Jennifer Armstrong

Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Dambudzo Marechera. --- I was uprooted Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) in 1984. After this the war was on: My father, who had become mad after the demise of Rhodesia, forcefully insisted I embrace the values of the far right, whilst forcefully pummeled me for the ideology of the political right wing. I've been working on a complex intellectual system, to make sense of it all, which I had pursued earlier through my PhD. I had been brought up with very rigid and strict values by parents who were more British than British, never emoting. I really didn’t have any sense of Western individualism or freedom of choice or capacity to use knowledge to make decisions when my parents brought me to the industrialized West. Although this should have been obvious to people, I received no help in adaptation. Rather, people treated me as if I were a narcissist and gave me a tough time. My health broke down really badly as a result.