Dambudzo Marechera: A Celebration
In May 2009 Oxford University, which expelled Marechera in 1976, will be hosting Dambudzo Marechera: A Celebration, which its organizers describe as a" multi-media festival to recuperate the memory of the author in Oxford... Marechera's experimental interpretation of the colonial and postcolonial experience has been recognized as a significant instance of African modernism and postmodernism that links him with such writers as Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo and J. M. Coetzee and demands new retellings of African literary history. His post-nationalist vision, an alternative to cultural nationalism long before its currency in postcolonial theory, is highly relevant to the concerns of postcolonial studies today, as the continued critical interest in the writer indicates."
This event brings together important Marechera scholars and friends, some of whom are listed below:
Jennifer Armstrong (University of Western Australia)
"Marechera's shamanistic approach to reading history"
The paper will look at Marechera's take on Britain and post-independence Zimbabwe. It will show how he uses a shamanistic approach to reshape and reframe our perceptions of history, and if possible to redirect the future, itself. His approach is shamanistic in that he seeks to restore health to the soul-sick by intervening at a pre-Oedipal stage of awareness.
Jane Bryce (University of the West Indies)
"'Bits and pieces I picked up and pocketed':
The tangential feminine in Marechera's fiction"
Known for his combative and menippean writing style, Dambudzo Marechera has not infrequently been taken to task for his apparently negative portrayal of women. The poet Chenjerai Hove, for example, was of the opinion that: 'In this poetry woman is the mother of "bastards", the "bitch" or the "wench". This portrayal betrays the struggle to improve women's position in society.'
This paper will take an opposite view - that Marechera's multiplicity of disguises included feminine personae, through whose abused bodies he expressed a deep empathy with the suffering and exploitation of all victims, including women. At the same time, sex is invariably depicted in his work as one of a continuum of violent acts perpetrated on the weak and those unable to defend themselves.
Through a focus on particular short stories, the paper will dismantle the critique of a negative femininity, recontextualising it within a world view which sees the feminine as potentially subversive of masculinist and patriarchal power.
Memory Chirere (University of Zimbabwe)
"Marechera-mania and Zimbabwean Literature"
This paper explores a multifaceted phenomenon tentatively called “Marechera-mania” that has gripped some prominent young Zimbabwean writers who started writing earnestly in the 1990's. These writers have either associated themselves with Marechera, or have been associated, by others, with his writing style or ideas as a launching pad into their own careers. But more important is how they have tended, variably, to give Marechera very interesting new leases of life in whatever independent directions they have been taken as writers. Robert Muponde is the most prominent of the “Marechera apostles”. His short stories in No More Plastic Balls echo Marechera in their vigorous language and an in-depth exploration of violence and victimhood. Ruzvidzo Mupfudza’s early works like "Cancer" echo Marechera’s "The Christmas Reunion" in its excruciating introspective search for meaning in a world where family ties are fast collapsing. The early Nhamo Mhiripiri’s work exudes Marecherean existentialism as it explores the complex spirit of the township as in The House of Hunger. The others are the late Phillip Zhuwawo and the much younger Tinashe Mushakavanhu.
Gerald Gaylard (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa)
"Love in the time of illness: Marechera's love poetry"
Dambudzo Marechera was radical in every sense of the word, and no less so in his love poetry which was unprecedented, particularly in black Zimbabwean literature just after independence in the early 1980s. Whilst there has been interesting recent work on Marechera, for instance on his writing about war, his love poetry has received scant critical attention. This is regrettable both because of the paucity of love poetry in the Zimbabwean context and because Marechera dealt so insightfully with the intricacies of relations between self and other within a racialised and claustrophobically bordered world. This paper aims to rectify this by a careful examination of his love poems, in particular the "Amelia" sequence and "My Arms Vanished Mountains" from Cemetery of Mind. The paper shows that Marechera's insurrectionary quest for psychosexual freedom in this poetry involved a number of important literary interventions. He had to be prepared to challenge gender roles, and in particular any sense of himself as a conventional heterosexual male and the idea of femininity as passive. He had to be prepared to both use and abandon any and all traditions, particularly those that associated identity with sexuality with power. He had to embrace alterity, particularly in the form of European others, which led him into a dangerous Kristevan territory of jouissance and abjection, what he calls in his introduction to the "Amelia" sequence "the delight of pure sexual pleasure...when thought and calculation are banished out of sight. A melodrama of the voluptuous" (167). And, finally, he had to find a new and appropriate style and register in which to write this new form of love. The result of these interventions was a poetry dynamic in its refusal to be dominated by history, its anti-racism and its suggestion that love involves a curiosity about and exploration of otherness, a suggestion ahead of its time in many ways.
Nhamo Mhiripiri (Midlands State University, Zimbabwe)
"Visualising Marechera and seeing the self-performer: Marechera on film and video"
Filmic documentary is an artistic method whose importance in the presentation and re-presentation of Dambudzo Marechera has not been adequately investigated. Marechera has appeared in both film and video documentary, 'acting' himself, as in the first part of The House of Hunger (1984) by Chris Austin, and in interviews such as Olley Maruma's After the Hunger and the Drought (1985). There is also unedited footage of Marechera being interviewed by Ray Mawerere. These three audio-visual documentaries are important in ascertaining what popular impressions of Marechera they capture, project, reinforce or demystify, and whether they perpetuate the image of the eccentric, mad, wild man. Marechera is best remembered as a writer rather than an 'actor'. When he was contracted to act himself in The House of Hunger, the visuals show him as a fired up, angry, but very articulate young exile in Britain. He is full of life and his body deportment exudes confidence and defiance. A somewhat similar mood and articulation of topical issues is extended in Olley Maruma's After the Hunger and the Drought. The footage collected by Ray Mawerere tells a different story with a visibly ailing Marechera, calm and mellowed, at his workplace at Speciss College. He has a bad bout of flu but still carries himself with pride and dignity. Here he is no longer signifying the mad fiery writer anymore. Whilst Marechera has not yet resigned to death, a reflexive video viewer can see the man who wrote somewhat morbid poems such as "I used to like tomatoes" and "Who the bastard is death". Those lines are rife with a premonition of death and a sense of betrayal with the physical human body as a fragile and mortal frame on which "Time" and "Fate" make their own wry inscriptions. Certainly, in the filmic and video spoken words are important, but the way he dresses and carries himself, his poise and outward appearance are of semiotic significance that need attention. The film clips are existential texts which narrate a story that though ambiguous in its own right, complements and corroborates what Marechera said and wrote, confirming, inventing, reinventing or simply rejecting the popular myths about himself.
Chris Kabwato (Rhodes University, South Africa)
"'The undying influence': why Dambudzo is popular with today's youths"
Special Note to Presenters: In preparation and support for the important event, Munyori Literary Journal will attempt to feature interviews of some of the presenters in its Jan/Feb, Mar/Apr, and May/June issues. If you are interested in participating, contact us at manu@munyori.com
This event brings together important Marechera scholars and friends, some of whom are listed below:
Jennifer Armstrong (University of Western Australia)
"Marechera's shamanistic approach to reading history"
The paper will look at Marechera's take on Britain and post-independence Zimbabwe. It will show how he uses a shamanistic approach to reshape and reframe our perceptions of history, and if possible to redirect the future, itself. His approach is shamanistic in that he seeks to restore health to the soul-sick by intervening at a pre-Oedipal stage of awareness.
Jane Bryce (University of the West Indies)
"'Bits and pieces I picked up and pocketed':
The tangential feminine in Marechera's fiction"
Known for his combative and menippean writing style, Dambudzo Marechera has not infrequently been taken to task for his apparently negative portrayal of women. The poet Chenjerai Hove, for example, was of the opinion that: 'In this poetry woman is the mother of "bastards", the "bitch" or the "wench". This portrayal betrays the struggle to improve women's position in society.'
This paper will take an opposite view - that Marechera's multiplicity of disguises included feminine personae, through whose abused bodies he expressed a deep empathy with the suffering and exploitation of all victims, including women. At the same time, sex is invariably depicted in his work as one of a continuum of violent acts perpetrated on the weak and those unable to defend themselves.
Through a focus on particular short stories, the paper will dismantle the critique of a negative femininity, recontextualising it within a world view which sees the feminine as potentially subversive of masculinist and patriarchal power.
Memory Chirere (University of Zimbabwe)
"Marechera-mania and Zimbabwean Literature"
This paper explores a multifaceted phenomenon tentatively called “Marechera-mania” that has gripped some prominent young Zimbabwean writers who started writing earnestly in the 1990's. These writers have either associated themselves with Marechera, or have been associated, by others, with his writing style or ideas as a launching pad into their own careers. But more important is how they have tended, variably, to give Marechera very interesting new leases of life in whatever independent directions they have been taken as writers. Robert Muponde is the most prominent of the “Marechera apostles”. His short stories in No More Plastic Balls echo Marechera in their vigorous language and an in-depth exploration of violence and victimhood. Ruzvidzo Mupfudza’s early works like "Cancer" echo Marechera’s "The Christmas Reunion" in its excruciating introspective search for meaning in a world where family ties are fast collapsing. The early Nhamo Mhiripiri’s work exudes Marecherean existentialism as it explores the complex spirit of the township as in The House of Hunger. The others are the late Phillip Zhuwawo and the much younger Tinashe Mushakavanhu.
Gerald Gaylard (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa)
"Love in the time of illness: Marechera's love poetry"
Dambudzo Marechera was radical in every sense of the word, and no less so in his love poetry which was unprecedented, particularly in black Zimbabwean literature just after independence in the early 1980s. Whilst there has been interesting recent work on Marechera, for instance on his writing about war, his love poetry has received scant critical attention. This is regrettable both because of the paucity of love poetry in the Zimbabwean context and because Marechera dealt so insightfully with the intricacies of relations between self and other within a racialised and claustrophobically bordered world. This paper aims to rectify this by a careful examination of his love poems, in particular the "Amelia" sequence and "My Arms Vanished Mountains" from Cemetery of Mind. The paper shows that Marechera's insurrectionary quest for psychosexual freedom in this poetry involved a number of important literary interventions. He had to be prepared to challenge gender roles, and in particular any sense of himself as a conventional heterosexual male and the idea of femininity as passive. He had to be prepared to both use and abandon any and all traditions, particularly those that associated identity with sexuality with power. He had to embrace alterity, particularly in the form of European others, which led him into a dangerous Kristevan territory of jouissance and abjection, what he calls in his introduction to the "Amelia" sequence "the delight of pure sexual pleasure...when thought and calculation are banished out of sight. A melodrama of the voluptuous" (167). And, finally, he had to find a new and appropriate style and register in which to write this new form of love. The result of these interventions was a poetry dynamic in its refusal to be dominated by history, its anti-racism and its suggestion that love involves a curiosity about and exploration of otherness, a suggestion ahead of its time in many ways.
Nhamo Mhiripiri (Midlands State University, Zimbabwe)
"Visualising Marechera and seeing the self-performer: Marechera on film and video"
Filmic documentary is an artistic method whose importance in the presentation and re-presentation of Dambudzo Marechera has not been adequately investigated. Marechera has appeared in both film and video documentary, 'acting' himself, as in the first part of The House of Hunger (1984) by Chris Austin, and in interviews such as Olley Maruma's After the Hunger and the Drought (1985). There is also unedited footage of Marechera being interviewed by Ray Mawerere. These three audio-visual documentaries are important in ascertaining what popular impressions of Marechera they capture, project, reinforce or demystify, and whether they perpetuate the image of the eccentric, mad, wild man. Marechera is best remembered as a writer rather than an 'actor'. When he was contracted to act himself in The House of Hunger, the visuals show him as a fired up, angry, but very articulate young exile in Britain. He is full of life and his body deportment exudes confidence and defiance. A somewhat similar mood and articulation of topical issues is extended in Olley Maruma's After the Hunger and the Drought. The footage collected by Ray Mawerere tells a different story with a visibly ailing Marechera, calm and mellowed, at his workplace at Speciss College. He has a bad bout of flu but still carries himself with pride and dignity. Here he is no longer signifying the mad fiery writer anymore. Whilst Marechera has not yet resigned to death, a reflexive video viewer can see the man who wrote somewhat morbid poems such as "I used to like tomatoes" and "Who the bastard is death". Those lines are rife with a premonition of death and a sense of betrayal with the physical human body as a fragile and mortal frame on which "Time" and "Fate" make their own wry inscriptions. Certainly, in the filmic and video spoken words are important, but the way he dresses and carries himself, his poise and outward appearance are of semiotic significance that need attention. The film clips are existential texts which narrate a story that though ambiguous in its own right, complements and corroborates what Marechera said and wrote, confirming, inventing, reinventing or simply rejecting the popular myths about himself.
Chris Kabwato (Rhodes University, South Africa)
"'The undying influence': why Dambudzo is popular with today's youths"
Special Note to Presenters: In preparation and support for the important event, Munyori Literary Journal will attempt to feature interviews of some of the presenters in its Jan/Feb, Mar/Apr, and May/June issues. If you are interested in participating, contact us at manu@munyori.com
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