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.