*SPOILER (BEYOND CHAPTER 30) ALERT*
(But I've only skimmed the remaining chapters because I'm too busy freaking out over a big pres I've got tomorrow aaaaaah so apologies if I misconstrued anything.)
Part of the point I'd intended last week (lost in pruning) is that Conrad's portrayal of women reads to me as if he were even more of a misogynist, a reading underscored by Lord Jim. I've only read three Conrad works and in each the fate of the 'heroines' is to pine for their dead love for the rest of their "soundless, inert li[ves]," (331) even where they were (and often) the cause of that death. Conrad's misogynism is fairly documented, and in Gestures of Healing, Clayton notes that Marlow might not have "lied" - "the Intended can be equated with the Horror." (84) To continue my lost point: in missing this entirely and seeing her only as the positively-portrayed "refined, European woman," (14) Achebe performs an act of misogyny parallel to the racism he accuses Conrad and his admirers of, one that is "such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely undetected." (19)
If arguing Achebe's concern is mainly for African benefit, not women - nor Asians - all the more he should understand the limits of Conrad's own concerns. Jim gives us a stellar opportunity to put ourselves in Achebe's shoes: Conrad's portrayal of Asians is considerably 'high[er]-res' than his Africans - corresponding to the depths of his relative experience - and I feel he does us "beggars" a greater disservice. The good Dain Waris is so due to his "European mind," (213) Jim gets his heroic end at the relatively complex but ultimately vengeful hands of Doramin, rinse and repeat. Drawn in finer strokes, we are thus decisively cast as inferior even to a flawed specimen of whiteness - but that doesn't make Conrad any more a "bloody racist" (19) than the average 19th/20thC European: ala Althusser, we cannot escape from our contextual ideology.
(As a non-word-counted aside - I'm not harping on and on about Achebe because I'm anti-anti-racism, I just think that it's flawed for him to criticise Conrad and negate Darkness out of his and its context - I mean, I devoted an entire term paper last semester to slamming Michael Bay (for Transformers (2007)) as a "bloody racist" - but unlike Conrad, Bay is working within a historical context (i.e. ours) where he should 'know better.')
Showing posts with label Achebe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Achebe. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Was it a badge- an ornament- a charm- a propitiatory act?
“Heart of Darkness” and “Apocalypse Now” are prodigiously racist. But Heart of Darkness is an impenetrable text and Achebe’s “An Image of Africa” is governed by vibrating indignance. I read the novel as a fairly straightforward text. It had glimmers of profound meaning throughout, but essentially I read it literally as a journey toward inexorable, illuminating truth. Human (Kurtz’s) end is to mean something, if not exactly a discourse on mortality. The specular qualities in Marlow and Kurtz’s relationship cohere the sense of a relay: Marlow accesses meaning when Kurtz accesses death. His narrative only reaches apotheosis when Kurtz dies and grants him experiential value in his story, if not authenticity.
Meaning is thus presented as mere (pithy yet strangulated) articulation of this “horror”. Death is to grant us knowledge of life in its last few moments but I don’t see Kurtz’s last words as particularly enlightening. It’s choked off, definitely not authoritative, and ironically diminished at the very moment it is realized. In fact, this cry is, I would argue, inarticulate. It’s something atavistic that has more in common with the incomprehensible babble of the natives than it does with the civilized language that Achebe argues Conrad withholds from the rudimentary souls to “let the European glimpse the unspeakable craving in their hearts.” It emphasizes the powerlessness of Kurtz on his deathbed, and the failure of language here is echoed in Marlow: he extrapolates the candour, conviction, revolt and glimpsed truth because he has need to. “And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the difference, and all the truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps!” Yeah, perhaps. I, on the other hand, excavate more significance in the contemptuous pronouncement “Mistah Kurtz- he dead.” (300 words)
Nur Khairunnisa Ismail
Meaning is thus presented as mere (pithy yet strangulated) articulation of this “horror”. Death is to grant us knowledge of life in its last few moments but I don’t see Kurtz’s last words as particularly enlightening. It’s choked off, definitely not authoritative, and ironically diminished at the very moment it is realized. In fact, this cry is, I would argue, inarticulate. It’s something atavistic that has more in common with the incomprehensible babble of the natives than it does with the civilized language that Achebe argues Conrad withholds from the rudimentary souls to “let the European glimpse the unspeakable craving in their hearts.” It emphasizes the powerlessness of Kurtz on his deathbed, and the failure of language here is echoed in Marlow: he extrapolates the candour, conviction, revolt and glimpsed truth because he has need to. “And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the difference, and all the truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps!” Yeah, perhaps. I, on the other hand, excavate more significance in the contemptuous pronouncement “Mistah Kurtz- he dead.” (300 words)
Nur Khairunnisa Ismail
The Limitations of Culture
The introduction to my edition describes Heart of Darkness as ‘the creation of a writer who was neither a passive product of his own culture nor fully able to transcend the assumptions of that culture’, and I believe that this is really the best way to approach the novella. Indeed, the impact of the novella in the years immediately following the novella’s publication was that of an anti-imperialist tract, among other things; it was only when Achebe’s essay was published that a greater controversy started to make itself heard. Achebe’s concerns are certainly valid, and he has clearly thought about the issues regarding HoD in great depth; however, it is clear that his issue isn’t just with the novella, but with the entire condescending Western mindset that he feels is implicit in it. Conrad has failed to completely ‘transcend the assumptions of [his] culture’. And yet he was certainly not a ‘passive product’ of Western culture; one of his short stories, ‘Amy Forster’, can be read as a damming indictment on the unreasoning prejudices of his own adopted people (the British), and as mentioned, HoD paints European imperialism in a none-too-flattering light (though it curiously omits the British; that, however, is another discussion entirely). Achebe made HoD a scapegoat in his quest to shock his Western audience into seeing the flaws in their own viewpoints, and to judge by what has come since, he has in large part succeeded. But I feel that it is unfair to then simply dismiss HoD as ‘not great literature’, for, as other posters have noted, there is much more to the novella than a man who is held back by his cultural assumptions.
-Yingzhao (279 words)
A Pile of Bones
In writing an anti-imperialist novella, or a story about the oppression of a race, how else could an author depict the atrocities committed onto the subjugated race if not by portraying the worst of extremes in the roles of the bully and bullied to provoke thought? Achebe’s point that Conrad is a ‘bloody racist’ becomes irrelevant since I think the question should perhaps be ‘how racist are the readers’?
We see the failure of technology as we “travel back to the earliest beginnings of the world”. The colonizers’ enter Africa with steamships, weapons and their progressive ideologies but cannot escape Africa’s call to return to animalism. Kurtz the epitome of the white colonizer who is supposed to be on top of the food chain is reduced to crawling in the jungle. Kurtz’s regression into animalism suggests that the cycle of evolution has come full circle and that the natives are the fittest in the game of survival and all intruders have to beat a retreat.
The measuring of Marlow’s crania was surreal. The isolated head leads us to the display of impaled skulls outside Kurtz’s house. The clinical manner in which it was conducted was very perfunctory. Like the accountant, director and wool knitting lady, Conrad portrays everyone as part of a circus act, each performing their respective “monkey tricks”. Identities are superfluous since “what does [it] matter if the trick is well done”? This makes the job of superimposing identity-less accountants and wool knitting ladies onto these skulls rather easy. Europeans, Africans and animals ultimately return to a state of bones. Race, gender, power politics are rendered meaningless. . .
(266 words)
In writing an anti-imperialist novella, or a story about the oppression of a race, how else could an author depict the atrocities committed onto the subjugated race if not by portraying the worst of extremes in the roles of the bully and bullied to provoke thought? Achebe’s point that Conrad is a ‘bloody racist’ becomes irrelevant since I think the question should perhaps be ‘how racist are the readers’?
We see the failure of technology as we “travel back to the earliest beginnings of the world”. The colonizers’ enter Africa with steamships, weapons and their progressive ideologies but cannot escape Africa’s call to return to animalism. Kurtz the epitome of the white colonizer who is supposed to be on top of the food chain is reduced to crawling in the jungle. Kurtz’s regression into animalism suggests that the cycle of evolution has come full circle and that the natives are the fittest in the game of survival and all intruders have to beat a retreat.
The measuring of Marlow’s crania was surreal. The isolated head leads us to the display of impaled skulls outside Kurtz’s house. The clinical manner in which it was conducted was very perfunctory. Like the accountant, director and wool knitting lady, Conrad portrays everyone as part of a circus act, each performing their respective “monkey tricks”. Identities are superfluous since “what does [it] matter if the trick is well done”? This makes the job of superimposing identity-less accountants and wool knitting ladies onto these skulls rather easy. Europeans, Africans and animals ultimately return to a state of bones. Race, gender, power politics are rendered meaningless. . .
(266 words)
Creating Unstable Images
OTHERNESS
(i)Geographical/Physical Otherness
“Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as "the other world," the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where a man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality.”(para 8, Achebe)
(ii)Cultural/ Social Otherness
“…what thrilled you was just the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise”
(as quoted of Heart of Darkness in Para 12 of Achebe)
Here is the idea of the
(i)Relation of other to the self and
(ii) that (shocking) self realization of similarities (rather than the differences between)
What is it really that is different/dissimilar?
PORTRAYAL:
(i)Narration and authorial interjection(s)
“Certainly, Conrad appears to go to considerable pains to set up layers of insulation between himself and the moral universe of his story. He has, for example, a narrator behind a narrator.”(para 16, Achebe)
(ii)Western Interpretations- exoticization/stereotyping and general deliberate inaccuracy:
“As I said earlier, Conrad did not originate the image of Africa which we find in his book. It was and is the dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination and Conrad merely brought the peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it.(para 30, Achebe)
The question to ask here, as it was with A Passage to India, is what can we really glean from the western view of a non western continent in terms of its geography, peoples and culture? If the narrator is crutched by another narrator, the implication of multiple perspectives and constantly altering views/representations is surely one that complicates and possibly destabilizes the notion(s) of western ‘supremacy’?
Thoughts?
politics, politics
Achebe criticises Conrad for racism and the dehumanisation of the African people in his writing, stating at one point that HoD calls “the very humanity of black people” into question. While this blog is peppered with evidence in support of this statement, I’m quite uncomfortable with how literature is reduced to a battlefield on which Achebe wages his political war on the West.
An essay by Arif Dirlik from my long ago post-colonial class problematizes the reading of history and literature as “alternative forms of politics”, in particular referring to the “displacement of political questions to the realm of culture”. In the essay, these issues are discussed with regard to Asian-American writers and the expectation that they ‘represent’ or ‘give voice to’ the minority group to which they belong. Dirlik argues against these expectations, stating that literary representation should not be used as a tool to replace the political representation that minority groups lack in civil society.
In the same way, Achebe has a bone to pick with HoD that clearly isn’t just about literature. The figurative violence inflicted upon African bodies in HoD (and much of Western art) is symptomatic of the exploitation and literal violence done to these bodies under colonialism (Fanon says it all!). Heart of Darkness certainly represents a historical moment that is deeply prejudiced against
The heart of art lies outside itself
Read in relation to each other, the question that arises from both texts appears to be a metaphysical one: is there an essence to art that can be disentangled from its author, its setting, its shameful racist tendencies (or insert authorial vice)? This is paralled, perhaps, by Heart of Darkness’ question of whether there is an essence to man, released from the trappings of society.
Achebe says that because Heart cannot be untangled from its “bloody racist” author, it should not be considered art as such. For Marlowe, while Kurtz was “remarkable” for having “stepped over the edge”, man is perhaps better off trammeled by society.
But another answer to the original question (and one that I am more inclined towards) seems to present itself in the embedded structure of Heart itself. Marlow is both teller and part of the narrative, as is the shadowy “I”, as is Conrad himself. The effacing of authorial voice and the intentional similarities between Marlowe and Conrad just makes it all the more ambiguous to pin the text down to a unitary narrative. Similarly, Heart should be read not just as itself but as part of a body of narratives that grows with time: part of colonial discourse, part of the postcolonial reaction (by Achebe, for instance), part of modernism and so on. Perhaps then a work of art lies not in its essence but in how it can be taken out of itself to generate more fruitful narratives.
This quote from Heart seems particularly relevant: “to [Marlow] the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze…” (18)
283 words
ps. As a point of interest, there’s a slight parallel between Achebe’s criticism of Conrad and the recent decision by Britain’s exam board to ban a poem on knife crime by Carol Ann Duffy from the GCSE syllabus. Duffy’s riposte, in the form of a poem, also brings out a drawback to Achebe’s argument: where does one draw the line, since every author in history can probably be accused of being close-minded (and thus culpable of violence) in some way?
Achebe says that because Heart cannot be untangled from its “bloody racist” author, it should not be considered art as such. For Marlowe, while Kurtz was “remarkable” for having “stepped over the edge”, man is perhaps better off trammeled by society.
But another answer to the original question (and one that I am more inclined towards) seems to present itself in the embedded structure of Heart itself. Marlow is both teller and part of the narrative, as is the shadowy “I”, as is Conrad himself. The effacing of authorial voice and the intentional similarities between Marlowe and Conrad just makes it all the more ambiguous to pin the text down to a unitary narrative. Similarly, Heart should be read not just as itself but as part of a body of narratives that grows with time: part of colonial discourse, part of the postcolonial reaction (by Achebe, for instance), part of modernism and so on. Perhaps then a work of art lies not in its essence but in how it can be taken out of itself to generate more fruitful narratives.
This quote from Heart seems particularly relevant: “to [Marlow] the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze…” (18)
283 words
ps. As a point of interest, there’s a slight parallel between Achebe’s criticism of Conrad and the recent decision by Britain’s exam board to ban a poem on knife crime by Carol Ann Duffy from the GCSE syllabus. Duffy’s riposte, in the form of a poem, also brings out a drawback to Achebe’s argument: where does one draw the line, since every author in history can probably be accused of being close-minded (and thus culpable of violence) in some way?
Let it remain and be a stain...
Canonization- who decides what’s great literature? What makes great literature? In a reading done for another class, the author of that article said that great literature has to have a purpose, basically arguing against Art for Art’s sake. According to him then, ought HoD be canonized? What purpose did it serve other than for the colonized to give themselves pats on the back for being white and civilized and to perpetuate the African stereotype? See, as I read Achebe, I found myself agreeing with him, that HoD ought to be removed from the Western canon (since we are reading it even now as Achebe pointed out).
But then I thought, no it shouldn’t be. Because we aren’t sharing Conrad’s sentiments as the people of his times did or people 50 years later still did when Achebe wrote his article. We see the blatant racism, we see the Manichean aesthetics in place. Let me put it this way- the first ever time I heard of HoD was in JC when my White Lit teacher condemned the book for its blatant racism. So it would have been tragic if Conrad’s novel had been removed from the Western canon because then Achebe wouldn’t have seen/known the day a white man would slam the book. Achebe got what he wished for only because the book has remained in the canon. It being canonized has allowed it to proliferate outside the Western culture and world but while its fame reaches, its sentiments don’t. And now, even Whites are disgusted by the book.
It being canonized is a good thing- let it remain like a stain upon the Western literary history. If HoD once turned people against
(300 words)
PS: Prof Koh, you didn't "mark" my previous post. Just a reminder (",)
Heart of Darkness - Artworthy?
In "An Image of Africa", Chinua Achebe states:
“It seems to me totally inconceivable that great art or even good art could possibly reside in such unwholesome surroundings.”
Which got me thinking: what qualifies as art? Who decides what is and what isn’t art? Is it possible for art to be untainted – without a trace of racism, homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, atheism? Does Conrad’s positioning (by Achebe) as a “bloody racist” exclude Heart of Darkness from the category of great art / “permanent literature”?
I personally do not see the great art-ness of Heart of Darkness (yet), but I do think that all art is tainted. To me, all art necessarily involves violence – a violence done unto reality by its transference onto canvas / paper. Art is about perspective, and Heart of Darkness is Conrad’s perspective of Africa (albeit a racist one).
Taken from http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jconrad.htm:
Conrad crystallized his often quoted goal as a writer: "My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel - it is, above all, to make you see. That - and no more, and it is everything."
That is exactly what Heart of Darkness does. Conrad recreates the Africa he perceived which mirrors “the dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination”. Can we blame him for being born into a century of imperialism and blindness? I think not. Heart of Darkness is indeed racist but it enables its 21st century audience an insight into Western colonial perception of Africa, and hopefully by doing so it prevents us from continuing the ‘colonial legacy of racism’.
(271)
Here are some quotes pertaining to art which I found interesting:
Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity. ~ Barenboim, Daniel
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. ~ Oscar Wilde
All great art comes from a sense of outrage. ~ Glenn Close
“It seems to me totally inconceivable that great art or even good art could possibly reside in such unwholesome surroundings.”
Which got me thinking: what qualifies as art? Who decides what is and what isn’t art? Is it possible for art to be untainted – without a trace of racism, homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, atheism? Does Conrad’s positioning (by Achebe) as a “bloody racist” exclude Heart of Darkness from the category of great art / “permanent literature”?
I personally do not see the great art-ness of Heart of Darkness (yet), but I do think that all art is tainted. To me, all art necessarily involves violence – a violence done unto reality by its transference onto canvas / paper. Art is about perspective, and Heart of Darkness is Conrad’s perspective of Africa (albeit a racist one).
Taken from http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jconrad.htm:
Conrad crystallized his often quoted goal as a writer: "My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel - it is, above all, to make you see. That - and no more, and it is everything."
That is exactly what Heart of Darkness does. Conrad recreates the Africa he perceived which mirrors “the dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination”. Can we blame him for being born into a century of imperialism and blindness? I think not. Heart of Darkness is indeed racist but it enables its 21st century audience an insight into Western colonial perception of Africa, and hopefully by doing so it prevents us from continuing the ‘colonial legacy of racism’.
(271)
Here are some quotes pertaining to art which I found interesting:
Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity. ~ Barenboim, Daniel
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. ~ Oscar Wilde
All great art comes from a sense of outrage. ~ Glenn Close
The white man's anxiety
i do agree with Achebe that Europe and its people were at once as primitive as the africans and Conrad's work dismisses or leaves out any mention of this past, almost as though Europe has always been forward and civilised. I also completely agree with the point that when we talk about Africa and its rituals, superstitions and customs, Conrad, like many of us, speak of it as though such customs are exclusive to a place like Africa, failing to see that any community, even a "civilised" one has its own set of customs that may always be deemed as odd by an outsider. Hence, defining Africa and speaking of its culture without considering that we speak about this culture from our own specific locations and cultures and assumptions, which are equally limiting and alien, is what i think Achebe criticises Conrad for.
there is also this question of progression. how is the progress of an empire defined? Does not a community progress if it chooses not to follow the temlpates of modernism, and instead secure its culture and customs? Conrad's text favours this sort of progression, where language, race, speaking, body behaviour are the marks of a civilised and rational being. And somehow like Achebe says, Conrad has this anxiety to be able to describe and put in words everything that he encounters, but alot of which transcend the ability to be described. We see this in Forster's novel too where India constantly escapes being pinned down and being known. But India's and Africa's progression does not lie it their knowability but on the contrary, in their evasiveness. So they are not an "antithesis" to Europe, nor like Achebe says are they reflections of Europe's past. On the contrary i feel they stand very distinctly, uncomparably from Europe, and this is the white man's anxiety.
299 words
there is also this question of progression. how is the progress of an empire defined? Does not a community progress if it chooses not to follow the temlpates of modernism, and instead secure its culture and customs? Conrad's text favours this sort of progression, where language, race, speaking, body behaviour are the marks of a civilised and rational being. And somehow like Achebe says, Conrad has this anxiety to be able to describe and put in words everything that he encounters, but alot of which transcend the ability to be described. We see this in Forster's novel too where India constantly escapes being pinned down and being known. But India's and Africa's progression does not lie it their knowability but on the contrary, in their evasiveness. So they are not an "antithesis" to Europe, nor like Achebe says are they reflections of Europe's past. On the contrary i feel they stand very distinctly, uncomparably from Europe, and this is the white man's anxiety.
299 words
Conrad, “a thoroughgoing racist”?
I agree to a certain extent with Achebe that Conrad does fall prey to perpetuating discriminatory representations of Africans. For example, they are constantly described as being black “shapes” (1968) or “figures” (1976), almost as if they were inanimate objects void of humanity, with no “inherited experience” (1985) nor language. The constant reference to them yelling, clapping and stamping their feet also builds on the stereotype of them being a “black and incomprehensible frenzy” (1985)!
However, I don’t think that this is a deliberate attempt by Conrad to induce “hypnotic stupor in his readers through a bombardment of emotive words and other forms of trickery” as Achebe charges him with, nor do I think that Conrad implies any denigration in his descriptions. I think Conrad’s critique of colonialism still overrides these racial stereotypes and some of these descriptions could in fact ironically expose the depravity of the colonisers. For example, Conrad constantly refers to the Africans as the “blackness”, or “the heart of darkness”, alluding not only to the physical colour of the Africans but also perhaps to them being relatively more primitive. While these can be read as stereotypes, they could ironically also expose the moral corruption of the colonisers when the colonisers themselves ultimately become associated with this very “heart of darkness”. For example, Kurtz is described as being “an impenetrable darkness” himself—a man “lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines” (2010). This physical blackness and darkness of the Africans thus becomes transplanted into a metaphor for the white man’s depravity and state of soul.
Thus, while Conrad does fall prey to racial stereotyping, I do not think that he means it pejoratively and is probably not the “thoroughgoing racist” that Achebe paints him out to be.
(294 words)
However, I don’t think that this is a deliberate attempt by Conrad to induce “hypnotic stupor in his readers through a bombardment of emotive words and other forms of trickery” as Achebe charges him with, nor do I think that Conrad implies any denigration in his descriptions. I think Conrad’s critique of colonialism still overrides these racial stereotypes and some of these descriptions could in fact ironically expose the depravity of the colonisers. For example, Conrad constantly refers to the Africans as the “blackness”, or “the heart of darkness”, alluding not only to the physical colour of the Africans but also perhaps to them being relatively more primitive. While these can be read as stereotypes, they could ironically also expose the moral corruption of the colonisers when the colonisers themselves ultimately become associated with this very “heart of darkness”. For example, Kurtz is described as being “an impenetrable darkness” himself—a man “lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines” (2010). This physical blackness and darkness of the Africans thus becomes transplanted into a metaphor for the white man’s depravity and state of soul.
Thus, while Conrad does fall prey to racial stereotyping, I do not think that he means it pejoratively and is probably not the “thoroughgoing racist” that Achebe paints him out to be.
(294 words)
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Academia and Ideologies.
“Travellers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves”
Texts, particularly fictional texts, often do not tell us much except about themselves. This brings us back to the notion of representation within texts- and the precarious relationship it has with the author. Since we’re all mere cultural products of the prevalent ideologies- who is responsible for the representation?
“It was and is the dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination and Conrad merely brought the peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it”.
Perhaps this is why Achebe posits the change to move “the bloody racist” out of our literary canon. It seems to be the only way to negotiate within the system that is largely Eurocentric.
Now, Achebe writes with a passion against HoD’s position as part of “permanent literature”. His points are valid on all account. I’d like to posit that instead of perpetuating the distorted image of Africa within HoD, the continual dissection of Conrad’s text in academia allows for alternative interpretations of Conrad. Ideologies present within our present reading of the text, the readings before us and the context during Conrad’s time become evident with each dissection. Shoving HoD to the back shelves of the literary canon would merely leave such racist sentiments to perpetuate freely without voices like Achebe to point it out for us.
(225 words)
Texts, particularly fictional texts, often do not tell us much except about themselves. This brings us back to the notion of representation within texts- and the precarious relationship it has with the author. Since we’re all mere cultural products of the prevalent ideologies- who is responsible for the representation?
“It was and is the dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination and Conrad merely brought the peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it”.
Perhaps this is why Achebe posits the change to move “the bloody racist” out of our literary canon. It seems to be the only way to negotiate within the system that is largely Eurocentric.
Now, Achebe writes with a passion against HoD’s position as part of “permanent literature”. His points are valid on all account. I’d like to posit that instead of perpetuating the distorted image of Africa within HoD, the continual dissection of Conrad’s text in academia allows for alternative interpretations of Conrad. Ideologies present within our present reading of the text, the readings before us and the context during Conrad’s time become evident with each dissection. Shoving HoD to the back shelves of the literary canon would merely leave such racist sentiments to perpetuate freely without voices like Achebe to point it out for us.
(225 words)
Defending Achebe (just 'cos I'm trying to be different :P)
I’m quite fascinated by the discussions that Achebe’s article has thus far generated on the blog – they’re all very interesting, and mostly defend Conrad’s work. When I first read Achebe’s article I was quite disturbed by his aggressiveness in attacking HOD, and his assertion that HOD is ‘an offensive and deplorable book’ (11). But when I read all the people defending Conrad, I wonder if perhaps Achebe could be defended as well? I mean, his criticism must have some valid points in it to frequently be prescribed as the article to be read alongside HOD.
Heart of Darkness projects the image of
Doesn’t it echo some of the other readings we’ve done on this course? That oftentimes, these binaries are present in these literary works and our readings of them could influence our own perceptions of
(297 words)
-Yuen Mei-
Incomprehensible heart of darkness
Once upon a time, England was a dark, primeval place and the desire to escape this past was so strong, that perhaps one reason why England took on the role of the colonizer was to suppress this memory, to suppress the unconscious savage within the self. Could this be happening to the reader as well? That we fear the identification, the common ancestry and recognition of “kinship” with the African? In Conrad’s words, “the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly.”
So Conrad relegates the African into a world of “black and incomprehensible frenzy”. Words like “incomprehensible”, “unspeakable”, inscrutable” are repeatedly used to describe the African – which posit Africa as a locus of primitivism, separate from civilization, separate from the world we know today. This negates the fact that African groups have their own order and belief, and denies the value of what cannot be expressed by the English language (“violent babble”, “words that resembled no sounds of human language”).
It’s interesting, as mentioned last week in lecture, how we as readers tend to identify ourselves with the colonizer and the African as the Other. As such, Conrad's racism is too easily forgiven. In a way, we are so desensitized and so comfortable with racism that manifestations of racism simply brush us by. What Achebe was trying to do then was to alert readers of the implicit racism in everyone, and that the stereotypical assumptions we have of Africa, our own image of Africa, is further reinforced by books like Heart of Darkness. Aside from whether Conrad was racist, the main question is whether such a book "which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race…be called a great work of art?”
(290 words)
So Conrad relegates the African into a world of “black and incomprehensible frenzy”. Words like “incomprehensible”, “unspeakable”, inscrutable” are repeatedly used to describe the African – which posit Africa as a locus of primitivism, separate from civilization, separate from the world we know today. This negates the fact that African groups have their own order and belief, and denies the value of what cannot be expressed by the English language (“violent babble”, “words that resembled no sounds of human language”).
It’s interesting, as mentioned last week in lecture, how we as readers tend to identify ourselves with the colonizer and the African as the Other. As such, Conrad's racism is too easily forgiven. In a way, we are so desensitized and so comfortable with racism that manifestations of racism simply brush us by. What Achebe was trying to do then was to alert readers of the implicit racism in everyone, and that the stereotypical assumptions we have of Africa, our own image of Africa, is further reinforced by books like Heart of Darkness. Aside from whether Conrad was racist, the main question is whether such a book "which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race…be called a great work of art?”
(290 words)
“Mistah Conrad--he dead.”
Achebe’s essay on the Western Romantic imagination that is still pervasive and continued today paraded Conrad as a “bloody racist” to prove his point. Picking on the misogynistic representation of the Africans in terms of language (the lack of it too) and culture, Achebe argues that Conrad is perpetuating the racism through the ineffective “cordon sanitaire” of Marlow in HOD.
What is problematic about Achebe’s An Image of Africa is that he polemises the readership of HOD to the faction of Conrad scholars and supporters, and those of his view that Conrad is a misogynist. Are we supposed then to take up sides too? If we were to take Roland Barthes’ view in The Death of the Author, that we have to replace the author as “the only person in literature” with us, the readers, then we have to kill off Conrad, even Achebe, in this matter as we decide for ourselves what to make of HOD.
I agree with Achebe that Conrad might have been viewing Africa through tainted lenses, but can I fault him for being a historical being conditioned by the society that he had existed in? My own reading of HOD is that Marlow’s narrative to the rest of his company travelling on the Thames is more concerned with the moral degradation of the colonizer as he becomes absorbed into the world of the colonized as a god or superior being. The misogyny, sidelined as they are, paints Marlow as the racist, and not Conrad. Barring any other texts in Conrad’s canon or personal information, I believe that HOD by itself does not serve as incriminating evidence of Conrad’s racism.
(words:274)
What is problematic about Achebe’s An Image of Africa is that he polemises the readership of HOD to the faction of Conrad scholars and supporters, and those of his view that Conrad is a misogynist. Are we supposed then to take up sides too? If we were to take Roland Barthes’ view in The Death of the Author, that we have to replace the author as “the only person in literature” with us, the readers, then we have to kill off Conrad, even Achebe, in this matter as we decide for ourselves what to make of HOD.
I agree with Achebe that Conrad might have been viewing Africa through tainted lenses, but can I fault him for being a historical being conditioned by the society that he had existed in? My own reading of HOD is that Marlow’s narrative to the rest of his company travelling on the Thames is more concerned with the moral degradation of the colonizer as he becomes absorbed into the world of the colonized as a god or superior being. The misogyny, sidelined as they are, paints Marlow as the racist, and not Conrad. Barring any other texts in Conrad’s canon or personal information, I believe that HOD by itself does not serve as incriminating evidence of Conrad’s racism.
(words:274)
This 300w business is KEEL(HAUL)ING me...
I'm picking on a single Achebe point - the contrast between the women. Although the seemingly positive light the "savage and superb" African is presented in can be deflected by analysing her portrayal as a version of the exoticised noble savage and heeding Achebe's claim that "she is in her place and so can win Conrad's special brand of approval," I believe that the portrayal of the "refined, European woman" that Achebe sees her as a "savage" and inferior "counterpart to" (14) is not as positive as Achebe clearly makes it out to be either. She is strongly aligned with the twisted Kurtz and while Conrad "bestow[s]…human expression" (Achebe, 15) upon her, her words "silenc[e]" Marlow "into an appalled dumbness," (155) and invoke in him "a chill grip on [his] chest" (157): "eloquent" she may be, she is nevertheless a ghastly "phantom." (156) Her final pronouncement is also significant - what "she knew…was sure" (157) of is wrong. Next to her oppressive, horrifying, and mistaken figure, the "barbarous and superb woman" who "did not so much as flinch" (146) at the whistle seems to me rather the preferable encounter. Furthermore, she does speak, "shout[ing] something," (145) albeit something that Marlow does not understand - but neither does he seem to understand the "appall[ing]" declarations of love for Kurtz expressed by the other.
With just this, I'm not really contesting Achebe's claim that Conrad was "a bloody racist," (19) but I feel he oversimplifies Darkness, as this example shows. I find it interesting that reading Achebe seems to produce audience indignation on Conrad's behalf. As my post might indicate, I feel this justified, but I also wonder whether, ala Gikandi's conclusion, it arises because we still can't "displace" Conrad "from the ritualised place that he occupies in the modern" (476) library.
With just this, I'm not really contesting Achebe's claim that Conrad was "a bloody racist," (19) but I feel he oversimplifies Darkness, as this example shows. I find it interesting that reading Achebe seems to produce audience indignation on Conrad's behalf. As my post might indicate, I feel this justified, but I also wonder whether, ala Gikandi's conclusion, it arises because we still can't "displace" Conrad "from the ritualised place that he occupies in the modern" (476) library.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Racist Conrad. So what?
Achebe is right in highlighting certain aspects of Conrad's work that appear to be racially derogatory, but to call him "a thoroughgoing racist" obscures aspects of the work that aim to resist received conceptions of the colonial enterprise. Conrad never set out to subvert racial stereotypes, but to expose what many Europeans back home never knew about Africa and the violence inflicted upon its people, To achieve this polemic, humanizing the colonized is not a pre-requisite; Conrad only needed to dehumanize the colonizer. It is his depiction of the ironic reversal of the civilized becoming savage, of the divergence between reality and interpretation, which infuses the work with its timeless power. I think the racist strand within HD does not render Conrad's work complicit with colonialism. Rather, it underscores the pervasiveness of colonial discourse in his day; how Conrad, for all his progressiveness, was still unable to fully transcend the thinking of his time.
Another irony: Achebe's essay is now perennially read alongside Conrad's work, but this is possible primarily because of Achebe’s professorship at a top liberal American college. Franz Fanon himself was educated in Lyon, in the homeland of his colonizers. Perhaps this highlights the ambivalent and contradictory relationship between the colonized bourgeosis public intellectual and structures of knowledge production belonging to the colonizer, and how the former leverages upon the latter in a kind of neocolonial bootstrapping that only reinforces Western authority, like an extension of Gramscian hegemony.
Another irony: Achebe's essay is now perennially read alongside Conrad's work, but this is possible primarily because of Achebe’s professorship at a top liberal American college. Franz Fanon himself was educated in Lyon, in the homeland of his colonizers. Perhaps this highlights the ambivalent and contradictory relationship between the colonized bourgeosis public intellectual and structures of knowledge production belonging to the colonizer, and how the former leverages upon the latter in a kind of neocolonial bootstrapping that only reinforces Western authority, like an extension of Gramscian hegemony.
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