Žižekian Spectres in Conrad: Or What Happens to the Hoard of Gold in The Rover

Abstract

For Žižek, ideology is a systematically distorted communication: a text in which under the influence of unavowed social interest (of domination, etc.), a gap separates its ‘official’, public meaning from its actual intention…” and the repressed surplus unsymbolized by ideolgy haunts society in the form of spectres. For instance, in a unified nation, class conflicts are often the repressed kernel of the ideologically smooth operation of a nation. In Conrad’s novels, various hoards of treasure, whether it be gold, silver, ivory, or even coal will be the spectre of the repressed kernel of the imperialist ideology. It is the place where the interests of the ruling and the ruled of the empire collide contrary to the ideological profession of mutual beneficiality of the imperialist arrangement. The problematic hoard is often packaged in the language of ideology such as material interest, efficiency, and progress. But there is always the repressed residue, the greed, and it comes back in the form of spectral images, visions, or rumors of hoards and works havoc on the lives of the characters. Since the imperialist ideology is not such a consciously fabricated ideology as Nazism, which seems to be Žižek’s model for ideological analysis, the spectre does not completely mask the repressed real as in Žižek, but his model suggests ways to solve the enigma of various spectral visions of hoards that haunt Conrad’s world. In Conrad’s last finished novel, The Rover, which is set in the post-revolutionary and Napoleonic France, one finds a pile of gold, which does not behave in the haunting and cursed manner as most of Conrad’s hoards do. This is perhaps due to the fact that in the time frame deployed in the novel, the imperialist ideology has not quite been consolidated securely and its residue has not acquired the haunting and fetishistic power to the full. However, even though the pile of gold seems to secure an existence free of ideology for the protagonist Peyrol, in the end it implicates him in the Napoleonic dream of regaining maritime hegemony for France. And the gold sunk in the well by Peyrol is turned into the government coffer perhaps to be used for the reconstruction of France and eventually for rebuilding the second French colonial empire. Tenuous as its relationship with the imperialist ideology seems to be, its trajectory is inseparable from the course of maritime hegemony and imperialism. Conrad’s seeming endorsement of the Napoleonic dream of conquest can be explained by his Polish background. Napoleon’s army campaigning against Russia was welcomed by the Poles as an army of liberation. Reliving the dream of homecoming and sacrificing himself for the success of Napoleonic campaign through the surrogate self Peyrol is Conrad the exile’s wish fulfillment, and his slackening of the critical edge in dealing with the spectre of imperialism, the hoard of treasure, can perhaps be understood in this context.