Tuesday 30 June 2009

shamanic sensibilities

In terms of making an overall aesthetic evaluation of Marechera's work, I will look at how Marechera’s earliest works make an attempt to communicate his knowledge about reality from the point of view of the shamanic initiate, who sees more than others, being non-initiates, do, into the nature of contemporary existence. I will show how there is the aesthetic construction of much of his writing is extraordinarily successful from the point of view of representing shamanic perspectives and insights into how the human psyche accommodates itself to existing power structures or resists these, without having made any conscious decisions in either of these directions. I will show how there is something different about the later works of Marechera, which came after his ambitious novels that attempt to impart to us his shamanistic visions wholesale (-- a near impossible task: to appeal to non-initiates from the point of view of one who sees “the spiritual” dimension as well as the realm of the real, and how they interact). The later works seem to be directed less towards communicating shamanic knowledge as though from one initiate to another, and more towards using shamanic motifs for entertainment. This represents Marechera’s last ditch attempt to write in a way that was “relevant” on the basis of general and easy accessibility

nietzsche / natural hierarchies


Perhaps it is all down instinct, but I do not mean "instinct" in the animalistic sense as many who would be simplistically animalistic would like to understand the term.
Rather, it is the instinct that I have in me, having become accustomed to the notion that authority is only genuinely authoritative if it is prepared to risk itself (and preferably in terms of life and death)that causes me to reject present day patriarchal posturing.

The male authorities of my childhood were those who spoke little, but spoke kindly and authoritatively. I encountered NO masculine posturing, during my childhood -- nothing that tried to create the dynamic whereby the male set himself up to pick holes in my demeanour whereas I was expected to struggle along in a masochistic fashion, in a sabotaged -- and consequently frustrated -- effort to "improve" myself.

This kind of male power -- besides being self-evidently false and duplicitous to the inner eye of instinct -- also fails to be authoritative in my eyes, since it does not put itself on the line in terms of risk, but rather seeks to preserve a little fiefdom for itself, guarded and defended by mere postures.

But I have already put myself on the line MORE THAN THIS -- and over and over again, too.

Consequently, I have no respect for THIS KIND of human authority.

(One would have to outdo me in the stakes of risk, in order to gain my respect and become authoritative.)

It shows that there is a NATURAL hierarchy of honour, that at least is possible for human societies, based on instinctive recognition.

introducing you

http://home.iprimus.com.au/scratchy888/INTRODUCTIONCHAPTER.htm

Monday 29 June 2009

Neechy on being a ghost

We [hermits], too, do what all prudent masks do, and in response to every curiosity that does not concern our "dress" we politely place a chair against the door. But there are also other ways and tricks when it comes to associating with or passing among men -- for example, as a ghost, which is altogether advisable if one wants to get rid of them quickly and make them afraid. Example: one reaches out for us but gets no hold of us. That is frightening. Or we enter though a closed door. Or after all lights have been extinguished. Or after we have died. [ p321, The Gay Science ]

Bat eye

Insofar as it is spirit, the human reality is holy, but it is profane insofar as it is real. Animals, plants, tools, and other controllable things form a real world with the bodies that control them, a world subject to and traversed by divine forces, but fallen.

Bataille, George, Theory of Religion, Robert Hurley Translation., p.38.

reworked literature review

http://home.iprimus.com.au/scratchy888/literature%20review.htm

Sunday 28 June 2009

how insight in shamanism is obtained

If you reject your allotted identity thus allows for the choosing of one’s new identity, and a sacred role of furthering society’s development. Thus the death of the author’s persona at the end of Black Sunlight prefigures his own spiritual rebirth, as he looks into the mirror and sees his physical self as subject to the vagaries of his historical time and place, but also as a whole self. The subject’s gaze into the mirror, life-satiated, death-satiated, in essence “wrecked out of his wounds,” indicates that he is ready to accept that it is the contingent nature of reality that turns it toward the Sacred for him. To accept this is not to acknowledge a diminished psyche, but rather to accept that the raw experiences of fate are to be worked with, as a process of bending them to one’s will. The mirror reflects a return, after shamanistic journeying, to a wholeness of being. It recalls the gaze of the mother that, in Lacanian theory, is said to instill in the subject his original sense of egoistic wholeness. The shamanistic nature of the voyage suggests this is an ego returned to a different kind of wholeness, however than the ordinary maturity of Lacanian theory would suggest: It is as if the temporary shadow of the moon’s ‘immanence’ has cast its impression upon the transcendent intellect. This succumbs to its lunar fecundity (its feminine density) and is thus reborn. Moreover, insight is born by shamanistic journeying, and along with that, a new capacity for action and creativity. For the journey backwards into one’s primeval past has caused the atom to be split within the psyche – such that the seeming necessity of certain power relations, as one had previously emotionally construed them, has been revealed to have a merely contingent in historical processes. Thus these power relations are capable of being dissolved in life as well – as where they have already undergone destruction – in the psyche itself. Various forms of power and the manifestations of personal identity most commonly associated with them lose their binding link, under the pressure of shamanistic regression or “soul journeying”. The perspective facilitated by this “stepping back” from fixed relations of power, in a mode of dissociation, enables one to see, from a subatomic perspective, how power and identities are conventionally congealed into atoms. This gives a shaman such as Marechera insight into the nature of power relations, much as the aesthetic “alienation” technique of Bertolt Brecht was designed to do.

on the god given obligation to kick those who are down until they rise again

Also, just moving ahead as an adult is not expected of women in Southern culture — one is expected to at least FAKE not knowing what to do, asking Daddy, and so on. If you don’t do that you get into real trouble, and I did not figure this out until too late — did not figure out the duplicity (and don’t like it).

I figured out the duplicity that had brought me to a vulnerable condition in relation to others at the same time as I figured out that I was being abused at work. So I fought back against both these things simultaneously.

And it was all also linked to a NOTION of privilege that my family had -- although not with a counterpart of an actual experience of privilege, at least in the adult stages of my life.

I think that the cultural assumptions my parents had were that a young women will be treated by other members of her society with kid gloves, unless she is particularly evil, in which case she deserves all, or most, of what she gets.

You can see how the logic of this works in practice: So long as people are being kind to you, we, your parents approve of your behaviour. However, if people are cruel, then this is an indication that you have stepped out of line in some way, and you need to be punished severely for your misdemeanours -- and expect the punishment to continue until we find out what they are!

It's an extreme form of psychopathic idiocy -- kicking someone when they're down but applauding them when they are up, as if these conditions emulated the natural justice of the universe.

I think my parents' version of morality is extremely sick.

The clans

Isn't it funny how certain ideologues -- the ones who claim to believe in nothing but "the individual" -- are those who in reality believe in nothing but tribalism?

Take the patriarchs, for instance, and their insistence on defending their clan of penises.

Saturday 27 June 2009

utters the patriarch, fecklessly

I am really aware that not everybody has mental strength. I suspect that it is a really robust childhood -- in particular, being able to roam free for a period of time, whilst making one's own errors, and falling down and picking oneself up a few times -- that provides the basis, the mere basis, for mental strength.

But there are other aspects too. Mental strength is, for instance, definitively NOT the ability, or "will", to step on those who are lower in the social hierarchy than thou. An inclination to do so almost certainly denotes the opposite of mental strength -- a total absence thereof. For the compulsion to harm those who are weaker is a sign of self-doubt and the need for external assurances from the world.

Rather, hear Nietzsche: “How much truth can a spirit bear, how much truth can a spirit dare? ... that became for me more and more the real measure of value.”

And here-on begins the struggle.

For "What is truth?" utters the patriarch, fecklessly -- as if he's never been given a chance to know more than he does about it.

Monday 22 June 2009

KEY POINTS REGARDING SHAMANISM (PARTICULARLY MARECHERA'S)

1. Marechera's shamanism is very similar to those of Nietzsche and Bataille in that it is highly individualistic. The individual nature of experience is a key aspect of shamanism. However, Marechera's concerns are to be viewed within the context of a life that is already marginalised. So his concerns about "soul loss" (the loss of vitality) and how to remedy that are to be viewed in the psychodynamic context of defence of one's self concept against the authorities and their claims.

2 In terms of existing character, shamanism requires the opposite of timidity in order to participate in it -- that is, a pre-existing inclination to put one's inner self at stake. This is absolutely crucial because one does not strike a fire in one's own spirit unless one first puts something at stake. And if one has no fire to begin with, one does not strike a fire in that case, either. (This relates to Bataille's celebration of "excess" or the "limit experience" and Nietzsche's injunction to "live dangerously", both of which produce a heightened awareness of the INTRAPERSONAL -- that is, the inner self.) One lives close to the concept of death.


3. Shamanism involves strategic regression to trance states in order to enhance the quality of one's life. (This relates to Bataille more than it does to Nietzsche -- although both preferred feelings of "intoxication".) "Transgression" -- as per Bataille -- can destroy the currently existing social self and cause part of it to regress. Nietzsche adopted, by contrast, a regressive view of human nature, in order to enhance his feeling of power in reacting with it and ultimately transcending it.

4. Shamanism involves a certain amount of destruction of the existing self, in order to release pent up heat (causing pathologies) and to increase the capacity for inwards development and playful self transformations. This is its link to psychoanalysis, the talking cure.

5. There is an inherent shamanistic link between pre-Oedipal states (and the pre-Oedipal field in adult life) and the shamanistic -- since both recall a sense of Nature and one's primeval origins.  However these are not necessarily to be narrowly understood as psychoanalysis does, which is in terms solely defined by deprivation.

6. Self-creation through the release of pent up heat enables social playfulness and social masks. (Marechera dressed up as a photographer from Fleet Street.)

7. An archetypal form or idea may be used to help one to advance developmentally, using the pre-Oedipal field. This is the psychological purpose of the shaman's animal spirit guides.

8. The shaman deals with the inevitable sense of loss of wholeness that is part of normal development in the "depressive position" by engaging his or her creativity rather than more common/normal means of dealing with one's situation -- repression and resignation. This involves a definite risk -- that one has the energy and consistency to power one's own engine through life, rather than relying upon social organisations to assist one. The shaman is more aware than others that the nature of life is to be inherently "incomplete", and that deliberate and self-conscious efforts are required to heal this lack of wholeness, temporarily -- for the shaman's efforts can never signify more than a temporary festival of wholeness and completion. It is the shaman's hypersensitivity to the problem of the "depressive position" (that of alienation, aloneness and a lost sense of wholeness), that drives his creativity. It is his (or her) knowledge of how to provide temporary solutions against falling into typical resignation towards life ( in the depressive position), that becomes the shaman's secret fountain of youthfulness and exuberance.

9. The shaman's unusual perceptive abilities stem not only from his or her great sensitivity to the way that energy flows between different parts of his (or her) mind but also derive from the fact that the shaman is inclined to repress less of reality (for instance, out of fear of it), and is rather more inclined to work directly with the positive and negative aspects of reality as they are felt. This often leads to an attempt to manipulate, control and redirect psychological forces, within the broader society at large.

Nietzsche, Damasio, productivity



Nietzsche makes abundant sense if you read him in a shamanistic way. You can understand what he means by "loss of instinct".


In shamanistic terms, he is referring to "soul loss" -- the loss of which can make it difficult to fully experience the present (due to unacknowledged dissociation from it). Such "soul loss" can make it difficult to negotiate reality effectively on one's own behalf. One makes poor choices, due to being dissociated, partly, from the present. One can choose what is bad for one, rather than what is beneficial for one, simply because one is not fully present to the reality that is the here and now. This is due to the poor judgement that neurologist Antonio Damasio also refers to, in relation to his subject, Phineas Gage, in his book, Descartes' Error.   I believe I have been inclined to suffer from soul loss, which began with the trauma of migration, which led me to repress my feelings without being aware that I was doing so. This led me to conform to many conservative mores, when I had no joy in doing so. I found no innate joy in life and suffered from chronic fatigue. By means of shamanistic recapitulation, I recovered my pleasure in life. My decisions are sound. I also find no problem giving anything I have to others, if they really need it.

It is very clear to me now that what he meant by "instinct" was not political instinct as such, nor  concerned with accumulating wealth. Nietzsche did not accumulate any wealth himself.
The "virtue of selfishness" triumphed by Ayn Rand and her followers has no place in Nietzsche's shamanistic lexicon. Rather:
Insatiably striveth your soul for treasures and jewels, because your virtue is insatiable in desiring to bestow.
Ye constrain all things to flow towards you and into you, so that they shall flow back again out of your fountain as the gifts of your love.

Verily, an appropriator of all values must such bestowing. love become; but healthy and holy, call I this selfishness.Another selfishness is there, an all-too-poor and hungry kind, which would always steal- the selfishness of the sick, the sickly selfishness.


With the eye of the thief it looketh upon all that is lustrous; with the craving of hunger it measureth him who hath abundance; and ever doth it prowl round the tables of bestowers.


Sickness speaketh in such craving, and invisible degeneration; of a sickly body, speaketh the larcenous craving of this selfishness.


Tell me, my brother, what do we think bad, and worst of all? Is it not degeneration?- And we always suspect degeneration when the bestowing soul is lacking.

To imagine that Nietzsche is applauding the virtues of the capitalist in defence of those who have to struggle for a living is just too obscene.
Clearly, it is the state of PSYCHOLOGICAL abundance that wants to bestow, NOT the productivity of the capitalist.  Nietzsche's idea of health evokes a sense of something akin to Ubuntu, not factory-line productivity.

Saturday 20 June 2009

shape shifting

It is the HEAT that is generating by intense experiences that enable hidden forces to be released. This is what makes possible (in terms subtle and not so much) any form of shape shifting within the soul.

Without this intensity that brings unconscious forces into light (where they are the least comfortable) and exposes them to pressures of the other parts of MIND, the self does not develop.

Thursday 18 June 2009

style it ironic


Let us suppose that I am a naturally born ironist. If it is possible that I was not actually born that way, it is surely the direct result of bringing myself up in this mode, rather than having had it inculcated into my life by my parents. My idea as to what concerns the pinnacle of education – that is, what expresses the condition of having been well-educated – is that one has learned to doubt what one thinks one sees on the basis of the first appearance.

I don’t think that one can be brought up during the Rhodesian war (the second Chimurenga) and not have had to revise all of one’s opinions – one’s “first take” of life and its meanings. Perhaps after the second take, a third take and a fourth take are not even enough to satisfy one as the take that is finally the “right take”. Not to be completely sure of one’s perspectives, but to approach them with a relatively measured certainty is the mark of an educated person’s mind. I say it again.

So I want to introduce you to my application of the grotesque. It’s not the grotesqueness of a Marechera that you will find in my poems. He wants to reveal something with his use of the grotesque – some dimension of the way that torture is generally a hidden mode of societal control. My use of the grotesque has a different purpose. Perhaps you think you see all too clearly what I’m getting at in my poetry? I use the term, “race”, so perhaps I am a racist – someone who discriminates between people on the basis of colour? Perhaps I have “issues” concerning gender, and see that there are two genders with one gender distinctly differentiating from the other – since I use language that seems to point things out in this way? Perhaps what I’m saying is all too clear in many ways. I want you to think again.

The language I am using – these ideas – are they really my own? I would like people to consider whether a white girl, a white woman, sits down on any Sunday afternoon and generates out of her imagination, out of the ether that is nothingness, the notion of “race”? Okay! I confess that I didn’t do this. I used the word, “race”, in my poetry, but there’s no way that I generated different races. And, hey, wait a second! I don’t even believe in races! I believe in such a thing as “humanity” – the human race. So I am referring to races, in my poetry. I get in the act  -- except that I don’t actually believe in race. This, then, has now become your puzzle.

It’s the puzzle that all of my poetry presents. In actual fact, it is ironic dealing. The subject matter of my writing is not mine, in the sense that it was entirely produced by me. I am just working with the subject matter that was produced by my history -- and your history, too, if I am not mistaken. This is the black and white history of Zimbabwe (and Rhodesia), which has given us the remarkable and highly dubious gifts of race and gender. I’m not sure about you, but my perspective on these is a revelation of the grotesque!

I’m like Marechera, in that I want to do something to reorganise your vision, using poetry. Unlike our friend Dambudzo, I’m not keen so much to reveal to you the hidden dimensions of everyday existence and what you fail to see. Dambudzo had the sensitivity of a shaman who sees things that few other people do see – as if he looked into the spirit world and saw the dark and estranged aspects of our souls that pulled the mechanisms and pulleys, determining all our fates. His vision was anti-Oedipal and reveals us to ourselves in a way that would allow us to make amends with the past and its historical wrongs. By “anti-Oedipal” I mean that Marechera does not want to bring us under the sway of any new authority or system – whether governed by those of the left or right, white or black.

Marechera’s approach reveals, through gently winding narratives, the complex structures of the mind conditioned by a form of society that make us, Zimbabweans, what we are today. My approach is by contrast a throwing down of the metaphorical gauntlet – a challenge to alter one’s vision by keeping the eyes open as to the way in which we manufacture social and historical grotesques. Can we still face ourselves – albeit ironically – knowing that we tend to manufacture such grotesques? Can we rise above a naturalistic vision, which sees the development of such creations as natural and nothing to balk at, to the point where we rise above this terror that’s entailed in a realistic encounter with ourselves? At that point, we naturally lose our cool.

And really it is no different from the terror that one feels when one first learns to skydive. You manage the terror then, too, by holding the freezing blade close to your breast: in the desperate pleasure of your own icy resolution.


insouciant poems

In Zimbabwe I lost touch with Marechera’s
bleeding heart;
Went to school
white and stiff
My father said;
“It is your fault that us white males lost the war;
because of your genitals and
your demeanour
and the colour of your voice
which reminds me of the feminine.

“His father died in primary school
His father rose again to run the factory”

--I’m sure my teacher read it to me
when I was in Form three –
an overlooked and unregarded writer
at that time.

I wonder.

and the school walls and the grass roots kept the ogre at bay
for some time

and we transferred and lost our feet
and ended up eight inches above the sand
In number 3 caravan park;

and it was sordid heat

and three years later, in Australia the sleeping ogre
finally yawned and shook;
the anger at his loss breaking through
the cold tin roof
of his narrow mind.

**************


2.

It was the matronly ladies that I somehow missed
the ones who knew right from wrong
Not black from white, necessarily
but their arse end from a hole in the ground (pardon the crude Australian expression)

They had the eyes of wisdom
that were not their husband’s eyes
but were borrowed
From some University of Life
Quite different from Australian eyes, which peer here and there
and then return with their fish-hooks
and nothing.

They had the eyes, their eyes
that captured images
and brought them home to Roast
In Open Ovens.

Looking into the smallness of the mind
of the Rhodesian white male
They knew right from wrong.
Their eyes said as much.
And I believed them.


3.

Cultural Destruction
meant that I was now
evil.

One doesn’t become evil by any action of one’s own;
but by being
left Alone.

whilst others are being brought up.

If I cross out my evil
with so many crosses –

Would that help?

------


4.

I WOULD TAKE THE DOGS FOR A WALK

Up hill and down dale, in in craggy foreshortened river beds
which elongated the closer I reached.

And they would tell me something
with their tails
their minds
were MY MIND
investigating under shrub
investigating in the reeds
tearing free from trails
that offered nothing
especially special.

I would take the dogs for a walk.
But in their minds
They would take me
And this environment would mean something
especially special;
when I’d read it through the mind of dogs.

-------------------------------------


5.

ZIMBABWE ISN’T
deckchair material
It is
Hardwork
Lounging around
Waiting for others to do it for you
isn’t the way.

I think the notion of
the right to passivity
That god in the sky would do it for you
even though you didn’t try
Was what undid
the whites.


6.

Feed your children with hostility enough
and you will grow
a little guerilla in your midst

I didn’t want to tell you this
but it is true
There’s no denying

How nature works
When history repeats itself
The first time, Tragedy
and then as Farce.


7.

Australian culture
wrung out my Zimbabwean soul
It had a lot of mud in it --
a lot of rich red Earth
from Borrowdale
So there’s a lot of wringing to do.

Mud sticks;
but with a little bit of rain
I might be clean again?

8.

I’m writing down a little letter in my book
to Deity:
“Thou don’t exist”
even though it was once nice
To fight a war on your behalf
Realise that
It was my father fighting
and not me:
I never knew Thee.

9.

Zimbabwe’s free
of all the pestilence that
isn’t death.
You’ve got me on that one.

Political Purity
is one thing
That’s
INDIFFERENT
to
a little death.

10.

I don’t think
my race
will win
this race
although it might
come second.

Wednesday 17 June 2009

then they panic

According to the psychology I have been studying, the capacity to see another person AS A WHOLE and not merely as a "part object" is what constitutes a higher level of psychological health (actually, though, just "maturity" as such).

Let me now say that in the necessary, protracted and seemingly limitless (in every sense) WAR against the patriarchy and its mores, the impossible thing is to get most people to see the effect of patriarchal mores ON THE WHOLE PERSON.

They're inclined to say, (in not so many words): "Well dear it seems you had an injurity to part of you. In other words, it doesn't matter."

They are unable to see the whole person in the equation.

I bring it home to them with the actual consequences:

"Well, darlings, this is therefore what I'm doing to you, in response to this impossible situation."

THEN -- they start to panic.
They must deal with the whole person and the whole person's mode form of moral reasoning.

That just isn't what they're used to.

Tuesday 16 June 2009

concerning an article on psychoanalysis and empathy

There is something about Nietzsche, which I now interpret as an actual flaw in his thinking -- his view of the general human character is of one who is normatively immature. Apparently, Shopenhauer has the more mature image of the human being, whether or not you agree with his perspectives.

I think it is dangerous to pretty much assume that humans are as immature as Nietzsche makes them. Ultimately (and paradoxically?) this diminishes empathy as a rational-calculating device [as per the computational paradigm given as an example in the article]. Such an assumption is more likely to cause one to regress psychologically, due to the isolating nature of one's attitudes.

See: Sarah Richmond, "Being in Others: Empathy From a Psychoanalytical Perspective"

Sunday 14 June 2009

revise the manuscript


Putting the paradigm of shamanism in a completely different way, the shaman is more than just like the following but is the literal expression of the idea that I will relate. His or her life has been ‘shipwrecked’ at some point.  The fact that the ‘tragedy’ of one’s life produced unexpected benefits is harder to speak of in direct, everyday language, since it goes against the grain of rational expectations. This knowledge pertains to the ‘shamanic” aspect of the self, which gives the subject access to a level of reality that is generally denied by those who are uncomfortable with the notion of being shipwrecked.
In chapter one of this thesis, I will look at Marechera’s novella and 11 entitled The House of Hunger. Here, we encounter, for the first time, what I shall take to be his “shamanic initiation”. And it is worth mentioning, at this very early point, that there is a world of difference between this kind of initiation into knowledge of one’s own psychological resourcefulness and traditional Shona spiritual ‘mediumship’.  The former has its basis in the universal structures of the mind, which the shaman comes to know inside out and like the back of his hand.

In the latter case, there is much more of a specifically cultural mediation of the message at hand. Whereas a traditional shaman – such as one of the San, in a recently bygone era – would convey ideas from the ‘spirit world’ in order to enrich and enhance his communitys’ belief in itself, the process was based on the appearance of visions in isolation, that were later interpreted for the community’s edification. Thus there has always been a highly individualistic nature to shamanism and the production and interpretation of its visions. In the case of mediumship, the context for the interpretation of an event of “spirit possession” is already very social, rather than being individualistic. The medium becomes “possessed” in response to some political or historical question mark that urges for a solution. By contrast, when a shaman goes on a “journey”, his quest is not to be related to matters of epistemology, but to discover hidden psychological resources that relate to ontological matters, which concern the nature of existence.

The shaman – although he may come up with answers both historically and politically related – is specifically on the search for ways to revitalise existence. It is this that matters overwhelmingly, and not the specific meaning as such, that is given to everyday existence. So the stories within The House of Hunger ought to be read in the light of using shamanic resources of doubling the self in order to enhance the sense of vitality and intensity that the author experiences in his everyday existence. There are also elements of tragedy in the novella and the shorts stories, but as I have mentioned this is part of shamanic doubling – that one does not divorce oneself completely from the mortal coils of everyday existence and its pitfalls.

In chapter two, I will look at The Black Insider, from the point of view of shamanic insight into the structural turmoil of a divided nation – that is Zimbabwe-Rhodesia of 1979-1980.

Chapter three will focus on one of Marechera’s books that seems to best exhibit the structure of his shamanism. I have already given much indication of how Black Sunlight makes us plunge into a state (or states) of ontological shatteredness, in order to require us to be reconstituted again. Although the apparently chaotic nature of this book may belie what I am about to suggest, this is one of Marechera’s most philosophical books, for it exhibits an understanding that society will always reproduce itself in a conservative way (that is, preserving all the authoritarian and prejudicial elements of racial and sexual inequality) so long as we are all readily formed and developed through the universal psychological dynamic of the Oedipus complex. Black Sunlight furnishes a very complete answer as to how we can avoid what otherwise seems to be inevitable – the reproduction of society as it already is. The psychological structure of the book is patterned on the author-persona’s regression to the stage or field of the pre-Oedipal – albeit that this is not a complete regression as it incorporates the author’s adult point of view.

Does such a deliberate and structured regression – in shamanic terms a ‘soul-journey’ – produce redemption from biologically determined and socially prescriptive norms? The author’s encounter with the infantile dynamics of the mind – projective identification, splitting, dissociation, and magical thinking – does in fact spell out a partial “ego death” for the adult self. Ego death is one of the key motifs of “shamanic journeying”, and the emblem of the author’s suicide at the end of the book spells out ego death, whereas his perception of his whole, embodied self in the mirror, which is right at the end of the book, includes a motif of ego restoration, which is not present earlier on in the novel. The author’s project in writing Black Sunlight has been to explore sources of origin for the anarchistic psyche. Marechera’s solution regarding this type of psyche is to produce examples that are suggestively shamanistic, in my view. For shamans, just exactly like his anarchistic characters in the book, do undergo destruction of their currently existing and conventional personas, and end up experiencing self regeneration in a way that gives them much stronger personas, more socially active and aware of how society actually works in general (rather than how it seems to function from a psychologically superficial perspective). There is also present the shamanic motif that I have taken care to mention --the link between destruction (of society, for instance), and the idea of the result being a better form of society. Marechera seems to be enquiring about this dynamic, rather than simply prescribing a recipe for society’s destruction. The statement that the Black Sunlight organisation was “shit” (about three-quarters of the way through the book) seems to be a caution against any too crude political response in terms of engagement with actual anarchism. Rather one’s anarchism must be deeply psychological – that is, shamanistic.

In the fourth chapter, I will look at two of Marechera’s shorter and poetic texts. They are “A portrait of a Black Artist in London” and “Throne of Bayonets”. Each has a rather different structure, with the former acting as a prophetic warning against the political abuse of the black migrant and vagrant population in Britain. The latter concerns the superficial nature of the socialism in what was the recently born Zimbabwe of the early 80s. Marechera’s insights might also, in the latter case, be considered prophetic. In both cases, it is being close to “death” that enables the author to see into the political machinations of the two societies as much as he does. It is a shamanic notion that one must “face death” in order to become a shaman. Does “facing death” perhaps also activate parts of our long repressed survival instincts that would enable the human mind to ‘read between the lines’ and come up with insights that would pass others by? I’m suggesting that this is so. Beyond this, it is this kind of sensitivity that enables a poet and seer such as Marechera was, to attempt to change the course of fate by his writing that critiques the rather negative state of two political realities.

Chapter five brings us to Scrapiron Blues, and here I am looking at several ways in which Marechera as a writer acts as a bridge of consciousness between two worlds of being. They can be conceptualised as “the spirit world of the dead” and “the world of the living”. I will look at several extracts from different works throughout the book  that show how Marechera used his shamanic knowledge to enhance his writing skills, and to reveal to us the psychological dimension that is difficult to speak about in other ways – the silent cries of the oppressed.

Lastly, the thesis comes full circle, to Mindblast, where Marechera is battling out the last days of his life on a park bench in Harare. Although the collected works in this book were written at different times, before 1986 when they were published, the shamanic elements in them are still very strong. The everlasting concern with a way of living that takes into account the unseen dimensions of that pertain to the human psyche is present. Marechera tackles ontological questions concerning ways to retain one’s vitalised sense of selfhood, when the whole of social organisation seems to conspire against our retention of ourselves as our most prized possession. He cracks jokes amidst destitution. He bemoans his sense of having lost his “self” and fallen into a state of hollowness – although the vitality of much of his writing testifies against this as being the whole truth of the matter. “Soul loss” is a recurrent shamanistic motif – and Marechera tackles it here with regard to his self.

Saturday 13 June 2009

To read Nietzsche in a non-shamanistic light

...as most people do, is to become one of those who pushes conventional forms of civilisation to a quicker end.

Those who read Nietzsche -- as many fellows do -- as an injunction to get all over the case of women and to give them as hard a time as possible, are not those who have any interest in the longevity of patriarchal project. This is the very project for which they believe themselves to be the vanguard, furthering its ends.

They are prodigal sons of the true patriarchy, taking all of daddy's cash, as well as his good will, and blowing it on a single night out on the town.

All of that misogyny comes at a cost, good fellas. And daddy's bank account, which was built up on the premise of paternalism and societal good will has now entirely been depleted, by you.

Friday 12 June 2009

games of castration with the woman of 30 years

And now I am in a position to correct and resolve a mistake I'd made earlier.

(I'd always felt somewhat uneasy about my original formulation actually -- intuitively I was on the right track; but logically my sums were not adding up correctly. This can be a problem with leading with pattern recognition as a rational-intuitive, but generally the logical issues relating to the matter at hand are finally resolved)

Clearly, (now), it is NOT the state of adaptation to the demands of civilisation -- that which Lacan sees as the outcome of "castration"-- that is in any way to be faulted. Not at all. This is to confuse actual states and outcomes with energy systems -- although one can clearly see why I was misled on the basis of Lacan's terminology, which, although referring to a STATE of being, seems to imply a loss of energy as well.

I can resolve this. It is states of being with which Lacan's system concerns itself. It is, however, ENERGY SYSTEMS that Shamanism (as a process that works on neurological systems) concerns itself with.

Shamanism, then, concerns itself not at all with the outcome of psychological adaptive processes, but rather with the loss of vital energy that takes place in the process of making normal adaptations.

And this lost energy is what shamanistic systems seek to recuperate, and I mean "energy systems" in quite a specific sense -- that is "plasticity"; the capacity to change from one form to another.

In short, shamanistic processes have solutions to the condition of "La femme de trente ans."

And it also seems very likely that the so-called "preoedipal" (or early childhood years) is what one needs to return/turn to temporarily, if one wants to regain some of one's originative plasticity. However, one simply cannot turn/return to it in a rigid state. Do do so only makes things much, much worse. AND TO MAKE MATTERS CLEAR, A CHILDLIKE STATE WHICH IS CREATIVE AND RECEPTIVE IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM THE ACTING OUT CHILDHOOD TRAUMAS BY A MIND THAT IS STILL PARTLY RIGID.

And Nietzsche's system cannot be understood at all, I insist, if it is not viewed as being akin to a shamanistic system aimed at recuperating the psychical energies we conventionally all too easily lose.

Religious belief and the Western cultural structure


It will surprise many people who look at me and notice that I'm white, and that I seem to have a fairly good grasp of the English language, to learn that many aspects of the logic of Western culture are still quite alien to me. I experience them as a puzzle -- and sometimes with a jolting sense of disappointment, and a feeling of having been "foiled again".

One extreme puzzlement I have concerning thinking is what I will refer to as its Kantianism. There is a sense in which culturally conditioned Westerners renounce the sense of being able to take in the qualities of a person as a whole person. Instead of this, it seems that they perceive flashes in the pan of sudden goodness or a sudden quality of evil -- which impact on the perceiver in a revelatory way.

It seems that Western culture is still a culture of revelatory knowledge, which somehow undervalues (and casts under suspicion) even the very possibility of knowledge that is derived from ongoing processes of perception capable of making sense of a person as a whole. Rather, ongoing perception produces only a mechanical and (in the human sense) meaningless result. What produces meaning is something entirely different -- revelation.

***

In the Nietzschean sense, then, it is possible to say that Western culture tends to adopt the perspective of the 19th Century German Feminine.

As Nietzsche so graciously informs us, "a genuine woman" [as opposed to all the fake ones out there] "sees science as an enemy."  Excuse me if I cannot remove the tongue from my cheek.  I'm a trifle lopsided.
One finds that the Romantic and the Scientific are compartmentalized also in the Western mind. Indeed, it would seem that they cancel each other out if they get too close.

In terms of the Romantic way of experiencing the world (which pertains to all that is human about human relationships), knowledge of the other person's character should be revelatory. According to the Scientific approach, reality is purely mechanical and has no human meaning.

To spell out the logic of this epistemological bifurcation, human knowledge is always revelatory knowledge, but scientific knowledge is the genuine article -- ie. it is true knowledge.

You can see that there are further ramifications with regard to this typical Western bifurcation concerning knowledge.

Knowledge that relates to the human and is also meaningful on that level is cast as merely Romantic by some of those who have gone a bit further with drawing out conclusions about values and ideas within the existing framework of Western culture. Conversely, Scientific knowledge -- as a form of quintessentially anti-human, mechanistic knowledge -- is that which ought to dominate (like the male in a patriarchal family) and have its say.


training today

I'm going to be doing a lot more work in the mirror. I practiced the step, step, double jab, cross, with my correct stance and it looks much better in reverse stance. In reverse stance, I can feel my power, and my arms and legs move naturally. In left stance, my elbow comes out a little when I'm jabbing, thus telegraphing the punch, and my cross does not return to position quickly enough.

Thursday 11 June 2009

from shamanic solitudes:shamanic doubling

Here is a quote from shamanic solitudes:

[...E]motions felt by the shaman can suddenly appear. This happened with the shaman Ram Rai, who, during the dance, saw from far off the photo of his recently deceased brother, standing on a shelf. Ram Rai burst into tears. These were not the tears of Laladum [the wood nymph with back to front feet], but the tears of a man, who re-emerged at that particular moment. But this too is part of the ritual. It is not an anomaly. It is simply the irruption of a new fragment that makes up the shamanic ritual's complexity, providing for the fact that, among the various actors taking part on the stage, besides the gods, there may also be the "man-shaman".

The shaman's body always projects a double shadow on the ground. A subtle tragic vein seems constantly to underlie every shamanic ritual performance. Just so. Without leaving any way of distinguishing between the faces and the masks.

The magical allure (Nietzsche and Bataille)


It has been established -- clearly, in my my mind, that the magical allure that is undoubtably present in Nietzsche's writing is shamanistic. It is that which enables him to play the pied piper and to attract a following. Yet the shamanistic mode of logic -- although present -- is not as deep as it ought to be, were one to be truly faithful to the principles of shamanism. In precise terms: although the notion of plasticity of identity and self transformation is trumpeted, the degree of plasticity that is potentially available in each human being is portrayed as being much more limited than actually it is. Whereas changing genders is the ultimate expression of the logic of shamanism, Nietzsche's views that the gender roles ought to be fundamentally unassailable is directly in line with the logic of patriarchal priests throughout the ages.

And yet he uses shamanistic structures of thought -- which have a natural voluptuousness and sense of joyful celebration of the here and now -- to sell us on this gloomy patriarchal priest's ideas. UPDATED-- PERHAPS I WAS A BIT HARSH ON OLD NEECHY HERE, BUT I WAS BEING SORDIDLY ATTACKED BY MALE SUPREMICISTS CLOSE TO THE TIME I WROTE.

This is the contradiction within Nietzsche's work. Shamanism would totally free its initiates the constraints imposed by guilt, if not from guilt itself  -- but Nietzsche wants a certain amount of freedom to be permitted, and no more.

He is like a wine merchant who has decided that his product isn't going far enough -- and so he dilutes his wine with methylated spirits.

But methylated spirits -- the priestly complex -- is actually poison. Specifically, it is a poison in the eyes of this particular wine merchant.

So how did he go wrong -- to mix in so much priestly doom and gloom into what were, and ought to have been, liberating ideas for his time?

UPDATED:  Nietzsche once wrote, "Apart from the church, we too love the poison [of ascetic ideas]."

It seems that both Nietzsche and Bataille mixed their knowledge with a certain amount of religiosity -- poison -- in order to reach the widest possible audience.


Apes in Capes: a critique of Nietzsche through a shamanistic lens


I've been reading Nietzsche more through a shamanistic lens lately and it is quite clear to me what is going on here, that is what dynamic is driving his need to oscillate between the surface of life and its meaning and its depths. Quite clearly, the self-cruelty that he sees as being necessary for obtaining knowledge is akin to the shaman's self-cruelty in choosing to associate with death.

Quite clearly, too, the "surface" of life and the drive to maintain its apparent superficiality relates to the normative side of life, heavily monitored and policed by ego-defences, and -- according to Nietzsche -- quite rightfully so. (But even in this, we have the resonance of the conceptual and even practical shift between two selves -- the one who would rather stay on the surface, and the one who would rather dig deeper for a better resource of knowledge. This doubling within Nietzsche's writing echoes the doubling that is the norm in shamanism -- one foot on the side of everyday reality, and one foot in the realm of strange and dubious phenomena.)

Apart from that, I am now starting to get an ear for the sound of the patriarch in Nietzsche - which wasn't there for me before. Having conceptually and experientially separated the thrill of the shamanic voyage from the tone of the patriarch -- which is Nietzsche's own -- the latter comes across rather more clearly. One realises that it isn't necessary to have the tone or outward outlook of a patriarch to go shamanic voyaging. The latter part -- which may seem intrinsic to a voyage of this sort, in fact isn't necessary to it. (This could be an aspect in which Nietzsche's philosophy is profoundly misleading -- in Nietzsche's having blended that which is universal and accessible to any with the drive and courage for it with an idea that only males, or a certain kind of man, are properly equipped to understand the issues. Thus he has co-opted shamanism for a certain kind of man, when in actual fact its truer nature goes much deeper in the psyche, to the point where shape-shifting can transform one's psychological gender from one state to another. Yet the FORM and DRIVE behind the psyche's oscillations in Nietzsche's writings are still shamanistic.)

His insights are not fundamentally wrong, either -- although in many ways they don't transcend the 19th Century. I put it down to the cruelty and unnatural morality of my original culture that I have been able to survive, unscathed, so much of the misogyny that is also a part of my original culture.

Chaining a woman down within patriarchal culture is equivalent to robbing her of her libido. This, and more.

Wednesday 10 June 2009

Marechera and the psychology of shamanism


My particular intellectual background and experiences have made it fairly easy for me to find shamanistic elements within Marechera's work.

The other factor to my discovering these is that these elements were already in Marechera’s work, waiting to be analysed and discovered – if not be me, then by somebody else like myself, for I am sure that I cannot be alone in having the kind of background and ideas which would permit me to evolve towards a shamanic reading of Marechera.

I have already suggested that Marechera himself may not have known he was shamanic in his way of writing and manner of approaching the world. If one were a practitioner of a specific religion in the traditional sense, it would be necessary, of course, to know that this is what one was.  Such self-recognition would hardly be so necessary if shamanism were rather a phenomenon based upon the neurological structures of the mind – as I am suggesting, in line with the intensive theoretical research of Michael Winkelman, that it in fact is. Shamanism is the intuitive discovery that destruction of parts of the self (including and above all, one’s self concept) need not spell the end of the road for one’s processes of life, but is rather the beginning of new forms of life and self-identity, which can transcend in their perfection and intensity earlier ways of thinking and existing.

Shamanism is the creative and regenerating life force that recasts those accidents of fate that would have led simply to personal destruction into a sense that one has access to something better; something more. It is the neurological structures of the mind that facilitate the kind of healing that results, and it is the psychological experience of this healing that causes the one who had become inadvertently ‘shamanised’ to associate experiences of a partial ‘death’ and destruction of earlier self concepts with an intrinsic healing power within life itself.

This is by no means to imply that the shaman fully forgets the traumas of his or her past, or that he overcomes his sense of tragedy. Quite the opposite is the case.

Rather, a ‘shamanic initiation’ is an induction into an experience of psychological trauma, that results in the acknowledgement of ones’ mortality. From the point of view of one who may have been brought up within a system of monotheistic religion, it involves a radical destruction of the sensibility that there’s a God “up there” who will intervene on ones’ behalf. Rather, gods and the sense of the Good lose their positions on a pedestal above humanity, with the result that the sense of what is sacred is recast, neurologically, as being much more proximate to the human being and his or her everyday experiences.

Similarly – and this goes to the ‘bittersweet’ aspect of shamanism – death itself also draws nearer to the one who has been ‘shamanised’, and remains in proximity, as a constant reminder of human mortality. It is as if conventional ego defences, that would cause the subject to constantly deny his or her own mortality had been severely weakened by the traumatic process of ‘shamanic intitiation’. The initiate henceforth has more self knowledge, and more knowledge of the structures of human reality – but only at a cost.

In overall terms the cost is perhaps worth it. One has to, I suspect, be a bit ghoulish to say so – yet, in all honesty, one feasts upon the bones of the saints (both in literary and political terms, and in terms of spiritual self nourishment). Marechera’s writing embodies a state of human activity – the state of being thoroughly neurologically active – that one rarely sees in any written work. The normal developmental processes that produce, as their end result, the ‘good citizen’ and the ‘mature adult’, also lead to an outcome that is relatively static.

The following is the position of orthodox psychoanalysis (although it is not often recognised that this is its position, due to the tremendous power of conventional ego defences, in protecting us from developing knowledge about ourselves – in the end, a protection of knowledge concerning our mortality.) Psychoanalysis points to ‘normative’ processes of development that are also deemed to be normative in their traumatic nature, which can extract much of the lifeforce from a human being.   (See Freud's reference to the woman of 30 years.) Shamans, by contrast, are those who have made the happy discovery that there is life on the other side of the rational constructions (and rationalising limitations) of ego.

In the case of a shaman-initiate,  death has become a very well-known enemy indeed. And having become so well known, death may be bargained with, and persuaded to release more of one’s life force. A shaman is one who keeps his friends close and his enemy – death – even closer. It is through negotiating with death that one can persuade superego – who would require that one become increasingly more psychologically static – to allow one to expand. One faces down death and thus takes life force – (that which Nietzsche refers to as ‘plasticity’) – back from him. A shaman is a type who has discovered that there are benefits in engaging with the forces of destruction. Needless to say: despite his proclaimed intentions, he performs his mediation role on behalf of others, more than himself, for the shamanistic role is sacrificial.


the computer room


Tuesday 9 June 2009

http://home.iprimus.com.au/scratchy888/NEW%20INTRO.htm

Marechera's shamanistic development



5 shamanic stages to be found in Marechera’s life

1. THE STABLE “GOOD” WORLD—idealised as such, even if not so in actuality.

2. THE INTERVENTION OF EVIL AS DESTABILISING FORCE (LEADING TO DEPERSONALISATION AND DEREALISATION)

3. THE INTERNAL “TAMING” OF THESE FORCES FOR CREATIVE AND PRODUCTIVE ENDEAVOUR

4. THE ACQUISITION OF POWER (INCLUDING KNOWLEDGE AS POWER), POWERS OF TRANSFORMATION AND INSIGHT INTO HOW THINGS ACTUALLY WORK ‘BENEATH THE SURFACE”

5. THE STRUGGLE TO MAINTAIN INTERNAL EQUILIBRIUM “ON THE FENCE” BETWEEN TWO WORLDS.

5 shamanistic features to be found in Marechera’s work:

1. autodestruction and regeneration of the self
2. the use of imagination to supplement reality (tragic sense that life is in need of repair)
3. rebirth through shamanistic initiation to become no longer the child of one’s parent/s
(anti-oedipal/self-generating creativity)
4. the doubling of the self; The shaman's body always projects a double shadow on the ground. A subtle tragic vein seems constantly to underlie every shamanic ritual performance. Just so. Without leaving any way of distinguishing between the faces and the masks. [From "shamanic solitudes" p 87]
5. the sense that one’s being is the tenuous bridge between the ‘here and now’ and ‘the spirit world.’

From "shamanic solitudes" p 87

The shaman's body always projects a double shadow on the ground. A subtle tragic vein seems constantly to underlie every shamanic ritual performance. Just so. Without leaving any way of distinguishing between the faces and the masks.

Sunday 7 June 2009

mystified by my "nature" -- poetic justice



One adopts a tactic that is similar to the union "work to rule" when one has no way to more physically escape the patriarchy. One accepts the rules laid down by the patriarchy, along the lines of firm gender division. Only, one interprets them rather more consistently than the patriarchy is wont to do. For patriarchy requires to see a struggle against the shackles of shame and authoritarian rule that it imposes. One is supposed to engage in a lifelong attempt to raise oneself above the level of one's imputed baseness, with the outcome as a generally a foregone conclusion: One is not expected to win this artificially constructed battle for obvious reasons -- in patriarchy's ideological terms, one does not, because one cannot, overcome one's "nature".

Consistency in conformity to "the rule" is an excellent antidote to suffering the lashes of patriarchal shame. In terms of this alternative solution to one's that may eventually drain all your energy through speaking out, one does not provide anyone the spectacle of struggling against one's putative "nature", as one is actually required to do. Rather, one calls the patriarchal bluff by giving in to it entirely. That is, one temporary adopts the role -- only more consistently than generally anticipated -- in accordance with one's putative feminine nature.

I have found that failing to engage in a moral struggle against oneself raises the patriarchal ire like nothing else. It can even put the patriarchy into a veritable panic mode.

So if my clothes drape a little long on me, to mix it with the plates, and you happen to disapprove, do not be too surprised, if I seem to look toward the heavens, in astonishment (along with you) as to where this clothing could have come from and how they made their way to alight upon me.

The female world is an entirely passive one, and hence the passive tense: "It seems like nothing can be done about this!"

In other words, concerning all things putatively feminine -- I am as mystified as you are!!

Saturday 6 June 2009

more of the shamanic

The below paragraph goes towards an undestanding of the linear aspect of one’s development as a shaman – as well as to how it might be one’s undoing, which I believe, in Marechera’s case, it was. It is always possible to go under when doing battle with the spirits of one’s time. The more one takes on, the greater the likelihood of an unfortunate end. To dwell solely on this conclusion, however, is to become melancholy about human nature and the realities of human experience in general – life is always a risk, since little is assured in it, and taking risks with their life is one of the most interesting things a human being can ever hope to do. What is rather more interesting than the inevitability of a state of loss – death, in its final and irrevocable form – is the other aspect of shamanism that I have mentioned already. That is the circular nature of selfhood that one finds within Marechera’s work – the continual cycle of death and rebirth within a sphere of creative inspiration. When mind submits to the vital elements of present in all matter [base materialism] – if a degree of spirited intensity is already present in the subject – creative self-renewal is inevitable. A return to the womb and death of the old persona creates a new self – which is never the same as the old self, as the totally different approaches in Marechera’s work will testify to.

Friday 5 June 2009

shamanism

I take the typical shamanistic notion of “the taming of the spirits” in both metaphorical and metonymic senses – since an encounter with psychological forces is in fact an encounter with the “spirits” of others, only made manifest at a deeper level of self-knowledge. One encounters the good will and the bad will of others in an analysis of one’s own unconscious and its relationship to salient ideological forces. The natural evolution of a shaman is to first become acquainted with the nature of the disturbing psychological forces or “spirits” (in other words, the effect of others’ ‘ideological high spirits’) within him. Only later are these originally unruly forces tamed by self-knowledge, to the point where mastering the spirits of one’s time becomes, finally, a necessary and associated feature of developing one’s own self-mastery. Evidence of the former – for instance in the skill of social observation made manifest in Marechera’s art – is evidence also of the latter. Despite this, the shaman’s self-mastery is always tenuous, for he does battle with forces often much greater and more socially powerful than he; and for all the skill of management of alien forces, he nonetheless remains, at bottom, a very small unit of social power: a mere individual.)

on power and lack

A clear problem with social darwinism is brought to light by its blind-spots.

If it could articulate its position -- which of course it doesn't, because it has chosen a position in the antiquated paradigm of mind-body dualism that is on the side of the body -- it might say this:

"Yeah, well, sorry about that. But it's just the way life is. Humans always respect a display of force, but humans have no real attraction for the intellect. They don't respect it because they are programmed that way, to have no bar of it."

We can see the obvious problem, now, with social darwinism, in that its formulation writes me out of existence. I'm not in this human world, according to it. And that, quite clearly, is a contradiction.

For I do respect the intellect -- and, in non dualistic fashion, I respect it as a kind of force.

And when a patriarch does a little social darwinistic jig around me, using words judged to impose dominion, I tend to see that approach as indicative not of a use of force but of an absence of the intellect.

Which shouldn't be possible according to social darwinistic theory. For, if force always has a higher value than the intellect -- which is what many social darwinists assume -- by rights I should not be able to perceive anything intellectually lacking in the patriarchal jig of dominance. And I most certainly do.

Poorly considered dominance ploys display quite openly a lack of appropriate intellectual judgment about the world. 

Putting the pressure on


Giving a paper at a conference at UWA home turf today was easier than I'd expected. Compared to Oxford, the nature and shape of INTELLECTUAL pressure was very minimal indeed (no doubt due to being on home turf).

I have a few ideas that I want to write down, some day in the future, about intellectual pressure and how much I enjoy it.

My commentary in this potential article will muse upon how it can be that when everybody's focussed on a task, with a high level of profiency and skill (and not just energy and pure determination), a kind of group pressure develops that can raise everbody's skill levels and competencies, just by being part of the group.

It led me to think of how different this condition of "being under pressure" is from the average garden variety social darwinist's notion that upholds a view that condemnation or taunting are useful techniques to put a person "under pressure"  to determine whether they belong among the ranks of "the fittest".

Nothing -- and I repeat, NOTHING -- could be more poorly thought out than this extremely common notion of what it means to be put "under pressure" in a way that builds the character.

http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/

Wednesday 3 June 2009

once upon a midnight dreary

...as I ponder all my hair..ie.

I'm so, so tired of work and everything.

I really only had a small workout in the gym yesterday, and was planning to go again today, but woke up with a jolt thinking that it might be Friday this morning, rather than Thursday -- and then I would have missed an appointment.

I no longer expect, exactly, punishment, from the world -- but I do anticipate a never-ending condemnation to More Work.

Really, though, my boxing form is looking a little strange in front of the mirror, and my reverse stance does seem much more natural and instinctive than my supposedly 'normal' stance does.

My upper body is apparently weak compared to how it was before I went away to Britain. My aerobic capacity has, surprisingly, not suffered.

Monday 1 June 2009

a very good idea: masculinity.

Logic alone suggests that feminists have nothing at all to fear from masculinity, that it is our closest ally and dearest friend -- but that is if and only if it is all that it claims to be.

Indeed, masculinity -- if and if it is what it has been deemed to be throughout history -- should have nothing at all to fear from the strongest minds that society and feminism have to offer. Feminism is the manifestation of what is female rational and clear thinking and males who are not afraid of mental clarity ought not to be afraid of feminist thinkers.

One never fears anybody's independence of mind if one has an independent mind of one's own -- that is, unless one has taken one's marching orders from priests of duplicity, who perpetuate their power by smoke and mirrors. In the latter case, one's guilty conscience and sense of inner authenticity gives one everything to fear and everything to hide.

To be audacious, to attempt to try new things (even at the risk of failing) to dare to go against the grain of conventional mores, in order to discover new ways of thinking and being that correspond with one's higher degree of courage -- these are not values that any clear-thinking feminist would oppose. Rather, it is important for us to see such new and dangerous approaches to life come to life. Our sense of well-being and satisfaction depends on these.

Despite this, like Mahatma Ghandi, we are positioned to take an ironical stance towards certain dominant ideologies of the day. The introduction of masculinity to the contemporary political and social sphere seems like "a good idea".

No longer would we have to put up with the petty mind-games of those whose entire quota of masculinity consists in the degree to which they can make various women look idiotic and inferior in comparison to their good selves. No longer would we have to bother with counteracting this ultimately futile and severely delusional relational model of masculinity (which puts women down in order to trumpet its cause). Rather we would, for the first time, encounter something that would stand on its two feet, being assured of what it was, and happy to be that way.


Cultural barriers to objectivity