Transcript Heart of Darkness

Jopseph Conrad
 Heart of Darkness - Marcus Ragomale
Heart of Darkness
 Marcus Ramogale

 Achebe and Conrad's "Heart of Darkness": A
Reassessment of African Postcolonialism in the Era of
the African Renaissance
Heart of Darkness
 By exposing this sort of racism, Achebe and other
postcolonial critics have helped liberate Africa from
the devastation of colonialist discourse.
 In my view, "Heart of Darkness" sets out to expose, as
part of an authorial design, the destructiveness of
European racism and the absurdity of the colonialist's
much-vaunted "civilisation."
Heart of Darkness
 Marlow's disenchantment with white civilisation does
not, of course, lead to an automatic identification with
Africa.
 In fact, thanks to his ingrained racism, he is
consistently ambivalent towards Africans even after
his African journey: at one stage he describes them as
fellow human beings and at another as animal-like
creatures.
Heart of Darkness
 In fact, thanks to his ingrained racism, he is consistently
ambivalent towards Africans even after his African
journey: at one stage he describes them as fellow
human beings and at another as animal-like
creatures.
 This ambivalence creates tension which dramatises a
moral struggle in which the deep-rooted nature of
racial prejudice is demonstrated.
Heart of Darkness
 Marlow fails to free himself from the grip of racist
thinking, because he rejects the racism and
colonialism that derive from the European continent
only to embrace their British version.
 However, a perceptive reader can see that even the
British model is held up to subtle criticism, for according
to Marlow himself, "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" ("Heart of Darkness," YS, 50-1).
Heart of Darkness
 Marlow's new knowledge — that evil also rules in the
lives of the supposedly civilised — is not used to shed
light where it matters most: Europe.
 This may explain why early in the story the narrator
describes Marlow's African experience as
"inconclusive" (51).
 Its inconclusiveness seems to suggest an ethical
indeterminacy created by the absence of a moral
finish in his account.
Heart of Darkness
 Marlow, in spite of several racist comments he makes,
shows a remarkable critical attitude towards his
moral shortcomings and those of his fellow whites.
 For example, at the company's Outer Station he is
appalled by the waste he sees everywhere and the
ruthless exploitation of Africans.
Heart of Darkness
 The evidence of an evil force behind the company's
activities prompts him to say the following: "I foresaw
that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would
become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weakeyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly" (65).
 Although Achebe's soldierly approach was necessary in
1975 — as it helped to mobilise other combatants against
colonialism — it has to be recognised today, thanks to the
experience of the intervening 25 years or so, that
African postcolonialism cannot afford to remain stuck
in its anti-colonial mode.
Heart of Darkness
 Twenty five years after his lecture and some forty-odd
years after the emergence of the first African country to
be granted independence, postcolonial critics in Africa
have to realise, as some have done, that the source of
African problems is not solely extraneous.
 In other words, African problems are not caused solely
by the iniquities of what Wole Soyinka calls an "external
tyrant" (Soyinka, "The Writer...," 16).
Heart of Darkness
 By focusing attention mostly on the evils of white power,
African postcolonialism is in danger of encouraging the
view that African self-criticism is unimportant.
Heart of Darkness
 As I have indicated elsewhere, Africa also needs an
"inward--looking discourse" which will force
appropriate attention on her strengths and
weaknesses.
 Such a discourse will have to eschew fashionable truths
and political correctness in favour of a sobering and
empowering self-analysis (Ramogale, 9).
Heart of Darkness
 If African postcolonialism remains trapped within a
resistance strategy that is outwardly-directed, then it will
fail to bring about total emancipation, for the problems of
Africa do not only have an external source only but
have an internal one as well.
 Such an argument is often rejected by postcolonial critics
on the grounds that Africans cannot afford selfcriticism as it will only open up Africa to racist attack,
thus undermining the African cause.
Heart of Darkness
 As a consequence, self-examination is a marginal
activity in African postcolonialism.
 We have thus become accustomed to a simple moral
debate in which the villain is invariably the white
racist or imperialist.
Heart of Darkness
 Because a "moral ideology tends to ossify complex
social problems into symbols which are perceived as
finished forms of good or evil...writings influenced by
such an ideology tend to inform without involving
readers in a truly transforming experience" (329).
 In other words, the information acquired from such
writings does not lead to the "transformation" of the
reader's consciousness but results, instead, in the
reader's "recognition" of known evil (332). Such
writings, it may be argued, are not sufficiently liberating.
 END