after reading and discussing Conrad and HoD for the second time in my academic career, I have resolved that at least at this point in time I am a fan. I do not see Conrad or HoD as fundamentally racist although I think that there are certainly racist elements. I would however attribute such elements as literary devices or historical to the time rather than evidence of any inherent racism on Conrad’s part. this was a somewhat startling revelation for me as I studied HoD and Things Fall Apart last year and I felt very much the opposite. my teacher, who I admired greatly, HATED Conrad and I think that may have contributed to how I read him – it is very easy to hate Conrad. so to be perfectly honest, when I chose my essay topic discussing the racism of Conrad, I hadn’t as of yet formed any conclusion. I initially sought to prove the lack of racism in HoD simply to be the devil’s advocate, as proof of his racism is a much easier argument. however, I ended up convincing myself that, even if there are racially insensitive undertones in HoD the overarching theme and message of it, of the ambiguity of evil and race supersedes them. at what point do we do we allow a work of literature to simply be literature? I could be equally disgusted by Conrad’s treatment of women in the text, i think that there is just as much evidence to support his being a misogynist, as he actually explicitly comments on the role of women, but his opinions on Africans are always a bit more vague. the point is, though, that whether he is a racist or a misogynist, I dismiss these concepts out of deference to the greater message of the text.

i hate it when critics attempt to hold moral absolutism over writers as though they are supposed to be correct on every social and political issue of the day in which we are reading it. so Conrad was guilty of racism and misogyny just like everybody else was at the time. so what? he still wrote one of the greatest literary introspections of the human soul, in which he ultimately concludes that morality is not related to race or gender or stature or anything else. that is something worth celebrating in him.

here’s a quote from the photo blog post, Humans of New York, that says it much better:

“I can’t stand moral absolutism. You know, there’s always that guy who wants to point out that Martin Luther King cheated on his wife— as if he obviously couldn’t have been a great person if he did something like that. Or someone will bring out an inspirational quote, and get you to agree, and then inform you that Hitler said it. As if a good thought couldn’t come from Hitler. Moral absolutism keeps us from learning from the past. It’s easy to say: ‘Hitler was a demon. Nazis were all bad seeds.’ That’s simple. It’s much harder to say: ‘Is that humanity? Is that me?’”

my essay in part deals with the idea that it is not racism that is so offensive to us itself, but that it is offensive to our idea of ourselves as a morally superior society. and as modern readers we are prepared to pounce on any word that may threaten our carefully built perception.

to further illustrate this, here is a section from my essay that I decided to cut out due to length and relevance but I still like:

There is always a price for progress. For the rapid pace and convenience of communication we have sacrificed the charm and value of human intimacy. For the quantity and access of information that we have at our fingertips we have surrendered the sanctity of the truth. And for the price of a socially conscious, politically correct and egalitarian society one must constantly speak with caution, because every word uttered is judged, analyzed and condemned if found offensive to any of our cherished principles. Constant critics, we examine each connotation, allusion and innuendo with a fine-toothed comb, ever on the lookout for something that could be deemed morally dubious, culturally insensitive, or as a modern reading of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness may suggest, downright racist. Soon, with banners flying, the very values that we originally sought to promote are neglected in our race for moral supremacy.

As this is my last blog post I would like to conclude by first apologizing for the lateness of it. I can only attribute my delay to my excitement upon the writing of the blog post and the length of time that it requires for me to sort our all of my thoughts inspired by lectures and seminars into something coherent. it is a testament to how interesting the course is :).

First of all, my sincerest apologies for the lateness of this post.

1. Wollstonecraft

As likely evidenced in seminar I am a big fan of Vindications and of Mary W. In part due to her husband’s unflattering posthumous memoire, W’s reputation was severely damaged until the last century and she has thus not received much of the credit that she is due. I think that she is due credit as writing and therefore initiating the FIRST comprehensive discussion on women’s rights – and as a result human rights – and especially from a female perspective. there was nothing before her! no concept of women’s rights before she started writing about them. I find it interesting that some found W’s argumentation linking women’s education to being better wives and mothers as hypocritical. As noted in seminar I found the way that she structured her arguments brilliant in strategy, as it must be recognized that she was trying to appeal to men and she had to convince them that women’s education was worth their while, that it would benefit them. Regardless of her personal motives, I think that W should be applauded for her brilliant foresight and argumentation. Any woman can write an angry rant about our misogynistic society and men’s oppression of women – how successful do you think these women have been in truly advancing egalitarianism? It is women like Mary Wollstonecraft who are truly responsible for advancing the rights of women and society’s view towards them, through logic and well supported evidence, not through hyperbole and angry vitriol.

2. Hacking

I really enjoyed Rewriting The Soul and found the discussion of DID very interesting. As evidenced by my essay topic my main interest with this work is Hacking’s discussion on identity and the “self.” While Hacking may not say that identity is exclusively a societal construct, I think that that the case is made that it is still largely societally constructed. But while this may be true I think that identity is still a necessary and fundamental part of humanity.

3. Fanon

The concept of culture in Black Skin White Masks is something that is not unique to the time or specific culture that Fanon was discussing. It is something that many people especially in Canada struggle to define. Canada has always prided itself on being a multicultural country, the land of 200 languages but this has also resulted in losing a sense of what Canadian culture is. It is hard to describe to other Canadians never mind non-Canadians, what Canadian culture or identity is, often falling on tired clichés like maple syrup, hockey and amiability. Salim Mansur, a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario says that “a multicultural country has basically indicated it is a country without a core culture, or the core culture that once gave it cohesion, identity, framework, anchor, has been jettisoned to embrace a multiplicity of identities.”