The Emergence of Postcolonial Criticism (original) (raw)
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THE PLACE OF CONRAD'S HEART OF DARKNESS IN POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE
his paper deals with the reception of Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. The novella gains in importance in two respects: one, it introduces a pathbreaking modern narrative trend; two, it creates a stir in the postcolonial literary domain. It succeeds in attracting notice both in terms of form and content; the former, by experimenting a novel mode of metanarrative in modern stylistics; and the latter, by prompting a controversy in the postcolonial literary arena. This paper zeroes in on the latter -the postcolonial dispute the novella has spawned. It highlights the controversy triggered off by Chinua Achebe's seminal rebuke of Conrad as a 'thoroughgoing racist' in the wake of the wide acclaim the novella has supposedly received from the Euro-centric world. Achebe comes up with the critique upfront to question and denigrate the supposedly famous work in the eyes of the West. Cedric Watts has his own reasons to put checks on Achebe, and attempts to make the pungent comment blunt by showing the remarkable side of the novella. This paper limits its area of focus to Conrad, Achebe and Cedric Watts given the fact of
Critical responses to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
2010
This essay will revolve around the critical reception of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The focus will be on three primary sources: firstly, the early critical reception and how the novella was received when it was originally published in 1902, secondly, Chinua's famous critique in 1977 when he called Conrad a racist and condemned both the author and the novella, and thirdly, Said's defence and contextualization of Conrad's novella in 1992. The essay will explore how the critics have been influenced and from what standpoints they have entered into the debate on Conrad and show how the discussion has changed over time. Furthermore, it will show that the early responses ignore the 'race' aspect because 'race-thinking' was seen as something natural. It will also explain why Achebe might feel so strongly against Conrad. He is after all fighting for a strong African identity after the colonies gained their independence. Said defends and contextualizes Conrad as a creature of his time. Finally, the essay will discuss and contrast the critics, concluding that each critique is highly influenced by the time-period in which it was written.
Oppression and Resistance in Conrad's Heart of Darkness: A Postcolonial Study
Studies in Indian Place Names, 2020
This paper aims to analyze the themes of oppression and resistance in Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902) by tracing forms of oppression and resistance depicted through the novella. The purpose of this paper is to approach oppression of Conrad's Heart of Darkness from postcolonial study. It traces European colonialism in Africa. It depicted the people who affected and suffered from European colonization. This paper deals with postcolonial criticism that focuses on the oppression of the colonizers over colonized people. Conrad showed his readers the realities of colonialism and how it affects the oppressed as well as the oppressors.
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad: A Review
2015
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness bears particular relevance to the reader of the postmodern reader as it presents a story delving into the heart of the postcolonial discourse. At different times in history, the novella has received varying readings ranging from the postcolonial, autobiographical and even those that justify the colonizer's rationale. The reason for this is Conrad's craft in creating a truly discursive work, that remains a continuity to the present moment. This paper is a review of Conrad's masterpiece and attempts to situate it within the present context.
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a complex text that critiques European imperialism but also reflects the colonial ideologies it seeks to expose. From a postcolonial perspective, the novella reflects and reinforces colonial ideologies through its Orientalist portrayal of Africa and Africans. Particularly using Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism, explains how the West constructs the “Orient” as the opposite of itself, irrational, savage, and inferior. The novella reinforces binary oppositions that portray the colonized world as savage and barbaric to the Western colonizers to depict Africa as a mysterious, dangerous "Other." The story unfolds through Marlow, who embarks on a journey to the Congo, exposing the exploitation and horrors of European colonial practices. Furthermore, the novella’s relevance to contemporary discussions of race and representation, as well as its intersection with theories by Homi K. Bhabha and Frantz Fanon, reveals how colonial narratives continue to shape perceptions of non-Western cultures. However, this essay critically evaluates how these binaries undermine Heart of Darkness as both a critique and a product of colonialism, emphasizing the implications of Orientalism in the text and beyond.
Psychoanalytic reading of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the Freudian Pespective
Geographical discoveries and economic developments from the sixteenth to nineteenth and to the early half of twentieth centuries deeply influenced to every field of life from the politic to the literature, cultures and the lifestyles of people. The geographical discoveries and the need of imperial powers for the markets changed the balance. As the results of changes during the 16 th century, some governments such as Portugal, Russia, France and England became the great powers of the world in terms of colonialism and imperialism. Besides discovering new lands and markets they also advanced technologically that enabled them to dominate over their colonies.
Postcolonia Ecocriticism of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness
Postcolonial criticisms of literary texts remain incomplete without taking into consideration the ecocritical perspectives. The colonizer while colonizing a race of people also colonizes the land. Both the land and its people become resources to be exploited for economic profits. The foundation of western system of thought and knowledge has been formulated on the construction of dichotomiesbetween nature/culture, white/black, men/women. The conjoining of the two 'others' -'nature and black', which enables the white colonizer to solidify its claim of superiority, makes it inevitable to look at colonial/postcolonial literature through the lens of ecocriticism.
The Production of the Imperialist Subjectivities in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature
In this paper, I argue that Joseph Conrad portrays the imperialist ideology as fundamentally flawed in “Heart of Darkness". The inconsistency of imperialism is blatantly evident in the contradiction between the perceptions of Kurtz as “an emissary of pity” (59) and his call for genocide, which he put as a postscript in his report to the Society for the Suppression of the Savage Customs. I thus claim that “Heart of Darkness” constructs the colonizer as a flawed subject who suffers from the same contradictions with the imperialist system as its product. I will use the Lacanian theory of the symbolic order and refer to Slavoj Žižek’s re-formulations of it in order to substantiate and clarify my points.