The difference between African shamanism and European varieties is that the stuff from Dambudzo Marechera is freer, looser. In the case of Nietzsche and Bataille, they go so far and seem to strike some rocks. Nietzsche can't get beyond his "own truths" of gender essentialism and Bataille, because of his Catholicism, really does suppose that the spiritual nature of humans and their animal nature are diametrically opposed.
With African shamanism, there is less in the way. The downside is that Europeans, with their culturally instilled inhibitions, are less likely to understand him. The easy way out is to accuse the writer of being crazy. Of course that's racist and a nasty attitude to have, but Western types don't seem to notice they are being a little crazy themselves, so long as they view colonialism as having taken place in the distant past and as if it had been perpetuated by agents other than themselves. One easily blames those who left the shores of Western civilisation, who took the risk of living on the boundaries, for all the culturally offensive attitudes.
That this psychological barrier is unconscious and defensive makes it harder to point out. It doesn't matter. Europeans may learn better from their own, so long as they do not become shipwrecked on the dogmatic truths that Western cultures find it difficult to relinquish.
In the case of Marechera, who writes from the perspective of an African culture, albeit colonised, we get a sense of what it would be like if reality were unleashed from its grip by ideology. Marechera's writing simply takes us deeper. That is, it goes deeper than gender ideology to show how psychological projections create gender inequality, for instance, one sees how easily women slip out of visible life to become ghosts, only capable of communing with reality through the faculty of the imagination.
But Marechera's position as a colonial subject of the underclass would have given him insights into women's condition under the force of extreme patriarchal thinking. It should be noted that both white and black societies within Zimbabwe were prone to an extreme mode of patriarchal posturing and regimenting of the psyche. Men were upper, women lower, just in the same way as blacks were expected to be servants but not all that bright, whereas the whites were clever, just and true.
But Dambudzo saw through all that and he wrote about his perceptions. He saw, in particular, that imagination was the way out of a too rigidly defined society. So he broke open the bottom floors of society and let people fall free.
This was, of course, understood as madness, even by the liberal paternalists who championed him and simply knew there must have been a better way. No matter. For the people of that time, as well as me, there was no better way. We would never have made it.
African shamanism has the elements celebrated by Bataille and Nietzsche -- the admixture of tragedy with extreme levity (in a manner of transcendence), but it goes further and much deeper as it is genuinely implicated and inextricably involved in extreme violence. The lack of a social safety net and other factors relating to this being Africa and not somewhere in the West, mean that most actions come a little closer and may be more brutal. So the response to these socially justified cultural assaults also have to be wittier, faster, smoother. If not, you may not live to tell about it. In any case, you might not.
So the action is thick and fast and the comedy gets mixed with tragedy in much too sudden and dramatic sequence for European nerves to handle. It seems crazy, but it is necessity. One has to pop the illusions much more quickly as they appear. That gives the author the appearance of recklessness or just irreverence, but these are European standards which do not pertain to African circumstances, no matter how much you may want them to.
African shamanism simply goes deeper. You can get to the bottom of the gender discord that is sewn throughout the world and actually resolve it. You figure it out -- the cost that is extracted when women are deemed to be emotional and not realistic. They go mad. Or they become deviant. Or revolutionaries. And do not think you did not drive them to it.
You get to figure out the deeper nooks and crannies of your craziness through reading Marechera's works, but this takes patience and acceptance of the fact you may be wrong. You don't read a book merely to establish what you already think you know about reality. Only a philistine would do that -- whereas you are surely not one!
African shamanism simply goes deeper.
With African shamanism, there is less in the way. The downside is that Europeans, with their culturally instilled inhibitions, are less likely to understand him. The easy way out is to accuse the writer of being crazy. Of course that's racist and a nasty attitude to have, but Western types don't seem to notice they are being a little crazy themselves, so long as they view colonialism as having taken place in the distant past and as if it had been perpetuated by agents other than themselves. One easily blames those who left the shores of Western civilisation, who took the risk of living on the boundaries, for all the culturally offensive attitudes.
That this psychological barrier is unconscious and defensive makes it harder to point out. It doesn't matter. Europeans may learn better from their own, so long as they do not become shipwrecked on the dogmatic truths that Western cultures find it difficult to relinquish.
In the case of Marechera, who writes from the perspective of an African culture, albeit colonised, we get a sense of what it would be like if reality were unleashed from its grip by ideology. Marechera's writing simply takes us deeper. That is, it goes deeper than gender ideology to show how psychological projections create gender inequality, for instance, one sees how easily women slip out of visible life to become ghosts, only capable of communing with reality through the faculty of the imagination.
But Marechera's position as a colonial subject of the underclass would have given him insights into women's condition under the force of extreme patriarchal thinking. It should be noted that both white and black societies within Zimbabwe were prone to an extreme mode of patriarchal posturing and regimenting of the psyche. Men were upper, women lower, just in the same way as blacks were expected to be servants but not all that bright, whereas the whites were clever, just and true.
But Dambudzo saw through all that and he wrote about his perceptions. He saw, in particular, that imagination was the way out of a too rigidly defined society. So he broke open the bottom floors of society and let people fall free.
This was, of course, understood as madness, even by the liberal paternalists who championed him and simply knew there must have been a better way. No matter. For the people of that time, as well as me, there was no better way. We would never have made it.
African shamanism has the elements celebrated by Bataille and Nietzsche -- the admixture of tragedy with extreme levity (in a manner of transcendence), but it goes further and much deeper as it is genuinely implicated and inextricably involved in extreme violence. The lack of a social safety net and other factors relating to this being Africa and not somewhere in the West, mean that most actions come a little closer and may be more brutal. So the response to these socially justified cultural assaults also have to be wittier, faster, smoother. If not, you may not live to tell about it. In any case, you might not.
So the action is thick and fast and the comedy gets mixed with tragedy in much too sudden and dramatic sequence for European nerves to handle. It seems crazy, but it is necessity. One has to pop the illusions much more quickly as they appear. That gives the author the appearance of recklessness or just irreverence, but these are European standards which do not pertain to African circumstances, no matter how much you may want them to.
African shamanism simply goes deeper. You can get to the bottom of the gender discord that is sewn throughout the world and actually resolve it. You figure it out -- the cost that is extracted when women are deemed to be emotional and not realistic. They go mad. Or they become deviant. Or revolutionaries. And do not think you did not drive them to it.
You get to figure out the deeper nooks and crannies of your craziness through reading Marechera's works, but this takes patience and acceptance of the fact you may be wrong. You don't read a book merely to establish what you already think you know about reality. Only a philistine would do that -- whereas you are surely not one!
African shamanism simply goes deeper.
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