Different Orders of Pleasure: Good Life and Human Flourishing in the City in Dambudzo Marechera’s Scrapiron Blues

ABSTRACT

In this article, I argue that Dambudzo Marechera’s Scrapiron Blues demonstrates different and varied orders of enjoyment and well-being in the city that challenge the authenticity and truthfulness of the narration of the enjoyment space(s) sanctioned by the ZANU PF led nation-state in Zimbabwe. I argue that Marechera provides fora in which enjoyment and well-being in the city boost subject self-actualisation, subject mobility, and subject creativity that contrast with the way spaces are conceived by the nation-state in Zimbabwe. In addition, I centralise well-being, enjoyment, pleasure, good life and human flourishing as values that are invaluable in people’s lives as portrayed in Scrapiron Blues. For the purposes of contextualising this examination, I discuss concepts such as eudaimonism and eireneism in order to demonstrate what characters in the text perceive as good life and well-being, although my emphasis is on eireneism. I argue that the variations and modes of human flourishing, enjoyment and good life that are depicted by Marechera create an environment where ‘all parties’ flourish and enjoy their identitarian categories, irrespective of the spaces sanctioned by Robert Mugabe’s government.

KEYWORDS:

• eudaimonism
• shebeen
• enjoyment
• well-being
• Dambudzo Marechera
• eireneism
• good life
• human flourishing
• Zimbabwe

Notes

1. ZANU PF (Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front).

2. In Greek mythology, literature and poetry, muses were generally perceived as the goddesses of inspiration and creativity.

3. Where shebeens originated and thrived ‘because of and despite the 1928 prohibition on the sale of “European Liquor” to Africans’ in the colonial townships in South Africa, black people set out ‘home’ beer businesses as a way of subverting authority (Mager 2010, 12).

4. Shona equivalent for beer party.

5. Shona for a beer party, but unlike an ordinary beer party, work is done to assist the person who provides beer and food, something akin to a community work ritual often accompanied by a ceremonial meal and beer drinking.

6. Kachasu is an illicit beer brew with a high and unspecified alcohol content; it is widely believed to lead to death if consumed in excess.

7. Chibuku is a traditional brew that is prepared using fermented sorghum.

8. These are some of the dance types that come from different language clusters of the Shona culture(s).

9. Nhimbe is a ritual by the Shona ethnic group in Zimbabwe, where people work together with a common purpose; it usually incorporates a ceremonial meal.

10. Kurova guva ceremony is a ritual that is carried out a year after death; the descendants and relatives of the deceased welcome the spirit of the departed back into the family and one of the descendants becomes the svikiro or spirit medium.

11. In ‘Top convention destinations: Orlando, Chicago, Las Vegas’, USA Today, Johns Charisse (2013) describes Las Vegas as a city to visit for its entertainment and hospitality. The world class casinos offer multifarious ways of pleasure, enjoyment and good life.

12. Cody, Ramsey. (September, 2002) ‘In a state of big, Houston is at the top‘, Texas Monthly Magazine. https://www.texasmonthly.com/issue/september....2002/ Retrieved August, 2014.

13. Taking advantage of a beerhall where people used to gather to drink and talk, Adolf Hitler and Erich Lindendorff and other kampfbund leaders used the beerhall to steer people to initiate a coup d’état in Germany (See Moorehouse, ed., ‘the Munich Pusch’ at www.schoolhistory.org.uk accessed 2 August 2014).