Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Africa and orality
- 2 The folktale and its extensions
- 3 Festivals, ritual, and drama in Africa
- 4 Arab and Berber oral traditions in North Africa
- 5 Heroic and praise poetry in South Africa
- 6 African oral epics
- 7 The oral tradition in the African diaspora
- 8 Carnival and the folk origins of West Indian drama
- 9 Africa and writing
- 10 Ethiopian literature
- 11 African literature in Arabic
- 12 The Swahili literary tradition: an intercultural heritage
- 13 Africa and the European Renaissance
- 14 The literature of slavery and abolition
- 15 Discourses of empire
- 16 African-language literatures of southern Africa
- 17 Gikuyu literature: development from early Christian writings to Ngũgĩ’s later novels
- 18 The emergence of written Hausa literature
- 19 Literature in Yorùbá: poetry and prose; traveling theater and modern drama
- 20 African literature and the colonial factor
- 21 The formative journals and institutions
- 22 Literature in Afrikaans
- References
15 - Discourses of empire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- 1 Africa and orality
- 2 The folktale and its extensions
- 3 Festivals, ritual, and drama in Africa
- 4 Arab and Berber oral traditions in North Africa
- 5 Heroic and praise poetry in South Africa
- 6 African oral epics
- 7 The oral tradition in the African diaspora
- 8 Carnival and the folk origins of West Indian drama
- 9 Africa and writing
- 10 Ethiopian literature
- 11 African literature in Arabic
- 12 The Swahili literary tradition: an intercultural heritage
- 13 Africa and the European Renaissance
- 14 The literature of slavery and abolition
- 15 Discourses of empire
- 16 African-language literatures of southern Africa
- 17 Gikuyu literature: development from early Christian writings to Ngũgĩ’s later novels
- 18 The emergence of written Hausa literature
- 19 Literature in Yorùbá: poetry and prose; traveling theater and modern drama
- 20 African literature and the colonial factor
- 21 The formative journals and institutions
- 22 Literature in Afrikaans
- References
Summary
“The conquest of the earth,” declares Charlie Marlow, principal narrator of Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness, “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,” he continues, “is the idea only.” Thus does Marlow look back on his voyage up the great African river, at the moment when the King of the Belgians was tightening his grip over what he called the “Congo Free State,” at the cost of close to six million African lives. The remark comes at the opening of Marlow’s extended “yarn,” both a bitter memory and the canny opening gambit of a master storyteller. Marlow’s first words represent the closing remarks of a history whose moral climax turns on the evasion of last words. Though he has witnessed the horror that resounds in the life of that “remarkable man,” Mr. Kurtz, Marlow’s “inconclusive experiences” in Africa are – so we are given to understand – not amenable to final judgments.
Heart of Darkness is, for better and worse, both a chillingly clear-sighted account of imperial violence and a self-implicating instance of the moral blindness it denounces. Conrad’s story raises the discourse of empire to an excruciating pitch of self-consciousness. Deliberately provocative and self-loathing, the text combines a frank acknowledgment of colonial brutality with an exquisite aversion to moral judgments; and it opts, ultimately, to align itself with what it sees as the corrupting lie of “civilized” morality.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature , pp. 255 - 288Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
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