Ack, I nearly forgot about this...

*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.')