Word Bomber Supreme! Textual Strategies of Nihilism in the Poetry of Lesego Rampolokeng.

When Nobel laureate, Nadine Gordimer wanted to drag Rampolokeng off to her personal analyst, he questioned, ‘is it me or the things I write about that are sick?’ Indeed, Rampolokeng’s acerbic poetry, a mongrelized, polyglot invective against hegemonic Western discourses, social injustice, tyranny and corruption is striking for its grotesque and surreal imagery, scatological diction and the eschewing of conventional forms of poetry. The nihilistic impulse to destroy oppression, racism and its attendant ideologies is mostly situated in post-apartheid South Africa and is scripted in a macabre litany of activism and indignation. The narratorial voices of subversion/inversion of social and political hierarchies satirize, parody and decry inhumanity: ‘I look out on vultures pecking their souls fleshless’ (Rampolokeng 1990:1). His subjectivity deftly manipulates African oral stylistics, Jamaican dub poetry, American ghetto rap, jazz and contemporary popular music in irreverent, intertextual abandon. This study will critique Ramolokeng’s textual strategies of subversion that undermine hegemonic discourses and privilege the downtrodden masses. In doing so, it will reflect upon the nihilistic impulse to eradicate injustice, elitism and dogma and validate a thesis that the passion for destruction is paradoxically a creative impulse for a more humane, compassionate and just world order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]