“The Intimate Profundity of That Look” : A Study of Cultural Encounters in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

Abstract

This essay aims to deal with Conrad’s shifting, often nuanced account of cultural otherness in “Heart of Darkness,” which is overlooked by the way in which recent critics continue to focus on the narrative’s pursuit of the Marlow-Kurtz link as the origin of imperialist bias in the novella. The essay argues that the reason for this oversight has to do to with the Cartesian frame of critical thinking shaping their interpretation in its utmost concerns over the Western canon’s political or ideological functions. The Cartesian frame is quite useful in highlighting problems of representation concerning cultural otherness. On other hand, such a critical approach fails to offer any solution to the imperialist logic of representation, since its dualist outlook only exacerbates the biased frame by idealizing the other as something radically dissimilar, whose truth is presumed to remain outside the scope of knowledge and power. It is thus with a view to moving beyond the Cartesian frame that the essay tries to explore Marlow’s steamer as a field of dialogical interplay, in which African natives are no longer shrouded in mystery, but an active part of what emerges as an ideal community of role assignments and activities. What is critical is how this sense of community comes across as an unexpected revelation, which rescues Marlow’s narrative from the Eurocentric frame of knowledge and power: In this moment of heightening perception, cultural otherness no longer stands apart from Marlow, but merges into the world of interrelatedness that also claims his full involvement.