Achebe and His Image of Conrad

While talking to a fellow year 4 , Sonia about the Achebe article and how I felt about it, the similar topic of whether Kipling was a racist in his representation of the colonised in his novels came up as well. Sonia pointed out the Edward Said essay on Kim in her Penquin edition (which i don't have)and how he posited that Kipling should not be overtly ridiculed by today's post-colonial academia as a racist as he was writing (to paraphrase)"within the colonial sphere of his time". I had previously expressed my opinion to Sonia that Achebe was rather over-reacting towards Conrad's representation of the Other,

I am talking about a book which parades in the most vulgar fashion prejudices and insults from which a section of mankind has suffered untold agonies and atrocities in the past and continues to do so in many ways and many places today.

pg 11 for example,

and had failed to recognise the context in which Conrad was writing, as a product of his time "All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz [Conrad]" (71). Rather, I would posit the use of "reading against the grain" or deconstructive reading to "reclaim" the text in recognising the erroneous representation of the Other and “righting wrong”, but stopping short of criticising the author per say.

Another bone I have to pick was concerning Achebe's argument about Conrad's anxiety in the "lurking hint of kinship" in the novel. I would have to disagree. For brevity's sake, I will focus on the Congo/Thames representation. Rather than an antithesis, I felt that it was rather to draw a parallel of the Thames to the Congo, a reminder of Britain's past as the colonised rather than coloniser. A return to the "darkness" of its past, appealing to colonial anxiety rather than Conrad's.

(300 words excluding asides and citations)

"Native Dialects"

Re: Achebe's observations abt the use of the term "native language". Although it's inevitable that all novels feature people and thus generalize, stereotype and misrepresent them to some extent, HoD does quite deliberately take speech away from the native inhabitants. Colonizers must impose their systems of control and in doing so, rewrite existing "native" systems in their language. It's a form of linguistic violence which usurps and debases other languages, much like colonization itself does.

We see how the Africans are often portrayed a black, faceless mass: "a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of eyes rolling." (51) It's easy to why they are portrayed so--to show them as a mob is to render them lacking individuality and hence humanity. Often their language is a "complaining clamour" to Marlow's ears, and he is frequently unable to distinguish whether they are welcoming, threatening or anything else because it's not English, therefore barbaric and mere noise. Nothing is said of any subtlety of expression in their faces either, except how ferocious they appear--because they are ugly black faces and nothing is to be read in them. Only Kurtz's mistress is described in any detail, and we all know what Conrad/Marlow thinks of women. One might think that Marlow, being a veteran sailor, would have picked up some of the "native" African language, but he does not condescend to even acknowledge it. The book by Towser/Towson is a ray of enlightening salvation amidst this uncivilization for the Russian--a means to preserve his sanity and most importantly, his "whiteness". (The English) Language and the written word are shown here to be a means of distinction and a mark of superiority--a championing tool of colonization.

(294)

Response to Chinua Achebe reading

As mentioned in the article, “Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray – a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and immaculate”. I was thus reminded of this particular quote I have read in the Preface written by Oscar Wilde for his own book, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all” (Oscar Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray)

I think the quote pretty much explains itself in opposition to Achebe’s point about “artistic good faith”.

In addition, I think that the plurality of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is precisely what makes it so interesting and perhaps, worth spending time studying. HOD can be read as a racist text, but at the same time, its subversion of the Empire’s civilizing mission also critiques the Empire’s idea of progress as a form of regression.

If I may add, I believe that pluralism is central to the reading of modernist texts.

I shall conclude with another one of my favourite quotes:

“Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital” (Oscar Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray)

(224 words!)