Vindicating Dambudzo Marechera: Features of Cultic Remembering

Abstract

The article approaches the ongoing cultic phenomenon around the Zimbabwean author Dambudzo Marechera from the viewpoint of cultic remembrance. The diverse text corpus concerned with the writer is marked by nuances of regret and loss. These affects reveal a sense of guilt that envelops the author‘s memory, as well as a willingness to compensate the past wrongdoings to which Marechera is seen to become subjected. The sadness around Marechera‘s memory seems to spring from the conception that Marechera was misunderstood during his lifetime. Currently, however, he is seen to have been ahead of his time, a postcolonial writer avant la lettre, and a talent wasted in a hostile environment. What adds to Marechera‘s “tragedy” is that he is interpreted to have predicted the Zimbabwe crisis. Today, Marechera is seen to haunt the world of the living in a ghostly manner, which indicates a melancholic unwillingness to accept the writer‘s loss.