Postcolonial Philosophy and Culture in Joseph

Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Assist. Lecturer Tewfeek Muslim Haran
(MA in English)
University of Kufa, PO Box(21)
Faculty of Education
Department of English
Abstract
The present paper discusses the ideological and social approach of
postcolonial in English literature. The postcolonial approach deals with
literature and discourse which relates to the cultural and philosophical
legacy of colonial rule. The European colonial powers Britain, France and
Spain have been considered empires of others. The aim of study is to
highlight on philosophy and culture of many people who are occupied or
emigrated. The author Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) is a polish writer and
social critic. His creative writing is in English and his novel ''Heart of
Darkness'' has a prestigious overgeneralization to the whole world. It
considers as analysis of people who affected and suffered of colonization.
Therefore the novel illustrates the image of Africa as well as the world
through English literature. The author condemned the evil of imperial
exploitation and the matter of being uncivilized. The main attention of this
paper is intended to identify the postcolonial philosophy and the role of
culture where a large number of cultures share the same location in time and
space.
Introduction
According to Gregory Castle (2007), The emergence of Postcolonial
Studies is tied to a number of factors, the most important of which is the
relation of postcolonial nations to colonialism and the colonial era. Hence
the prefix “post-” refers to a historical relation, to a period after colonialism.
Strictly speaking, the postcolonial era begins with the American revolution
in the late eighteenth century and the Haitian revolution of the early
nineteenth century. However, the emergence of America as a leading
industrial nation and colonizing power in the later nineteenth century and
Haiti’s neocolonial situation extending well into the twentieth century
render them somewhat exceptional with respect to the current usage of the
term postcolonial. As many theorists have noted, the historical relation
alone is insufficient to describe the meaning of this “post-.” The title of
Kwame Anthony Appiah’s influential essay – “Is the Post- in
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Postmodernism the Post- in Post- colonial?” (1991) implies that the
significance of the term postcolonial extends beyond the historical relation
of colonialism to include other times, themes, and discourses. Adapting
Jean-François Lyotard’s description of the Postmodern as that which cannot
be “presented” in the modern, we might say that the postcolonial refers to
the unpresentable in the colonial: racial difference, legal inequality,
subalternity, all of the submerged or suppressed contradictions within the
colonial social order itself. In this sense, the postcolonial presents itself in
the colonial epoch, especially during periods of decolonization, when social
contradictions are expressed in intensified nationalist organization and anti-
colonial struggle. The processes of decolonization often continue well past
the official establishment of a postcolonial state in the form of neo-colonial
(or neo-imperialist) relations of economic and political dependence on the
former colonizer. Entities such as the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund often play a part in neocolonial relations, while the United
Kingdom retains something of its old colonial structure in the
Commonwealth of Nations, which consists mostly of former British
colonies. Frantz Fanon and Albert Memmi, the leading figures of the first
generation of Postcolonial theorists, wrote their most important works in the
1950s and early ’60s and were strongly influenced by the dialectical and
materialist traditions of Hegel and Marx. Both were interested in
understanding the psychology of colonialism, specifically of the absolute
sense of difference that characterized colonial relations. Fanon began his
short career with Black Skin, White Masks, a study of racial difference in
colonial and postcolonial societies. Fanon’s ideas about the nation,
nationalism, and national consciousness have been especially influential. He
rejected the Western conception of the nation as a “universal standpoint”
that subsumes all particulars (i.e., individual human lives) in the fulfillment
of its own abstract freedom. Universality instead belongs to the people who
comprehend themselves as a nation. The people’s struggle is largely the
struggle “to make the totality of the nation a reality to each citizen” (Fanon
200). It inevitably entails the spontaneous violence of the masses, for only
through violence can the native become human and enter into history as
something other than a mere slave. Violence and the “permanent dream to
become the persecutor” (Fanon 52–53) constitute the tools of the anti-
colonial revolutionary. However, Fanon noted a deep chasm between the
people in the countryside and the national bourgeoisie in the urban areas
whose members fill the former colonial bureaucracies and enjoy the fruits of
Western- style corruption. Little by little, accommodations are made with
former colonial rulers in order to sustain the privileges of power. This stage
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of decolonization, when nationalist groups consciously and unconsciously
mimic the political formations of the imperial state, inevitably reveals the
complicity that tempts even the most progressive anti-colonial groups to
build political parties and unions on metropolitan models. Some theorists, in
response to Fanon, have embraced the idea of “emancipatory complicity,”
the idea that nationalist or postcolonial critique can sustain itself within a
social and political environment shot through with neocolonial relationships
and lingering colonialist habits, historical determinations that can, if not
overcome, work against the creative, forward-looking power of postcolonial
nationhood. As Fanon points out, nationalism is concerned not with
inheriting power but with “the living expression of the nation” which “is the
moving consciousness of the whole of the people; it is the coherent,
enlightened action of men and women” (204). Only this form of national
consciousness will enable solidarity movements with other emergent
postcolonial nations. “National consciousness, which is not nationalism, is
the only thing that will give us an international dimension”.
Review of Postcolonial Theories and Perspectives
Postcolonial theory has a long history but most theorists in this field take
it for granted as if the origin of the theory were well known to all readers.
One of the postcolonial theorists, Young (2001), managed to trace the origin
of postcolonial theory through history. He introduces a historical beginning
y showing how postcolonial theory is a product of what the West saw as
antislavery activists and anti-colonialists. Young (2001:74-112) draws three
perspectives in which postcolonial theory emerges, namely humanitarian
(moral), liberal (political) and economic. Whereas humanitarians and
economists staged anti-colonial campaigns, politicians (liberals) supported
colonization as a means of civilizing the heathens by any and all means,
including force. Young (75-82) notes that the first example of an anti-
postcolonial campaign is attributed to Bishop Bartolome Las Casas (1484-
1566) of the Roman Catholic Church in Spain in 1542. Driven by pastoral
obligation, the Bishop drafted his contribution, A short account of the
destruction of the Indies, in whichhe informed the world about "the
genocide that had been practiced" under the blessing of the Spanish king
and that through him, the Pope had initially permitted missionaries from
Spain to Portugal to undertake expeditions to America. Las Casas
questioned the moral and the legal grounds of the Spanish occupation of
America. This was fifty years after the expedition of Christopher Columbus
in 1492 to the "new world" to America. The anticolonialism campaign of
Bishop Las Casas was taken up by Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) at the
beginning of the nineteenth century n South America. Young argues that
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"Las Casas's affirmation of the full humanity of the Indians and his
denunciation of the 'social sins' of the conquistador rule, led Gustavo
Guitierrez (1993) to identify him as the originator of twentieth century Latin
American liberation theology." Bishop Las Casas's campaign was
eventually joined by other European anti-colonialism activists and by the
eighteenth century, is sermon had been "developed into a fully-fledged
political discourse of theorists" of equal rights that formed the basis for anti-
colonial and anti-slavery movements in Europe. According to Young
(2001), postcolonial theory as a "political discourse" emerges mainly from
experiences of oppression and struggles for freedom after the
"tricontinental" awakening in Africa, Asia and Latin America: the
continents associated with poverty and conflict. Postcolonial criticism
focuses on the oppression and coercive domination that operate in the
contemporary world. The philosophy underlying this theory is not one of
declaring war on the past, but declaring war against the present realities
which, implicitly or explicitly, are the consequences of that past. Therefore
the attention of the struggle is concentrated on neocolonialism and its agents
(international and local) that are still enforced through political, economic
and social exploitation in post-independent nations.
Spivak has recently advocated the development of a “transnational
cultural studies” that would supplant traditional modes of comparative study
and encourage greater sensitivity to native languages and cultures. As for
the term postcolonial, she argues that its original use was to designate “the
inauguration of neo-colonialism in state contexts. Now it just means
behaving as if colonialism didn’t exist.” Moreover, the emphasis in
Postcolonial Studies on the nation-state is no longer timely: “we can’t think
of postcoloniality in terms only of nation-state colonialism. We have to
think of it in different ways. Otherwise, it becomes more and more a study
of colonial discourse, of then rather than now. You can no longer whinge on
about imperialism. We’re looking at the failure of decolonization”
(“Setting” 168). It may be that Fanon’s dialectical fusion of “national
consciousness” and “an international dimension” is no longer possible.
There appears to be little common ground between well-developed
postcolonial states (e.g., Ireland, India, Egypt) and the new transient
internationalism of migrants, refugees, exiles, émigrés, and stateless peoples
like the Kurds. This problem of transience illustrates from another
perspective Bhabha’s “temporality of continuance,” for it is the failure of
nationalism and the triumph of neocolonial exploitation that have remained
constant in the second half of the twentieth century. This is especially true
of the Arab lands, which were carved up by the colonial powers and
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redistributed without regard for tribal, ethnic, and religious boundaries. This
remapping of territories created and continues to create innumerable
problems for national governments that are virtually powerless to remedy
the lingering effects of colonial domination. Another factor in the ongoing
development of postcolonial states is the neo-imperial project of
globalization that links developed nations to the burgeoning labor forces
and consumer markets in developing and undeveloped regions around the
world. As a result, the postcolonial nation, often modeled on the nineteenth
century European nation-state, is left out of the “international dimension”
because it has failed to develop sufficiently. The nullifying, destabilizing
effects of theological and ideological absolutism so evident in the formerly
colonized regions of the world may be the result of incomplete nation-
building and thus of incomplete nationalism. Fanon charted an itinerary
from subjugation to revolution, and along that itinerary was the difficult
process of building a nation that represented the spirit of the people. In
many cases, the nation-building process got stalled in the early years of
independence, and the national consciousness, or Bildung, that Fanon
foresaw seems to have been arrested as well. As for the “international
dimension,” it no longer seems possible to forge socialist alliances along
traditional European lines. In the opening decade of the twenty first century,
we tend to regard the international dimension in different terms. We tend
now to think of terrorism, of free-floating, stateless collectivities and
networks of “sleeper cells” whose members are often marginalized or
excluded by the nationalism of their home countries. Once international
socialism fell with the Berlin wall, the Islamic world alone maintained any
interest in a vision of an international community bound by religious and
historical ties. In this new context, the question of neocolonialism continues
to be urgent. (Gene M. More 2004 p. 142-144)
Cultural and Philosophical Analysis of Heart of Darkness
For generations, most Westerners had viewed their way of looking at the
world as the only one possible, a view evolving out of Christian theology
and ultimately based upon absolute truths. Consequently, they saw Western
culture’s advanced technology and civilization as validating their world
view, with all other ways of looking at the world appearing inferior,
backward, and wrong. However, the challenges to such Western views that
appeared in the nineteenth century brought into question fundamental
assumptions about the nature of the world and the nature of the universe. In
this way, the moorings of Western civilization began to erode, and the very
idea of absolute truths came under scrutiny. The effects of this cultural

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climate profoundly influenced the world in which Conrad wrote. (John J.
Peters 2006 p. 29)
The transition from the altruism of the antislavery movement to the
cynicism of empire building involved a transvaluation of values that might
be appropriately described in the genealogical language of Michel Foucault.
Edward Said’s Foucauldian analysis in Orientalism, based on a theory of
discourse as strategies of power and subjection, inclusion and exclusion, the
voiced and the silenced, suggests the kind of approach I am taking here. For
middle- and upper-class Victorians, dominant over a vast working-class
majority at home and over increasing millions of “uncivilized” peoples of
“inferior” races abroad, power was self-validating. There might be many
stages of social evolution and many seemingly bizarre customs and
“superstitions” in the world, but there was only one “civilization,” one path
of “progress,” one “true religion.” “Anarchy” was many-tongued; “culture”
spoke with one voice. Said writes of “the power of culture by virtue of its
elevated or superior position to authorize, to dominate, to legitimate,
demote, interdict, and validate: in short, the power of culture to be an agent
of, and perhaps the main agency for, powerful differentiation within its
domain and beyond it too.” At home, culture might often seem threatened
by anarchy: through Chartism, trade unionism, and socialism, the alternative
voices of the working class could at least be heard by anyone who cared to
listen. Abroad, the culture of the “conquering race” seemed unchallenged: in
imperialist discourse the voices of the dominated are represented almost
entirely by their silence, their absence. If Said is right that “the critic is
responsible to a degree for articulating those voices dominated, displaced, or
silenced” by the authority of a dominant culture, the place to begin is with a
critique of that culture. This, according to Foucault, is the function of
“genealogy,” which seeks to analyze “the various systems of subjection: not
the anticipatory power of meaning, but the hazardous play of dominations.”
(Gene M. More 2004 p. 43-44)
What seems to have interested and fascinated Conrad, how- ever, is not
so much the fate of the non-white as a victim of imperialism but rather, what
became of the character and fate of the so-called superior race the moment it
left the shores of a supposedly “civilized” Western world and came face to
face with the dark people of an alien culture and environment. (Ibid 255)
It is quite tempting to those who have enjoyed reading Heart of Darkness
in the past to point out that it is no use for the African reader to get worked
up ninety years after the book was published: after all the Africa of Heart of
Darkness is a mythical one and, as such, illuminates very little about the
realities of Africa of the 1890s. The only problem here is that in the history
6
of black people myth and reality have often collided very much to the
detriment of the children of Africa. For instance a well-known powerful
gentleman of culture, Lord Chesterfield, argued in a letter to a son of his
who was probably troubled about the morality of the slave trade: “blacks are
little better than lions, tigers, leopards and other wild beasts which that
country produces in great numbers.” He went on to argue that blacks had no
arts, sciences and systems of commerce and, as such, it was acceptable “to
buy a great many of them to sell again to advantage in the West Indies”
(Dabydeen 1985 p. 29).
In other words Conrad is peddling myths about blacks which have been
manipulated in the past by those who sought to exploit them for material
gain. An interesting stereotype which some critics have positively
commented upon at the expense of the rather lifeless presence of Kurtz’s
Intended is centered on the savage African woman. She is a personification
of the whole continent and is described as follows:
"She walked with measured steps, draped in
striped and fringed clothes, treading the earth
proudly with a slight jingle and flash of
barbarous ornaments. She had brass leggings to
the knees, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a
crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable
necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre
things, charms, gifts of witch-men, that hung
about her, glittered and trembled at every step.
She must have had the value of several elephant
tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wild-
eyed and magnificent; there was some- thing
ominous and stately in her deliberate progress.
And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon
the whole sorrowful land, the immense
wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and
mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as
though it had been looking at the image of its
tenebrous and passionate soul." (Heart of
Darkness 101)
Here the African woman symbolizes a barbaric magnificence: she is
majestically alluring yet with a gaudiness which is gratuitously repellent;
she is the ivory which beckons fortune seekers, but only to destroy the
morally unwary. Her vitality is as seductive as it is sinfully corrosive: it is
part of that sexuality hinted at by the words “passion,” “mysterious,” and
7
“fecundity,” but a sexuality which is demonic and therefore morally
dangerous. Later in the narrative Kurtz is said to have been part of
unspeakable sexual deeds of a lurid and debauched nature. As Karl claims,
her “demanding dis- play of sex” is provocatively tempting but fatal to the
likes of Kurtz, who lacks restraint. She is the darkness which awakens the
primeval instincts in Kurtz and as such, part of the black peril which casts a
dark menacing shadow across the width and breadth of the whole land. In a
way she becomes an African version of the legendary femme fatale, the
proverbial temptress of the African wilderness. According to the
metaphysical language of the narrative, the fall of Kurtz is a moral crime
caused by his singular lack of restraint. Unlike Captain Good who rejects
the gentle but equally tempting black beauty, Foulata of King Solomon’s
Mines, Kurtz goes native the moment he embraces the savage African
woman and indulges in sexual orgies of an inexpressible and abominable
kind. In falling from grace he dramatizes the extent to which imagination,
vitality, resolute will-power, and restraint all qualities identified with the
construction of a European civilization and with Kurtz can easily be
destroyed by those primeval instincts which have always hounded man.
These instincts can express themselves through an unbridled lust for sex, an
unrestrained greed for wealth, and a passion for a godlike power over other
fellow creatures. Given a chance to choose between the rather pale and
lifeless Intended and the savage African mistress, the reasoning part in
Kurtz would opt for the former: but of course the anarchic beast in him opts
for the seductive but vengeful African mistress and in doing so he loses his
soul in the Faustian manner. Incidentally, even the language of the story
becomes very scriptural at this point. In other words, in spite of the
assiduously cultivated sense of mystery and vagueness which Leavis
describes correctly as being achieved through an “adjectival insistence,” one
senses the crude outline of a morality play of the medieval period embedded
in the novella, but of course rendered in the cynical idiom of a theologically
more uncertain nineteenth and twentieth-century environment. The African
mistress embodies those regressive primeval instincts which, in the story,
overwhelm the idealism of the ambitious Kurtz. Evil, this time, triumphs
over good. It can be argued that as an artist Conrad is entirely free to offer
us a mythical version of Africa, as long as this version suits his artistic
purposes. Unfortunately for Africans, the cliche´-ridden description of the
savage mistress with her dark and tempting sexuality is part of a long-
standing stereotype in which blacks are perceived as possessing a
lustfulness and bestiality associated with the animal Kingdom. According to
Ruth Cowhig, the belief in the excessive sexuality of blacks “was
8
encouraged by the wide- spread belief in the legend that blacks were
descendants of Ham in the Genesis story punished for their sexual excess by
their blackness” (Dabydeen 1985, 1).
Black as a color becomes a symbolic badge proclaiming the moral
condition of a whole people. Consequently, the unspeakable sexual excesses
of which Kurtz is accused become credible once they are identified within
an African context as Conrad does here successfully. On the other hand very
few people would deny the fact that such sexual stereotyping has been very
harmful to black-white relations on a global scale. One can cite the abysmal
black-white relations and the lynching which went on during as well as
immediately after the slavery period in the Deep South of the United States.
Fear of miscegenation and other numerous sexual horrors of an abominable
and unspeakable type haunted the white settlers in Southern Africa so much
that statute books were filled with laws forbidding sex relations between
blacks and whites. The fate of Mary Turner in Doris Lessing’s The Grass is
Singing comes to mind here. So the sexual stereotyping that is related to the
savage mistress is far from being a harmless exercise of the imagination.
Together with other historical factors, such a sexual image has been very
successful in needlessly widening the racial and cultural gulf separating
whites from blacks and much damage has been done to both races, but more
so to the blacks who are noted historically for their powerlessness and
vulnerability. (Gene M.M. 2004, 233)
Conrad also returns to a fuller investigation of important ideas that he
had considered in his previous works. Early in the story, the frame narrator
comments on the famous adventurers and conquerors who had set forth
from the Thames. The narrator’s laudatory description of these past
adventurers causes Marlow to contrast contemporary England with the
England that the Romans encountered when they came to conquer it some
two thousand years earlier. Thus begins Marlow’s inquiry into the basic
assumptions about Western civilization of the frame narrator and the other
men on board, as well as those of Conrad’s reading public. At the time of
the story’s writing, England was the most wealthy and powerful nation on
earth. It was also the epicenter of Western civilization and represented the
height of civilized progress, and London, where the Nellie is anchored, was
the pinnacle of English society as well as the literal and symbolic source
from which civilized progress issued forth to the rest of the world. Marlow,
however, points out that to the conquering Romans the British would have
been mere savages and Britain a mere wilderness. In fact, Marlow’s
description of the England that the Romans would have encountered seems
strikingly similar to the description of the Congo that Marlow gives later in
9
the story. Marlow does suggest a distinction between the Roman conquerors
and the European colonizers, arguing that the Romans’ rule ‘‘was merely a
squeeze . . . They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to
be got,’’ while of the Europeans he says, ‘‘What saves us is efficiency – the
devotion to efficiency’’ (50). Marlow concludes:
"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." ( Heart of
Darkness 50–51)
This seemingly contradictory statement forms one of the critical cruxes
of the story. If the ‘‘conquest of the earth . . . is not a pretty thing when you
look into it too much,’’ then can it really be redeemed? Does Marlow accept
colonialism, reject colonialism, or reject continental colonialism but accept
British colonial- ism because of its ‘‘devotion to efficiency’’ and ‘‘unselfish
belief in the idea’’? An answer to this question becomes crucial in
determining how one interprets ‘‘Heart of Darkness.’’ Before answering this
question, though, one must first determine what this ‘‘unselfish belief in the
idea’’ is. Based upon what occurs later in the story, it seems that this
‘‘idea’’ is the idealistic goal of improving the non-Western world through
the dissemination of Western culture, society, education, technology, and
religion. Given Marlow’s treatment of the colonial endeavor, as he
experiences it in Africa, we can only conclude that he is highly critical of it.
The more subtle nuances of this conclusion, though, are less clear. Despite
Marlow’s withering critique of colonialism, it remains unclear whether
colonialism in general is under attack or only continental colonialism
particularly Belgian colonialism. In other words, by insisting that
colonialism can be redeemed, Marlow leaves open the possibility that he
exempts the British from his otherwise unrelenting indictment.
Leaving this question aside, however, what remains is a clear criticism
of Western civilization as Marlow encounters it in Africa. The whole
colonial endeavor, at least as it was represented at the time, consisted of an
uneasy marriage between commercial colonial trade and an altruistic
attempt to improve African life, as Kurtz is quoted as saying: ‘‘Each station
should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade
10
of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing’’ (91). Even if
one grants the Eurocentric assumption that the non-Western world needed
improving, the difficulty of marrying such incompatible motivations as
economics and education seems to have proven to be beyond the abilities of
even the most sincere colonizers. Invariably, the colonial endeavor
ultimately became one of exploitation, and this exploitation becomes
prominent in ‘‘Heart of Darkness.’’ The public perception of colonial
activities was one of paternalism, as Marlow’s aunt demonstrates when she
talks of Marlow’s ‘‘weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid
ways’’ (59). Marlow discovers, though, that the reality of the colonial
experience in Africa is anything but ‘‘humanizing, improving, instructing.’’
Marlow’s fireman best exemplifies this problem:
"He was an improved specimen; he could fire up
a vertical boiler . . . A few months of training had
done for that really fine chap. He squinted at the
steam-gauge and at the water-gauge with an
evident effort of intrepidity – and he had filed
teeth, too, the poor devil, and the wool of his pate
shaved into queer patterns, and three ornamental
scars on each of his cheeks . . . He was useful
because he had been instructed; and what he
knew was this – that should the water in that
transparent thing disappear, the evil spirit inside
the boiler would get angry through the greatness
of his thirst, and take a terrible vengeance. So he
sweated and fired up and watched the glass
fearfully." (Heart of Darkness 97–98)
Clearly, the fireman’s education is merely an expedient one for the
colonial officials. They make no real attempt to ‘‘improve’’ him. They
simply play upon his own beliefs and replace them with similar ones, and so
Marlow refers to ‘‘the philanthropic pretence of the whole concern’’ (78).
The company is only interested in cheap labor, not in educating the Africans
about Western values and beliefs and replace them with similar ones, and so
Marlow refers to ‘‘the philanthropic pretence of the whole concern’’ (78).
The company is only interested in cheap labor, not in educating the Africans
about Western values and beliefs. (John J. Peters 2006, 56-58)
Hegel remains one of the most exciting minds to contribute to the
development of Western philosophy, yet one wonders if his greatness can be
reconciled with the nauseating opinions he displays in the instance above.
So much for the prejudices and ignorance which have been dutifully handed
11
down to numerous Western generations as acquired wisdom! By the same
token, Heart of Darkness can be called great, but one wonders at what price!
The novel has been accorded the status of a classic in the Western world but
such a status is based on its capacity to peddle racist myths in the guise of
good fiction.
Conrad’s novel presents, regrettably, a powerful convergence of most of
those stereotypes which have been bandied about in regard to the nature and
status of black people in the world. These stereotypes concern their
supposed ignorance and barbarism, their assumed simple mindedness, their
being childish and childlike, their irrationality and excessive lustfulness and
their animal-like status to name only a few. African writers and thinkers
have been laboring under the burden of such false images for a long time,
and it would be surprising if anyone familiar with the suffering and history
of black people can label Heart of Darkness a masterpiece when it distorts a
whole continent and its people. There is a terrible parallel here between the
economic rape which Africa suffered and the artistic loot that Conrad gets
away with!
In conclusion, it is interesting to note that Heart of Darkness betrays the
fallibility of some of the so-called great writers and critics. As for African
scholars and general readers, it is important to know that texts which are
canonized as classics need not be regarded as such by all peoples at all
times. These texts are rooted in specific societies at specific points in history
and can sometimes, in a most unexpected way, nourish the very prejudices
which any society in its right mind should struggle against. More
significantly, writers such as Joseph Conrad can help to start a debate about
the fate of the oppressed, but, ultimately, they cannot be a substitute for the
voices of the oppressed themselves. The discourse of liberation belongs to
them. Finally, it is of vital importance that future generations of Africans are
sensitized to how peoples of other nations perceive Africa. Only then can
they be well placed to relate to other races in a meaningful way. (Gene M.
More 2004, p.241- 242)

‫ﻓﻠﺴﻔﺔ ﻭﺛﻘﺎﻓﺔ ﻣﺎ ﺑﻌﺪ ﺍﻻﺳﺘﻌﻤﺎﺭﻳﺔ ﰲ ﺭﻭﺍﻳﺔ ﻗﻠﺐ ﺍﻟﻈﻠﻤﺎﺕ ﻟﻠﻜﺎﺗﺐ ﺟﻮﺳﻴﻒ‬

‫ﻛﻮﻧﺮﺍﺩ‬
‫ﺍﳋﻼﺻﺔ‬
 ‫ر‬‫ ا‬   ‫ي وا‬‫ ا‬‫ ا‬‫ ا‬‫ ور‬
‫ي‬‫ ا‬‫ط‬‫دب وا‬‫ ا‬ ‫ر‬‫ ا‬  ‫ م‬ . ‫م‬‫دب ا‬‫ا‬
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‫ور‬‫ ا‬‫ر‬‫ى ا‬‫ ا‬ . ‫ وا‬‫روث ا‬ 
  ‫را‬‫ف ا‬ .‫ ا‬  ‫م‬‫ وإ‬‫م‬‫ و‬‫م‬
.‫ى‬‫ان ا‬ ‫وا ا‬ ‫ا او‬‫ ا‬‫س ا‬‫ ا‬  ‫ و‬  ‫ء‬‫ا‬
 ‫ وروا‬‫ ا‬‫ وم‬ ‫اد‬‫م‬  ‫ي‬‫م‬‫ي وا‬‫ ا‬‫وا‬‫ا‬
‫ة‬‫ل ا‬ ‫ ا‬‫وا‬‫ع ا‬ ‫ور‬ .‫ء ا‬‫ ا‬ ‫ت‬‫ ام‬ ‫ت‬‫ا‬
‫ت‬   ‫وا‬‫ ا‬ ‫ى وا‬‫ان أ‬ ‫ ا‬‫ ا‬  ‫وا‬
‫رة‬ ‫وا‬‫ ا‬‫ أ‬ .‫ل‬‫ ا‬ ‫ا‬‫م‬‫وا و‬ ‫اد ا‬‫ ا‬‫وط‬
‫ ا‬‫ أ‬.‫ي‬‫م‬‫دب ا‬‫ل ا‬  ‫ ا‬    ‫أ‬
‫ ا‬‫ ا‬.‫ر‬ ‫ق ا‬‫ وا‬‫ل ا‬‫ وا‬‫ ا‬‫ا‬
.‫ر‬‫ ا‬   ‫ ودور ا‬‫ن ا‬   ‫ ا‬‫ر‬
References
 Achebe, Chinua. (1988). Hopes and Impediments. London: Heinemann.
 Conrad, Joseph.(1902). Heart of Darkness. 1902. London: Penguin, 1989.
 Dabydeen, David, ed.(1985). The Black Presence in English Literature,
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
 Fanon, Frantz. (1963) The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance
Farrington. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.
 Gene M. More (Ed.) (2004). Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: A
Casebook. United States of America: Oxford University Press.
 Gregory Castle (2007).The Blackwell Guide to Literary Theory.UK:
Blackwell.
 John J. Peters (2006). The Cambridge Introduction to Joseph Conrad. New
York: The Cambridge University Press.
 Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. London Routledge and Kegan Paul.
 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. (1988) “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism
and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence
Grossberg. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
 Young, R. J. C.(2001). Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction,
London: Blackwell.

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