Heart of Darkness, keepin' the status quo

Purity?

The first time I read Heart of Darkness, in high school, I did not pick up on any hints of racism, nor did my class speak of it in our discussions. We read the book and used the allegory of travel up the Congo to talk about what perhaps lies in all men (now that I think of it, we did not discuss women), but we did not mention the significance of this river’s setting. Only now that I am reading criticisms of Conrad and his work am I beginning to understand how entrenched our Western civilization is in its absurdly racist (and classist, and sexist) roots.

A friend at Gallatin who is currently taking Narratives of African Civilization has been feverishly telling me of his discoveries, most of them pertaining to a European repression of African cultures and deliberate omissions and revisions to the history of Africa. For example, who in this class knew that Greek sculptures - yes, the classic white ones, were all originally painted; painted in bright oranges and purples, color schemes and aesthetics that we would find striking today. I bet none of you did, and it’s because this fact has been downplayed to the public by historians for centuries, although there is ample proof and academic discourse on the subject (Clyde R. Taylor, The Mask of Art, chapter two, “The Art of Ethnic Cleansing”). Examples like this - and there are so many - that propagate “light” as pure (and thus “dark” as evil) have been a given in Western culture ever since those first imperialists needed to find ways to justify slavery: they effectively changed the course of history, and established new paradigms for us to follow.

So, when we read Heart of Darkness, it’s ludicrous to talk about the novel solely as a work of literature. We have to refer to its historical significance, and ask ourselves why we are still reading it in literature classes. As author Chinua Achebe points out in his essay, "An Image of Africa," Conrad used two geographical places to make his case, but travelling on the Thames River is much different from sailing up the Congo. Conrad could have placed his story anywhere, but he chose Africa, to use Achebe's words, as "a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril." What Achebe insists we learn from this work is about “the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this agelong attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world.” If we continue to read Heart of Darkness as a literary “gem” without looking beyond what we are told, our latent racism will become further entrenched in our society. As a “travel fiction,” Heart of Darkness does, however, allow us ample space to study the origins of travel (and accordingly, what’s so wrong with imperialism).

We must rethink what we are told and always question; question what we’re reading, question what we’re taught, and question ourselves. To conclude this post, I urge all of you to take this Harvard study of subconscious racial bias. (Just check it out – they don’t keep your information, but you can potentially learn something really interesting from your results!)