Fragmentation, Space-Time Collapse, and Melancholia: Reflections on Lesego Rampolokeng's Bird-Monk Seding

ABSTRACT:Bird-Monk Seding by Lesego Rampolokeng is a book that blends several genres, which lends the text a fragmented character. This paper argues that the fragment is a central motif in the text, which manifests on a structural as well as on a symbolic level and has often a collapse of space and time as a consequence. In a second step, I will outline that these various forms of fragmentation are signs of trauma and melancholia and a powerful device in order to place marginalized stories and histories at the center of the text.