Post-Colonial Approach
Heart of Darkness
Prepared By
Sameeha
Elwan
Outline:
1. Colonialism.
2. Post-Colonialism
3. The Image of the Other
4. Application to Heart of Darkness
What is Colonialism? And Colonialist Literature?
Colonialism is about the dominance of a strong
nation over another weaker one .
Colonialist Literature:
Colonialist literature - according to Elleke Boehmer, is
literature primarily concerned with colonial expansion.
"It was literature written by the coloniser and for
colonising Europeans about non-European lands
dominated by them" (3). It represented the coloniser's
point of view. In other words it was part of the support
structure or ideology making the colonising work
honourable and just. Thus Conrad helped unwittingly
build Empire.
His basic assumptions in defense of
his actions are:
1.The colonized are savages
2.The Inferior culture of the colonized.
3. The colonized nation is unable to manage
and run itself properly.
4.The profanity of the (Non-Christian
colonized nation
5. The colonized people pose dangerous threat
to themselves and to the civilized world if left
alone
Imperialism and Colonialism:
“The empire that was controlled by a government
from the centre, and which was developed for
ideological as well as financial reasons, a structure
that can be called imperial. And an empire that was
developed for settlement by individual communities
or for commercial purposes by a trading company, a
structure that can be called colonial.”
Empire is the relationship, formal or informal, in which
one state controls the effective political sovereignty of
another political society. Imperialism distinguishes itself
from empire, because while the establishment of
empires by the active colonisation of territories has
ended, imperialism ‘lingers where it has always been, in
a kind of general cultural sphere as well as in specific
political, ideological, economic, and social practices’
(1993:8). Its very investment in culture makes
imperialism a force that exists far beyond a
geographical empire”
Edward Said “Culture and Imperialism”
(1965).
Post-Colonialism:
In essence, what post-colonialism, as a movement, does is to
expose to both the colonizer and ex-colonized the falsity or
validity of their assumptions.
Therefore, Post-colonialism is not merely a fashionable term given to
what follows colonialism
Post-colonialism is as much the study of colonialism and imperialism,
as it is about the conditions and experiences that were followed by
the end of colonialism and imperialism.
Post-colonialism often involves the examination of the experiences
of slavery, migration, suppression, resistance, race, gender,
difference, place, and the responses to the discourses of imperial
Europe
The Assumptions of Post-colonialism:
1. Cultural relativism. This means that the colonialists’
distortion of the culture of the colonized is socially,
morally and politically incorrect.
2. The absurdity of colonial language and discourses:
Paradoxical, conflicting, and ambivalent.
3. Ambivalence towards authority. This ambivalence is
born out of the struggle and conflict between native and
settler with the outcome of the settler’s disposal.
4. Colonial alienation . The colonized are marginalized.
Colonialism leads to the alienation of the native in his own
land.
So, to examine any literary work from a post-colonial
perspective while reading any literary discourse, we
should keep in mind some questions:
• How do these narratives treat their subjects?
• What are the main themes or messages?
• What cultural elements are being examined, and from whose
perspective?
• Are there stereotypes presented in the narratives? What are they?
How are they presented? For example are the local inhabitants seen as
savages, cannibals, polygamous, dirty, violent, irrational, etc.?
• How are the colonialists presented in the narratives? Are they
tolerant, oppressive, violent, charitable, cute, white, brave, religious,
hypocrites, etc?
• Do the narratives depict natives versus settlers, vice versa? How?
• Are there intellectual, levelheaded characters in the narratives? Who
are they and whom do they serve? What is their class and orientation?
• What binary oppositions can you find in the narratives and what do
they serve?
Two Visions in
Heart of Darkness
Edward Said
Applying
Post-Colonial Theory
In his “ Culture and
Imperialism”
Edward Said argues,”
“What distinguishes the modern European
empires from the Roman
or the Spanish or the Arab is that they are
systematic centerprises, constantly
reinvested. They do not move into a
country, loot it and leave. What keeps
them there is not simple greed, but
massively reinforced notions of the
civilising mission. This is the notion that
imperial nations have not only the right
but the obligation to rule those nations
‘lost in barbarism’
In “ Heart of Darkness”
“ The moral Ground”
“They
were no colonists; their administration was merely a
squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were
conquerors, and for that you want only brute force—
nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength
is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.
They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what
was to be got. It was just robbery with violence,
aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it
blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness.
The conquest of the earth, 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. What redeems it is the
idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental
pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea—
something you can set up, and bow down before, and
offer a sacrifice to. …”
Page 10
Rethinking Decolonization:
“This feeling in turn led to Westerners
rethinking the whole process f decolonization.
Was it not true, ran their new evaluation, that
“we” had given “them” progress and
modernization? Hadn’t we provided them with
order and a kind of stability that they haven’t
been able since to provide for themselves?
Wasn’t it an atrocious misplaced trust to believe
in their capacity for independence, for it had led
to Bokassas and Amins, whose intellectual
correlates were people like Rushdie? Shouldn’t we
have held on to the colonies, kept the subject or
inferior races in check, remained true to our
civilizational responsibilities?”
. “Why don’t they appreciate
us, after what we did for them?”
The Image of the Tranquil Thames:
“Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the
serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old
river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of
day, after ages of good service done to the race that
peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a
waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth”
Page 8
The Image of the Other
The Other: Not( White- EuropeanChristian)
“One significant contemporary debate about the
residue of imperialism—
the matter of how “natives” are represented in
the Western media—illustrates
the persistence of such interdependence and
overlapping, not only in the
debate’s content but in its form, not only in what
is said but also in how it
is said, by whom, where, and for whom”
The Image of The Other: ( Natives of the Congo)
-Absent presence ( marginalized)
‘True, by this time it was not a blank space any more.
It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes
and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful
mystery— a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously
over. ( page 11)
-Mirroring a contrast to Europe
- Babbling ( Their own language not acknowledged by Marlow)
“a violent babble of uncouth sounds” page 20
-Cannibalism ( page 37) ( page 45)
“Conrad's stress on cannibalism, his identification of African customs
with violence, lust, and madness, his metaphors of bestiality death,
and darkness, his suggestion that travelling in Africa is like travelling
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” Bratlinger
-Inhumane descriptions:
"niggers", "savages" "pre-historic man", "rudimentary souls“
‘The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to
look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but
there— there you could look at a thing monstrous and
free. It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were
not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—
this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come
slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and
made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the
thought of their humanity— like yours—the thought of
your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.
Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough;” Page 33
-Praised for their Vitality to the colonizers, the masters.
“More than once she had to
wade for a bit, with twenty cannibals splashing around and
pushing. We had enlisted some of these chaps on the way
for a crew. Fine fellows—cannibals—in their place. They
were men one could work with, and I am grateful to
them. And, after all, they did not eat each other before my
face” Page 32
The helms man:
“Perhaps
you will think it passing strange this regret for a savage
who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black
Sahara. Well, don’t you see, he had done something, he
had steered; for months I had him at my back— a help—
an instrument. It was a kind of partnership” Page 44
Was that a partnership?
Kurtz’s colonial and Imperial Desires:
“You should
have heard him say, ‘My ivory.’ Oh, yes, I heard him. ‘My
Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my—’
everything belonged to him.” Page 43
“He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of
the land— I mean literally”
The Binary Oppositions:
White Vs. Black
Enlightenment Vs Darkness
Savagery VS Civilization
In Conclusion,
Post-colonial criticism recognises the text as "a vehicle
of imperial authority ". Heart of Darkness would
therefore be seen as one of the many texts, relying on
'myth and metaphor', which unwittingly supports the
suppression of any one people on the coloniser's
presumption that these people were inferior