The Inward and Outward Trajectories of the Shaman’s Journeys: Mediation in Ben Okri’s Dangerous Love and Zakes Mda’s The Sculptors of Mapungubwe

Abstract

This article teases out a dialogue between Zakes Mda’s The Sculptors of Mapungubwe (2013) and Ben Okri’s Dangerous love (1988), fictions that foreground art and delineate it as a shamanic ritual site. Having provided synopses of ritual in these two novels, the discussion then goes on to remark on the concern with this key subject in these novels’ respective scholarships. Thereafter, the examination moves on to suggest that these overlapping highlight the tendency in African literatures to turn to spirituality and to the figure of the shaman during challenging political transitions. The proposal is that the shaman reconfigures memory into secular mediations of other subjects’ trauma, making these intercessions operate in mutually inclusive private and public complexities. The rest of the article considers the depictions of two such intricacies: the artist’s struggle to establish a narrative of mourning in Dangerous love, and the socially oriented dance and sculpture in The Sculptors of Mapungubwe.

Opsomming

Hierdie artikel ondersoek ’n samespraak tussen The Sculptures of Mapungubwe deur Zakes Mda (2013) en Dangerous Love deur Ben Okri, fiksies waarin kuns op die voorgrond gestel word en uitgebeeld word as die terrein van sjamaanse rituele. Ná ’n sinopsis van ritueel in die twee romans word die aandag gevestig op studies van die onderskeie romans se bemoeienis met dié sleutelonderwerp. Die artikel voer aan dat die oorvleueling lig werp op ’n neiging in Afrika-literature om toevlug te neem tot spiritualiteit en die sjamaanfiguur in tye van moeilike politieke oorgang. Die artikel voer aan dat die sjamaan herinneringe hersaamstel tot sekulêre bemiddelings van ander persone se trauma en sodoende bewerkstellig dat hierdie bemiddelings in onderling inklusiewe private en openbare kompleksiteite werk. Die res van die artikel ondersoek die uitbeelding van twee sulke verwikkeldhede: die kunstenaar se stryd om ’n treurnarratief in Dangerous Love te vestig; en die sosiaal georiënteerde dans en beeldhoukuns in The Sculptors of Mapungubwe.