Hiromi_X
H of D revisited
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Speaking of topless people with cloths tied around their middles, I re-read Heart of Darkness recently. Are they still assigning this book in high school English classes? That was the last time I read it, and I liked its illustration of the slide of so-called civilized people into barbarism.
But this time, I had to keep reminding myself that it's a 19th century book to prevent myself from vomiting. It was progressive at the time it was written, I'm sure, but geezus... When the Africans speak, it's in grunts; when they are given words, it's a demand to eat human flesh. They are referred to as "prehistoric man," as savages. Marlow (the narrator) says,
[T[hey were not inhuman...that was the worst of it - this suspicion of their not being inhuman...They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity - like yours - the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly.
Basically, Joseph Conrad puts European man at the apex of human evolution, and the Africans at the bottom. He makes it clear, though, that they have a shared origin. Although European men managed to evolve from the darkness into the light (the story opens on the Thames, and there is all this damn light imagery), he risks slipping back into his own primordial savagery through contact with savages.
That is what bothered me. It was not the exploitation and brutalization of other human beings for economic gain that dehumanized and de-civilized the Europeans involved in colonialism, although Conrad questions the legitimacy of their ventures. At any rate, it was their proximity to darkness that did it.
Is it a great book? Yes. Should it be taught in schools? Hell yes. It would be ridiculous for me to expect Joseph Conrad to write with the sensibilities of a leftist minority female living in the United States in the early 21st century. His work still asks important and relevant questions: How do groups of "superior" people act when given power over people they consider "inferior?" What happens when you remove a "civilized" person from civilization and place him where there are few restraints? It's a case study on the human capacity for evil, and a very well-written one at that.
I bring this up because of this article that Carlton linked to in this post. A proposed bill in Arizona would require public universities to provide alternative coursework for students who find the assigned readings "'personally offensive,' which is defined as something that 'conflicts with the student’s beliefs or practices in sex, morality or religion.'"
So, my point is, I find the racist construction of Africa offensive, but I'm not going to try to force Heart of Darkness from the classrooms. Disturbing thoughts are *good*. That's what ejamacation is all about.
Comments
Yep, Adv. English and also a certain int'l exam I wrote at the end of 12th grade...
1. Posted by d on February 20, 2006
Oops, forgot to add, "which wasn't *too* long ago."
2. Posted by d on February 20, 2006
I like your opinions (mostly) and your pictures (almost always). You are using your body to advertise your opinions. This makes sense these days - when did we loose the moral high-ground? Do we care ...
Congrats on a good body and brains - and making them work synergistically ...
3. Posted by horst on February 20, 2006
Heart of Darkness sits on the passenger seat of my car. I've picked it up to read it, but I can't get into it. I gloss over it now to keep the panic attacks at bay at red lights. (long story)
I think it's important to know the history of thinking. Being a former bigot, I'd like people to realize the ignorance of former popular thought (and in some places, current - - who's the savage, now?).
"A proposed bill in Arizona would require public universities to provide alternative coursework for students who find the assigned readings "'personally offensive,' which is defined as something that 'conflicts with the student’s beliefs or practices in sex, morality or religion." I haven't heard of this one, yet.
Oh, fucking get over it! Isn't education about expanding your ideas? Seeing things objectively, no matter how shitty? To learn from mistakes? Pick your ideas and values and run from there?
This seems stupid enough to require a Catholic student to read, for lack of a better example (because I can't spell Bagavagida - - see?) The Koran, and the student saying it offends them, in a class pertaining to world religions. What do they do? Take ART 100 for the "credit" instead?
Oh, yeah, finger painting will expand your conciousness. If you're stoned. I know. I've done it. On my body. By myself :(
4. Posted by Whirly on February 20, 2006
So d, whatcha think of H of D?
Horst, I was a little taken aback by your comment that I use my body to advertise my opinions. That's not the case - I'm just a run of the mill exhibitionist.
Whirly said: "I think it's important to know the history of thinking."
I totally agree. It's important to know where our ideas come from.
I like the fact that the bill is sponsored by right-wingers. We all have our version of "politically correct."
5. Posted by Hiromi on February 20, 2006
The idea that eating human flesh is somehow "barbaric" is, of course, a modern Western construct.
It must have been difficult for Conrad to realize that this was so--that what he felt were fundamental rules of "humanity" were nothing more than the products of his social upbringing.
6. Posted by James on February 20, 2006
Right on, Hiromi. Joseph Graff wrote a great article about teaching controversial material called - surprize!- "Teaching to the Conflict." His point is that students shouldn't be sheltered from these kinds of debates. In fact, he advocates putting the cultural issues/wars books like "Heart of Darkness" raise front and center. His point is that this will engage the students -- why let the profs have all the fun -- b/c it will let them take sides, express opinions, navigate through a current, relevent debate.
Besides, can you imagine just how shockingly uneducated some sweet liberal gal (or boy) or naive Christian (or whatever) would be if they came out of college never having read something that shocked the fuck out of them ? Talk about stripping the written word of its power.
7. Posted by Timory on February 21, 2006
“Man’s mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
That is the purpose of education, both higher and lower. To place that kind of personalization on it is silly. That's like saying "I want to be a surgeon but I can't stand the sight of blood." "I want a fellowship in early Medieval Literature, but the Canturbury Tales need to be burned because they are dirty." Makes me want to slap them and tell them grow the eff up.
8. Posted by Darkneuro on February 21, 2006
Hiromi - sorry, am obviously old school thinking that pictures and text should be related somehow. Ok, I'll accept and will keep enjoying them as the creative products of an (much better than run-of-the-mill) exhibtionist.
About the proposed bill: Sounds to me like education going down the road of news media - if it doesn't suit your prejudices switch channels ...
9. Posted by horst on February 21, 2006
Hm. While I would lean toward thinking that I agree with this on a personal level, on a educational level I find it abhorrent. Although it certainly could be the case that this rule could be used by someone on the more progressive side of things, such as your example with the Heart of Darkness, it smacks of religious exlucsivity.
i.e. "I don't have to read Darwin because I find it personally, religiously offensive. Nor do I need to read any books that depict sexuality that my religion doesn't approve because I find them personally offensive." etc.
Leading to basically a total lack of education. A total lack of critical thinking. Simply nothing more than indoctrination and constant reinforcement of your own series of beliefs. No mental challenges. Ugh.
10. Posted by smallerdemon on February 21, 2006
I am a hard core liberal, yet I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal exactly because I want to read intelligent arguments that are directly in opposition to my own. (To calm down after reading their Op-Ed page, I subscribe to the New Yorker magazine.)
Putting yourself in a bubble indicates a high level of personal insecurity, I think.
I read H of D. Don't feel bad, Whirly, Conrad's thick prose reminds me of William Faulkner or Umberto Eco. Those writers often send me drifting off into daydreams after a page or two. He doesn't have the crisp economy of Hemmingway or Twain.
I think Apocalypse Now was a brilliant adaptation of the story, if a bit loose. Anyone see the TV version with John Malkovich? Is it any good?
11. Posted by Moatjon on February 21, 2006
You should read:
King Leopold's Ghost
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618001905/sr=8-1/qid=1140531702/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-3397065-6384613?%5Fencoding=UTF8
12. Posted by Adam Chance on February 21, 2006
no heart of darkness to be read over here. the books I had to read in highschool were Lord of the Flies, To Kill A Mockingbird, and a few Shakespeare plays among others.
That animals collection of yours looks like something I'd love to have decorating one of my shelves!
13. Posted by JeN on February 21, 2006
Previous commentators have failed to acknowledge the fact that some are not comfortable with challenges to their personal belief structures. And when confronted with materials intended to educate- but are nonetheless offensive to their ethics and morals- the reaction is to close down.
Creating a comfortable environment is a much more effective tactic in openning people to knew ideas. The depth and bredth of the human experience allows a student to find common lessons in a variety of sources. To assume eliminating 'offensive material' from one's reading or viewing list is to deprive one of an opportunity to learn something suggests the only way to gain insight is via confrontation. A perspective that makes sense to the confrontational, but ignores reality.
14. Posted by mtw on February 21, 2006
Nonsense. Nobody has suggested that "the only way to gain insight is via confrontation." Saying that students do not have the right to assume that their beliefs will never be challenged, even accidentally, is not logically the same thing as saying that insight only comes through confrontation. What those of us who do this for a living have suggested is that teaching 100-500 students a semester makes it all but impossible to ensure that none of them will ever be offended by any course material. Last semester, we had several students who were deeply offended at two lines in the textbook asserting that Greeks had different feelings about male homosexuality than they themselves do. I'm sorry to say that I don't feel bad for them. A student's right to have a comfortable learning environment does not extend to being flattered into thinking that everything they personally think has the status of uncontested truth.
15. Posted by C on February 21, 2006
Thanks, everyone, for commenting. There're just a couple of things I'd like to specifically address:
Smallerdemon, the bill was proposed by conservatives in response to The Ice Storm being assigned for a class that surveyed American period literature. We've heard a lot in the past about the PC Police targeting the "classics," but recently, the media reports seem to be all about conservative religious attacks on evolution and books involving sexual matters. Oh, and Harry Potter.
Moatjon, geezus, the Op-Ed page of the WSJ? For a POV to the right of my own with first-rate reasoning, I read the Economist. I hate the WSJ.
Adam, yeah, that book is on my to-read list.
"A student's right to have a comfortable learning environment does not extend to being flattered into thinking that everything they personally think has the status of uncontested truth."
Right ON, Carlton.
As Timory described, simply having books with controversial elements in the classroom is not in and of itself confrontational - it's up to the instructor to lead the discussion in a fruitful way.
But what is gained by taking away the opportunity to confront ideas that may be contrary to what they believe? Besides the death of critical thinking, which I think is the intent of the people sponsoring the bill.
16. Posted by Hiromi on February 21, 2006
I believe a good course of action (which has been followed in both my high school AP lit course and my university survey of 20th century lit) is to assign Heart of Darkness and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, and Achebe's critical essay accusing Conrad of racism. It gives a nice balance and historical context.
17. Posted by Erin on February 21, 2006
Erin, I'm glad to hear that an alternative view of Africa is being presented. Lord knows, we need one - Conrad's view still lingers, and still affects things like IMF policy.
18. Posted by Hiromi on February 21, 2006
Now you mention it, we read Things Fall Apart too.
Not enough brain power to state more than facts for now though... let me pull myself together.
19. Posted by d on February 22, 2006
I loved that book by Conrad. However I saw it in a different light (no pun intended) and the comparision between the europeans and africans was just a footnote to the bigger picture that Conrad was trying to get across with humanity as a whole.
20. Posted by lionzub on February 22, 2006
lionzub, that's how I read it at first. But the racism - and it's venomous - is just hard to ignore UNLESS you're used to depictions of Africans in that way.
I'm not calling you or me a racist, just that we're used to the image of Africa=savage. It's in the media, too - do we ever hear about Africans who aren't starving, in the middle of a war, who aren't sick, who aren't getting their genitals cut, in teh news or movies or whatever?
No, we don't, which is why H of D is problematic. It's one of the few images of Africans that are available, and it's so widely taught, that I think this issue should be addressed.
I'm really glad to hear that they're pairing it with another book these days for that reason.
21. Posted by Hiromi on February 22, 2006
I guess if people actually haven't seen the skyscrapers in Africa like so: http://www.emporis.com/en/il/im/?id=222404 for example then I guess continuing the give the imagery that Africans are savages are problematic. But I don't believe that this book in particular should be the target to end the imagery just because it contains this imagery and because it is taught in schools. I'll admit that I was ignorant of African culture before going to University, but the reason for that was not from H of D. The beauty of H of D is through it's imagery, and although he may be painted as a racist (you aren't the first one), I believe still that the main theme of the novel was presented well. The same arguements could be said about other great novels like Beloved and the imagery it gives about the slaves in America. It's all written to invoke these emotions in us, but we shouldn't let that overtake us and blind us with the main themes that the author intended us to find out.
I just have a seperate opinion. Love your blog; thanks for the reply.
22. Posted by lionzub on February 22, 2006
I *stated* in my OP that H of D is a great book. On the flip side, its depiction of moral issues that confront modern man should not blind us to its racist imagery.
That racist imagery - the idea that societies evolve in a linear way based upon the Western model - still persists today, and still negatively impacts Africans.
That developmental model, which is based on 19th century thought as seen that book, is still exercised today, in the form of neoliberal economic policy that works to the detriment of poor countries.
I didn't say ban the book. I'm saying, teach it in context.
23. Posted by Hiromi on February 22, 2006
"That racist imagery - the idea that societies evolve in a linear way based upon the Western model - still persists today, and still negatively impacts Africans."
What's fascinating to me about this discussion was that I took this as the idea that Conrad was trying to demolish in the story. That this was the belief that the brutal Europeans (I think it was Dutch, right?) were clinging to to justify the horrors they were perpetuating. (I still remember a scene with dead miners stacked like cordwood.) I thought his offensive language was a way of hammering home just how racist his charaters, and readers for that matter, were.
Anyway, this is what makes it a great story to teach, but also a really difficult story to teach. There are so many different ways of reading it.
24. Posted by C on February 22, 2006
I really don't think Conrad meant the narrative in an ironic manner. To me, there's nothing to indicate that Conrad was distancing himself from Marlow. I think that's just being unnecessarily charitable to Conrad.
25. Posted by Hiromi on February 22, 2006
I don't know if it's exactly ironic. But, I definitely take Marlow as hopeless and closed off from all other human beings, which seems like a universal in Conrad's world. So, I saw him as deeply and irreparably corrupted by the Company and yet not aware of it. The natives are just sort of props for him, as they are for Conrad and the reader. I don't think of this as ironic so much as a particuarly cruel narrative decision. I may well be giving Conrad too much credit. It's hard to tell. But, yeah, by the end, I was convinced that Marlow was mad and Kurtz was sane.
26. Posted by C on February 22, 2006
Thing is, I think it was a criticism of what was going on there (it was the Belgians), but because it was bad for Europeans, not because it was bad for Africans.
27. Posted by Hiromi on February 22, 2006
I like Conrad, I love the Heart Of Darkness. Conrad is not Marlow in the same way that Brett Easton Ellis is not Patrick Bateman.
I admire this lady's take on the 'darkness' of the supposed 'light', and on the glitter and deceptive brightness which frequents the narrative. From the opening "parable":
I think it is all too easy to dismiss it as a racist book and to call it problematic. It's literature, it's important and it says something, but in the end its just a book.
xxB
28. Posted by boudica of suburbia on February 22, 2006
Yes, the Belgians! Of course- it's the Congo. This is what I love about books- I took it as an argument that the imperial enterprise itself made some men into monsters and others into products, and your reading makes perfect sense too. It's multivalent!
29. Posted by C on February 22, 2006
"We need not, however, look as far back as Nazi Germany for examples of people undergoing personality changes and extreme shifts in ideology. We can learn from present-day American groups." Dusty Sklar
"We are all too familiar with the opposition between historical truth and untruth. It is strange that the Christian myths are said to be thoroughly historical!" Friedrich Nietzsche
30. Posted by steven trull on February 23, 2006