This Black thought revolutionary response to Eurocentric attitudes of African and Black people. Stereotypes have been designed to reshape African history and its impact on civilization, tracing back to the Greek. These stereotypes have distorted and made African history very vague, giving a sense of entitlement to others. Scholars have used this as a tool to deny African contribution to modern civilization, omitting the fact that all human civilization has been impacted by Africa from millions of years ago. This gave a sense of entitlement to Europeans claiming there to be no African impact on Greece civilization.
The reason for the first layer of narration is that “Heart of Darkness” is not so much about what happened in Africa as it is about the psychological, moral and spiritual impressions those events left on someone with completely different ideals and values and unconnected to what happened. The reason to the second layer of narration is less obvious to me at first. I think the role of “I” is of a witness and listener; “I”, like readers, learned that our ideas about “civilization” can be founded on lies, corruptions and unspeakable horrors. By the end of the story, Marlow’s tale significantly changes the narrator’s attitude towards the ships and men of the past. It leaves a profound psychological effects on “I” and readers; it prompts us to ponder the dark side of our nature.
They have been wronged by being overshadowed by the white man’s inaccurate account of events. From what we can understand about their customs, we should respect the indigenous population of America. American Indians were more logical than the white men who came over to the “new world.” Ortiz points out the hypocrisy of the white men for regarding the natives “as without any laws or government” when the white men themselves were “people who ignored their own laws and governments” (Ortiz
This is demonstrated through the differences in political stability, ethical standards, and gender equality in western and eastern culture. Western culture negatively impacts our views on cultural relativism and changes the way we view other cultural practices. To begin, the concept of cultural relativism is being covered up by the mindset of ethnocentrism, which is believing one's culture is superior to all others[2]. Clearly one's culture is affected by this mindset and it affects the way other cultures are viewed. North America is fond of their political stability and feel like it is more superior and therefore view the African government negatively.
It may be this delusion of great superiority that causes the colonizers to believe that it is nothing wrong with them forcing their ways upon the natives. Upon interpreting Heart of Darkness, it gives off the message that colonizers in general genuinely believe the civilizations that they colonize are inferior compared to their own society. In the story, a European trade company, referred to throughout the story as “the Company”, pushes their enterprise into Africa creating an imperialistic relationship with the natives. They leave practically no barrier between their business and the society of the native, leading to the inevitable abuse of the inhabitants. However, the excuse of civilizing the natives is used.
However, the problem to some is that Conrad's record of what went on in that place was perceived from the eyes of a European, who─and here I am referring to Conrad has betrayed his true nature of fulfilling his meant task as an ethical recorder-writer. One of the controversial critic-writers who has responded, and bitterly, to Conrad's claims which are viewed as to, beyond measures, belittle Africa is Chinua Achebe. Such labels have been referred to in an essay by Achebe which came as a response to Conrad's Heart of Darkness; the essay is entitled An Image of Africa. From here on I chose that the rest of what follows is going to be about Achebe's fight-back essay, his subtle disapproval with Conrad's Heart of Darkness, wherein many others, mainly Europeans, perceived it as a true record of what happened down there in the Congo, and thus regarding Heart of Darkness as one of the great legitimate masterpieces of all time. The question here which will carry on this research paper is, is Conrad really racist, or he is just trying to be a realist?
Although creating this dichotomy seems a gross generalization and oversimplification of the colonial African experience, it more importantly allows for a different perspective- one that exposes the overwhelming success of the typically peaceful or pacifist reaction in contrast to the little gain and large losses of the violent response. Throughout history, European powers have tried and succeeded in imperializing lesser developed countries, countries that did not fall under or follow the European standards. This was the case with China and Japan. Both China and Japan were self-sufficient countries that only trade with neighboring countries. They had the necessities they needed to live and did not want trifle gadgets.
Hunt Hawkins believes that Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was an anti-imperialism novel, as opposed to what some may believe while reading the novel; an example would be Chinua Achebe, who believes the novel to be racist and de-humanizing. Imperialism in Africa was evident in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the affects of it was not only political, but also social, psychological, and spiritual. This essay will show a critical deconstruction on imperialism and Conrad’s work. Background In order to understand the point of this essay, one would need to understand what deconstruction is as well as imperialism. Deconstruction, according to Jacques Derrida, started in late 1960s France and “upends the Western metaphysical tradition.
Howard Felperin writes: The discourse of colonialism […] abounds in shifting conflations of the ‘exotic’, the ‘demonic’, the’ monstrous’, the ‘slavish’ or ‘subservient’ under the master category of the radically and ineluctably ‘other’. (1995, p50) Native characters who you are supposed to sympathise with are often described as having European attributes, to make them less alien to the British consumer of this literature. As such, my argument will lean towards the question’s statement being true, with noted exceptions. The character of Caliban in The Tempest is not usually portrayed as being white. His mother, Sycorax, was said by Prospero to be from Algiers, capital of Algeria.
Then Kloby helps us look at real examples of different times in which colonialism has hurt Africans more than helped them. All of these authors have come to one clear consensus: colonialism has ultimately destroyed Africa’s chances of becoming a great and powerful continent. In Mies’ essay, she tends to be very pessimistic about the Africa being able to “catch-up” to other already developed countries. Mies says that, “the poverty of the underdeveloped nations is not as a result of ‘natural’ lagging behind but the direct consequence of the overdevelopment of the rich industrial countries who exploit the so-called periphery in Africa” (151). She denies that possibility that Africa can catch up by following the same path of industrialization, technological progress, and capital accumulation as the more developed countries have used.