In his essay An Image of Africa, Chinua Achebe has such a way of cutting to the essence of a matter that I've decided to refer to him in my mind as "The Katana." For example:
If there is something in these utterances more than youthful inexperience, more than a lack of factual knowledge, what is it? Quite simply it is the desire -- one might indeed say the need -- in Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe's own state of spiritual grace will be manifest.TKO! Put this way, the problems inherent in Conrad's approach to Africa and Africans become clear. The Congo that Conrad creates exists to serve his rhetorical objectives, not to present a fair and balanced ethnography. Simply because Conrad opposes the gross mistreatment of the native Africans does not mean that he embraces an egalitarian, progressive view of race relations.
In this context, Heart of Darkness can be seen as one chapter in Europe's internal struggle over morality. Africa itself remained an impenetrable, savage place: the dark counterpart to Europe's luminous civility. Achebe, again:
As I said earlier Conrad did not originate the image of Africa which we find in his book. It was and is the dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination and Conrad merely brought the peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it. For reasons which can certainly use close psychological inquiry the West seems to suffer deep anxieties about the precariousness of its civilization and to have a need for constant reassurance by comparison with Africa.Conrad got slashed. "The Katana" strikes again...
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