Memory and Dispersal in Rešoketšwe Manenzhe’s Scatterlings

Abstract

Recent studies of contemporary South African writing have remarked on the challenges that have come with naming the time and place, and thus the interpretive framework, in which this writing could be situated today. In part, this is because the past remains the point of reference and the foundational moment for both the writing and the studies of it in the present. Moreover, it is not a singular and absolute past that has shaped the present, but a multiplicity of contending senses of the past. Another reason for the challenge could lie in the nature of the time itself, in its relation to space and events. This is especially so when the time seems, as Hamlet says of his own time, "out of joint" (Hamlet, 1.5.195–96). Besides marking particular historical sensibilities and trajectories—they are all conspicuous by their sense of time as moving inexorably forward, even though what has actually been said about South African literature under these terms suggests a more complex reality—the terms "post-apartheid," "transition," "post-transition," "post-post-apartheid," "post-anti-apartheid," "post-Marikana," and others that have served at various times to give the present shape and meaning are indicative of the groping for fitting calibrations of our times. Nevertheless, they have had something to say about what is otherwise a "dizzyingly heterogeneous corpus" of "postapartheid South African literature" (de Kock 1).