Jennifer Armstrong 1 second ago
In fact this two-tone quality is exactly what I noticed in the works of those I call "intellectual shamans". You have helped me conceptualize it still further, and it is interesting that after all this time, I am finally able to produce the tone that I had noticed in my mentors. My reason for calling these heroes "shamans" is because it seemed to me that life gave them a real bashing and put them at a disadvantage. Constitutionally, they became weakened by this bashing. As a consquence they had to exploe, and deploy every mechanism available to them just to survive. Thus, in the tone of an "intellectual shaman" we can hear two things: One is the echo of the bashing and the constitutional weakness this produced. The second is a very, very strong will to life, courage, force of character, and knowledge as to the complex meanings of life. All of these are acquired as a result of individual determination and resolution of the difficulty. They are completely unique to the person who forges their recovery. Most people who get a bashing do not survive, but turn into narcissists or cut off their knowledge, and compromise with death to live a lowly and truncated existence. A shamanic character is far more rare, just as it is far more rare to have something in the character that chooses to fight the forces of pathology -- and succeeds. Nietzsche, Bataille and Marechera all follow this pattern, as far as I can tell.
