반제국주의 속의 어둠 —『암흑의 핵심』에 나타난 인종주의 (Darkness at the Heart of Anti-Imperialism: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국영어영문학회
· 수록지 정보 : 영어영문학 / 55권 / 1호 / 61 ~ 82페이지
· 저자명 : 신문수

초록

This paper aims to reexamine the issue of racism in Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness, especially in the light of Chinua Achebe’s critique of the novella as
a racist text entrenched with European prejudices of Africa and its people in
his 1975 speech at the University of Massachusetts titled “An Image of
Africa.” While the novella’s indictment of imperial exploitation has been
noted from an early stage of its critical reception, its racism had hardly been
discussed until Chinua Achebe posed it. Achebe offers the canonized status of
the text as a modernist classic, “the most commonly prescribed novel in twentieth-
century literature courses,” as one reason for its obvious manifestations
of racism being glossed over. One may add that Conrad’s militant denunciation
of imperialist enterprises as “a sordid farce,” his seemingly radical stance
against imperialism, serves as ideological constraints upon his readers, blinding
them to its immanent racism.
A closer look at the novella’s attack on imperialism turns out to be contradictory,
for it also shows such liberal-humanist ideas as the civilizing mission,
the work ethic, and the superiority of civilized man, all of which served to
prop up European imperialism at the end of the nineteenth century. This ideological
contradiction also accounts for Conrad’s racist attitude, which is
betrayed in his portrayal of Africans as obscure, primitive. Euro-American
imperialism has frequently justified itself by recourse to racism, but racism
has not always been allied with imperialism. Some staunch racists such as
Robert Knox and Arthur de Gobineau went against imperialism, and Conrad
proves one of such cases whose critique of imperialism is voiced in ways that
can be characterized as racist.

영어초록

This paper aims to reexamine the issue of racism in Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness, especially in the light of Chinua Achebe’s critique of the novella as
a racist text entrenched with European prejudices of Africa and its people in
his 1975 speech at the University of Massachusetts titled “An Image of
Africa.” While the novella’s indictment of imperial exploitation has been
noted from an early stage of its critical reception, its racism had hardly been
discussed until Chinua Achebe posed it. Achebe offers the canonized status of
the text as a modernist classic, “the most commonly prescribed novel in twentieth-
century literature courses,” as one reason for its obvious manifestations
of racism being glossed over. One may add that Conrad’s militant denunciation
of imperialist enterprises as “a sordid farce,” his seemingly radical stance
against imperialism, serves as ideological constraints upon his readers, blinding
them to its immanent racism.
A closer look at the novella’s attack on imperialism turns out to be contradictory,
for it also shows such liberal-humanist ideas as the civilizing mission,
the work ethic, and the superiority of civilized man, all of which served to
prop up European imperialism at the end of the nineteenth century. This ideological
contradiction also accounts for Conrad’s racist attitude, which is
betrayed in his portrayal of Africans as obscure, primitive. Euro-American
imperialism has frequently justified itself by recourse to racism, but racism
has not always been allied with imperialism. Some staunch racists such as
Robert Knox and Arthur de Gobineau went against imperialism, and Conrad
proves one of such cases whose critique of imperialism is voiced in ways that
can be characterized as racist.

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