Marechera's writing style has been viewed as "elitist", and perhaps the way in which the novella and the nine stories of
The House of Hunger have been written would provide ample evidence for this point of view. That being said, the attribution of "elitist" to what is fundamentally a shamanistic style of writing -- (
The House of Hunger is where the budding author discovers his style) -- misses its mark. For what we see in
The House of Hunger , as in his later works, is the harnessing of intellectual ideas as well as well as mythopoetic ideas derived from the local Shona culture (as well as Marechera's own imaginative embroidery of his local time and place) in order to tell a story of shamanistic initiation and transformation. It is always this
inner story that is primary, and essential to understanding in any of Marechera's works.
The intellectual ideas that he appropriates, in order to tell the story of how oppression led indirectly (and by no means inevitably) to the expansion of his mind, are always bent and honed to suit this particular purpose of story-telling. The ideas he uses -- whether Jungian or Freudian or pan-Africanist in their nature -- retain only some of their original theoretical consistency and become merged with notions derived from very different schools of thought, in Marechera's writing. His work is far less
elitist, then, in terms of what is generally implied by this term: in terms of an approach being chosen so as to advocate for one's intellectual superiority. Rather, we see that various ideas and theories of thought are taken from the Western and African contexts in which they were originally generated, and used by Marechera to form a skin or exo-skeleton that will define the outline of his "inner experience".
This emphasis on "inner experience" is more than just hinted at by Marechera's seemingly eclectic approach to stylistic matters. It is based on shamanistic ways of making choices between different sources of material during the processes of writing. This tendency to differentiate between the "exoteric" (as in the types of material that Marechera uses in order to point to something about his state of mind) and the "esoteric" (the state of mind itself, which is revealed only by experiencing the work holistically, and not by any means just in terms of its parts)is also shamanistic. In fact, we see the inception of this type of thinking -- a mode of of thinking that Marechera was always to employ in his writing -- in terms of the differentiation between the inside of the "house of hunger" (the emblem representing Marechera's psyche)and the outside of it. The novella of
The House of Hunger can be seen esoterically as involving the budding author's learning to distinguish between inner experience and experiences that are determined from the outside of one's mind, and caused by historical inevitability. It is the power of inner experience that is given value and precedence to determine quality of life, at the end of the novella. This is not to suggest a break from reality, or that the author descended into solipsism -- but rather, to the contrary, that a firm shamanistic dualism has been established to distinguish the knowledge that one has of "the inside" (that is, knowledge of the self) from that which one has concerning "the outside" (that is, the partly knowable external world, which is now seen to need the imaginative powers of a shaman-creator to supplement it.)
The charge of elitism also seems misplaced when one considers that it is not a shaman's task to disperse intellectual knowledge, so much as to differentiate between social and cultural forces that enhance the experience of life and those that serve to dampen or kill "inner experience". This is what is what is meant by referring to a shaman's "ontological knowledge". An encounter with death imparts this knowledge. The death of ego is represented in
The House of Hunger , when the protagonist is unable to distinguish between the inside of "the house" (his psyche) and its outside. His self is thus "dissociated", and yet to its advantage, is given ventilation and room to breathe. (It's a different metaphor that the writer uses at this point -- the all too tight "stitches" that hold together the author's head (symbolising his fraught character structure) no longer pull so tightly anymore. It's a holistic depiction of how temporary psychosis led to the expansion of his mind despite his original inner resistance to this process of expansion. This is a story of spontaneous "shamanic initiation". It is often viewed as a sickness that is brought about by "spirits" or a wounding of the mind and body. The author's way of writing about it has nothing to do with feigning an elite stance against the world. Rather, he incorporates intellectual and aesthetic material from the widest range of sources (African and Western), in order to convey the nature of his transformation. (His writing should be considered to be broadly culturally inclusive, rather than by any means "elitist".)
The value of shamanic initiation, as I have said, is that the one who undergoes it receives "ontological knowledge". The person who "faces death" through shamanic initiation understands implicitly the relationships that humans develop with the spectre of death (that is, death as symbolically constructed, death as a common means of psychological self-compromise that facilitates certain types of human social organisation, and death as existential threat or "limit".) Marechera's writing in
The House of Hunger and beyond reveal a preoccupation with these concerns. Shamanic healing is involves using the techniques of dissociation and projecting of one's ego elsewhere, to cope with this now known enemy -- the spectre of death. The goal is to use one's knowledge of how the human psyche is constructed (knowledge gained during initiation) to outwit danger and death. Shamanic dualism (as previously described) enables one to escape the spectre of symbolic death by taking on different forms. Symbolic death is a human construct, and therefore, has conventionalistic predilections, which do not take into account the possibility of shamanic transformations. We see here a useful transformation in "The Writers' Grain" when the protagonist encounters "Barbara's father in the valley":
'I'll get you in the end, you rascal!' he screamed.
But I bit the silver button and turned myself into a crocodile and laughed my great sharp teeth at him. (p 33)
The use of shamanic knowledge is not just in terms of a folklorish context, however. The psychological knowledge of what can be achieved by dissociation, splitting, projection and magical thinking is real. One with shamanic knowledge understands how these psychological devices are commonly used in everyday human society, and how they may advantage or disadvantage those who use them. Access to this kind of knowledge marks the shaman as potentially a real political player:
While I was cursing [Barbara's father], a voice I did not recognise said:
"You thought it was all politics, didn't you?'
But there was no one there.
I sneered.
'Isn't it?'
And I sullenly turned myself back into human shape. (p 133.)
A shamanistic approach does have political advantage in that it takes a holistic approach to human affairs. It disregards the common human need for repression as well as forms of mind-body dualism that do not allow for an equal expression of both of these sides. Therefore it is capable of seeing more at once, and from a wider angle, than most more theoretical positions are capable of taking in at one time.
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