Postcolonialism & ‘Heart of Darkness’

Notes by Cathelein Aaftink, March 8^th 2005

Critical Tradition

• 19th century: Biographical research, Moral/Philosophical approach

• Beginning 20th century: Formalism, New Criticism

• After 1920: Structuralism

• Late 1960s: Poststructuralism, Deconstruction

• 1980s: Postcolonialism

Postcolonialism = study of global effects of European colonization

- Postcolonial theory & criticism, and literature

- Post-colonial vs. postcolonial

- Identity politics & ideology

- The Other

- Both literary and non-literary texts (book of travels, rapports, juridical-political treaties) are studied

- Geographical focus: Africa, India, Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, South-America, also Canada

- Stages in critical development:

First: Analysis of representations of colonial countries by authors coming from colonizing countries

Later: [Analysis of] Writings of postcolonial writers

- Theorists: Edward W. Said, Chinua Achebe, Gyaytri Spivak, Chandra Mohanty

- Authors: Chinua Achebe, Wilson Harris

- Overview of characteristics of postcolonialism:

a. Focus on representations of the Other, groups, ideologies in relation to others

b. Focus on language and literature

c. Emphasis on identity as doubled, hybrid, unstable; being both colonized and colonizer

d. Stress on cross-cultural interactions between the pre-colonial and postcolonial

Said, Edward W.

• Born in 1935 in Jerusalem, died in 2003

• Godfather of postcolonialism

• Orientalism (1978); Orientalism = the way in which colonized people are characterized as the (inferior) Other in the works of European writers

• Social role of criticism:

The job facing the cultural intellectual is ... not to accept the politics of identity as given,

but to show how all representations are constructed, for what purposes, by whom, and with what components. (Said, Culture and Imperialism 314)

• Imperialism, culture, literature

• Savior complex

Said & ‘Heart of Darkness’

- Hollowness of imperial rhetoric & viciousness of imperial practice

- In “Conrad and Nietzsche” (1976): Conrad tries to show the impossibility of an absolute identity

- In “The World, the Text, and the Critic” (1983): “Kurtz is one of the chief products of Orientalism” (264)

- In “Intellectuals in the Postcolonial World” (1986):

Conrad’s realization is that if like narrative, imperialism has monopolized the entire system of representation which allowed it, in the case of Heart of Darkness, to speak for the blacks as well as for Kurtz and the other adventures (who include Marlow and his audience), your self-consciousness as an outsider can provoke in you an active comprehension of how the machine works, given that you are usually out of synch with it and at distance from it. (49)

Achebe, Chinua

• 1930 –

• Novel Things Fall Apart (1958); Criticized for: 1. Novel is written in English; 2. Title refers to a poem by Yeats “The Second Coming”; 3. Achebe attended western schools & writes about African villagers

• “The African writer and the English Language” (1975)

– Colonialism gave Africa a language so that the different African peoples can communicate with each other

– English language, but used in an African manner:

I want one of my sons to join these people and be my eyes there. If there is noting in it you will come back. But if there is something there you will bring home my share. The world is like a Mask, dancing. If you want to see it well you do not stand in one place. My spirit tells me that those who do not befriend the white man today will be saying had we known tomorrow. (957)

Vs. “English version”:

I am sending you as my representatives among these people – just to be on the safe side in case the new religion develops. One has to move with the times or else one is left behind. I have a hunch that those who fail to come to terms with the white man may well regret their lack of foresight. (958)

- Credo:

The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience. I have in mind here the writer who has something new, something different to say. (957)

Stereotyping & literary institution:

- Firchow, Envisioning Africa: Racism and Imperialism in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ (2000):

The issues of national identity and national stereotyping are relevant and important to those of us who inhabit (either temporarily or more or less permanently) literary academia, grouped as we are in departments or faculties traditionally defined along strictly racial or national lines (e.g., English Literature, African American Studies, etc.). So, without presuming to provide a definitive answer to any of these overwhelming questions, we can see that canonical or would-be canonical literature, as well as the organized study of such literature in schools and universities, has played and continues to play a significant, if not always conscious, role in helping to shape and alter conceptions of racial, ethnic, and national identity (and, along with it, other types of collective identity). In other words, the presence of racial, national, or ethnic stereotypes in the literary products of high culture has helped to make us more aware of our own imagined collective national identities (or what is usually called our autoimage) as well as the supposed national identities of other groups (or heteroimages). (xii)

References

http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/landow/post/achebe/achebeov.html

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. 1958. The Longman Anthology of World Literature: The Twentieth Century. Ed. David Damrosch, et al. New York: Pearson Longman, 2004. 871-952.

--. “The African Writer and the English Language.” 1975. The Longman Anthology of World Literature: The Twentieth Century. Ed. David Damrosch, et al. New York: Pearson Longman, 2004. 953- 58.

Barry, Peter. “Postcolonial Criticism.” Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. 191-201.

Damrosch, David, et al. “Chinua Achebe.” The Longman Anthology of World Literature: The Twentieth Century. New York: Pearson Longman, 2004. 868-70.

--. “Joseph Conrad.” The Longman Anthology of World Literature: The Twentieth Century. New York: Pearson Longman, 2004. 55-58.

Firchow, Peter Edgerly. Envisioning Africa: Racism and Imperialism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000.

Macey, David. “Postcolonial Theory.” The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory. London: Penguin Group, 2001. 304-305.

--. “Other.” The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory. London: Penguin Group, 2001. 285-86.

Murfin, Ross C. “Cultural Criticism and Heart of Darkness.” Heart of Darkness: Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical and Historical Contexts, Critical Theory, and Essays from Five Contemporary Critical Perspectives. By Joseph Conrad. Ed. Ross C. Murfin. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1996.99-114.

Said, Edward W. Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966.

--. “Conrad and Nietzsche.” Joseph Conrad: A Commemoration: Papers from the 1974 International Conference on Conrad. Ed. Norman Sherry. London: The Macmillan Press, 1976. 65-75.

--. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978.

--. The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983.

--. “Intellectuals in the Postcolonial World.” Salmagundi 70-71 (1986): 44-64.

--. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf, 1993.

Stape, J.H, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.