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Elliot Ziwira @ The Book store

In both literal and metaphorical senses, a whole nation may be crippled as a result of neurosis.

The social neurosis and moral drought prevalent in Zimbabwean literature conform to the literature of combat postulated by Frantz Fanon (1967): “A literature of combat, in the sense that it calls on the whole people to fight for their existence as a nation . . . a literature of combat, because it moulds the national consciousness, giving it form and contours, and flinging open before it, new and boundless horizons . . . a literature of combat because it assumes responsibility and because it is the will to liberty expressed in terms of time and space.”

Brian Chikwava, Memory Chirere, Shimmer Chinodya, Robert Muponde, Clement Chihota, Dambudzo Marechera and Shakespeare Nyereyemhuka are among Zimbabwean writers who are consistent in their use of the metaphor of madness and symbolic elements to capture the universal neurosis at the core of the national discourse.

In “Hunting in Foreign Lands and Other Stories” (2010) avarice and individualism know no class castes, as it involves the wretched of the earth and those in social and political positions of influence, which makes the quagmire that society finds itself in universal; with no solution in sight, as everyone is caught up in the rat race to material fruition, and anything that may mitigate poverty and suffering. There is so much suffering, despondence, frustration and hopelessness that the individual seeks solutions in irrationality.

Using modernist traits and satirical tropes, artistes are able to effectively play their role as the voice of the voiceless, as posited by Chenjerai Hove, cited in Veit-Wild (1993:4): “African writers have to perform the task of helping to awaken the consciences of the world to the plight of the powerless in a world where the muscle of arms, rather than morality seems to determine the fate of life.”

This rationale of the artiste as the voice of the voiceless also obtains in Chinweizu et al (1985:24) assertion that: “The artiste in the traditional milieu spoke for and on behalf of his community.” Using “tones of the satirist spectrum, wit, ridicule, irony, sarcasm, cynicism, the sardonic and invective” (Studies in Literary Modes, 1946:32), artistes poke at the neurosis and moral decay of the family unit, community and nation.

Brian Chikwava’s “Harare North” (2009), Shimmer Chinodya’s “Chairman of Fools” (2005), “Somewhere in this Country” (2006) by Memory Chirere and “Hunting in Foreign Lands and Other Stories” (2010) conform to modernism as postulated by Ellman and Fiedson (1965), as they argue that modernism is: “A distinctive mode of imagination which derives from the enlightenment … strongly implies some sort of discontinuity, either a liberation from inherited patterns or at another extreme, deprivation and disinheritance.”

They go on to say that: “Modernists have been as much imbued with a feeling for their historical role, their relation to the past, as with a feeling of discontinuity.”

As the hunting terrain changes, so do the roles as the former prey turns to be the hunter, and vice versa. The once colonised fail to unshackle themselves from the native-master discourse. The African is now the explorer of modern gold, diamonds and emeralds, thus reversing the gains of independence; and in all this ruckus the individual’s psyche breaks and gives in to a neurotic condition that afflicts everyone.

In Kampt’s view (1967), modernists are always in perpetual struggle as they seek to capture the foibles and vices obtaining in their societies, because modernism is a “condition of permanent revolution”. It is evident that modernists are obsessed with despair, frustration and disillusionment.

The sense of impermanence, uncertainty, hopelessness and scepticism is expressed through the use of symbolic elements. The use of symbolic elements pervades African literature in general and Zimbabwean literature in particular. Solutions are sought in the past; death and insanity are used as forms of escapism, much to the detriment of societal values and regeneration.

The new breed of hunters thinks more of themselves than the nation, as individualism and the quest for material gain take centre stage. Migration and displacement as a result of the need to fend for the family as well as satiate individual expectations in the wake of post-colonial oppression leads to social neurosis, which becomes detrimental to the familial, communal and national discourses, leading to paralysis, malaise and stasis.

In the struggle for location and identity in the different sites that shape his or her being, the individual finds himself or herself unable to extricate his or her being from the snare of his or her existence. The obsession for material gain becomes a universal condition weighing down upon individual aspirations, and subsequently taking its toll on every character that the protagonist associates with – and in the end everyone becomes a victim.

The neurotic inclinations that ensue become a bane on societal regeneration and progress. Neurosis is defined as a mental disorder that causes obsessive fears, depression and unreasonable behaviour. According to Boeree in “A Bio-Social Theory of Neurosis” (2002), neurosis, which is hereditary, refers to a variety of psychological problems involving persistent experiences of negative effect including anxiety, sadness or depression, anger, irritability, mental confusion, cognitive problems, such as unpleasant or disturbing thoughts, habitual fantasising and cynicism.”

Culture and social background play a significant role in the way one relates to his or her surroundings, even if he or she is displaced from the source of the initial problem. Thus burdened, the individual seeks to avoid or mitigate his/her situation through vigilance, escape behaviours and defensive thinking.

The creation of a make believe world as an elixir from the burdensome reality may be destructive if what is expected turns to a travesty; leading to anger, anxiety and sadness, (Boeree, 2002). Freud (1904, 1923, 1930) also examines the clinical notion of neurosis as posited by Boeree (2002). Jung (1961, 1989) intimates: “I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life,” (Jung, 1961, 1989:40).

He goes on to say that: “The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who have lost their faith,” (ibid, 1989:40). However, neurosis as a mental or psychological condition in postcolonial states has its roots in imperialism, which makes it more than just a clinical condition, but a metaphorical response to oppressive tendencies which affect not only individuals, but whole groups, or entire nations (Fanon, 1952, 1967).

There are a lot of questions that we as individuals have, but such questions are inadequately answered or completely ignored. Sometimes we content ourselves in the inadequacy of the given answers and juxtapose them with our own individual lacks; literally and metaphorically.

In both literal and metaphorical senses, a whole nation may be crippled as a result of neurosis. In “Black Skin White Masks” (1952), Frantz Fanon, though adopting Freud’s clinical concept of neurosis as “a conflict between the ego and its id,” (Freud, “Neurosis and Psychosis”,1923), he examines the psychological responses to imperialism by fore-fronting the phobi or “neurotic reactions” of the Africans to colonialism.

The detrimental state of the self is more profound than just a clinical response to a situation, but as expounded by Boeree (2002), there is a bio-social link which has its roots in socio-cultural background, thus Fanon (1952) advocates the investigation of “the extent to which the conditions of Feud or of Adler can be applied to the effort to understand the man of colour’s view of the world” (Fanon, 1952:109).

According to Lacan (1973) in “The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III”, neurosis is deeper than a specific condition, but assumes the form of “legible” delusion that is structured like a language. Because of its impact on the psyche, imperialism is a kind of disease (neurosis) that is not curable, in the sense that to the oppressed it is a condition that is lived, and relived; generation after generation, thus becoming an intricate social system, (Lacan, 1973:45).

The political, social, economic and cultural practices which shape establishments in post-colonial Africa have their source in imperialism whereby individual experiences of the coloniser (master) and colonised (native), shape the way they think, hence in the end an overall social neurosis ensues, as purveyed in Spivak’s “retrospective hallucination” (Spivak, 1967:275).

Through the use of nihilistic traits of modernism and satire, artistes hold up the erstwhile coloniser, as well as African leaders, responsible for the paralysis of individual aspirations, culminating in neurosis, as new gods are fashioned through deification, avarice and corruption.

Probably Jung aptly sums it up: “Contemporary man is blind to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by ‘powers’ that are beyond his control. His gods and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names. They keep him on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food—and, above all, a large array of neuroses” (Jung, 1964:82).