrefutably straightforward that the unborn child can see that even if man was wiped off the face of the earth one plus one would always and forever-equal two.The "unborn child" is one who cannot yet speak, who can be readily victimized by narrow forms of logic that would easily be able to erase humanity. The "unborn child" is also the non-rational state of the shamanistic seer. Huge aspects of reality are more readily observable when one has learned not to depend on language.
2. When shamans work with "energy fields", they are referring to the ability one needs to have to defend oneself against projective identification. This term has gained meaning in psychoanalysis as implying that someone has injected their own needs and values into another person to get them to play a particular function on their behalf. These functions are to express emotional attitudes that area already in another person but which he doesn't have the confidence or the courage to express.
Shamans work to develop a strong "energy vest" for the one who has become ill, to enable her to resist future attempts to control her. A shaman's incantations are sung to create a sense of wholeness about identity, defined as integral bodily sensations. Future assaults against the integral wholeness of the victim will from now on be understood by her in terms of what they are, and not being unconsciously accommodated.
Having developed a sense of energy fields, one is cured, since one now understands when one's own energy field has been violated. Should a "dart" be fired in one's direction, one can choose to ignore it, or to return the dart to the original owner. There is nothing mysterious about the fact that darts and energy fields exist, except for the terminology. The means by which assaults take place, as well as their psychological meanings, can be accounted for in the earlier mentioned term of projective identification.
Shamans take knowledge of energy fields a step further than others do in psychoanalysis, however. An advanced shaman will conduct effective ideological warfare by observing another's energy field and sending "darts" into the field of another to disrupt their mental ability to work. It was said that shamans used to lob mountains at each other.
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