Case Studies in Contemporary Crit SERIES EDITOR: Ross C Murf Tone Aue, nna Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism ncaa ay Alisa M. Duckworth, Univer of loc SERIES EDITOR: Ross C Marlin, Southern Methodist University Chasotte Bont, Jone Ere ‘otra Wy Beth Newman, Southesn Methods Univesity Enily Bron, Waaierin Heights, Second Edition ten Wr Lila Hy. Peterson, Yale Univers Geofltey Chaucer, The Wife of Bash tren fy Peter G Bele, Lebigh University Kate Chopin, The Awadenng, Second Edition JOSEPH CONRAD piven iy Nancy A. Water, Vander Uawesity Some Saath tony Mee Heart of Darkness eh Gon Hart fran ton i Joseph Conrat TS Sharer Complete, Authoritative Text with (Chaves Dickeos, Great Eepectations : Biographical, Historical, and Cultural Contexts, mt Janice Carle, Tulane Univesity Critical History, and Essays from EM Porter, Hrmardt End Contem iti pee eprren ar Alistair M. Duckworth, University of Frida ne ere Tomas Hay Teo ted Urberile eon 3 Yoha Pal Riquelme, Boston Universi : Nathaniel Hovthoree, Te Seve Ler, Second Eaton ‘THIRD EDITION eto 3 Ross C Muri, Southern Methodist Univeity Henry James, The Thon ofthe Serer, Tai Elton vito y Peter eid, Lehigh University James Joyce, Te Dead eovienne Daniel R. Schwarz Comel! Univers EDITED BY James Joyee, A Porinnit oF the Artie as Young Man, Second Ealtion Ross C Murfin nvrao WKB. Kershner University of Fria “Thomas Mann, Devt in Venice Evie Naomi iter, Univers Wiliam Shakespeare, Huwler orvEp ny Sune L, Wofford, University of Wisconsin-Madison May Shelley, Franfsnein, Second Edition pssab hi obaniea M. Smith, Universe of Tena a Atington Bram Stokes, Dracula "btn fy Joha Paul Riquelme, Boston Universisy Jonathan Swit Gulliver's Travele "ora by Christopher Fos, University of Notre Dame alih Wharton, The Home of rab ‘ona ay Shas Reastovk, University of Mimi : Southern Methodist University of Miso Bedford/St. Martin's BOSTON # NEWYORKBa THE NEW HISI WORKS CITED Bann, Stephen. The Closbing of Clio. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984 Gucrard, Albert J. Conrad she Novelist, Cambidge: Harvard UP, 1958, New York: Atheneum, 1967, Iagers, George G. The German Conception f Hisrory. Middletown: Wesleyan UR, 1968 Kosellek, Reinhart. Futures Past. Trans. Keith Tribe. Cambridge: MIF D, 1985, Matthiessen, F. O. American Renaissance, New York: Oxford UP, 1941 : Miller, J. Hillis. The Disappearance of God. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1963. ——. Poats of Realty, Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1965. Pearson, Charles H. National Life and Characeer: A Forecast. London: Macmillan, 1893. Postcolonial Criticism and Heart of Darkness WHAT IS POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM? Postcolonial criticism sypically involves the analysis of works by authors from regions of the globe subject to European colonization. Postcolonial criticism might just as easily have been referred to as “post- imperialist criticism,” since the term imperialism refers to the extension of rulership or authority (almost always unsought and unwanted) by a politically and economically powerful empire or nation and its culture ‘over a weaker, less “developed” foreign country or region and its cul tute, thereafier referred to as a “colony” or “dependency” of the im perialist{ie}, colonizing ruler nation Usually, the prefix post in postcolonial signifies the period follow: ing the end of colonization and the achievement of national indepen dence by a former colony, but sometimes itis used to refer to any point following the establishment of colonial rule. ‘Thus, Chinua Achebe's ‘Dhings Fall Apart (1959), a novel that implicitly opposes the ongoing colonial oppression of the Nigerian people, is offen referred to as @ postcolonial work. Although in such instances the prefix pas scems to have secondary onnutations of wn, ies meaning is usually more strictly chronological. For one thing, postcolonial criticism sometimes engages texts produced by authors hailing from the colonizing culture. (Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darknes, written by an author Achebe has called a 285286 POSTCOLONIAL. CRITICISM “bloody racist,” is a case in point.) ‘The intent of this type of post colonial criticism is to expose colonialist attitudes held by the author and /or literary characters and to demonstrate the role such biases play in the representation of subjugated persons and cultures. Emerging from an extraordinary variety of critical and theoretical discourses prevalent during the last half of the twentieth century, post- colonial criticism entered the twenty-first century as the predominant form of literary study. Because it may best be thought of as a conver gence of discourses, postcolonial criticism may be best understood in relation to some of its antecedents, One of these involved the study of so-called Commonwealth litera ture; that is, literature produced in and about areas colonized by the British Empire that at one point become part of the Commonwealth of Nations (to which, for instance, Canadka still belongs). Another focused ‘on what used ro be called Third World Literature, a wider field of study since it included non-English cultures and texts (e.g, francophone stud. ies of cultures once colonized by France). Important intellectuals asso- ciated with the development of postcolonial criticism include Achebe, mentioned earlier; Edward Kamau Brathwaite, a Caribbean writer from Barbados whose work will be described later; Aimé Césaire, and Frantz, Fanon. Céseir, a francophone postcolonial intellectual best knowa for his book Discours sur le coloniatisme (Discourse on Colonialism, 1950), experienced the brutality of French imperialism firsthand. He estab- lished the “Negritude” movement, the purpose of which was to increase political awareness and unite the pan-national interests among, black victims of European colonization. Fanon, a French-educated black African psychiatrist who immigrated to Algeria, wrote a series of essays, ‘on the needs of colonized peoples, with particular emphasis on political independence from the imperialist, colonizing county. When painting the background of contemporary postcolonial crt cism with the very broadest brush strokes, itis impossible not to men- tion cultural criticism, or culcural studies. Indeed, in the most general sense, postcolonial criticism may be seen as a form of cultural criticism, an approach to literature and its manifold social and economic rela tionships that emerged in England in the 1950s and 1960s. Cultural «tities notably opposed the general tendency to hear “culture” and think “high culture” — evenings at the symphony, gallery openings, belles Jorsess, They strived to make the term refer at least equally to popular, folk, even “street” culture. Raymond Williams, an early British cultural tite, famously suggested in his book The Long Revolution (1961) that art and culture are ordinary”; he did so not to “pull art down” but Se ; WHAT Is POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM 287 rather to point out that there is “creativity in all our living. ... We ere: ate our human world as we have thought of art as being created” (37). The idea that culture, including literature, is produced not only by the dominant or “official” culture but also by ordinary folk enabled and encouraged an interest in authors speaking from the vantage point — and ofien in the native language of —a colonized people. Early cultural critics such as Williams followed the practices of Marxist criticism in viewing culture in relation to ideologies, which, Williams defined as the “residual,” “dominant,” or “emerging” ways of viewing the world held in common by asocial groups or by individu als holding power. Williams’s view that even repressive ideologies can evolve was linked to his belief in the resilience of subjugated individu als, in their ability to experience the conditions in which they find them. selves and creatively respond to those conditions. These relatively hope ful views paralleled those of Michel Foucault, a mid-twentieth-century French theorist who greatly influenced the new historicism (see “What Is the New Historicism?,” pp. 245-57), cultural criticism, and, ult mately, postcolonial criticism. Like Williams, Foucault had been influenced enough by Marxist thought to study cultures in terms of power relationships, But Foucault refused to see power as something exercised by a dominant class or group over a subservient one. Instead, he viewed it as a whole web or complex of forces involving everything from “discourses” — accepted ‘ways of thinking, writing, and speaking —and social practices. Accord- ing to Foucault, not even tyrannical aristocrats wield power, for they are themselves formed by a network of discourses and practices that consti tute power. Viewed by Foncault, power is that which produces what happens. It is positive and productive, not repressive and prohibitive. Furthermore sto historical event, according to Foucault, has a single cause; rather, it is intricately connected with a vast web of economic, social, and political fctors. Like Williams's view that cultare is not, by definition, centered in “high” culture and refiective of dominant ide- ologies, Foncaul’s radically decentered view of both power relations and history — the history that power relations engender and are engen dered by — reinforced the work of early postcolonial critics and enabled the development of postcolonial criticism by later practitioners. For instance, Brathwaite, generally viewed as one of the first post colonial cricies, adopeed a ud aul dynam view of dhe power relations that develop benween imperialistic nations and colonized cultures. In ‘The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770-1820 (1971), he used the term creofication to describe what he viewed as a “two-way eee ee eae238 POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM process,” “a way of seeing the society, not in terms of white and black, master and slave, in separate nuclear units, but as contributory parts of a whole. ... Here in Jamaica, fixed within the dehumanizing institu- tion of slavery, were two cultures of people, having to adapt themselves to a new environment and to each other. The fiction created by this conltontation was cruel, but it was also creative” (153), Homi Bhabha, a leading contemporary cultural critic, focuses on the creative aspect of the colonial confrontation, making a Foucauldian argument that mar- ginalized people subject to repressive power in fact wield positive and productive power of their own. In an essay entitled “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse” (1987), he uses the term hybridity to refer to the process whereby subjugated people, hav- ing at first assimilated aspects of oppressor culture, eventually manage to metamorphose those elements, making them their own through a process of transformation. Bhabha, it should be noted, also adopts a decentered view of history made possible by Foucault, arguing that modern Western culture is best understood from the perspective of the postcolonial world, rather than vice versa, as Westerners (stereo)typi- «ally assume. ‘The overlap between postcolonial criticism and the cultural criti cism from which it emerges is perhaps most evident in the work of Bhabha, who in his groundbreaking work The Location of Culture speaks cryptically of “culture’s archaic undecidability” in arguing that “there can be no ethically or epistemologically commensurate subject of culture” (135). Since culture is thought to distinguish humanity from the rest of nature, to define the subject of culture generally one would have to begin with an impossibility, namely, a definition of humanity that is not derived from any particular culture's sense of val: tues. Thus, just as there is no one set of practices that can be said defini tively to constitute “culture” (as opposed to “pop culture” or “high culture”), 80 any larger definition of human culture is a dangerous undertaking doomed by a relativism that is inevitably myopic and potentially murderous, as when the values and practices operative within one social group (e.g., the native Afficans represented in Conrad’s Heart of Darknest) are viewed and represented by members of another group (e.g, Mr. Kurtz, the European manager of “the Company's” Inner Station) as sub- or even nonhuman. (“Exterminate all the brutes!” Kurtz writes in his postscript t0 a report written for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs [p. 66].) WHAT IS POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM? 289 In theory, postcolonial criticism could analyze works about or ars ing from any colonized culture and could be written in the language of the imperialistic colonizers or in the colonized language. In fact, how. ‘ever, most postcolonial criticism is written in English and tends to con. cer itself with the following geographic areas: Africa and the Carib: bean, as have been mentioned, but also the “East” (i.e., the Middle East and Asia) and the Indian subcontinent — areas in which, during the past century, liberation movements arose that ultimately led to national independence, To be sure, some attention has been paid to Australia, Canada, and New Zealand — often referred to ax English “settler colonies” — and sometimes even the thirteen “settier® colonies that became the United States are viewed from the postcolonial per: spective. (However, inthis instance, the focus is far more likely to be on ‘Affican American works and works by nonblack authors about Affican slaves brought to America and/or their free descendants than on, say, “Thomas Jefferson as leader of a postcolonial rebellion!) Additionally, an ‘occasional postcolonial reading of Irish literature has taken into account Ireland’s status a8 a colony in all but name — but one that, unlike other colonies, was near the center of the empire with respect to matrers such as location, race, and (for the most part) language With regard to the Middle East and Asia, the most powerful prac- titioner of postcolonial criticism is, indeed, one of its acknowledged founders: Edward Said. Said, like his cultural-crtical precursor Wile liams, understood implicitly the role played by ideology in blinding the colonizer to the realities and conditions of the colonized. More specifi cally inuenced by Foucault, Said laid the foundations of postcolonial criticism in Orientalism (1978), a book in which he analyzed European discourses concerning the exotic, arguing that stereotypes systemati- cally projected on peoples of the Bast contributed to the establishment ‘of European domination and exploitation of Eastern (Asian) and Middle Eastern cultures through colonization. Although Orientalism focuses ‘on colonialist discourses, both Said and those scholars influenced by him have used its insights to interpret the aftermath of colonialism. Gayatri Spivak, an Indian scholar, has examined the ways in which issues of class and, especially, gender pertain to the postcolonial situa- tion, relationships that develop within it, and cepresentations of it. In her groundbreaking essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988), Spivak uses “subalterns” —a British term used to refer to the lowest-ranking officers in the military — to refer to the colonized and, more specifi «ally, to the most vulnerable of the groups comprising that population290 POSTCOLONIAL, CRITICISM = ‘WHAT IS POSTCOLONIAL CRUTTCISNE 290 (e.g. women, racial minorities, immigrants, and underclass persons dominated by relatively powerful groups within the colonized culture). With regard to the position of women, subaltern scholars have pointed. out their double oppression, both by traditional patriarchal attitudes, and practices within their own culture and, beyond that, by attitudes, and practices inherent in colonizing cultures that were in many cases more masculinist, sexist. Indeed, Michael Payne has said that subaltern criti in India, Ngugi wa Thiong’o of Kenya, and Rey Chow of China “have read imperialism as not only actively suppressing the more femi nist and egalitarian of indigenous institutions and cultural practices, but also as driving the indigenous patriarchy to increasingly reactionary excesses against women and subaltems in an effort to maintain its strength pis-a-pis the colonizers” (425), Issues Spivak raises concerning whether and how agency — the abil ity of postcolonial, subaltetn subjects to choose and to speak indepen- dently — can survive the impact of long-term hierarchal situations are central to the understanding of individuals and groups in postcolonial contexts. But they also highlight the difficulties fuced by postcolonial scholars whose goal i to give the voiceless a voice. Some of these schol- ars have resorted to such things as court testimony and prison memoirs, while others have studied popular cultural forms (e.g., oral lrerature and street theater) through which those who have been silenced may still be heard co speak. The Subaltern Studies Group has been particu larly successful at producing revisionary historical accounts of l experienced by once-silent or silenced colonial subjects. Ranajit Guha’s “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency” (1983), for example, provides a sitical alternative to accepted historical narratives by contrasting, off- ial documents with personal ones, contemporary accounts with retro- spective ones, and European views with indigenous perspectives Feminist postcolonial critics have understandably focused on recov- ‘ring the cultures of postcolonial women. In doing so, they have ques- tioned whether the universal category “woman” constructed by certain Frenchand American predecessors is appropriate to postcolonial women ‘or the diverse groups of women comprising that general category. They have stressed that, while all women are female, they are something clse as wel (such as African, Muslim Pakistani, lesbian, working class, and so forth). This “something else” is precisely what makes them — including. their problems and goals different from other women, Some femi nist postcolonial critics have focused on a particularly unique female postcolonial experience, namely, that of women marginalized not in their own colonized culture but, rather, in the imperialistic, colonizing, ‘culture to which they have immigrated or been forcibly taken. The so: «called classics of white Enropean novels may even tell, indirectly, of the ‘experiences of these women, In “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique ‘of Imperialism” (1985), Spivak mines Charlotte Bronté’s novel Jane Eyre or its numerous references to the West Indies, the slave trade, and Bertha Mason (often referred to as “the madwoman in the attic”), the insane Jamaican wife of the novel’s hero, Mr. Rochester. Elsie Michie subsequently focused not on images of the colonized in Jane Eyre but, father, on “the way the colonizers are represented in Bronté’s novel ‘because, as Edward Said and subsequent postcolonial critics have noted, images of the colonized are inextricably bound up with and determined by the attitudes of the colonizers” (584), For the most part, however, the postcolonial women discussed by feminist postcolonial cities are not characters in novels written by white women. Amrit Wilson has written about the challenges faced by post: colonial Asian women living in London, pointing out, for instance, that they tend to be expected by their families and communities to preserve ian cultural traditions; thus, the expression of personal identity through clothing involves a mach more serious infraction of culeural rules than it does for Western women. Gloria Anzaldiia spoke person ally and eloquently about the experience of women on the margins of Eurocentric North American culture. “I am a border woman,” she wrote in Borderlands: La Frontera = The New Mertisa (1987), “I grew up between two cultures, the Mexican (with a heavy Indian influence and the Anglo. ... Living on the borders and in margins, keeping intact one's shifting and multiple identity and integrity is like trying to swim in a new element, an “alien” element” (i). Powerfull though it is as a force in contemporary literary studies, postcolonial criticism has is crties, Even the name postcolonial bas been deemed imprecise, due to the various, inconsistent ways in which the prefix postis used and the way postcolonial may be used to refer to poli cal situations, writers writing from or abont those contexts, and schol ars and critics writing about those writers. Others find postcolonial mis. leading if not useless as an umbrella term because, in fact, the attitudes and practices of some colonizing countries differed so utterly from those of nations with dissimilar political values and economic purposes, Still others take the upprnite view, arguing dsat postcolonial critics over stress differences and undervalue attempts (for instance by the Negri tude movement) to forge a shared collective {in this case Alcan) his tory of repression and revolt cee292 POSTCOLONIAL eRITICISM The use of postcolonial as an adjective to describe any and all so called diaspora studies has been questioned — whether these studies con. cern slaves living in the American South, thriving but insular “black’ communities in London, or Chinese American families like the one depicted in Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club (1989). Critics have also, objected to use of the term with reference to settler colonies in which the majority of the population came quickly to consist of colonists and use ofthe term in connection with minority groups living within a colo- nizing culture (e.g,, the Irish) whose race and language they share. Some critics of the postcolonial approach have argued that the focus on relations between imperialists and those they have colonized leaves entirely too much out of the picture, whether the picture in question is of postcolonial society or some litetary representation or a postcolo- nial situation, Within this group are those who would prefer to see race, class, or gender difference privileged over the opposition colonizer/ colonized. Then there are various groups of detractors who find a mis- leadingly bright thread in various aspects of what has been called post- colonial studies. Some of these believe that, in so often telling the story of oppressed peoples who eventually gained independence from subju- gating empires, postcolonial criticism misleadingly implies thar oppres- sion ends when political independence is gained. In reality, however, most of the above-mentioned critics of post: colonial criticism are, in fact, in almost everyone else’s view, postcolo- nial critics themselves, a fact that demonstrates the dynamic liveliness ofthe approach, the way in which, although we have the general rubric postcolonial criticism, it can mean as many different things (for the time being) as the prefix post In the example of postcolonial criticism that follows, Patrick Brant linger begins by alluding to the now-famous claim — made in 1975 by Afican novelist Chinna Achebe — that Conrad was a racist and that Heart of Darknessis a racist work, He then summarizes the diametr: cally opposed view of Cedric Watts, one of the many critics who have rejected Achebe’s assertion. Implicitly asking how the same text could strike different readers so differently, Brantlinger comes up with a.com pelling answer: “Heart of Darkness... offers a powerful critique of at least certain mnanifestations of imperialism and racism, at the same time that it presents that critique in ways that can only be characterized as both imperialist and racist” (p. 3 Brantlinger draws a parallel between the mixed signals given out by Heart of Darkness and its author's lukewarm opposition to colonial WHAT 1S POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM? 293 oppression in real life. Conrad was sympathetic with the goals of the Congo Reform Association, founded by his feiend Roger Casement (see pp. 113-16 in this volume), but generally “backed away from involvement,” contributing less to the association’s work than did writ: cers such as Mark Twain and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (pp. 112, 14). Furthermore, Brantlinger points out, “the worst feature of imperialism for Conrad may not have been its violence toward the ‘miserable’ and “helpless,” but the lying propaganda used to cover its bloody tracks” (p. 307). What bothered Conrad more than the thought of starving, Congolese chain gangs was the realization that their exploitation was being characterized in Europe as a noble act of philanthropy: One of the most interesting aspects of Brantlinger’s essay is his claim that in writing Heart of Darkness Conrad drew as much on books and newspaper articles written after his return to Europe as upon his ‘own experiences in the Congo in 1890. While in Africa, for instance, Conrad “probably saw little ot no evidence of cannibalism, despite the stress upon it in his story” (p. 307); he would have learned about the savage practices of cutting off heads or limbs (see “Mutilated Ai cans,” pp. 116-18) from “exposé literature” chronicling the horrors of the 1891 war between Arab slave traders and King Léopold’s forces, both of which employed Congolese slave-soldiers. What doesn’t come through, either in the accounts Conrad read or the novella he subse quently wrote, is that many of the atrocities described were not so mu the traditional practices of the Congolese natives as they were the exploitative, intimidating tactics of their Belgian and Arab oppressors, ‘That “Conrad portrays the moral bankruptcy” of colonizing ven- tures by “showing European motives and actions to be no better than Aiican fetishism and savagery” is a telling indication of the novel’s at ce anti-imperialist and racist tone, according to Brantiinger. He writes that Conrad “paints Kurtz and Aftica with the same tarbrush His version of evil —the form taken by Kurtz’s Satanic behavior — is ‘going native.” In short, evil & Affican in Conrad’ storys if itis also Enropean, that’s because some number of white men in the heart of darkness behave like Afficans” (p. 311) Another important aspect of Brantlinger’s postcolonial approach is 4 usage of Marxist thought regarding the relationship between repres sive ideologies and oppressed cultures that recalls the work of Williams and Foucault, Brandinger draws on Fredric Jameson's Marxist argu- ment that another famous novel by Contad, Lord Jinn, is characterized by a split between a hollow, modernist “will to style” (which according to Jameson is the source of Conrad’s “impressionism”) and “the mass reac aaa294 POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM culture tendencies of romance conventions” (p. 313). Brantlinger decon: structs Jameson’s opposition, arguing that “on some level, the Simpres sionism’ of Conrad’s novels and their romance features are identical” (p. 314). Certainly, “romance conventions” and “heroic adventure themes” do as much to advance colonialist propaganda as the mociern- ist (and /or impressionist) will to style does to blur the depiction — thereby obscuring the reader's awareness ~ of atrocities. Brantlinger shows his debt to earlier practitioners of cultural ert cism by using Marxist thought while fssing it with the thinking of non- ‘Marxist postcolonial cities such as Said, Tacitly agrecing with Williams that “culture is ordinary,” Brantlinger insists on seeing a Great Work of Art like Heart of Darkness not only in terms of literary modernism but also as a work informed by newspapers, exposé literature, and mass culture romances. Finally, though, Brantlinger’s essay exemplifies that contemporary strain of cultural criticism best described as postcolonial criticism insofar as it places the text in the context of postcolonial poli tics, secing it not only in terms of the political reality it supposedly represents but also in terms of the politically motivated representations of that political realty. POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM: A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Postcolonial Criticism and Theory: General Texts Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Grifiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Postcoloniad Literatures. New York: Routledge, 1989. Print Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Post~ Colonial Studies Reader. 24 ed, London: Routledge, 2006. Print. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Past-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge, 2000. Print. Barker, Francis, Peter Hulme, and Margaret Iversen, eds. Colonial Discourse/Postcoloniad Theory. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1994. Print Bochmer, Elleke. Colonial and Postcolonial Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995, Print. Castle, Gregory, ed. Postcolonial Discounes: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001, Print | A SELECTED simLuOGRApHIY Chambers, Iain, and Lidia Gurti, eds. The Post-Colonil Question: ‘Commion Skies, Divided Horizons. London: Routledge, 1996. Print Chrisman, Laura, Postcolonial Contraventions: Cultural Readings of Race, Imperialism, and Transationnlism, Manchester: Man- chester UP, 2003, Print Desai, Gaurav, and Supriya Nair, eds. Pesteolonialisms: An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism. Piscataway: Rutgers UP, 2008 Print Featherstone, Simon. Pastcolonia! Cultures. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2005. Print Gandhi, Leela, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, New York: Columbia UP, 1998. Print Gilbert, Helen, and Joanne Tompkins. Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics. London: Routledge, 1996. Print. Goldberg, David Theo, and Ato Quayson, eds. Relocating Posteolo- nialiom. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. Print Harrison, Nicholas. Postcolonial Criticism: History, Theory, and the Work of Fiction. Cambridge: Polity, 2003. Print. King, C. Richard, ed. Postcolonial America, Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2000. Print Loomba, Ania. Coloniatism/Peacolonialirm. 2d ed. London: Rout- ledge, 2005, Print. Loper, Aled J. Posts and Pasts: A Theory of Pestcolonialiom. Albany: State U of New York P, 2001. Print. MeLeod, John. Beginning Pastcolonialin. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000. Princ Mongia, Padmini, ed. Contemporary Postcolonial Dieory: A Reader. London: Arnold, 1996. Print Moote-Gilbert, Bart. Postcalonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics, London: Verso, 197, Print Moote-Gilbert, Bart, Gareth Stanton, and Willy Maley, eds, Postola- nial Criticism, London: Longman, 1997. Print Panter, David, Postcolonial Imaginings: Fictions of a New World Order, Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2000. Print. Quayson, Ato. Pastcolonialism: Theory, Practice or Process? Malden: Blackwell, 2000. Print. Kayan, Gita, and Kadfuka Mohanram, eds. Postcolonsad Discourre and Changing Cultural Contexts: Theory and Criticism. Westport: Greenwood, 1995. Print eee ee ee ce eC Se Eee296 POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM Schwarz, Henry, and Sangeeta Ray, eds. A Companion to Postroloniat Siuidies, Malden: Blackwell, 2000. Print. Sharp, Joanne. Geagraphics of Postcoloniatisn. London: Sage, 2008. Print. Smith, Rowland. Postcolonising the Commontveatth: Studies in Litera~ ture and Culture, Waterloo: Wilfid Laurier UP, 2000. Print Sugirtharajah, R. S. Postcolonial Criticiom and Biblical Interpretation. ‘Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print Syrotinski, Michael. Deconstruction and the Postcoloni af Theory. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2007. Print Williams, Patrick, and Laura Chrisman, eds, Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993. Print, Young, Robert. Postclonialism: An Historical Introduction. Oxford Blackwell, 2001. Print. See especially Part V, “Formations of Postcolonial Theory.” At the Limits ‘Works by or about Homi K. Bhabha, Edward and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Ansell-Pearson, Keith, Benita Parry, and Judith Squires, eds. Cultural Readings of Imperialism: Edvard Said and she Gravity of History. London: Lawrence 8 Wishart, 1997, Print. Bhabha, Homi K. “Framing Fanon” (foreward). The Wretched of the Earth, Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove, 2004 Print. ‘The Location of Culture, New York: Routledge, 1994. Print, See especially “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colo- nial Discourse.” 85-92 Nation and Narration. New York: Rontledge, 1990. Print. See especially “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation.” 291-322. ——. “OF Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Dis course.” In The Location of Culture. “Postcolonial Criticism.” Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn. New York: MLA, 1992. 437-65, Pi Bhabha, Homi, and W. J. T. Mitchell, eds. Edward Said: Continuing the Conversation, Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008, Originally published as a special issue, Critical Inguiry 31 (2005). Print. A-SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Bové, Paul A., ed. Edward Said and the Work of the Critic: Speaking Truth to Power. Durharw: Duke UP, 2000. Print. Morton, Stephen. Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak, London: Routledge, 2003. Print Said, Edward, After she Last Sky: Palestinian Lives. theon, 1986. Print Culture and Imperialism, New York: Knopf, 1993, Print ‘The Edward Said Reader Eds. Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin. New York: Vintage, 2000. Print. Joscpb Conrad and the Fiction of Autabiqgraphy. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1966, Print. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978. Print. ———. The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983, Print Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, “Can the Subaltern Speale” Maratsns ‘and the Enterpretation of Culture, Eds. Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg. Urbana: U of illinois P, 1988. 271-318, Print. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present, Cambridge; Harvard UP, 1999, Print Death of a Discipline. New York: Colutnbia UP, 2003. Print. Includes interpretation of Heart of Darknes. In Other Worlds: Esays in Cultural Politics, New York: ‘Methuen, 1987. Print. Other Asias, Malden: Blackwell, 2007. Print. Ouse in she Teaching Machine. New York: Routledge, 1993, Print ‘The Post-Calonial Crisic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. Ed. Sarah Harasym, New York: Routledge, 1990. Print. ‘The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Eds. Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean. New York: Routledge, 1996. Print “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism.” Critical Inquiry 12.1 1985}: 243-61. Print few York: Pan: Influential Texts in the Development of Postcolonial Criticism and Theory Brathwaite, Kdward Kamau. he Development of Create Soctesy in Jamaica, 1770-1820, Oxford: Clarendon, 1971. Print Césaire, Aimé. Discours sur le colonialisme (Discourse on Colonialism Paris: Réclame, 1950. Print eoEoEOEOEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeE——eee—_—e en _ _ _e—e—e—G—G—GyGOe298 POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM Derrida, Jacques. La Dissémination (Dissemination). Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1972. Print, Fanon, Frantz. Les damnés de la terre (The Wretched of the Earth). ‘Paris: Maspero, 1961. Print. With a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin/ White Masts). Pais Euitions du Seuil, 1972. Print. Foucault, Michel. Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Disei- line and Punish: The Birth of the Prison), Paris: Gallimard, 1975. Print Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society, 1780-1950. London: Chatto & Windus, 1958, Print ‘The Long Revolution, New York: Columbia UP, 1961. Print. Postcolonial Criticism and Theory with a Feminist or Gender Emphasis Anzaldtia, Gloria, Borderlands = La Frontera: The New Mestiza, San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987. Print. Jayawardena, Kumari. Fesninism and Nationalivm in the Third World. ‘New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1986, Print. Kwok, Pui-lan, Postcolonial Pmagination and Feminist Theolegy. Louisville: Westminster John Knox P, 2005. Print Lewis, Reina, and Sara Mills, eds, Fominist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2003. Print. McClintock, Anne, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat, eds. Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives. Minne apolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997. Print Mills, Sara, Gender and Colonial Space, Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 2005. Print. ‘Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, et al., eds. Third World Women ana the Politics of Feminism, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991, Print. Sharpe, Jenny. Allegories of Empire: The Figure of the Woman in the ‘Colonial Test. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993. Print. Wilson, Amit. Finding a Voice: Asian Women in Britain, London’ Virago, 1978. Print Subalternity, Subaltern Studies Beverley, Julus. Subudeernity anal Represensasion. Arguments in Cultural Theory. Darhara: Duke UP, 1999. Print. Chaturvedi, Vinayak, ed. Mapping Subaltern Studie and the Pot- zolonial, London; Verso, 2000. Print ASUSCTED aieLioGRArHY 299 Guha, Ranajit. “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency.” Subaltern Sswates ‘No. 2: Writings on South Asian History and Society. Dethi: Oxford UP, 1983, 1-42. Princ hooks, bell. “Marginality asa Site of Resistance.” Eds. Russell Fergu- son etal. Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Culeures. Cambridge: MIT P, 1990, 341-43. Princ. Ludden, David, ed. Reading Subatern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the Globalization of South Indie. Delbi: Permanent Black, 2001. Print. Payne, Michael. A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, Print. See entries on postcolonial studies sub- altern studies. Subadeern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society Delhi: Oxford UP, 1982-2008. Print. Series edited by Ranajit Guha cecal, comprised of 12 numbered volumes, Selected Subaltern Studies (1988), and A Sudaltern Studies Reader: 1986-95 (1997) See especially Ranajit Gua’s essays “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India,” vol. 1, 1-8, and “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency,” vol. 2, 1-40. Burther Reading on Postcolonial Criticism and Theory Bartolovich, Crystal, and Neil Lazarus, eds. Marxism, Modernity, and Posteolonial Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. Print. Bohata, Kisti. Postcolonialism Revisited: Welsh Writing in English. Cardiff: U of Wales P, 2004. Print Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. The Empire Strikes Back: ‘Race and Racin in 705 Britain, London: Hutchinson, 1982, Print Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincialising Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000. Print. Chow, Rey. Weitings Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary ‘Cultural Studie, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993, Print. Dirlik, Avif. Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitslism. ‘Boulder: Westview P, 1997. Print. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso, 1993. Print. Hawley, Joba C., ed. Postcolonial, Queer: Theoretical Intersections. Albany: State U of New York P, 2001. Print. Hoggan, Graham, The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. London: Routledge, 2001. Print. ee300 POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM JanMohamed, Abdul, and David Lloyd, eds. The Nature ond Context “of Minarity Discourse, New York: Oxford UP, 1991. Print Kaplan, Amy, and Donald Pease, eds. Cultures of United States Inperialion, Durham: Duke UP, 1983, Print Kelertas, Violeta. Baltic Potoloniatiom. Amsterdam: Exitions Rodopi BV, 2006. Print. Mbembé, Actille. On the Postolony. Trans. A. M. Berret et al. Berkeley: U of California P, 2001. Print. McCallum, Pamela, and Wendy Faith. Linked Histories: Postcolonial Srudies in 2 Globalized World, Calgary: U of Calgary D, 2005 Prine Ngogi wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language sn African Literature. London: J. Currey; Portsmouth: Heine- ‘mann, 1986, Print. Parey, Benita, Postcolonial Studies: A Materialist Critique, London Routledge, 2004. Print. Chapter 9, "Narrating Imperialism: Beyond Conrad’s Dystopias,” includes a section on Hears of Darkness 132-39 Pines, Jim, and Paul Willeman, eds. Questions of Third Cinewa ‘London: BEI, 1989. Print. Rajan, Gita, and Radhika Mohanram, eds. English Postoloniatiny: iterates from Around the World. Westpor: Greenwood, 1996. Print Rooney, Caroline. Decolonising Gender: Literature and a Poeies of the Real. London: Routledge, 2007, San Juan, E. (Epifanio), Jr. Beyond Potcolonial Theory. New York Se. Martin’s, 1998. Print. Singh, Amritjit, and Peter Schmidt, eds. Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Literature, Jackson’ UP of Mississippi, 2000. Print. “Tali, Ismail S. The Language of Postzolonial Lizratures: An Intro duction. London: Routledge, 2002, Print Young, Robert, ed. “Neocolonialism.” Oxford Literary Review 13 (1991) (special issue). Prine White Mythologies: Writings Histor, and the West. 1st ed. and 2d ed, London: Routledge, 1990, 2004 Postcolonial Readings Arata, Stephen D. “The Occidental Tourist: Stoker and Reverse Colonialism.” Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Pin de Sidcle. Cam- bridge: Cambridge UP, 1996, 107-32. Print. A SELECTED MIALIOGRAPEY. gor Bongie, Chris. Islands and Exiles: The Greole ldentitis of Post/Cotonial Literature, Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998. Print, Gorra, Michael Edward. After Empiry: Scott, Naipawl, Rushiie, Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997. Print. Hogan, Patrick Colm, Colonialism and Cultural Identity: Cries of Tradition in the Anglophone Literatures of India, Africa, and the Caribbean. Albany: State U of New York P, 2000. Print. Keown, Michelle, Postcolonial Pacific Writing: Representations of the Body, London: Routledge, 2005, Princ Meyer, Susan. Imperialism at Home: Race and Victorian Women’s ‘Waiting. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996. Print Michie, Else. “White Chimpanzees and Oriental Despots: Racial Stereoryping and Edward Rochester.” In “Jane Eyre” A Cast Study in Contemporary Criticism. Ed. Beth Newman. Boston: Bedford Books, 1996, Print. Narain, Denise deCaires. Contemporary Caribbeas Women’s Poetry Mating Sole. London: Routledge, 2002. Print. Ni Loingsigh, Aedin. Postcolonial Eyes: Intercontinental Travel i Francophone African Literature, Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2009. Print ark, You-me, and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, eds. The Posteolomial Jane “Austen, London: Routledge, 2000. Print Plasa, Carl. “Reading “The Geography of Hunger” in Tsitsi Danga rembga's Nervous Conditions: From Frantz, Fanon to Charlotte Bronté.” The Journal of Commonealth Literature 33 (1998) 33-45, ———. Textual Politics from Slavery to Postolonialism: Race and Identification. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000. Print. Sabin, Margery. Disenters and Mavericks: Writings about India in English, 1765-2000. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print. Sharrad, Paul, Pastcolonial Literary History and Indian English Fic- tion. Amherst: Cambria P, 2008. Print. ‘Thieme, John, Postcolonial Con-texts: Writing Back to the Canon. London: Continunm, 2001. Print Postcolonial Readings of Conrad and ‘Heart of Darkness Achebe, Chinua. “An Tuage uf Afliva.” Muavbmsetes Review 18 (1977): 782-94. Print Bongie, Chris. “Exotic Nostalgia: Conrad and the New Imperialism.” ‘Macropolitcs of Nineteenth-Century Literature: Nationalism, Na eeyor POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM Exoticism, Imperialism. Eds, Jonathan Arac and Harriet Ritvo. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1991. 268-88. Print Brantlinger, Patrick, “Epilogue: Kurtz's ‘Darkness’ and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Rule of Darkness: Britith Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914, Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988. 255-74 Print Caminero-Santangelo, Byron. Afiican Fiction and Joseph Conrad: Reading Postcolonial Intertexsuality. Albany: State U of New York P, 2005. Print. See especially chapter 4, “Subjects in History Disruptions of the Colonial in Heart of Darkness and July’s People.” Collics, Terry. Posteolonial Conrad: Parndoxes of Empire. London: Routledge, 2005. Print. See especially chapter 5, “Conrad in the Postcolonial World,” on the reception of Conrad’s work in the field of postcolonial studies, and chapter 6, “Heart of Darkness History, Politics, Myth, and Tragedy,” the author's own reading of the novella Greiff, Louis K. “Soldier, Sailor, Surfer, Chef: Conrad’s Ethics and the Margins of Apocalypse Now.” Literature/Filmm Quarterly 20 (1992): 188-98. Print Hamner, Robert D., ed. Joseph Conrad: Thirat World Perspectives, Washington, D.C.: Three Gontinents, 1990. Print Harrison, Nicholas. Postcolonial Criticism: History, Theory, and the Work of Fiction. Cambridge: Polity, 2003. Print. See especially chapters 1-2 for historical context and a close reading of Heart of Darkness Lopez, Alfied J. “The Other! The Other!”: Conrad, Wilson Harris, and the Postcolonial “Threshold of Capacity.” Bost and Pasts ‘A Theory of Pastcoloniatiom. Albany: State U of New York P, 200) 43-64, Print ‘McClure, John A. “A Late Imperial Romance.” Raritan 10 (1991) 111-30, Print Parry, Benita. Conrad and Imperialism: Ideological Boundaries and Visionary Frontiers. London: Macmillan, 1983. Print, See espe- cially chapter 2, which addresses Heart of Darkness Shetty, Sandya. “Heart of Darkness Out of Affica Some New Thing Never Comes.” Journal of Modern Literature 18 (1989): 461-74, Princ ‘Thieme, John. “Conrad's “Hopeless” Binaries: Hears of Darkinessand Postcolonial Interior Journeys.” Postcolonial Con-tesis: Wrisingy Back to the Canon. London: Continuum, 2001. 15-52. Print. Considers a range of postcolonial responses to the novella, PATRICK BRANTLINGER, 303 Watts, Cedric. “*A Bloody Racist’; About Achebe’s View of Conrad.” ‘Yearbook of English Studies 13 (1983): 196-209. Print White, Andrea. Jaeph Conrad and the Adventsire Tradition: Con structing and Deconstructing the Imperial Subject. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993, Print. See especially chapter 9, “The Affican Fictions (II): ‘Heart of Darkness.” 167-92 A POSTCOLONIAL CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE PATRICK BRANTLINGER Heart of Darkness: Anti-Imperialism, Racism, or Impressionism? Ina 1975 lecture at the University of Massachusetts, Nigerian ov. elist Chinua Achebe attacked Heart of Darkness as “racist.” Conrad “projects the image of Affica as ‘the other world,’ the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man’s vaunted intel ligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality” (Achebe 783). Supposedly the great demystifier, Conrad is instead a “purveyor of comforting myths” (Achebe 784) and even “a bloody racist” (788). Achebe adds: “That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Aftica is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely undetected” (788). Achebe would therefore like to strike Conrad's novella from the curriculum, where it has been one of the most fre ‘quently taught works of modern fiction in English classes from Chicago to Bombay to Johannesburg Achebe's diatribe has provoked a number of vigorous defenses of Heart of Darkness, which predictably stress Conrad’s critical stance toward imperialism and also the wide acceptance of racist language and categories in the late Victorian period, Cedric Watts, for example, argues that “really Conrad and Achebe are on the same side” (204). ‘Achebe simply gets carried away by his unclerstandable aversion to racial stereotyping, “Far from being a ‘purveyor of comforting myths,'” Watts declares, “Conrad most deliberately and incisively debunks such myths" (197). Acknowledging that Conrad employed the stereorypic language common in his day, Watts contends that he nevertheless rose above racism: encase304 POSTCOLONIAL CHTICISM ‘Achebe notes with indignation that Conrad (in the “Author's Note” to Victory) speaks of an enconnter with a “buck nigger” in Haiti which gave bim an impression of mindless violence. Achebe might as well have noted the reference in The Nigger of the ®Nar- risus”, .. toa “tormented and flattened face —a face pathetic and brutal: the tragic, the mysterious, the repulsive mask of a nigger’s soul.” He might have noted, also, that Conrad's letters are sprinkled with casbal anti-Semitic references. It is the same in the letters of his friend [R. B. Cunninghame] Graham, Both Con- rad and Graham were influenced by the climate of prejudice of their times. ... What is interesting is thac the best work of bot men seems to transcend such prejudice. (208) Their work “transcends prejudice,” Watts believes, partly because they both attack imperialism. Watts is one of the many critics who inter- pret Heart of Darknessas an exposé of imperialist rapacity and violence, Kurtz's career in devittry obviously undermines imperialist ideol- ogy, and the greed of the “faithless pilgrims” — the white subKurtzes, 0 to speak — is perhaps worse. “The conquest of the earth,” Marlow declares, “which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much” (p, 21). There is nothing equivocal about that remark; Conrad entertained no illusions about imperialist violence, But Marlow distinguishes between British imped alism and that of the other European powers: the red parts of the map are goad to see, he says, “because one knows that some real work is done in there” (p. 24). Heart of Darkness is specifically about what Conrad saw in King Léopold’s Affican empire in 1890s the extent to ‘which his critique can be generalized to imperialism beyond the Congo is unclear. ‘The politics of Conrad’s story are complicated by its ambiguous style. I will use “impressionism” as highly inadequate term to refer to its language and narrative structure, in part because Fredric Jameson uses tin his diagnosis of the “schizophrenic” nature of Lord Jin (219). Conrad’s “impressionism” is for some critics his most praiseworthy ‘quality, while for others it appears instead to be a means of obfuscation, allowing bim to mask his “nihilism,” or to maintain contradictory val ues, or both. Interpretations of Heart of Darkness that read it as only raclst (and therefore imperialist), or conversely as only anti-imperialist (and therefore antiracist), inevitably founder on its “impressionism,” "To point only to the most obvious difficulty, the narrative frame filters everything that is said not just through Marlow, but also through the PRUIUCK BRANTLINGER 305 anonymous primary narrator. At what point is it safe to assume that Conrad /Marlow express a single point of view? And even supposing that Marlow speaks directly for Conrad, does Conrad/Marlow agree ‘with the values expressed by the primary narrator? Whatever the answers, Heart of Darkness, Ubelieve, offers a powerful critique of at least certain ‘manifestations of imperialism and racism, at the same time that it pre sents that critique in ways that can only be characterized as both impe Falist and racist. “Impressionism” is the fagile skein of discourse that expresses — or disguises — this “schizophrenic” contradiction as an apparently harmonious whole. 1 In Conrad and Imperialism (1983), Benita Parry argues that “by revealing the disjunctions between high-sounding rhetoric and sordid ambitions and indicating the purposes and goals of a civilisation dedi cated to global... . hegemony, Conrad’s writings {are} more destruc tive of imperialism’s ideological premises than [are] the polemics of his contemporary opponents of empire” (10). Pethaps. I sat least certain that Conrad was appalled by the “high-sounding rhetoric” that had been used to mask the “sordid ambitions” of King Léopold II of Bel ‘gium, Conrad’s ultimate employer during his six months in the Congo in 1890. Heart of Darkness expresses not only what Contad saw and partially recorded in his “Congo Diary,” bat also the revelations of atrocities that began appearing in the British press as early as 1888 and that reached a climax twenty years later, when in 1908 the mounting scandal forced the Belgian government to take control of Léopold’s private domain. During that period the population of the Congo was reduced by perhaps one half, 8 many as 6,000,000 persons may have been uprooted, tortured, and murdered through the forced labor sys tem used to extract ivory and what reformers called “red rubber.”! Conrad was sympathetic to the Congo Reform Association, established in 1903 partly by his friend Roger Casement whom he had met in Africa, and Casement got him 10 write a propaganda letter in which Conrad says: “It isan extraordinary thing that the conscience of Europe which seventy years ago .... put down the slave trade on humanitarian grounds tolerates the Congo state today” (Morel, Rule 351-82). There "For history of Brish humanitarian protest agains: Léopol’s pois, see S. 1 Cockey, Britain sl she Congo Quetion, 1885-1913 (London: Langstaa, 1963).et 306 POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM follows some patronizing language contrasting, the brutalities visited upon the Congolese with the legal protections given to horses in Europe, but Conrad’s intention is clear enough. There is little to add to Hunt Hawkins’s account of Conrad's rela- tions with the Congo Reform Association. Its leader, Edmund Morel, who quoted Conrad's Jetter to Casement in King Leopold's Rule in Africa (1904), called Heart of Darkness the “most powerful thing ever ‘written on the subject” (Hawkins 293), But as Hawkins notes, apart from writing the letter to Casement, Conrad backed away from involve ment with the Association, Other prominent novelists who'd never been to the Congo contributed as much or more t0 its work, Mark Twain volunteered “King Léopold’s Soliloquy,” and Sie Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a book for the Association called The Crime of the Congo. Hawkins notes that Conrad “had little faith in agitation for political reform because words were meaningless, human nature unimprovable, and the universe dying” — hardly views that would encourage engage ‘ment in a cause like that of the Association (292-93) All the same, in at least one other work of fction Conrad registered his abhorrence of King Léopold’s rape of the Congo. This is the minor but highly revealing fantasy that Conrad coauthored with Ford Madox Hueffer, The Inberisors: An Extravagant Story(1901). Conrad’s role ia its writing may have been slight, but was still substantial enough to make plain that he shared the views expressed in it. Briefly, the protagonist meets a beautiful young woman who claims to come ftom the “fourth dimension” and to be one of those who “shall inherit the earth.” “The Dimensionists were to come in swarms, to materialise, to devour like locusts... . They were to come like snow in the night: in the morning one would Jook out and find the world white ‘As to methods, we should be treated as we ourselves treat the inferior races. (Conrad and Hueffer 16) Far from being meek, the “inheritors” are obviously modern-day impe- Tialists, satirically depicted as invaders from a “spiritualist” alternative ‘world, Bur apart from the young woman and one other character, the invasion does not occur during the course of the novel, although the satire upon imperialism is maintained through the portrayal of the Duc de Mersch and his “System for the Regeneration ofthe Arctic Regions” (46). Like King Léopold, “the foreign financier — they called Hi dhe Due de Mersch — was by way of being a philanthropist on megaloma- niac lines,” He proves ultimately to be no philanthropist at all, but just the sort of “gigantic and atrocious fraud” that Conrad believed Léopold ae PATRICK BRANTLINGER 307 to be. All one needs to do to read The Inberitors as an attack on Léopold’s African regime is to substitute “Congo” for “Greenland.” ‘The hero, journalist Archur Granger, helps to expose “the real horrors of the systéme Groénlandais — flogged, butchered, miserable natives, the famines, the vices, diseases, and the crimes” (280). The authors are not even particular about the color of the Eskimo victims: one character says that the Duc “has the blacks murdered” (246-74). Hueffer and Conrad write some scorching things in The Inheritors about “cruelty to the miserable, helpless, and defenceless” (282). But the facts of exploitation in the Congo are perhaps less distressing to them than the lying idealism which disguises i More revolting to see without a mask was that falsehood which had been hiding under the words which forages had spurred men to noble deeds, to self-sacrifice, o heroism. What was appalling wat. that al the uadional dels of honour, glory, conscience had been committed to the upholding of a gigantic and atrocious fraud. The falsehood had spread steaithily, had eaten inco the very heart of creeds and convictions that we lean upon our passage between the past and the faeure, The old order of things had to live or perish with ale. (282) Twill come back to the possibility that the worst feature of imperialism for Conrad may not have been its violence toward the “miserable” and “helpless,” but the lying propaganda used to cover its bloody tracks ‘As Hawkins and others have pointed out, Conrad did not base his critique of imperialist exploitation in Heart of Darknes solely on what he bad seen in the Congo. What he witnessed was miserable cnough, al he was also made personally miserable and resentful by disease and the conviction that his Belgian employers were exploiting hin. But, as hhe assured Casement, while in the Congo he had not even heard of “che alleged custom of cutting, off hands among the natives” (Morcl Rule 117), The conclusion that Casement drew from this and other evidence was that most of the cruelties practiced in the Congo were not traditional, but were the recent effects of exploitation. The cutting off of hands was a punishment for noncooperation in Léopold's forced labor system, and probably became frequent only after 1890. And just as Conrad had seen litle or no evidence of torture, so, Molly Mahood ‘wujectures, he probably saw litte or no evidence ot cannibalism, despite the stress upon it in his story (Mahood 12). Te thus seems likely that much of the “horror” either depicted or suggested in Heart of Darkness does not represent what Conrad sav,308 POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM ‘but rather his reading of the literature that exposed Léopold’s bloody system between the time of his return to England and the composition of the novella in 1898-99. While Conrad’s “Congo Diary” and every facet of his journey to Stanley Falls and back has been scrutinized by Norman Sherry and others, much less attention has been paid to what Conrad learned about the Congo after his sojourn there. ‘The exposé literature undoubtedly confirmed suspicions which Conrad formed in 1890; the bloodiest period in the history of Léopold’s regime began about a year later. According to Edmund Morel: “From 1890 onwards the records of the Congo State have been literally blood-soaked, Even at that early date, the real complexion of Congo State philanthropy was, beginning to appear, but public opinion in Europe was then in its hood winked stage” (Rule 103). The two events that did most to bring Léopold’s Congo under public scrutiny after Conrad's time there were the 1891-94 war between Léopold’s forces and the Arab slave-traders and the murder of Charles Stokes, English citizen and renegade missionary, by Belgian officals in 1895. The conflict with the Arabs —-a “war of extermination,” according to Morel —was incredibly cruel and bloody. “The first seri ‘ous collision with the Arabs occurred in October 27, 1891; the second ‘on May 6, 1892, Battle then succeeded battle; Nyangwe, the Arab stronghold, was captured in January, 1893, and with the surrender of Rumaliza in January, 1894, the campaign came to an end” (Rule 23). Conrad undoubtedly read about these events in the press and perhaps also in later accounts, notably Captain Sidney Hinde’s The Fall of the ‘Congo Arair(1897), Arthur Hodister, whom Sherry claims as the orig inal of Kurtz, was an early victim of the fighting, having led an expedi tion to Katanga that was crushed by the Arabs. According to Tan Watt, “The Times reported of Hodister and his comrades that ‘their heads were stuck on poles and their bodies eaten’ (23), This and many simi lar episodes during the war are probable sources of Conrad’s emphasis, upon cannibalism in Heart of Darknes Cannibalism was practiced by both sides in the war, not just by the Arabs and their Congolese soldiers. According to Hinde, who must also be counted among the possible models for Kurtz, “The fact that both sides were cannibals, or rather that both sides had cannibals in their train, proved a great element in our success” (124-25). Muslims, inde points out, believe uta they will gow heaven ouly ielveir boulies are intact, as opposed 10 mutilated, chopped up, eaten. So cannibalism ‘was in part a weapon of fear and reprisal on both sides, and in part also. nnn PATRICK BRANTLIN 309 a traditional accompaniment of war among some Congolese societies. Hinde speaks of combatants on both sides as “lnuman wolves” and describes numerous “disgusting banquets” (69). A typical passage in his account reads: “What struck me most in these expeditions was the ‘number of partially cut-up bodies I found in every direction for miles around. Some were minus the hands and feet, and some with steaks cut from the thighs or elsewhere; others had the entrails or the head removed, according to the taste of the individual savage ...” (131). Hinde’s descriptions of such atrocities seem to be those of an impartial, external observer, but in fact he was one of six white officers in charge of some four hundred “regulars” and “about 25,000” “cannibal” troops. His expressions of horror seem only whatare expected of an Englishman, but they are also those of a participant and contradict more honest expressions of sadistic fascination with every bloodthirsty detail While it seerns likely that Conrad read Hiinde’s lurid account, he must have known about the war from earlier accounts such as those in ‘The Times. To cite one other example, in a series of journal extracts published in The Century Magazine in 1896-97, B. J. Glave d mented “cruelty in the Congo Free State.” According to Glave, “The state has not suppressed slavery, but established a monopoly by driving out the Arab and Wangwana competitors.” Instead of a noble war to end the slave trade, which is how Léopold and his agents justified their actions against the Arabs, a new system of slavery was installed in place of the old. Glave continues: “sometimes the natives are so persecuted that they [take revenge] by killing and eating their tormentors. Recently the state post on the Lomami lost two men killed and eaten by the natives. Arabs were sent to punish the natives; many women and chil dren were taken, and twenty-one heads were brought to [Stanley Fals], and have been used by Captain Rom asa decoration round a flower-bed in front of his house” (706). Captain Rom, no doubt, must also be counted among the possible models for Kurtz. In any event, the prac tice of seizing Congolese for laborers and chopping off the hands and heads of resisters continued and probably increased after the defeat of the Arabs, as tumerous eyewitnesses testify in the grisly quotations that form the bulk of Edmund Morel’s exposés. According to a quite typical account by a Swiss observer: “Ifthe chief does not bring the stipulated number of baskets [of raw rubber}, soldiers are sent out, and the people are killed without merey. s proof, parts of the body are brought to the factory. How often have I watched heads and hands being carried into the factory” (Morel, Rubber 77).0 POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM 0 When Marlow declares that “the conquest of the earth... . is not a pretty thing,” he goes on to suggest that imperialism may be “redeemed” by the “idea” that lies behind it, But in the real world idealism is fragile, and in Heart of Darkness, except for the illusions maintained by a fow women‘olk back in Brussels, it has almost died out. In “going native,” Kurtz betrays the *civilizing” ideals with which he supposedly set out from Europe. Among the “fuithless pilgrims,” there are only false ideals, and the false religion of selfseeking. “To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire,” says Marlow, “with no more moral pur: pose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe” (p. 45). The true nature of Bnropean philanthropy in the Congo is revealed to Marlow by the chain gang and the “black shadows of dis- case and starvation,” left to de in the “greenish gloom,” whom he sees at the Outer Station (p. 31). These miserable “phantoms” arc probably accurate depictions of what Conrad saw in 1890; they may also be taken, to represent what be later learned about Léopold’s forced labor system. In any case, fom the moment he sets foot in the Congo, Marlow is clear about the meaning of “the merry danee of death and trade” (p. 29). Ie thus makes perfect sense to interpret Heart of Darkness as an attack oon imperialism, atleast as it was operative in the Congo. ‘But in the course of this attack, aff “ideals” threaten to tutn into “idols” — “something,” in Marlow’s words, chat “you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to” {p. 21). Conrad universalizes “clarkness” partly by universalizing fetishism. Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, and other Marxist critics of empire described the era of “the scramble for Africa” — roughly 1880 to 1914 —as one when the “commodity fetishism” of “late capitalism” was most intense, a notion that Edward Said touches upon in analyzing The Niaaer ofthe “Narcissus? (142-43). Ifthe “natives” in their darkness set Kurtz up as an idol, the Europeans worship ivory, money, power, reputation. Kurtz joins the “natives” in their “unspeakable rites,” worshipping his own unrestrained power ‘and lust. Marlow himself assumes the pose of an idol, sitting on ship deck with folded legs and outward palms like a Buddha. And Kurtz’s Intended is perhaps the greatest fetishist of all, idolizing her image of hr fiancé, Marlow’s lie leaves Kurtz’s Intended shrouded in the protec- tive darkness of her illusions, her idol worship. But the difficulty with this ingenions inversion, through which deals” become “idols,” is that Conrad portrays the moral bankruptcy of imperialism by showing European motives and actions to be no bet- TATRICK BRANTLINGER 30 ter than African fetishism and savagery. He paints Kurtz and A‘tica with the same tarbrush, His version of evil — the form taken by Kurt2’s Satanic behavior — is “going native.” In short, evil is African in Con. rad’s story; ifit is also European, that’s because some number of white men in the heart of darkness behave like Africans. Conrad’s stress on cannibalism, his identification of African customs with violence, lust, and madness, his metaphors of bestiality, death, and darkness, his sug. gestion that traveling in Aftica is like traveling, backward in time to primeval, infantile, but also hellish stages of existence — these features of the story are drawn from the repertoire of Victorian imperialism and racism that painted an entire continent dark. Achebe is therefore right to call Conrad’s portrayal of Aftica and Afficans “racist.” Te is possible to argue, as does Parry, that Conrad works with the white-and-black, light-and-darkness dichotomies of racist fantasy in order to subvert them, but she acknowledges that the subversion is incomplete: “Although the resonances of white are ren dered discordant ... black and dark do serve in the text as equiva ences for the savage and unredeemed, the corrupt and degraded the cruel and atrocious, Imperialism itselfis perceived as the dark within Enrope.....Yet despite... momentous departures from traditional Enropean usage ... the fiction gravitates back to established practice, registering the view of two incompatible orders within a manichean tuniverse” (23). The “imperialist imagination” itself, Parry suggests, works with the “manichean,” irreconcilable polarities common to all racist ideology. Achebe states the issue more succinctly: “Conrad bad a problem with niggers. ... Sometimes, his fixation on blackness is overwhelming” (789), Identifying specific sources for Conrad’s later knowledge of the horrors of Léopold’s regime is less important than recognizing that there were numerous sources, swelling in number through the 1890s. ‘Conrad reshaped his firsthand experience of the Congo in the light of these sources in several ways. As I have already suggested, the emphasis, ‘on cannibalism in Heart of Darkness probably derives in part from Con rads reading about the war between Léopold’s agents and the Arabs. [At the same time, the war is not mentioned in the novella — indeed, the Arab rivals of the Belgians for control of the Congo are conspicuous only by their absence. ‘The omission has the important effect of sharp- ening the light and dark dichotomies, the staple of European racism; “evil” and “darkness” are parceled out between only two antithetical sides, European and Aftican, “white” and “black.” But while Conrad/ Marlow treats the attribution of “evil” to the Enropean invaders as a ec30 POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM paradox, its attribution co Africans he teats as a given. Further, the fomission of the Arabs means that Conrad docs not treat cannibalism as a result of war, but as an everyday custom of the Congolese, even though he probably saw no evidence of it when he was there. Exagger- ating the extent and nature of cannibalism is also standard in racist accounts of Aftica, In simplifying his memories and sources, Conrad arrived at the dichotomous or “manichean” pattern of the imperialist adventure romance, a pattern radically at odds with any realist, exposé intention, Perhaps Heart of Darkness expresses two irreconcilable intentions. As Parry says, “to proffer an interpretation of Heart of Darleness as a mili tant denunciation and a reluctant affirmation of imperialist civilisation, as. fiction that [both] exposes and cotludes in imperialism’ mystfica- tions, is to recognise its immanent contradictions” (39). Moreover, the argument that Conrad was consciously anti-imperialist, but that he unconsciously or carelessly employed the racist terminology current in his day will not stand up, because he was acutely aware of what he was doing. Every white-black and light-dark contrast in the story, whether it corroborates racist assumptions or subverts them, is precisely calcu- lated for its effects both as a unit in a scheme of imagery and as a focal point in a complex web of contradictory political and moral values Conrad knew that his story was ambiguous: he stresses that ambi guity at every opportunity, so that labeling it “anti-imperialise™ is as Lunsatisfactory as condemning it for being “racist.” The fault-line for all of the contradictions and ambiguities in the text ies between Marlow and Kurtz. Of course it als lies between Conrad and both of his ambiv alent characters, not to mention the anonymous primary narrator. Is Marlow Kurtz's antagonist, critic, and potential redeemer? Or is be Kurtz’s pale shadow and admirer, his double, and finally one more idol- ator in a story fll of examples of fetishism and devil worship? Conrad pposes these questions with great care, but he just as carefully refuses to answer them or In the world of Heart of Darknes, there ate no clear answers. Ambi guity, perhaps rhe main form of “darkness” in the story, prevails. Con- rad overlays the political and moral content of his novella with symbolic and mythic patterns that divert attention from Kurtz and the Congo to “misty halos” and “moonshine.” The anonymous narrator uses these i PATRICK DRANTLINGER, metaphors to describe the difference between Marlow’s stories and those of ordinary sailors “The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical ... and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a faze, in the likeness of one of these misty balos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine. (pp. 19-20) ‘The passage announces that locating the “meaning” of the story won't be easy, and in fact may be impossible, It seems almost to be a confession of defeat, or at least of contradiction. Conrad here establishes as one of his themes the problem of rendering any judgment whatsoever — ‘moral, politcal, metaphysical — about Marlow's narrative. [tis precisely this complexity —a theme that might be labeled the dislocation of meaning or the disorientation of values in the story — chat many crities have treated as its finest featore. In The Political Unconscious, Fredric Jameson argues that Conrad’s stories — Lord Jim is his main example — betray a symptomatic split between 2 modernist “will to style,” leading to an elaborate bur essen- tially hollow “impressionism,” and the reifed, mass culture tendencies of romance conventions. In a fairly obvious way, Heart of Darkness betrays che same split, moving in one direction toward the “misty halos” and “moonshine” of a style that seeks to be its own meaning, apart from any “kernel” or center or embarrassingly clear content, but also grounding itself in another direction in the conventions of Gothic romance with their devalued mass culture status — conventions that were readily adapted to the heroic adventure themes of imperialist pro- paganda. This split almost corresponds to the contradiction of an anti- imperialist novel which is also racist. In the direction of high style, the story acquites severat serious purposes, apparently inclucling its critique of empire. In the direction of reified mass culture, it falls into the ste: reotypic patterns of race-thinking common to the entire tradition of the imperialist adventure story or quest romance. This double, contradic tory purpose, characteristic perhaps of all of Conrad's fiction, Jameson calls “schizophrenie” (219), Ry “the manichaeanism of the imperialist imagination.” Parry means dividing the world between “warring moral forces” — good ver~ sus evil civilization versus savagery, West versus Eas, light versus dark- ness, white versus black, Such polarizations are the common property Seou POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM. of the racism and authoritarianism that constiture imperialist political theory and also of the Gothic romance conventions that were appropri ated by numerous writers of imperialist adventure tales — G. A. Fenty, Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson, Conan Doyle, John Buchan, Rudyard Kipling, and Conrad among them. As Martin Green points out, “Conrad of course offers us an ironic view of that genre. But he affirms its value” (219}, Conrad is simultaneously a eritic of the imperi- alist adventure and its romantic fictions, and one of the greatest writers ‘of such fictions, his greatness deriving partly from his critical irony and partly from the complexity of his style — his “impressionism.” But the chief difficulty with Jameson’s argument, I think, is that the “will to style” in Conrad’s text is also a will to appropriate and remake Gothic romance conventions into high art. On some level, the “impression ism” of Conrad’s novels and their romance features are identical — Conrad constructs a sophisticated version of the imperialist romance — and in any case both threaten to submerge or “derealize” the critique of empire within their own more strictly esthetic project. As part of that project, providing much of the substance of “impressionism,” the romance conventions that Conrad reshapes carry with them the polar izations of racist thought. In analyzing Conrad’s “schizophrenic writing,” Jameson notes the proliferation of often contradictory critical opinions that mark the history of his reception: “The discontinuities objectively present in Conrad’s narratives have, as with few other modern writers, projected 4 bewildering variety of competing and incommensurable interpretive ‘options. . ” Jameson proceeds to list nine different critical approaches, from “the ‘romance” or mass-cultural reading of Conrad as a writer of adventure tales [and] the stylistic analysis of Conrad as a practi tioner of... [an] impressionistic’ will to style,” to the “myth-crtical,” the Freudian, the ethical, the “ego-psychological,” the existential, the Nietzschean, and the structutalist readings. Jameson leaves off of the list his own Marxist-political reading; what he wishes to suggest is how often criticism ignores or downplays the contradictory politics of Con: rad’s fiction (208-09), Raymond Williams voices a similar complaint: Icis. .. astonishing that a whole school of criticism has succeeded in emptying Heart of Darknes of its social and historical con- tent. .. . The Congo of Léopold follows the sea that Dombey and Son traded across, follows it into an endless substitution in which no object is itself, no social experience direct, but everything is translated into what can be called a metaphysical language — the river is Evil; the sea is Love or Death. Yet only called metaphysical, PATRICK BRANTLINGERR ais because there is not even that much guts in it. No profound and ordinary belie, only a perpetual and sophisticated evasion. (4s) ‘There are wonderfully elaborate readings of Marlow’s journey as a descent into hel, playing upon Conrad's frequent allusions to Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Goethe, and devil worship. And there are just as many elaborate readings of the story as an “inward voyage” of “self discovery,” in which its geopolitical lnguage is treated as symbolizing, psychological states and parts of the mind. Conrad, Albert Guerard reminds us, was Freud’s contemporary, and in Heart of Darknes he produced the quintessential “night journey into the unconscious” (39). Guerard adds that “i little matters what, in terms of psychological sym bolism, we... say [Kurtz] represents: whether the Freudian id o the Jungian shadow or more vaguely the outlaw” (39). Perhaps it matters just as litle whether we say the story takes place in Léopold’s Congo or in some parely imaginary landscape, ‘The point, however, is not to take issue with Guerard and other critics who concentrate on the “impressionism” of Conrad’s story, but rather to restore what their readings neglect. In a great deal of contem- porary criticism, words themselves have ceased to have external refer- ‘ents, Williams does not take Jameson’s line in accusing Conrad’ “will to style” of emptying Heart of Darkness of its “social and historical content”; instead, he accuses criticism of so emptying it. The “will to style” — or rather the will to a rarefied critical intelligence — devours Us, C00, leaving structuralists and deconstructionists, Althusserians and Foucauldians, and so forth. And yet Conrad has anticipated his critics by constructing a story in which the “meaning” does not lie at the cen ter, not even at “the heart of darkness,” but elsewhere, in “misty halos” and “moonshine” — forever beyond some vertiginous horizon which recedes as the would-be critic-adventurer sils toward it Wv ‘The crowds [in one village] were fired into promiscuously, and fifteen were killed, including four women and a babe on its ‘mother’s breast, The heads were cut offand brought to the officer in charge, who then sent men to cut off the hands also, and these were pierced, strung, and dried over the camp fie. Lhe heads, ‘with many others, I saw myself. The town, prosperons once, was burt, and what they could not carry off was destroyed. Crowds of people were caught, mostly ... women, and three fresh rope36 POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM PXTRICK BRANTLINGER 37 gangs were added. ‘These poor ‘prisoner’ gangs were mere skele- tons of skin and bone. ...Chiyombo's very large town was next attacked. A lot of people were killed, and heads and hands cut off andl taken back to the officers. ... Shortly alter the State caravans, with flags fying and bugles blowing, entered the mission station at Luanza ... and I shall not soon forget the sickening sight of deep baskers of human heads. (Morel, Rubber 49) While the primary narrator and many critics seem to believe that the meaning of Heart of Darkness lies in “the spectral illumination of moon- shine,” Marlow knows better. “Ilfumination” proves as false as most white men —as false as white “civilization”; the “trath,” or at least the meaning of Conrad’s story, ies in “darkness.” ‘That is why, once Mar: ow learns about the shadowy Kurtz, he is so impatient to get to the Central Station. And yet Kurtz seems inadequate as a central character or the goal of Marlow’s quest — vacuous, a mere “shade,” a “hollow man.” That, however, may be part of Conrad’s point. lan Watt has identified at least nine possible models for Kurtz, including Henry Morton Stanley, Arthur Hodister, and Charles Stokes, who left the Church Missionary Society for an Aftican wife and life as a gun-runner and slave-trader (Watt 141-45), In 1895 Stokes was executed in the Congo for selling guns to the Arabs, an event which, close on the heels Of the war, provided a focus for British public indignation, To Watt’s list of models for Kurtz I have already added Captain Hinde, author of The Fall of the Congo Arabs, and Captain Rom, who decorated the bor ders ofhis flower garden with skulls. The Belgian officer responsible for Stokes’ illegal execution, Captain Lothaire, must also be counted. Bat just as Conrad probably drew upon many sources in depicting the horrors of the Congo, so he probably had many models for Kurtz in mind. Al/ of the white officers in charge of Léopold’s empire were in essence Kurtzes, as the eyewitness testimony published by the Congo Reform Association demonstrates. And what about the eyewitnesses? Were they always so objective or so morally appalled as they claimed to bbe? What about Conrad himself? Although his role in the building of Léopold’s “Congo Free State” was minor and also prior to the worse horrors, Conrad must have recognized his own complicity and seen himself'as at least potentially a Kurtz-like figure. In the novella, the Atican wilderness serves as a mirror, in whose “darkness” Contad/ Matlw sees a deatl pale setiaye. ‘The massive evidence of wholesale torture and slaughter under the direction of Léopole?s white agents suggests not only that there were numerous Kurtzes in the “heart of darkness,” but also that, as Hannah | Arendt contends in The Oriains of Totalitarianism, nincteenth-century imperialism prepared the ground in which fascism and Nazism took root after World War I. Arendt has Kurtz and other Conrad chacacters in mind when she describes the appeal of “the phantom world of colo, nial adventure” to certain types of Europeans: Outside all social restraint and hypocrisy, against the backdrop of native life, the gentleman and the criminal felt not only the close- ness of men who share the same color of skin, but the impact of world of infinite possibilities for crimes committed in the spirit of play, for the combination of horror and laughter, that is for the full realization of their own phantomlike existence. Native life lent these ghostike events a seeming guarantee against all conse {quences because anyhow it looked to these men like a “mere play of shadows. A play of shadows, the dominant race could walk through unaffected and disregarded in the pursuit of its incom prehensible aims and needs.” ‘The world of native savages was a perfect setting for men who had escaped the reality of civiliza- tion. (70) A great many Knrtz-like Europeans “went native” in Aftica, offen to the extent of practicing genocide as a hobby; some were even rumored to practice cannibalism. According to Sir Harry H. Johnston, first gov: emnor of British Central Afiica, “I have been increasingly struck with the rapidity with which such members of the white race as are not of the best class, can throw over the restraints of civilization and develop into savages of unbridled lust and abominable cruelty” (68). Kurtz is not a member of the worst “class” of the white race, however; Conrad is talk ing about a quite common pattern of behavior. One of the most remarkable perversions of the criticism of Hare of Darkness bas been to sce Kurtz not as an abomination — a “hollow man” with a lust for blood and domination — but as a “hero of the spirit.” That phrase is Lionel Triling’s. In his well-known essay describ- ing the establishment of the first course in modern literature at Colam- biz University, Trilling explains why he put Conrad’s novella on the reading list: Whether or not .. . Conrad read cither Blake or Nietzsche I do not know, but his Heart of Darines follows in their line. This very great work has never lacked for the admiration it deserves, and it has been given a... canonical place in the legend of mod cer literature by Eliot’s having it so clearly in mind when he wrote The Waste Land and his having taken from it the epigraph to “The Hollow Men.” (“Modiern” 17-18)3S POSTCOLONIAL CRUTICIs4¢ Despite the “hollow man” association between Eliot's poem and Con: rad’s novella, Trilling claims that “no one, to my knowledge, has ever confronted in an explicit way [the latter’s] strange and terrible message of ambivalence toward the life of civilization” (17). In Sincerity and Authenticity (1981), Trilling adds that Conrad’s story is “the paradig. ‘atc literary expression of the modern concern with authenticity,” and continues: “This troubling work has no manifest polemical content but it containsin sum the whole of the radical critique of European civiliza tion that has been made by [modern] literature” (106). Although Trilling mentions the Congolese background of the story, it is less important to him than the larger question of the nature of “Bucopean civilization.” Marlow’s quest for Kurtz, becomes a quest for the truth about that civilization. Tilling arrives at his view of Kurtz partly the way Marlow does, because Kurtz at the end of his satanic career seems to confront “the horror, the horror.” “For Marlow,” says ‘Trilling, “Kurtz is a hero of the spirit whom he cherishes as Theseus at Coloous cherished Oedipus: he sinned for all mankind. By his regres jon to savagery Kurtz had reached as far down beneath the constructs (of civilization as it was possible to do, to the irreducible truth of man, the innermost core of his nature, his heart of darkness. From that Stygian authenticity comes illumination ...” (108) Marlow does patadoxically come to admire Kurtz because he has “summed up” or “judged” in his final moments: “He was a remarkable man” (p. 86). Marlow’s admiration for Kurvz, however, carries a terrific burden of irony that Trilling seems not to recognize. Kurtz has not merely fost faith in civilization and therefore experimented with “Stygian authenticity” — he is also a murderer, perhaps even a cannibal. He has allowed his idolators to make human sacrifices in his honor and, like Captain Rom, has decorated his corner of hell with the skulls of bis victims. I suspect that Trilling arrives at his own evaluation of Kurtz as 2 “hero of the spirit” in part because he himself does not find “the hor ‘or" all that horrible, even though the deaths of 6,000,000 Congolese is a high price to pay for the “illumination” of “Stygian authenticity.” Bat Triling’s interpretation of Kuet2’s dying words — “the horror, the horror” — does not take account of what transpired in Léopold’s Congo. “For meit is still ambiguous whether Kurtz's famous deathbed cry refers to the approach of death or to his experience of savage life” (silling, “Modern” 18). According to ‘Trilling’s view, either Kurtz. thinks death “the hor- tor,” or Kurtz thinks Affican “savagery” “the horror.” There is another possibility, of course, which is that Kurtz’s dying words are an outcry 39 against himself — against his betrayal of civilization and his Intended, against the smash-up of his early hopes, and also against bis bloody domination of the people he has been lording it over. No one would ever mistake Conrad’s other traitors to civilization as “heroes of the spirit.” Tam thinking, for example, of Willems who goes wrong and then “goes native” in An Outcast of the Islands, or of the itonically sym pathetic murderer Leggatt in “The Secret Sharer.” Even Lord Jim is tno *hero of the spirit,” but 2 moral cripple who manages to regain @ semblance of self respect only after fleeing to Patusan. But how ws it possible for Trilling to look past Kurtz’s criminal record and identify “the horror” either with the fear of death or with Aftican “savagery”? Achebe gives part of the answer: “white racism against Africa is such normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unde- tected” — so normal that acts that are condemned as the vilest of crimes when committed in the supposedly civilized West can be linked to a heroism of the spirit” and to "Stygian authenticity” when committed in Aftica against Afticans, Bur the other part of the answer, it scems to me, is that Trilling is tight. Conrad himself identifies with and ironically admires Kurtz. He, t00, sees him as a “hero of the spirit,” although “the spirit” for Conrad is pechaps not what Trilling thinks itis, For Conrad, Kurtz’s heroi consists in staring into an abyss of nihilism so total that the issues of imperialism and racism pale into insignificance. It hardly matters if the abyss is of Kurtz's making, No more than Trilling or perhaps most West cern critics, I think, did Conrad concern himself deeply about “unspeak able rites” and skulls on posts. These appear in Marlow’s account like so many melodrama props — the evidence of Kurtz's decline and fall, yes — but itis still Kurtz who has center stage, with whom Marlow speaks, who is the goal and farthest point of the journey. Kutz’s black victims and idolators skulking, in the bushes are also so many melo- drama props. Kurtz is not only the hero of the melodrama, he is an artist, a “universal genius,” and a quite powerful, eloquent “voice” as wel. As ‘Achebe points out, the Aftican characters are, in contrast, rendered almost without intelligible language. ‘The headman of Marlow’s anni bal crew gets in a few phrases of Pidgin-minstrelese, something. about cating some fellow Afticans. These are the black Kurtz worshippers, shrieking and groauing incobereutly in de Gggy shrubbery along the river. Kurtz’s “superb and savage” mistress, though described in glow- ing detail, is given no voice, but in spite of this I like to imagine that she, atleast, entertained no illusions about Kurtz or about imperialism, Ee0 POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM uualike the prim, palefaced knitters of black wool back in Brussels, “It’s ‘queer how out of touch with trath women are” (p. 27) says Marlow, but of course he means white women. Kurtz’s black mistress knows all; it’s just unfortunate that Marlow did not ask her for an interview. ‘The voices thar come from the “heart of darkness” are almost exclu- sively white and male, Asa nearly disembodied, pure “voice” emanat- ing ftom the very center of the story, Kurtz isa figure for the novelist, asis his double Marlow. True, the “voice” that speaks out of the “heart of darkness" is a hollow one, the voice of the abyss; but Marlow still talks of Kurtz’s “unextinguishable gift of noble and lofty expression.” ‘The “voice” of Kurtz has “electrified large meetings,” and through it Kurtz “could get himself to believe anything — anything” (p. 88). Is Conrad questioning or mocking his own “voice,” his own talent for fiction-making, for lying? Is he awace that the *will style,” his own tendency to “impressionism,” points toward the production of novels that are hollow at the core — that can justify any injustice — that con- tain, perhaps, only an abyss, a Kurtz, “the horror, the horror”? Yes, I think so. It is just this hollow “voice,” so devious and egotistical, so capable of self-deception and lying propaganda, that speaks from the center of “the heart of darkness” to “sum up” and to “judge.” Besides a painter, musician, orator, and “universal genius,” Kurtz is also, like Conrad, a writer. What he writes can be scen as an analogue for the story and also its dead center, the Kernel of meaning or non: ‘meaning within its cracked shell. True, Kurtz has not written much, only seventeen pages, but “it was a beautiful piece of writing.” ‘This is his pamphlet for the “International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs,” witich Marlow describes as “eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too high-strung, I think” ‘The opening paragraph ... in the light of later information, strikes me now as ominous. He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, “must neces- sarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings — we approach them with the might as of a deity,” and so oon, and so on. “By the simple exercise of oar will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,” etc., etc. From that point he soated and took me with him, The peroration was magnificent, though difficult o remember, you know. Tt gave me the nation of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made sme tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence. [And here I will add, “This was the unbounded will PATRICK BRANTLD CER, pat to style."] .. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the Foot of the last page, scravled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, lke a flash of lightning in a serene sky: “Exterminate all the brutes!” (pp. 65-66), Viewed one way, Conrad's anti-imperialst story condemns the murdet- ‘uss racism of Kurtz's imperative. Viewed another way, Conrad’ racist story voices that very imperative, and Conrad knows it. At the hollow center of Heart of Darkness, far from the “misty halos” and “moon shine” where the meaning supposedly resides, Conrad inscribes a text that, like the novel itself, cancels out its own best intentions. But now Kurtz’s dying words can be seen as something more than an outcry of guilt, and certainly more than a mere expression of the fear of death or of loathing for African “savagery.” They can be seen a8 referring to the sort of lying idealism that can rationalize any behavior, toa complete separation between words and meaning, theory and prac tice — perhaps to the “impressionistic” deviousness of art and language themselves. On this metaphysical level, I think, Conrad ceases to worry about the atrocities committed in the Congo and identifies with Kurtz as a fellow-artist, a “hero of the spicit” of that nihilism that Conrad himself found so attractive. On several occasions, Conrad compared the artist with the empire builder in a way that obviously runs counter to bis critique of impetial ism in Hears of Darkness. In A Personal Record, Conrad writes of “that interior world where [the novelist’s] thought and... emotions go seeking for... imagined adventures,” and where “there are no police men, no law, no pressure of circumstance or dread opinion to keep him within bounds.” And in the fist manuscript of “The Rescuer,” which as John McClure points out contains “by far” Conrad's “most sympa- thetic” treatment of imperialism, empire builders are among “those unknown guides of civilization, who on the advancing edge of progress are administrators, warriors, creators... They ate like great artists « mystery to the masses, appreciated only by the uninfluential few” (McClore 89-90). Kurtz is empire-builder, artis, universal genius, and voice crying from the wilderness all in one, But he has lost the faith — vision or illusion that can alone eustain an empire and produce great art, Nihilism is no basis upon which to found or administer a colony, and it is also no basis on which to write a novel, and again Conrad aa POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM PATRICK BRANTLINGER 3 knows it. In suggesting his affinity to Knrtz, he suggests the moral bankruptcy of his own literary project. But once there were empite bbuildersand great artists who kept the faith. Conrad frequently expresses his admiration for the great explorers and adventurers, from Six Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake through James Brooke, the white rajah of Sarawak, and David Livingstone, the greatest of the many great explorers of the “Dark Continent.” Conrad's critique of empire is never strictly anti-imperialst. Instead, in terms that can be construed as conservative rather than nihilistic, he rmoutns the loss of the truth faith in modern times, the dosing down of frontiers, the narrowing of the possibilities for adventure, the commer: alization of the world and of art, the death of chivalry and honor. Here the meaning of his emphasis on the lying propaganda of modern imperialism becomes evident. What was once a true, grand, noble, albeit violent enterprise is now “a gigantic and atrocious fraud” — except maybe, Marlow thinks, in the red parts of the map, where “some real work is done.” Staring into the abyss of his life, or at least of Kurtz's life, Conrad sees in bis disillasionment, his nihilism, the type of the whole — the path of disincegration that is modern history. 1¢is nor just [Affica or even just Kurtz who possesses a “heart of darkness”; Conrad’s story beats that title as well. But I am not going to end by announcing in “a tone of scathing contempt” the death of Conrad’s story as a classic, like the insolent manager's boy announcing: “Mistah Kurtz — he dead.” I agree with Trilling that “authenticity,” trath-telling, so far from being a negligible literary effect, is the essence of great literature. The fact that there are almost no other works of British fiction written before World War I that are critical of imperialism, and hundreds of imperialist ones that are rac~ ist through and through, is a measure of Contad’s achievement. T do not believe, moreover, that the real strength of Hwr® of Darkneslies in ‘what it says about atrocities in King L€opola’s Congo, though its docu mentary impulse is an important counter t0 its “will to style.” As social ‘ritcisn, its anti-imperialist message is undercut both by its racism and by its impressionism. But I know few novels that so insistently invoke am idealism that they don’t seem to contain, and in which the modern ist “will to syle” is subjected to such powerful self-scrutiny —in whieh it is suggested that the “voice” at the heart of the novel, the voice of literature, the voice of civilization iwsell mnay jn its purest, freest form yield only “the horror, che horror.” i | } | i i { i WORKS CITED Achebe, Chinua, “An Image of Affica.” Masiachuserts Review 18 (1977): 782-94. Arendt, Hannah. Imperialism. New York: Harcourt, 1968. Conrad, Joseph. A Personal Record. New York: Doubleday, 1924. Conrad, Joseph, and Ford Madox Hlueffer. The Inheritors: An Extray- ‘agaist Story. New York: McClure, 1901 Cookey; $. J. Britain and the Congo Question: 1885-1913. London: Longman, 1968. Glave, E. J. “Cruelty in the Congo Free State.” Century Magazine 54 (1897): 706. Green, Martin. Dreams of Adventure, Deeds of Empire. New York: Basic, 1979 Gucrard, Albert J. Conrad the Novelist. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958. New York: Atheneum, 1967, Hawkins, Hunt. “Conrad’s Critique of Imperialism in Heart of Daviness” PMLA 94 (1979): 286-99. Hinde, Captain Sidney L. The Fal of the Congo Arabs. London: Methuen, 1897. Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as 0 Socially Symbolic Act. Whaca: Cornell UP, 1981. Johnston, Sir Harry H. British Central Africa, London: Methuen, 1397, Mahood, M. M. The Colonial Encounter: A Reading of Six: Novels. London: Rex Collings, 1977. McClure, John A. Kipling and Conrad: Tie Colonial Fiction. Cam- bridge: Harvard UP, 1981 Morel, E. D. King Leopold's Rude in Africn, Westport: Negro Univer- sities P, 1970. —. Red Rutbber: The Story ofthe Rubber Slave Trade on the Congo. London: Unwin, 1906. Parry, Benita. Conrad anid Imperialism. London: Macmillan, 1983. Said, Edward W. Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography. ‘Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1966. Sherry, Norman. Conrad’s Western World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1971 Triling, Lionel, “On the Modern Element in Literature.” Beyond Culiure: Esays on Literature and Learning. New York: Harcourt, 1968, . Sincerity and Authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 198134 POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISNE Watt, lan. Conrad in the Nineteenth Century. Betkeley: U of Cali fornia P, 1979. Watts, Cedric. ‘A Bloody Racist’: About Achebe's View of Conrad.” ‘Yearbook of English Studies 13 (1983): 196-209. ams, Raymond, The English Novel from Dickens to Lavrence. New York: Oxford UP, 1970. Ww i i Combining Postcolonial, Feminist, and Gender Criticism with Queer Theory Although you have been introduced to feminist and gender crt: cism as well as the postcolonial approach earlier, you have not been introduced to queer theory. Because the essay by Gabriclle McIntire that follows eventually takes 2 “queered” tun after combining the postcolonial approach, feminist and gender criticism (plus the post modernist concept of the diffevend, which McIntire herself thoroughly explains), a brief introduction to queer theory commences the follow= ing lead-in to “The Women Do Not Travel: Gender, Difference, and Incommensurability in Conrad's Heart of Darkness.” WHAT IS QUEER THEORY? Generally speaking, queer theory begins by assuming that homosex«- ality and heterosexuality are not mutually exclusive binary oppositions — fixed and exclusive modalities of personal identity — but, rather, points along a continuum of possible sexual practices. Most queer theorists would agree with feminist gender critics that gender differences by and large are not innate but, rather, constructed, which is to say that they are the result of long-standing, assumptions about what constitutes feminine versus masculine behavior. But they take the constructionist Niewpoine a step farther, argning that the opposition homosexual/ 5326 COMBINING PERSPECTIVES | heterosexual is also an either/or social construct that codifiesand thereby misrepresents a range of behaviors and practices. Rather than being a term used prejudicially, gureris used by queer theorists to refer to critical and philosophical positions taken outside the circle of conventional assumptions about sextality and gender. 8s a result, some queer theorists are interested in the way in which prevail ing discourses regarding sex, gender, and sexuality lump individuals and individual practices not only into boxes marked male/female, mascu- line/feminine, and straight queer (heterosextial /homosexual) but also divyy the “queer” world up into boxes marked bisexual, transvestite, transgendered, sadomasochist, and so forth. "The philosophical roots of queer theory are deeply grounded in Michel Foucault's Hiisoire de lie sexwalité (The History of Sexuality [19761), which maintained that the whole concept of homosexuality 28 the abnormal opposite of heterosexuality was an artifact of nineteenth century Western thought. Those roots also may be found in philoso- pher Judith Butler's Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of TTdentity (1990) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s landmark books Between ‘Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (985) and Episte- mology of the Close (1990), both of which paved the way to understand: ing how queer theory can undergird a critical approach to literary works, Berween Men is particularly relevant to Mclntie’s reading of “Heart of Darknes, insofar as it utilizes the terms of feminist and gender criticism to analyze relationships between men that involve levels of male bonding that, though not necessarily ot even usually sexual per se, utterly leave women out. ‘Any definition of quecr theory will inevitably elicit reasonable objec- tions from various subsets of queer theorists, For instance, some might avant {0 carve out exceptions, arguing that Afiican American lesbian authors have more in common with other Affican American women anthors than, say, with black male homosexual writers. And, certainly, there are queer theorists who write not from the constructionist but, rather, from an essentialist perspective, arguing that homosexual per~ sons are naturally different feom birth much in the way chat there are essentialist feminists who insist that women and men are not just ana- tomically different but enentially different in a number of ways (¢-8. the way in which they write) In the opening pages of the essay excerpted below, Gabriella Meln- tire examines the representations of women found in Heart of Darknes, finding them to be “always positioned . in either the [African] colony ee WHAT Is QUEER THEORY! x or the [European] metropole,” always “bere or there,” “decidedly stat and unable to wander between cultural, ideological, and national boundaries” (p. 382). Thus “placed, ... Conrad’s women” — from Marlow’s aunt in her parlor serving tea to the gorgeous African wornan looking “like the wilderness itself” — “reinforce a sense of extreme separation between the colony and the metropole, and as such they are crucial for guarding and preserving difference between Africa and Burope” (p. 332). But because they are all women (in a world of waveling white men), they also underscore gender difference in Heart of Darkuess, a topic previously addressed by Johanna M. Smith, whose 1989 essay “Too Beautiful Altogether” (pp. 189-204) represents feminist and gender criticism in this volume, and Bette London, whose essay {published the same year) “Reading Race and Gender in Conrad’s Dark Continent” blends the feminist/gender approach with that of postcolonial criti cism, Developing the ideas of Smith and London while extending her argument regarding the gap between Europe and Aftica, McIntire writes: “While Conrad’s text explicitly marks out incommensurable dif. ferences between Europe and Aifica and between Europeans and those he calls ‘savages,’ these are, in turn, “sustained and enforced by the incommensurabilies in knowing and speaking that he establishes along gender lines” (p, 335). For the “male protagonists possess both empir: cal and abstract knowledge of the colonial enterprise in both Affica and Europe” (p, 385); thus, when Marlow judges his aunt's enthusiasm for the European civlizing project to be evidence that she is “out of touch with trath,” he criticizes her not for exhibiting European moral blind: ness but, rather, “he reads her indoctrination as a specifically feminine ignorance” (p. 336). Later, in Sone of the few places in the text where Marlow intecrupts his narrative with an aside to his [male] auditors,” he “pushes this exclusion {of the feminine from knowledge] farther to insist, with an intratextual echo of his own words, that women should be ‘out of his whole story.” “I laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie.” he began suddenly. “Girl! What? Did I mention a gir!? Oh, she is out of it — com: pletely. They — the women I mean — are out of it — should be out of it.” (p. 337) Melntire finds in the sbove-quoted passage what postmodernist theorist Jean Frangois Lyotard refers to asa alfferend, which tefers on ‘one hand to “an unstable state and instant of language wherein some: thing which must be able to be put into phrases cannot yet be” and, on ee aa328 COMBINING PERSPECTIVES the other, that which would be “put into phrases” — thats, “rhetorical ‘or speech genre” (MeIntire’s phrase) which cannot be “translate[ed]” by those wielding the predominant discourse. In the first sense of differend, Marlow’s language is unstable because he is trying to “put” the feminine “into phrases”; he “typically,” as MeIntire points out, “stutters and falters in his narration most explicitly at the moments when he is unable to make women part of his story” (p. 338). In the second sense of Lyotard’s term, what women would “put into phrases” Jn speaking to power is also present as a trace in the passage — that is, as silence. Turning to Smith’s account of the way in which the women in Heart of Darkness are either silenced by the patriarchal discourses from which they ate excluded or reduced to parroting them weakly, McIntire then returns to Lyotard’s The Differend, which argues that discursive interactions between two parties from heterogenous “phrase regimens” end with one party “reduced to silence.” Melatire contin- ues: “The voices Lyotard writes of are as unintelligible to the more powerful discourses that frame and contain them ...as the women in Heart of Darknessare to Martow’s narration” (p. 339) “Without framing his argument in feminist, queer, or racial terms,” MeTntire subsequently argues, “Lyotard goes very far in describing how institutional and societal modes disallow certain forms of speech or genres of expression by not making space for the possibility of their idiom” (p. 339). Befare ever invoking The Différend, Mcintire framed her argument in linked, feminist and racial terms. “[N]either women nor Afficans (regardless of gender),” she had earlier remarked, “are capable of navigating between types of knowledge, any more than they are capable of leaving the territory that defines them” (p. 336). Having introduced Lyotard’s concept of the différend, she powerfully reframes her argument in homosocial, homoerotic, “queer” terms She does so most pointedly in her consideration of the story’ end: ing, which “highlight{s]” Marlow’s “desire for non-contact between his epistemological framework” and “women’s in general.” When Mar- low visits Kurtz’s Totended, he “return{s] things” (a portrait and her letters) but “cannot meet her with language.” Instead of engaging the young woman in conversation, he “mimics her phrasing,” In answer to her statement, “You kntew him wel,” he echoes her in profoundly homoerotic language: “I knew him as well as it is possible for one man to know another.” His echolalia effectively parodies her desire for knowledge about nothing less than bnow/- ‘edge itself by claiming a supreme (and possibly sexual) form of knowledge for himself. (p. 341) j | j | works crreD ‘As “their exchange continues,” as Marlow “stragglfes] to piece words together in the hesitating language of discomfort, claiming ‘He was a remarkable man [...] it was impossible not to...’ the Intended inter poses ‘Love him" (p. 342). In Lyotard’s phrase, this is an attempt to “pat into phrases” her love for the same man, to—in Mefntire’s words ~ “meet Marlow on his own discursive level by literally con pleting his sentence, ... by echoing his language of love and desire,” Bur this is “precisely the sort of thing Marlow does not want to hear from a woman; itis fir too near to the ‘truth? about bis attraction to Kurtz, Marlow experiences this interpolation as a terrifying shutting down of his voice, feeling that she was ‘silencing me into an appalled dumboness’™ (p. 342) Marlow soon cecovers his voice. When the Intended subsequently asks him to “repeat” Kartz’s last words, to in effect share in Kurta’s and Marlow’s language, he — in Mclntire’s words — “reinforces their dif ference by refusing to mect her in the same discursive territory of ‘truth.’ Rather than tell her that Kurtz died muttering “The horror! ‘The horror!” in what Marlow has called a “supreme moment of com plete knowledge” that “had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth,” he instead tells her that Kurtz died speaking her name. “As such,” ‘Melntire concludes, “Marlow ends his story on a differend by directing: her away from knowledge to leave her believing in a false romantic vision of Kurtz’s inal words" (pp. 342-43). WORKS CITED Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print. For a new introduc- tion by the author, ee the 1999 edition. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. Trans, Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon, 1978. Print, London, Bette. “Reading Race and Gender in Conrad’s Dark Conti nent.” Criticinn 31 (1989): 235-52. Print. Lyotard, Jean Frangois, The Différend, Trans. Georges Van Den ‘Abbecle. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1988. Print. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofiky. Benmcen Men: English Literature and Male ‘Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia UP, 1988, Print ———. kptstemology of the Claset. Berkeley: U of California F, 1991, Print, Smith, Johanna M. “ ‘Too Beautifal Altogether’: Patriatchal Ideology in Heart of Darknes.” 189-204, this edition. Print