Sunday, September 28, 2008

September 28, 2008

Gene M. Moore. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, A Casebook. 2004.

Introduction speaks of Chinua Achebe's essay on Conrad, calling Conrad a "bloody racist."

However, introduction also notes that the words racist and racism did not exist in Conrad's life time - first instances recorded in the OED date from the 1930s and even their predecessor, racialism, was not use until 1907. So Conrad may well have been a racist but not aware of his actions as Achebe's insinuates.

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Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa." In Joseph Conrad: Third World Perspectives, edited by Robert Hamner, 1990.

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