Here is the key to Marechera’s shamanism: It is to be found in his ability to gain astounding insights whilst cognitively undergo a level of ego deflation (which, of course, emerges from a state of mind moderated by cognitive maturity). This is a useful state of mind employed by artists, that The theroetician of art, Anton Ehrenzwieg terms “dedifferentiation” whereby one thing melts into another, whereby male and female, black and white identities no longer seem to exist. Once all the solid elements of reality have been reduced as part-pieces of a primeval oneness, the hidden relationships between these elements can be explored.
NOTE: Unlike those of the Kleinian schools, Jungians don't use the term, "pre-Oedipal" to imply evil or pathology as such. Jungians see this original, early childhood level of consciousness as being simply different from the rational, adult norm. It's a realm of transformation and mystical consciousness. We all have components of that in us; the ability to see ourselves as part of life's great oneness.
According to Anton Ehrenzweig, a lack of access to states of mind where the ego is de-differentiated signifies schizophrenia. One must be able to dissolve one's stress by temporarily de-differentiating the ego from the field of one's being, to regroup with creative resources, rather than pathologically splitting and projecting.
Facing his environmental and personal relationships in their molten state of cognitive “dedifferentiation”, Marechera is able to see new alignments of the dynamic forces that make up identity, and to reintegrate the elements at will, into his artistic and Utopian political vision. What is shamanistic about this is that he appears to see, as it were, the spiritual counterparts of concrete social and historical identities. One is more than one's formal identity -- so much more.
The shamanistic departure from the adult model of crystalline identities is redemptive for one views those one comes across in terms of their unconditioned potentialities -- in Marechera’s terms, “all the souls that didn’t come out of the womb with you”, and not just in terms of their limits within the historically contingent sphere of actually existing reality. Indeed “probabilities” (as per the waves versus particles idea of physics elucidated by Bohm and Bion), and a deepening awareness of group dynamics See: Bion) are employed very effectively by this writer. Wave theory is unto particle theory as the unconscious is to the conscious mind. Work produced by a cognitively dedifferentiated sense of the world may be grasped by the reader not logically -- that is in terms of cause and effect, or in terms of a subject and his field -- but intuitively and holistically at a subliminal and visceral level.
Marechera’s contemporary shamanism involves first the breaking the ground of reality and next is rearranging the elements of cognition in a new artistic pattern in a manner that Ehrenweig describes as a reassimilation of the features created in the work of art, under the guidance of unconscious processes. This last ability lies behind the conventional
NOTE: Unlike those of the Kleinian schools, Jungians don't use the term, "pre-Oedipal" to imply evil or pathology as such. Jungians see this original, early childhood level of consciousness as being simply different from the rational, adult norm. It's a realm of transformation and mystical consciousness. We all have components of that in us; the ability to see ourselves as part of life's great oneness.
According to Anton Ehrenzweig, a lack of access to states of mind where the ego is de-differentiated signifies schizophrenia. One must be able to dissolve one's stress by temporarily de-differentiating the ego from the field of one's being, to regroup with creative resources, rather than pathologically splitting and projecting.
Facing his environmental and personal relationships in their molten state of cognitive “dedifferentiation”, Marechera is able to see new alignments of the dynamic forces that make up identity, and to reintegrate the elements at will, into his artistic and Utopian political vision. What is shamanistic about this is that he appears to see, as it were, the spiritual counterparts of concrete social and historical identities. One is more than one's formal identity -- so much more.
The shamanistic departure from the adult model of crystalline identities is redemptive for one views those one comes across in terms of their unconditioned potentialities -- in Marechera’s terms, “all the souls that didn’t come out of the womb with you”, and not just in terms of their limits within the historically contingent sphere of actually existing reality. Indeed “probabilities” (as per the waves versus particles idea of physics elucidated by Bohm and Bion), and a deepening awareness of group dynamics See: Bion) are employed very effectively by this writer. Wave theory is unto particle theory as the unconscious is to the conscious mind. Work produced by a cognitively dedifferentiated sense of the world may be grasped by the reader not logically -- that is in terms of cause and effect, or in terms of a subject and his field -- but intuitively and holistically at a subliminal and visceral level.
Marechera’s contemporary shamanism involves first the breaking the ground of reality and next is rearranging the elements of cognition in a new artistic pattern in a manner that Ehrenweig describes as a reassimilation of the features created in the work of art, under the guidance of unconscious processes. This last ability lies behind the conventional
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