Abstract
Artists, shamans and sorcerers work on the interface of the physical and the metaphysical. Art making thereby implies that rational thought is bypassed and the unconscious dominates. In this essay I briefly discuss various models of the unconscious including the Freudian and shamanistic. I consider Cixous’ écriture feminine and Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of becoming-animal and writing like a rat as useful metaphors for the creative process. I also invoke the metaphor of ‘madness’ as Lewis Carroll articulated in Alice’s conversation with the Cheshire Cat. In this context I investigate the work of South African artists, Elizabeth Gunter and Nicolene Swanepoel, as well as my own works from The Alice Diaries.
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Cruise, W. (2017). I’m Mad You’re Mad We Are All Mad: The Alice Diaries . In: Woodward, W., McHugh, S. (eds) Indigenous Creatures, Native Knowledges, and the Arts. Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56874-4_11
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