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 Africa; however, it does not necessarily follow that it is an offensive and deplorable book. While it is next to impossible to divorce art from its political context, neither is it reasonable to judge a work of art purely for its political and ideological position. To reduce the novella to the single issue of (non)-representation of African people is an unfair appropriation of literature for overtly political means.

(288 words - a nice, lucky number)