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Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 438
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 05, 2004 - 01:23 am: | 
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Amazing conversation between two of our best writers! This is for ya'll ol' headz, engaging non-deep thinkin, sambo callin, western canon defendin, Cosby luvin, non-hip hopping hopping, aretha posing, elitist, sippin kappa-chino, bourbon tastin, home ownin, conservative, liberal, radical, generatin x hatin lovin, beautiful black folk that i love! Enjoy!
Out of Africa
Chinua Achebe, father of modern African literature, has long argued that Joseph Conrad was a racist. Caryl Phillips, an admirer of both writers, disagrees. He meets Achebe to defend the creator of Heart of Darkness but finds their discussion provokes an unexpected epiphany
Saturday February 22, 2003
The Guardian
Chinua Achebe leans forward to make his point. He raises a gentle finger in the manner of a benevolent schoolmaster. "But you have to understand. Art is more than just good sentences; this is what makes this situation tragic. The man is a capable artist and as such I expect better from him. I mean, what is his point in that book? Art is not intended to put people down. If so, then art would ultimately discredit itself."
Achebe does not take his eyes from me, and I stare back at him. The face is familiar and marked with the heavy lines of ageing that one would expect to find on a 72-year-old man's face. But Achebe's lines are graceful whorls which suggest wisdom. He leans back now and looks beyond me and through the window at the snowy landscape.
We are sitting in his one-storey house in upstate New York, deep in the wooded campus of Bard College. For the past 13 years, Achebe has been a professor at this well-known liberal arts college, which has had writers such as Mary McCarthy and Norman Mailer on the faculty. His house is decorated with African art and artifacts, but the landscape and the climate could not be further removed from Nigeria and the world of Achebe's fiction and non-fiction. As though tiring of the wintry landscape, Achebe turns and returns to our conversation.
"The man would appear to be obsessed with 'that' word."
"Nigger."
Achebe nods.
"He has an admiration of the white skin. It is the whiteness that he likes, and he is obsessed with the physicality of the negro."
Again Achebe falls silent, but this time he lowers his eyes as though suddenly overcome with fatigue. I continue to look at him, the father of African literature in the English language and undoubtedly one of the most important writers of the second half of the 20th century. What I find difficult to fathom is just why Conrad's short novel, Heart of Darkness, should exercise such a hold on him?
Achebe has taught term-long university courses dedicated to this one slim volume first published in 1902. As long ago as February 1975, while a visiting professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Achebe delivered a public lecture entitled "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness ". The lecture has since come to be recognised as one of the most important and influential treatises in post-colonial literary discourse. However, the problem is I disagree with Achebe's response to the novel, and have never viewed Conrad - as Achebe states in his lecture - as simply "a thoroughgoing racist". Yet, at the same time, I hold Achebe in the highest possible esteem, and therefore, a two-hour drive up the Hudson River Valley into deepest upstate New York would seem a small price to pay to resolve this conundrum.
Achebe's lecture quickly establishes his belief that Conrad deliberately sets Africa up as "the other world" so that he might examine Europe. According to Achebe, Africa is presented to the reader as "the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilisation, a place where man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality".
Achebe sees Conrad mocking both the African landscape and the African people. The story begins on the "good" River Thames which, in the past, "has been one of the dark places of the earth". The story soon takes us to the "bad" River Congo, presently one of those "dark places". It is a body of water upon which the steamer toils "along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy".
According to Achebe, Conrad's long and famously hypnotically sentences are mere "trickery", designed to induce a hypnotic stupor in the reader. Achebe drafts in the support of "the eagle-eyed English critic FR Leavis", who many years ago noted Conrad's "adjectival insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery" whose cumulative effect is to suggest that poor Africa is inexplicable.
But it is when Achebe turns to Conrad's treatment of African humanity that he is most disparaging of Conrad's vision. He quotes from the moment in the novel when the Europeans on the steamer encounter real live Africans in the flesh:
"We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there - there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were - No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it - this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. 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. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you - and you so remote from the night of first ages - could comprehend."
These people are "ugly", but what is even more disturbing is that they are in some way also human. A half-page later, Conrad focuses on one particular African, who, according to Achebe, is rare, for he is not presented as "just limbs or rolling eyes". The problem is that the African man is, most disturbingly, not "in his place".
"And between whiles I had to look after the savage who was a fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind legs."
Those critics who have defended Heart of Darkness against charges of racism have often pointed to both the methodology of narration and Conrad's anti-colonial purpose. The narrator of the novel is Marlow, who is simply retelling a story that was told to him by a shadowy second figure. However, in his lecture Achebe makes it clear he is not fooled by this narrative gamesmanship, or the claims of those who would argue that the complex polyphony of the storytelling is Conrad's way of trying to deliberately distance himself from the views of his characters.
"...If Conrad's intention is to draw a cordon sanitaire between himself and the moral and psychological malaise of his narrator, his care seems to me to be totally wasted because he neglects to hint, clearly and adequately, at an alternative frame of reference by which we may judge the actions and opinions of his characters. It would not have been beyond Conrad's power to make that provision if he had thought it necessary. Conrad seems to me to approve of Marlow..."
Achebe is, however, aware of Conrad's ambivalence towards the colonising mission, and he concedes that the novel is, in part, an attempt to examine what happens when Europeans come into contact with this particular form of economic and social exploitation. In the lecture he remembers that a student in Scotland once informed him that Africa is "merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr Kurtz", which is an argument that many teachers and critics, let alone students, have utilised to defend the novel. But to read the book in this way is to further stir Achebe's outrage.
"Africa as setting and backdrop, which eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognisable 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?"
Achebe has no problem with a novel that seeks to question both European ambivalence towards the colonising mission and her own "system" of civilisation. What he has a huge problem with is a novelist - in fact, an artist - who attempts to resolve these important questions by denying Africa and Africans their full and complex humanity.
During the two-hour drive up the Hudson River Valley through a snow-bound and icy landscape, I thought again of my own response to the novel. There are three remarkable journeys in Heart of Darkness. First, Marlow's actual journey up-river to Kurtz's inner station. Second, the larger journey that Marlow takes us on from civilised Europe, back to the beginning of creation when nature reigned, and then back to civilised Europe. And finally, the journey that Kurtz undergoes as he sinks down through the many levels of the self to a place where he discovers unlawful and repressed ambiguities of civilisation.
In all three journeys, Conrad's restless narrative circles back on itself as though trapped in the complexity of the situation. The overarching question is, what happens when one group of people, supposedly more humane and civilised than another group, attempts to impose themselves upon their "inferiors"? In such circumstances will there always be an individual who, removed from the shackles of "civilised" behaviour, feels compelled to push at the margins of conventional "morality"? What happens to this one individual who imagines himself to be released from the moral order of society and therefore free to behave as "savagely" or as "decently" as he deems fit? How does this man respond to chaos?
Conrad uses colonisation, and the trading intercourse that flourished in its wake, to explore these universal questions about man's capacity for evil. The end of European colonisation has not rendered Heart of Darkness any less relevant, for Conrad was interested in the making of a modern world in which colonisation was simply one facet. The uprootedness of people, and their often disquieting encounter with the "other", is a constant theme in his work, and particularly so in this novel. Conrad's writing prepares us for a new world in which modern man has had to endure the psychic and physical pain of displacement, and all the concomitant confusion of watching imagined concrete standards become mutable. Modern descriptions of 20th-century famines, war and genocide all seem to be eerily prefigured by Conrad, and Heart of Darkness abounds with passages that seem terrifyingly contemporary in their descriptive accuracy.
"Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up. One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence."
As my car moved ever closer to Bard College, I constantly asked myself, was Conrad really a racist? If so, how did I miss this? Written in the wake of the 1884 Berlin Conference, which saw the continent of Africa carved into a "magnificent cake" and divided among European nations, Heart of Darkness offers its readers an insight into the "dark" world of Africa.
The European world produced the narrator, produced Marlow, and certainly produced the half-French, half-English Kurtz ("All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz"), but set against the glittering "humanity" of Europe, Conrad presents us with a late-19th-century view of a primitive African world that has produced very little, and is clearly doomed to irredeemable savagery. This world picture would have troubled few of Conrad's original readers, for Conrad was merely providing them with the descriptive "evidence" of the bestial people and the fetid world that they "knew" lay beyond Europe. However, by the end of the 20th, and beginning of the 21st century, Conrad's readers are living in a decolonised - indeed postcolonial - world, and Conrad's brutal depiction of African humanity, so that he might provide a "savage" mirror into which the European might gaze and measure his own tenuous grip on civilisation, is now regarded by some, including Achebe, as deeply problematic.
But is it not ridiculous to demand of Conrad that he imagine an African humanity that is totally out of line with both the times in which he was living and the larger purpose of his novel? In his lecture, even Achebe wistfully concedes that the novel reflects "the dominant image of Africa in the western imagination".
And the novel does assert European infamy, for there are countless examples throughout the text that point to Conrad's recognition of the illegitimacy of this trading mission and the brutalising effect it is having on the Africans. However, the main focus of the novel is the Europeans, and the effect upon them of their encountering another, less "civilised", world.
The novel proposes no programme for dismantling European racism or imperialistic exploitation, and as a reader I have never had any desire to confuse it with an equal opportunity pamphlet. I have always believed that Conrad's only programme is doubt; in this case, doubt about the supremacy of European humanity, and the ability of this supposed humanity to maintain its imagined status beyond the high streets of Europe. However, as I pull my car up outside Achebe's house, I already sense I had better shore up my argument with something more resilient than this.
For a moment Achebe has me fooled. He looks as though he has nodded off, but he has just been thinking. This mild-mannered man looks up now and smiles. He returns to the subject we were talking about as though he has merely paused to draw breath.
"Conrad didn't like black people. Great artists manage to be bigger than their times. In the case of Conrad you can actually show that there were people at the same time as him, and before him, who were not racists with regard to Africa."
"Who?" I ask. Achebe says nothing for a moment, and so I continue. "I find it difficult to think of any European writers who have had a benevolent view of Africa. Surely they've all used Africa as a foil."
"Well, Livingstone," suggests Achebe. "He is not a writer, but he is an explorer and Conrad admired explorers. When asked what he thought of Africans, Livingstone replied that he found them 'infuriating'. In other words, they were just like everybody else."
We both fall silent and I think back to Achebe's lecture. That Conrad had some "issues" with black people is beyond doubt. Achebe quotes Conrad who, when recalling his first encounter with a black person, remembers it thus:
"A certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days. Of the nigger I used to dream for years afterwards."
Conversely, when the 16-year-old Conrad encounters his first Englishman in Europe, he calls him "my unforgettable Englishman" and describes him in the following manner:
"[His] calves exposed to the public gaze... dazzled the beholder by the splendour of their marble-like condition and their rich tone of young ivory... The light of a headlong, exalted satisfaction with the world of men... illumined his face... and triumphant eyes. In passing he cast a glance of kindly curiosity and a friendly gleam of big, sound, shiny teeth... his white calves twinkled sturdily."
However, despite Achebe's compelling "evidence", I am still finding it difficult to dismiss this man and his short novel. Are we to throw all racists out of the canon? Are we, as Achebe suggests, to ignore the period in which novels are written and demand that the artist rise above the prejudices of his times? As much as I respect the man sitting before me, something does not ring true. We both agree that Conrad was not the originator of this disturbing image of Africa and Africans. And we both appear to agree that Conrad had the perception to see that this encounter with Africa exposed the fissures and instabilities in so-called European civilisation. Further, we both agree that in order to expose European fragility, Conrad pandered to a certain stereotype of African barbarity that, at the time, was accepted as the norm. Finally, we both agree that this stereotype is still with us today. Achebe speaks quickly, as though a thought has suddenly struck him.
"You see, those who say that Conrad is on my side because he is against colonial rule do not understand that I know who is on my side. And where is the proof that he is on my side? A few statements about it not being a very nice thing to exploit people who have flat noses? This is his defence against imperial control? If so it is not enough. It is simply not enough. If you are going to be on my side what is required is a better argument. Ultimately you have to admit that Africans are people. You cannot diminish a people's humanity and defend them."
I feel as though I am walking around an impregnable fortress. However, I am losing interest in the problem of breaching the ramparts and becoming more concerned with the aesthetics of its construction.
"Which European or American writers do you feel have best represented the continent of Africa and African people?"
Achebe looks at me for a long while and then slowly begins to shake his head.
"This is difficult. Not many."
I suggest Graham Greene.
"Yes, perhaps. Graham Greene would be one because he knew his limitations. He didn't want to explain Africans to the world. He made limited claims and wasn't attempting to be too profound. After all, we can't be too profound about somebody whose history and language and culture is beyond our own."
"But you're not suggesting that outsiders should not write about other cultures?"
"No, no. This identification with the other is what a great writer brings to the art of story-making. We should welcome the rendering of our stories by others, because a visitor can sometimes see what the owner of the house has ignored. But they must visit with respect and not be concerned with the colour of skin, or the shape of nose, or the condition of the technology in the house."
It is now my turn to stare out of the window at the six-foot snow drifts and the bare, rickety arms of the trees. The light is beginning to fade and soon I will have to leave. I avert my eyes and turn to face my host.
"Chinua, I think Conrad offends you because he was a disrespectful visitor."
"I am an African. What interests me is what I learn in Conrad about myself. To use me as a symbol may be bright or clever, but if it reduces my humanity by the smallest fraction I don't like it."
"Conrad does present Africans as having 'rudimentary' souls."
Achebe draws himself upright.
"Yes, you will notice that the European traders have 'tainted' souls, Marlow has a 'pure' soul, but I am to accept that mine is 'rudimentary'?" He shakes his head. "Towards the end of the 19th century, there was a very short-lived period of ambivalence about the certainty of this colonising mission, and Heart of Darkness falls into this period. But you cannot compromise my humanity in order that you explore your own ambiguity. I cannot accept that. My humanity is not to be debated, nor is it to be used simply to illustrate European problems."
The realisation hits me with force. I am not an African. Were I an African I suspect I would feel the same way as my host. But I was raised in Europe, and although I have learned to reject the stereotypically reductive images of Africa and Africans, I am undeniably interested in the break-up of a European mind and the health of European civilisation. I feel momentarily ashamed that I might have become caught up with this theme and subsequently overlooked how offensive this novel might be to a man such as Chinua Achebe and to millions of other Africans. Achebe is right; to the African reader the price of Conrad's eloquent denunciation of colonisation is the recycling of racist notions of the "dark" continent and her people. Those of us who are not from Africa may be prepared to pay this price, but this price is far too high for Achebe. However lofty Conrad's mission, he has, in keeping with times past and present, compromised African humanity in order to examine the European psyche. Achebe's response is understandably personal.
"Conrad's presentation of me is my problem and I have a responsibility to deal with it, you understand?" I nod. "I don't come from a 'half-made' society as your 'friend' Naipaul would say. We're not 'half-made' people, we're a very old people. We've seen lots of problems in the past. We've dealt with these problems in Africa, and we're older than the problems. Drought, famine, disease, this is not the first time that we're dealing with these things in Africa."
He takes a deep breath. Beyond him, and through the window, the blanket of night begins to descend over the woods.
"You know," he continues, "I think that to some extent it is how you must feel about your 'friend'. You take it to heart because a man with such talent should not behave in this way. My people, we say one palm nut does not get lost in the fire, for you must know where it is. But if you have 20 you may lose sight of some and they will get burned, but you have others. Well, as you know, we have very few who have the talent and who are in the right place, and to lose even one is a tragedy. We cannot afford to lose such artists. It is sheer cussedness to wilfully turn and walk away from the truth, and for what? Really, for what? I expect a great artist, a man who has explored, a man who is interested in Africa, not to make life more difficult for us. Why do this? Why make our lives more difficult? In this sense Conrad is a disappointment."
© Caryl Phillips
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 562
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 05, 2004 - 01:10 pm: |
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Yukio, why would you expect anything different from author Joseph Conrad who represents Euro-centrism? Afro-centrists are guilty of the same things.
J.R.R. Tolkien, author of my beloved "Lord of the Rings", has been accused of racism, and I can see why. But all races think they are superior to others. At some point, I enjoy a story for its human aspects. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 442
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 05, 2004 - 01:37 pm: |
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Passion:
Firstly, as you should know, there is no such thing as race. If this is the case, then the complexion of people is changing, but this doesn't mean that their culture or politics change.
You, in other words, conflate color and ideology/political views. Are u not dehumanizing non-african blacks if you calling them racist for having a different culture and views from you that are not based on race but nationality and culture? |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 443
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 05, 2004 - 01:38 pm: |
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cynique: what are u talking about? I have not made any statements either pro/con joseph conrad. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 564
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 05, 2004 - 01:59 pm: |
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Yukio writes:
"Amazing conversation between two of our best writers! This is for ya'll ol' headz, engaging non-deep thinkin, sambo callin, western canon defendin, Cosby luvin, non-hip hopping hopping, aretha posing, elitist, sippin kappa-chino, bourbon tastin, home ownin, conservative, liberal, radical, generatin x hatin lovin, beautiful black folk that i love! Enjoy!"
That statement sounded anti-Joseph Conrad to me because it seemed to imply that his writing reinforced what you have been complaining about. But, again, I make assumptions.
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Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 444
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 05, 2004 - 03:11 pm: |
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cynique: there are two sentences; the first was descriptive. The second, obviously, a poor attempt to declare that while some of may differ, we can at the same time love one another.
Passion: I mostly respect all views; I just don't agree with them. Actually, i especially don't respect anything imperialist or colonialist.
How is the socalled "New World Pan Africanist COLONIALIST vision" white supremacist?
Inter-racial marriage, as I've repeatedly stated, tells us nothing about a person's politcs. If this was the case, Africans would get along. Europeans would get along, etc...this is not the case. Cultures change or die...
Lets set the record straight...it is not the skin that is the culprit; the skin is only the sign of the culture and it is culture that is evil and the society that culture projects. You should know this for this is the history of intra-african and intra-european conflict. Yet, as has always been the case, since folk have the same skin but culturally different then we need to focus on the culture rather than the skin, which is only the facade.
What I get from Achebe is that all socalled groups have culture and all are fallible. As I read it, when he states, "But they must visit with respect and not be concerned with the colour of skin, or the shape of nose, or the condition of the technology in the house," I understand it to mean not to use difference(culture, race, religion, creed, lanuage) as a barometer of one's humanity.
At the same time, if we turn Achebe's position on its head, we could argue that to embrace humanity then you have embrace difference(religion, race, creed, etc..), assuming that is is not dehumanizing you. |
Sisg
Veteran Poster
Username: Sisg
Post Number: 54
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 05, 2004 - 09:24 pm: |
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To all...i saw this quote on another site and thought it befitting.
The tree that bends before the gale does not break.
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Sisg
Veteran Poster
Username: Sisg
Post Number: 55
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 05, 2004 - 09:25 pm: |
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Sorry guys, posted in the wrong place...ignore. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 445
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 05, 2004 - 10:28 pm: |
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Passion: U do what u must. I have read what you posted, but I wanted to make sure that I understood your position, which is why i asked u a question. You point is, interracial mating(although there is no such thing as race) causes the erasure of the black race.
Let me make the same to points that I've made for the last 2 to 3 years:
1. There is not such thing as "race." This doesn't mean that there is no such thing as racism, discrimination based on the assumption of race. I've stated this before and few believed me. Indeed after a PBS program called Race: The Power of Illusion Troy initiated a thread, which u participated in (although I must say, as usual, the thread drifted off to a black leadership, immorality, and poverty). Yet, you have refused to inculcate and integrate this knowledge with how you understood the world. You continue, as do others, to use your own cultural notions of race. At any rate that is your choice.
If there is no such thing as race then there is no difference between, on the one hand, socalled interracial mating and on the other hand, same socalled race mating, since there is only the human family. Indeed, the reason for the continuity of any color as more to do with conquest than anything else. This leads us to my second point.
2. If there is no such thing as race, then what is the real value of achebe and our discussion, here. The value is, and indeed your point about the socalled "endless detail and magnificence" of whiteness is, that Conquest, imperialism, and colonialism not our skin differences are the causes of oppression, as it relates to Africans and people of African descent, this form of oppression we call racism, but there have been others..first based on bloodline, then on religion, and then race...this is basic world history. The 24 hrs we see is because white folk are economically, technologically, and politically in control of this world. Is is not surprise that much of the world speaks european languages, which those languages and knowledge many of us have been brainwashed...consider the story of Othello, for example.
Yet, and this is what you fail to acknowledge, though there is both literature and history which demonstrates this, is although the Americas, Asia, and Africa(lets not forget that africans are trying to lighten their skin) have been whitened but that doesn't mean that we have not (1) retaliated and (2) created our own peoplehood, whose values are not based on race. value.
In other words, to marry mexicans, asians, etc...doesn't mean that we embrace whiteness. It is about edifying our politics and ideology, rather than confusing color with political views. If folk truly fall in love based on shared human qualities, convictions, and values that are no race-specific, then what can u do?
Conquest is another story, for we can not reverse history because you fear the erasure of black people.
Those interested in the PBS program see: http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-teachers-01.htm and http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15897
And those interested in the aalbc thread see: http://www.thumperscorner.com/discus/messages/179/245.html?1053461184 |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 284
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 07, 2004 - 09:45 am: |
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The discouraging thing about this is that Phillips had to go to Chinua Achebe to figure out that Conrad is racist. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 450
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 07, 2004 - 12:19 pm: |
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yes, it is. but at least he is honest and forthcoming with his experience(s). In addition, I think the conversation was great. Phillips seemed to confuse COnrad's anti-colonialism position with affirmation of black humanity. I believe, similarly, that many of us confuse white liberal and democrats anti-conservativism with the affirmation of black humanity. I don't trust them! |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 319
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 07, 2004 - 01:06 pm: |
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Yukio,
I have what are likely to be considered to be some somewhat controversial views on this subject. But before I post them, I want to know why did you create this post of Chinua Achebe and Caryl Phillips' 'debate' about "The Heart of Darkness"? |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 451
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 07, 2004 - 02:01 pm: |
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ABM: I like both authors, and I thought it would be interesting for posters, who may not have read author's interpretation of other authors, to read how two respected black authors addressed the content, narrative, and thematic significance of a western classic.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 321
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 07, 2004 - 03:02 pm: |
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Ok, here is my spiel...
The Heart of Darkness ('Darkness) is first and foremost a searing indictment of the White Supremacy, particularly with respect to the malevolence it wrought upon Africa. 'Darkness obliterates the fantasy that the Europeans intentions/deeds were more civilized, more ennobled than those of Africans. I am dismayed that reasonable people would allow someone of Chinua Achebe's esteem and reputation to obfuscate a discussion of this great book amid the minutiae of it prejudiced overtones.
I am sorry. But Achebe commentary are mostly the fading intellectual gasps of a cantankerous old man who is, perhaps, trying to used alleged misgivings about 'Darkness to conveniently quicken this fame/notoriety. Of course Conrad was a racist. Cynique is right: WHAT White man borne/bred in the 19th Century WASN'T racist? And, ok, Achebe is disappointed the 'Darkness is not especially empathetic of Africa(ns). TUFF! Join the REST of us who have been born the past +500 years, pal!
Since 'Darkness doesn't make ALL of the Afro-political arguments he would prefer, the ENTIRE book is to be discarded? Is THAT an appropriate stance for a reasoned mind to take, especially when virtually ALL of Western Literature/History is rife with such derision on Blacks? Heck, if he wants to purge the world of all prejudiced materials, he may as well toss his Merriam-Webster, Roget's Thesaurus, Atlas, Almanac, Encyclopedia Britannica, et al.
Amid his diatribe he (conveniently) omits discussing any specific 'effects' or 'Darkness. If the book was as monstrous as he relays, why does he not mention its onerous impact on Whites and Blacks, Americans and Europeans?
He says 'Darkness made life MORE difficult for Africans. Well, where is there proof of THAT? What increment of malice was reaped upon Africans with the advent of 'Darkness that had not already occurred 100X fold? Heck, 'Darkness certainly didn't CAUSE colonization or any of the pernicious effects that ensued. If anything, 'Darkness provided a stirring polemic of colonization.
Also, why didn’t Phillips leave 1/2 way thru this thing?
Because this whole thing bogs down into Achebe's confusion/ambivalence on what can/should a White writer be allowed to write about Africans.
When Caryl Phillips smartly asks Achebe to mention ONE White person who manages to do what Conrad has allegedly failed to accomplish (which is Phillips' ONLY worthy utterance during this entire wasted effort), Achebe must labor to mention even one, Graham Greene. This suggests to me one of 2 things, either A) Achebe has himself not fully thought thru what he's ranting about or B) there are few if any White authors who have managed to achieve what Conrad supposedly has not, which then begs the question of why is Achebe deriding Conrad's 'Darkest any more than he should COUNTLESS other books written by COUNTLESS other Whites about Blacks?
Also, he credits Greene for being empathetic of Blacks, but then contradicts himself when he says about Greene that "...we can't be too profound about somebody whose history and language and culture is beyond our own." Which is it? And if that is true that you can't expect others to be "too profound" about someone of a different "history and language" - AGAIN! - then what the HECK can you expect a 19th Century bred Conrad to think/feel about Africans other than that which is very circumscribed and prejudiced?
Achebe even cites Stanley Livingstone as an archetype of a White writer who is genuinely empathetic of Afric(ans). I find this to be laughable because 1) Livingstone wasn't even an author per se, he was an adventure/explorer and 2) and anyone who has actually read much of Livingstone's writings would know that he was working off a "I am here to save the ignorant savages" god-complex in Africa (which to me seems hardly complimentary of Africa[ns]).
Achebe even refers to Phillips are being made from a "half-made people". Well Gee! I wonder what all of US born from the African Diaspora should think of a debasing crack like THAT?
And by the time he starts making bizarre comparison between Conrad and palm nuts, my eyes began to glaze over as it was clear he was spouting off some conveniently trite African proverbs that had NOTHING to do with the subject at hand.
This entire event was pointless. Phillips was supposed to defend 'Darkness but he came off as an effete, intellectual lightweight. Perhaps they should have sent someone to meet with Achebe who wouldn't be inclined to kiss his wrinkled @$$.
BTW: I was intrigued by Achebe's quotes of Conrad's graphic descriptions of both the Black Haitian and the White Englishman. I wonder why Conrad said those specific words and why Achebe chose to quote them. Because, I don't. But those descriptions seem almost to have a tone of homoeroticism? |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 289
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 07, 2004 - 03:46 pm: |
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Abm:
You musta read a different book. I read Heart of Darkness as a nuerotic diatribe about what getting close to them darkies (the Darkness) will do to you. That you start going "native" or turning black, just like all those folks who warned parents about letting their kids listen to "jass" music and rock n roll and jungle rhythms.
You say, "Of course Conrad is a racist". Then you go on to the "but". There is no but. So we have to discard the book. Good. You are what you eat or read. People don't want to believe that writings, stories, poems, etc have a quality unlike spells--that they are hoodoos, as Ishmael Reed says. If you take in a hoodoo that hates you without proper preconditioning or if you are not strong, it makes you sick just like eating spoiled food. Oh yes. Think of reading Mein Kampf. Some excellent parts in there especially about propaganda and public speaking. Try to get it placed on a reading curriculum in any literature appreciation class (esp in New York City). Think Nietchze. Heavy Philsopher. Some thundering passages in Thus Spake Zarathustra. Try to tell that to 'em at Oral Roberts University
Why the hell should we be understanding? Ain't nobody else!
And, is it my imagination, or does it just seem that you are finding hidden homoeroticism in every topic?
I guess that's okay, but I don't remember you seeing that when we discussed the pros and cons of superhero comic books (big sweaty mens in tights, beating up other big sweaty mens in tights, and dressing up like bats and hanging out in caves with their teenaged "wards"(!)
Maybe he went there to defend Conrad ""Heart of Darkness" Just listen to that title. Don't that conjure up Tarzan movies? Cocaine crazed Negro rapists out to violate white womanhood? King Kong? Maybe face to face with Achebe his own doubts were blown to smithereens. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 326
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 07, 2004 - 05:00 pm: |
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Chris,
We obviously have different intellectual philosophies. I think any/all books should be available for reading. I don't care about their subject matter. And, I have NO PROBLEM with Mein Kampt and/or Nietchze's Zarathushtra being on reserve at our local library. And I find it abominable that, in a so-called free society, such references are not readily available to the public.
Now I would agree that reasonable people might argue about the relative merits of a book. But to discard/disallow the reading of a book simply because it include text that some consider defamatory does none of us any good.
I believe it was Hemingway who penned "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, for it toll for thee."
Black people in particular have to be VERY careful about encouraging any kind of censorship. Because you'd better believe in such an environment, the first mouths that will be gagged are those that have 'thick lips'.
If we start pre-empting 'Darkness, who's to say that someone won't come along and discard some of Baldwin's polemics of White people, Walker's polemics of men, Sharpton's polemic of government, etc.?
And it's interesting you deride 'Darkness yet, like Achebe, fail to offer any proof that it has incite all of the anti-Black hysteria that you surmise. Come now, if the book has been so destructive to Africa, surely there must be some evidence of the havoc that it has wrought.
That was a funny (yet predictable) line about my seeing homoeroticism in everything. No I was, for example, referring to Conrad's comments about some Englishman's "calves exposed to the public gaze... dazzled the beholder by the splendour of their marble-like condition and their rich tone of young ivory... The light of a headlong, exalted satisfaction with the world of men... illumined his face... and triumphant eyes. In passing he cast a glance of kindly curiosity and a friendly gleam of big, sound, shiny teeth... his white calves twinkled sturdily."
That sure seems a little 'gay' to me.
And, I don't know maybe it all of the READING, but I don't associate the title of 'Darkness with the disparagement of Africa[ns] (e.g., King Kong, Tarzan, etc.). I associate it will the hidden madness that lies within the spirit of all people, Black and White.
PS: Why YOU remain fixated on the crotches of comic books figures continues to intrigue (and yet scare) me. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 454
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 08, 2004 - 01:31 am: |
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abm: achebe is only stating that conrad was a racist and that his literature denied african humanity. Therefore, it seems, you are in agreement with him. I'm not sure if achebe wants to get rid of the book, although this is what Phillips rhetorically querried. Achebe calls conrad a "disappointment," which is the sentiment of not getting rid of good writers because their are only a few. He is talking to Phillips about both Naipaul and COnrad(Phillips has a criticizes of Naipaul's barbaric and elitist characterization Guyana and Afro-guyanese, but he still claims him as important and even a son of the Caribbean). In addition, I don't think it is about getting rid of all racists literature, but to call it what it is racist, which for most of the century the academy and educational institutional taught as non-racist, because of its anticolonial sensibilities.
Achebe didn't say that mean that Phillips was "half-made"...if you reread, Achebe is paraphrasing the indo-guyanese author naipaul. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 331
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 08, 2004 - 12:57 pm: |
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Yukio,
I agree that Achebe does not expressly recommend prohibiting 'Darkness, though everything he stated certainly appeared to infer such. But even if I assume he doesn't advocate abolishing 'Darkness, I am still urged to question just WHAT was his meeting with Phillips suppose to achieve. Because I am hardpressed to believe that any thinking Black person would be surprised that a White man born over 100 years ago harbored racists views of Africans. All right, we agree that Conrad very likely was a racist. So were Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, etc. et al.
Simply: Why would he expect Conrad to be imbued with an indemnity from a ‘disease’ that has plagued the entire Western World?
And as I said before, how can one accurately gauge WHAT Achebe thinks. First he says: "After all, we can't be too profound about somebody whose history and language and culture is beyond our own."
But then, immediately following that statement, when asked whether non-Africans should be allowed to write about Africa, he says: "We should welcome the rendering of our stories by others, because a visitor can sometimes see what the owner of the house has ignored."
Ok. Surely I can't be the ONLY one who sees the contradiction in his thinking.
See, it is that kind of duplicity that makes me question Achebe's purpose (and, perhaps, mental cogency). And I suspect Phillips could discern that Achebe's thoughts were dithering about (I mean, really, how could he MISS it?). But he seemed to be too awed by Achebe to risk calling him on his apparent inconsistencies.
It just seems to me Achebe has found within 'Darkness a convenient forum to spout off Afro-political dogma, which; though isn't in of itself a bad thing; should at least be clear, supportable and consistent.
And read Achebe's comments CLOSELY: ""I don't come from a 'half-made' society as your 'friend' Naipaul would say. We're not 'half-made' people, we're a very old people. We've seen lots of problems in the past. We've dealt with these problems in Africa, and we're older than the problems. Drought, famine, disease, this is not the first time that we're dealing with these things in Africa."
Now, if one were NOT African-borne - for example, African Americans - couldn't she(he) reasonably infer from these descriptions that Achebe considers her(him) to have been in someway "half-made"?
Passion,
Obviously, I share your views. I recall a great line in Mario Puzo's "The Godfather": "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." To defeat a potent adversary, you most get close enuff to him to find the chink in his armor. And reading what he has written/said may provide access to such.
And, I don't know, maybe it is my quirky, arrogant mind. But I am at times buoyed by the racial-tinged madness of some White people. Because I feel that anyone who is stupid enuff to use race to underestimate my abilities is in for a rude and painful reckoning. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 458
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 08, 2004 - 02:40 pm: |
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abm: Phllips position is about whether it is racist, while Achebe's is much more. Achebe's discussion is academic and in the academic realm, our socalled towers of higher learning, Conrad and others are being taught as unproblematic classics.
So, it not not that he is surprised about the racism or he is not a "thinking man." If you reread the section on palm nuts and the thread on Phillips analysis of Naipaul, it is clear that he respects Conrads' work but is disappointed, for it is something to keep. Yet, if this is so, then it must be taught correctly, and so this is Achebe's contribution...changing the way it is taught!
The point is, similar to Carter G. Woodson's in Miseducation of the Negro, that these texts be taught correctly, because they are the canon, which is taught to our children from elementary school to college. As Passion has noted, many of our black students don't no anything about their people, and it is worse when they read aboutt them that they are dehumanized.
This work is hateful not only to african americans but it also contributes to and exacerbates conflict between us and africans. Remember these comments from Cynnara Collins:
ABM I don't understand. Why should we go back to Africa when we never been to it? We're Americans.
I don't see what I could do in Africa that I can't do in America. In some ways, the white people did us a favor.
She says again:
But I am not African. I am American. I am 20 and will be 21 in May thank you very much.
Yes the white people did my ass a favor and I don't like Africans because they don't like me. Not to mention, I ain't no African. I don't know nothing about Africa and I do not wish to know nothing about Africa.
These comments though extreme, are not unusual, nor is the same from African students, though it is for other reasons. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 340
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 08, 2004 - 05:17 pm: |
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Yukio,
I understand we must reconcile must of the rhetoric that has helped to engender/perpetuate the ill sentiment felt toward Africa. But rather than focusing on debunking what we consider to be wrong, perhaps we should instead make, embrace and fortify that which is right.
Passion,
Ok. I shall heed and embrace the wisdom of your words.
I do not intend to dethrone any of our noble Black 'monarchs'; be they of either African, American, Carribean or European birth. All I ask is that they 'rule' wisely, for dare we no longer let our course ride astray from truth. If you are a 'king', then be a good one, lest the prince should lay claim to your 'crown'.
Take heart, not all of us who would succeed Achebe and Cosby are milquetoast pretenders. Some of us can roar as proudly and fight as fiercely as our sires had ever dared imagine. So permit us our rightful position at the feast...lest we will take by force that which a withered hand can no longer deny.
And my daughter, please lower your strident arms, and open your hands. And in warmth, please hold and love me. Then, look at me and smile. Because you are my sister, and I too am your child. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 461
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 08, 2004 - 06:43 pm: |
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ABM: I see both(debunk what is wrong/fortify that which is right) as part of the same struggle. |
Reppskearn
Newbie Poster
Username: Reppskearn
Post Number: 6
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 08:31 am: |
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I love the dialogue that is occurring in this thread. I wish I could jump in, but I'm a bit rusty with my knowledge of Heart of Darkness. In fact, I 'm planning to reread it this summer. So, carry-on. Thanks for the intellectualism--a long
standing attribute of this site, that has recently been threatened.REK |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 466
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 09:31 am: |
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REK: hmmmm.....i don't see any threat. I see continuity, but I say thank you and go! |
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