Contradictory excessiveness: abandoned trolleys in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay explores the significance of abandoned trolleys in South Africa. As an international student who later settled in South Africa, I did not initially notice abandoned trolleys. However, as I became more familiar with the senses of South African society, I began to spot trolleys abandoned in seemingly random locations throughout the country. Using Jacob Dlamini’s charge that studies of South African urban history should foreground the senses, I take up the sight of abandoned trolleys as symbols of the contradictory excessiveness of post-apartheid South Africa. Drawing from my own experiences and photos, and the work of Ivan Vladislavić’s emphasis on “tomasons,” I illustrate their centrality within South Africa, albeit from the margins of society. By zeroing in on an object that tends to be overlooked, the polarizing contradictions that exist between people can be distilled from the abstract into the human.