Well it is not impossible that Marechera has a little of the SPD in him, but if so I am inclined to think that this could have been the texture of his life, rather than what directed his overall existence. More likely he used psychodelics to achieve the basic format for his stories.
I still see a certain logic of intellectual and artistic integrity as the driving force of his life. How does one keep it together when everything around is looking bad? Does a bit of SPD actually help one to do so? Yet, Marechera spoke of the thickness of his skin wearing thin through constantly having to beg. Clearly, he acknowledges the reality of social norms.
Still he spoke of how people and other things became 'unreal' to him after his father's death. This sense of keeping the real world and one's fantasy world apart is a feature of SPD.
Then, another contra-indicator: What stands out for me in Marechera's writing is a very strong sense of human psychology, of the ways in which we emotionally function. In the way that I read him, he hits the nail on the head psychologically, again and again - he is IN TUNE with human emotion. That is to say that his writing shows that he is excruciatingly aware of the precise nature of emotional effect that various configurations of events can have on others. Indeed, he often uses the knowledge that comes from his deep emotional awareness to shock people. His acute sense of dramatic timing and irony would not be possible if he were truly "depersonalised" (according to SPD) -- and crazy.
Against such a simple psychiatric approach, I would like to suggest that with regard to the whole detachment from social life aspect that is apparently a feature of SPD, it is important to recognise that cultural alienation can really do a number on you. I know with regard to my own case that my whole sense of humour, my way of making light of the bad situation I felt myself to be in (that is, the situation of being culturally alienated and feeling a gap in 'making sense' between what I was doing and what would have liked to do) was misread in a way that I totally did not intend it. (haha) When the heavy fist of judgment descends against the wryness of your sense of humour, casting it as a character defect, then the shock of the unexpectedness of this kind of judgment can bring about a feeling of powerful detachment from a society that judges one thus.
And yet, once one has at last adapted to even a bad cultural situation, one is changed forever through the process of relearning about oneself. One can never, as the same person, go home again.
Talk about inner exile!
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