Shaman. Afterwords.

This paper started as a writing exercise. After reading Harvey’s account of a shaman women in Korea I went to write a recreation of the story in 1^st person. To my surprise, as I was writing I realized that there were many things in common between the shaman woman of the story and my experience as an artist.

In pre-modern times, that is the time of Homer and beyond, there is no separation between the cosmos or physical universe and the body and the social. The cosmos cut across the body and the social with myth. Myth is the understanding of the workings of the universe and the position of the individual and the group in it. If the body and the social are separated they both are included in the cosmos through mythical thinking. The separation between the body and the social in one hand and the physical universe on the other starts when man looks upon himself as an object of reflection, when he sees himself as the center from which will, thinking and action emanates. Man is no longer an extension of the will of God or the deities. Man is a subject among other subjects and occupies a place in the network of inter-subjective social forces.

In pre-modern times man is still not separated from the forces that govern the universe, he is one with it. The first accounts of art are inseparable from magic and ritual. From the caves of Lascaux and Altamira to the Venus of Willendorf aesthetics results are inseparable from function. Aesthetic products are a mean to an end, whether the hunting down of a beast or the securing of germination at the dawn of agriculture.

 

In pre-modern times the rainmaker, shaman or medicine-man fulfills a necessary activity in the community. He is the one that secures the rain after a long drought; or cures a disease by restoring the flow of energies in the body. This activity is a double edge sword since the life and well being of the rainmaker depends on the results of his practice. If he doesn’t heal, if he doesn’t produce rain, he could attract the anger of the tribe and be eliminated. But if he does produce rain or gives health he fulfills a social need while at the same acquiring social relevance and status.

The story of the shaman woman in Korea is placed in a pre-modern context. She and the group she belong to are still living in unity with the forces of cosmos. Their thinking is still embedded in myth. They are a group of pre-enlightened individuals under siege by the forces of modernity and they have to struggle and come to terms with the features of the modern state, its politics and economics. These modern features are experienced as repression to which they need to oppose strategies of resistance such as going underground, secret societies, secret codes, etc. A would be shaman has to overcome the forces of fear and repression that comes from the family and the state. But if the activity of the shaman produces positive results, she or he is socially appreciated.

There is another element that has to do with choosing such a precarious profession such as shaman. Is related to the impossibility of doing any other productive activity. Real shamans are not made; they are born. And it is here where I started to see parallelisms between the shamans and the modern artist. Artists are not made, they are born too –at least real artists This has to do not with talent or anything else but with the impossibility of doing some other activity.

If the practice of the modern artist is not linked to magical-religious thinking, it still retain some element of magic in it exclusion of any practical, instrumental activity in favor of the aesthetic, disinterested realm.

The modern artist experiences the same manifestations of oppression that come from the family, society and the state. He or she can also acquire social relevance proved that his activity produce results. The artist is a producer of an object that is linked not only to the social and to the body, but to that long lost realm of magic and natural forces, to the universe. The aesthetic production of a work of art is a residue of the magical ritual of the cave man.

Another thing is the relation between creativity and madness but I’d rather focus on the concept of madness in itself. If we read the account of the body aches of the shaman of this story as symptoms she could be considered mentally ill. We can consider her as having hallucinations and psycho somatic manifestations and fit to be thrown in any mental institution of the West. But because she lives in a magical, pre-modern context, her experiences find a positive reception and they are even deemed necessary to the well being of the community. This possibly has to do with the power of suggestion and with the place that punishment and reward occupy in the ethical conduct and the personal realization of the subjects. She is not regarded as mentally ill but as a necessity in the family and the group, a restorer of the emotional and psychological well being of the subjects. Here another dimension of the problem. The notion of metal illness as un-separable from social context and culture.