Hello and welcome to another lecture on postcolonial
literature. Now, in our previous meeting,
if you remember, we discussed how the military
and economic processes of colonialism is integrally
associated with a peculiar kind of discourse,
which we refer to as the colonial discourse.
And we also studied Orientalism as an example
of this colonial discourse and saw, how through
the discourse of Orientalism, places like
Egypt, places like India, were transformed
into passive objects of knowledge for the
European coloniser.
And we also saw the use of colonial discourse
to justify the process of colonialism. So
a colonial discourse like Orientalism for
instance, which constructs the Arabs and the
Indians as barbaric, ignorant, and childlike
creatures presents European colonialism as
a civilising mission rather than an exploitative
economic enterprise. And the argument is actually
very clear here.
The argument that a colonial discourse makes
is that colonialism, by exposing these less
civilised people like the Arabs for instance
or the Indians to the more civilised Europeans,
actually benefit them more. Because they get
enlightened than they benefit the Europeans.
So it is ultimately colonialism, according
to the colonial discourse, is ultimately beneficial
to the colonised subjects.
And so therefore, I mean in other words, through
colonialism the adult and civilised European
is seen as leading the childlike Oriental
natives to civilizational maturity. Now however,
at this point it is important to note that
Orientalism was not the only instance of colonial
discourse. It was one example and if you look
at the European colonialism of Africa for
instance that carved up that entire continent
into colonies for European countries like
Britain for instance, France, Belgium, Germany,
etcetera, during the late 19th century, we
encounter another instance of colonial discourse
associated with this process. And this discourse
of course has its focus on Africa. And though
it is distinct from Orientalism, the underlying
logic is very similar. And it is similar because
in the colonial discourse on Africa, Africans
are presented as barbaric, as childlike, who
need the guidance of enlightened Europeans
to reach civilizational maturity.
So, in other words, the late 19th-century
European colonialism of Africa, just like
the European colonisation of the Orient before
that, was explained away as a civilising mission
which was more beneficial again to the colonised
than to the coloniser. So in today’s lecture,
we are basically going to talk about this
colonial discourse which had its focus on
Africa and the bizarre ways in which it twisted
the colonial reality. And we are going to
talk about this with reference to one of the
classics of British fiction.
The name of the novel that we are going to
deal with today is Joseph Conrad’s Heart
of Darkness. But before we move on to the
novel, let me introduce you to the novelist
Joseph Conrad. And here in this slide, you
can see his image and you can also see his
dates.
Conrad was born in 1857 in present day Ukraine
in a family of Polish aristocrats, landed
gentry. He died in 1924. And you know if you
read about Conrad’s life, it is very interesting
to note that though Conrad later went on to
become a very celebrated English novelist,
he only learnt English in his 20’s. So he
did not know the English language before that.
And it was in 1886 that Conrad took British
citizenship.
And his first novel written in English was
published as late as 1895. And the name of
that novel was Almayer’s Folly. Following
the publication of Almayer’s Folly in 1895,
Conrad went on to publish other powerful tales
like The Nigger of Narcissus, Heart of Darkness
- which we are going to discuss today, Lord
Jim, and Nostromo.
And in this slide you can see the dates of
their publication given within parentheses.
And in many of these fictions, that I have
referred to just now, Conrad’s acquaintance
with the sea and with distant lands as a professional
sailor - Conrad was a professional sailor,
at one point of time, in his career - is prominently
reflected in most of these novels. And, in
fact, the novel Heart of Darkness, which we
are going to discuss today, also had its origin
in one of Conrad’s journeys as a sailor.
So in 1890 Conrad sailed for the Congo region
in west Africa.
And Congo region is this shaded region here
roughly. This actually, this map is of a present
day country called the Democratic Republic
of Congo. But roughly this is the Congo region.
So Conrad, in 1890, went to this region. And
he went on behalf of a Belgian company because
he was commissioned by that company to take
charge as captain of one of the company’s
steamers that plied along the Congo river.
King Leopold II, the ruler of Belgium at that
point of time had recently annexed large portions
of the Congo basin as Belgian colony. He had
done that in 1870’s, to be precise. And
when Conrad visited the area in 1890, it had
already become infamous as a site of inhuman
Colonial brutalities and exploitation. And
Heart of Darkness, on the one hand is a documentation
of these European brutalities meted out to
the local African populations and on the other
hand, it is a meditation on the gap between
this brutal physical reality of the colonial
process and the colonial discourse generated
from within the metropolis which presented
this process as a civilising mission. So,
it is a meditation on the gap between the
discourse which presents colonialism as a
civilising mission and the brutal reality
of the colonial process.
One can follow this gap between the colonial
discourse and the colonial process in Conrad’s
novel by focusing on the title of the novel
Heart of Darkness. So in the novel, the character
Marlow is a very important character, is commissioned
by a Belgian company to journey to Congo.
And here Marlow reflects Conrad’s own journey
to a certain extent. And Marlow is supposed
to go there, take charge of a boat that plied
along the Congo river and he was also supposed
to locate a somewhat mysterious person called
Kurtz. K U R T Z. I encourage you to read
the novel because then these names will be
more familiar and the incidents that I am
talking about will be more familiar. So Kurtz
is a character who is only gradually represented
to the reader and this gradual unfolding of
the character of Kurtz is really what the
story of the novel is all about.
But what is known at the very outset is that
Kurtz is a European agent who works for the
same Belgium company which hired Marlow and
he is located deep within Africa, deep within
this Congo region. So at one level, it is
Marlow’s journey to the depth of Africa,
which is signified as a journey to the Heart
of Darkness. The heart of darkness of the
title actually signifies, at one level, this
journey of Marlow to the heart of Africa.
But what is the connection between Africa
and darkness? Well Africa in colonial discourse
was frequently referred to as the dark continent.
And this darkness has actually nothing to
do with lack of sunlight in Africa. Africa
gets plenty of sun. This darkness actually
is a reference to lack of knowledge about
Africa. So, for Europeans, the interior of
Africa remained an uncharted and unmapped
territory well into the 20th century.
And therefore, in European maps, which represented
for the Europeans the known world, the continent
of Africa remained a blank space. And because
it remained a blank, unmapped, unknown space,
it was referred to as the dark continent.
But within the European colonial discourse
on Africa, the contrast between darkness and
light also signified a moral opposition. And
this is something very important that you
need to understand. So Africa was dark because
it was considered as barbaric, primitive,
and childish, which was unable to distinguish
between what was morally good and what was
evil. And Europe in contrast represented the
forces of light, of knowledge, of civilisation,
because it was perceived as progressive and
as mature. And it was also considered as a
force, as a power, which was dedicated to
the mission of bringing enlightenment, the
light of civilisation, to the colonised subjects
in Africa.
And, it is this light and darkness binary
of the colonial discourse that Conrad puts
to test in his novel Heart of Darkness. So
what happens in the novel after Marlow journeys
to Africa? Well, when Marlow lands in Africa,
his first port of call is referred to as the
Outer Station. And during the course of the
novel Marlow will move across many such stations
bearing very generic names like Outer Station,
Central Station, and Inner Station. What are
these stations? What do they represent?
Well they are actually sites of interaction,
sites of European settlement, sites of European
colonial activity. And therefore they are
sites of interaction between the European
colonisers and the colonised natives of Africa.
And following the logic of the colonial discourse,
they are also sites of progress and of civilisation.
Right? Yet, the reality which confronts Marlow
in these stations is radically different.
So, for instance, in the outer station segment
of the novel Marlow witnesses an attempt,
to build a railway track. Now the reference
to railway is important because if anything
was ever touted as a sign of progress and
civilisation that European colonisers brought
to the colonised parts of the world it was
railways. It still is, in fact. The apologists
of colonialism still refer to railway tracks
in India, for instance, as the boon of colonialism.
However, in Conrad’s novel, this notion
of progress and development, that the railways
signified within the colonial discourse is
undercut in two major ways.
Firstly, while Marlow witnesses the attempt
to construct a railway project it does not
appear to him as a project that will bring
progress in any way. Rather it appears to
him as an enormous folly. So Marlow, for instance,
finds that machineries and rail tracks have
been brought from Europe and a lot of blasting
of cliffs and the nearby landscape was taking
place but Marlow could not see any visible
sign of progress.
The machineries that he witnessed were evidently
decaying and the railway tracks, as soon as
they were being laid, were being consumed
by the forests of Africa. Clearly the very
attempt to build a railway is perceived by
Marlow as a futile project because it neglects
the immediate context. Railways, like much
of the other things that the coloniser brought
with him to the parts of the world that they
colonised, tried to replicate the notions
of progress as developed in Europe and implement
that on to lands which were geographically,
socially, culturally very different. And the
railways in Congo suffers from this lack of
context. It is a European thing that has been
forcefully replicated in an African landscape.
And because of this, the railways, rather
than becoming a symbol of progress in the
novel, becomes a symbol of an alien endeavour
which represents a certain kind of foolhardiness.
The novel also undermines the project of railway
building and its association with progress
by questioning about the beneficiaries of
this so-called progress.
So when we talk about the European colonialism
ushering in progress and development in the
colonised parts of the world, it is always
important to ask the question - progress for
whom? As Marlow realises, if the railways
being built in Congo was supposed to bring
civilisation and progress to the native population
of Africa, then that was proving to be a signal
failure. Why? Because the project, rather
than elevating the positions of Africans,
rather than ennobling them, had actually,
as Marlow witnessed, had actually transformed
them into bonded labourers, who were toiling
to complete a foolhardy work that was thrust
on them by the colonising outsiders. The Africans,
in fact, that Marlow observes near the railway
site in the Outer Station are found tiding
chains, walking desolately with basket full
of earth on their heads. This is what the
promise of colonial progress achieves in Africa,
it tears the native population from their
own social and cultural fabric and converts
them into chained groups.
Now, at this point, it is important to take
note of one of the narrative techniques that
Conrad uses in this novel to tell the tale
of European colonialism of Africa.
And this technique is best understood as a
delayed decoding of the external reality.
So, while narrating his experiences in Africa,
Marlow tells of how he perceived the reality
that surrounded him through his sense organs
and it is only after a delay, that Marlow,
as well as the reader, actually gets to understand
what these sense impressions actually mean.
To understand this technique, let us consider
these lines from the novel, where Marlow is
describing his experience in the Outer Station
where the work for the railways is going on.
“Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between
the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging
to the earth, half coming out, half effaced
within the dim light, in all the attitudes
of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another
mine on the cliff went off, followed by a
slight shudder of the soil under my feet.
The work was going on. The work! And this
was the place, where some of the helpers had
withdrawn to die.”
Now, the first line presents a bizarre landscape
of black shapes which confronts Marlow’s
eyes even while his other sense organs are
overwhelmed by the constant blasting that
is taking place for the railways. But, it
is not until the last line, the line - “and
this is the place, that some of the helpers
had withdrawn to die” - do we actually grasp
the meaning of the black shapes? Those bizarre
shapes, leaning and clinging in pain and abandonment,
we realise, Marlow realises, are nothing but
emaciated and dying Africans, African workers,
who are the apparent beneficiaries of European
colonial progress.
So this slight delay in decoding the reality
experienced by Marlow is actually indicative
of how the truth of colonial discourse is
disjointed from the colonial reality. Marlow
takes time to grasp what is happening around
him, precisely because, as a European, fed
on the myth of colonialism as a civilising
mission, he finds it difficult to make sense
of a reality that is so far removed from any
trace of civilised behaviour and of progress.
Now, this disparity between a discourse which
presents colonialism as a civilising mission,
and the colonial reality is, however, most
powerfully represented through Marlow’s
discovery of the character called Kurtz. But
before Marlow even gets to meet Kurtz in person
he hears about him. He hears him being praised
as a prodigy, as a superior being who really
personifies all the civilizational virtues
of Europe. So he is presented as this iconic
European. And Kurtz is also praised for being
one of the most efficient agents who can procure
an astonishing amount of ivory from the interiors
of Africa to be shipped to Europe.
And ivory, of course, was one of the most
prized resources that European colonisers
extracted from the Congo region for their
domestic consumption. Now, when Marlow finally
gets to meet Kurtz in the Inner Station, he
is again confronted with the reality that
is radically different from the discourse
about Kurtz. And it is so radically different
that he finds it difficult to make sense of
the reality that he encounters when he actually
meets Kurtz or goes to the Inner Station where
Kurtz is located.
Here again there is a masterful use of the
technique of delayed decoding. Thus, when
Marlow sees Kurtz’s house by the river for
the first time and by now Marlow has journeyed
from Outer Station through Central Station
to Inner Station where he finds Kurtz’s
house, and he first sees it through his binoculars.
And he is immediately struck by the number
of poles, wooden poles surrounding the house
with what appeared to be ornamental knobs
on the top.
It is only after a substantial delay and careful
observation that Marlow realises that these
knobs are something more sinister than merely
ornamental woodwork. With mounting horror
Marlow recognises them as dried and shrunken
heads of Africans which Kurtz had severed
from the bodies of the native villages to
spread terror among the local population.
This horrible exercise was in fact how Kurtz
compelled the locals to hunt for ivory on
his behalf. This was in fact the secret of
his efficiency as a colonial agent.
At this point in the novel, the title Heart
of Darkness assumes a new and altered significance.
Darkness seizes to be a qualification of Africa
and Africans and becomes associated with the
iconic European figure of Kurtz and the process
of colonial extraction of resources that Kurtz
represents. Thus Conrad’s novel really turns,
what it actually does here is it really turns
the colonial discourse on its head and explodes
the myth of civilising mission by placing
it against the brutal realities of colonialism.
And seen from this perspective, Heart of Darkness
appears to be Conrad’s contrapuntal reading
of the colonial discourse. So, as discussed
in our previous lecture, you will know that
a contrapuntal reading attempts to read a
discourse against the grain, against the ideological
bias that underlines a particular discourse,
so as to bring out its fault lines. And this
is precisely what Heart of Darkness does with
the colonial discourse.
It brings out the biases, the contradictions,
and the falsehood that underlines it. But,
at this point, we come across another question:
can we also read the novel Heart of Darkness
contrapuntally? After all the novel, in spite
of its anti-European orientation, is itself
a product of European metropolitan culture.
And this is an important question that we
will take up in our next lecture. Thank you.
