GRGR Re: Achebe on Conrad

[Keith Obye]

Bleeechhhh......

Some of you are starting to sound .....well....

NEW CRITICAL!

Northrop Frye, T.S. Eliot etc.

****

    The interesting thing about Achebe's stance on Conrad is that Conrad was
rather anti-colonial in many ways.  Unfortunately, however harsh Conrad's
condemnation of the excesses of Coloniality, Conrad only questioned the
violence and excesses but not the colonizing mission itself.  The colonizing
mission itself was accepted as a given.  So in a sense you can have it both
ways, Conrad both anti-colonial (in terms of the form of colonization) and
yet seeing colonization as something inevitible and desireable.  Achebe
misses the complexity of Conrads position.  Placed in the proper historical
context Conrad would have been a critic with a strong critique circumscribed
by the ideology of empire.
    much of the book is based on Conrad's experiences in the Belgian Congo
where an incredible genocide took place around the turn of the century
(upwards of 10 million people perished).  There is a decent history book on
the subject called _King Leopolds Ghost_.

Cheers, Keith Obye