warp & woof,

[Terrance]

Otto Sell wrote:
> 
> >
> > I don't think that Achebe has forgotten something, he makes
> > many of the same points you have, he says, it's not Conrad's
> > fault, he was born 1857, christians... and so on.
> >
> 
> But how can he than say that Conrad is a "bloody colonist"? He must know
> that this is not true.
> 
> Otto

Let me just quote from the essay I have referring to so we
don't get confused. 




"The point of my observations should be quite clear by now,
namely that Joseph Conrad was a thorougoing racist." 

Africa as setting and backdrop which eliminates the African
as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid
of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering
European enters at his peril. Can nobody see the
preposterous and perverse arrogance in thus reducing Africa
to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European
mind? But that is not even the point. The real question is
the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age
long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the
world. And the question is whether a novel that celebrates
this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the
human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is:
No, it cannot. I do not doubt Conrad's great talents...But
all this has been discussed in the last fifty years. His
obvious racism has, however, not been addressed. And it is
high time it was!

>From Norton Critical Edition, HoD, Third Edition, Edited by
Robert Kimbrough


Chinua Achebe, "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart
of Darkness" (An amended version (1987) of the Second
Chancellor's Lecture at University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, February 18, 1975.