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.

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