I'm not sure it is entirely illegitimate to focus on the degradation experienced by a colonizer--it's one way to convince people that the whole enterprise is bad even for those benefitting from it. It is often easier to relate to how your "own kind" can turn into monsters than it is to the plight of thousands of people who are abstract numbers to so many of those not directly involved. But I agree completely that it depends on how it is done. Focusing on SYMPATHY for the "sad colonial" doesn't do the trick. Focusing on how the "sad colonial" has become less than human, someone the audience would abhor, might work.
My own impression on first reading Heart of Darkness was definitely Kurtz as bad guy. That was back way before Vietnam. The book, like so many over the years, has developed overlays of meaning as we apply it in light of our current preoccupations and prejudices.
For me, colonialism has always meant at root taking over and exploiting others' resources for oneself. Genocide is the ultimate result: the power doesn't even exploit the labor of the colonized, but simply eradicates them. And that is what is going on in Palestine today. Genocide in Gaza, "mere" colonialism in the West Bank.
Thanks for the analysis of the Israel/Palestine situation. Meir was even worse than the most bloodthirsty of mandate-era terrorists. Unlike Jabotinsky, who had no illusions about what he was involved in, and never denied that there were other people on the land, Meir claimed that there were no Palestinians.
That said, I disagree with your analysis of Heart of Darkness, a work I've gone back to rather obsessively. I'm not saying you're wrong in your conclusions (It's a fiction, after all) but I see things differently.
Ultimately it's the bookends of
“You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies"
and the lie to the "intended" that closes the book.
Marlow is astounded that he gets away with it.
"It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle"
To me that's the entire point of the work, that it's lies all the way down by everyone involved even those who profess to be truth-tellers.
I’m not sure that’s really at odds with what I’m saying?
that is, Conrad is clearly saying that Kurtz is morally bad/evil/culpable. the question is whether he’s bad because he’s a colonizer, or whether contact with colonized people makes him bad.
and beyond that, the question of why a novel about colonial violence is centered on the question of the moral state of the colonizer.
"...they are “not about the Vietnamese at all…but about American guilt only.” Vietnamese people have no voice in these movies, which “allows Americans to talk on [their] behalf."
This could arguably be said about American films made in relation to World War II, especially those actually made during the conflict. When they weren't trying to make American people live up to impossibly dramatic and idealized portraits of the country, they were portraying the Japanese as sub-human people who didn't deserve to exist in the same vicinity as the U.S. And ignoring the fact that the U.S. had done a great deal of pseudo-colonialism in the Pacific Islands.
Utterly wrong and pretty tone deaf in the wake of the murder of two Israelis. You appear to have left out the part where Palestinians slaughtered more than 2,000 people. Apparently that's Israel's fault? What nonsense.
You know that Israel is starving the entire population of Gaza right now, yes?
The murder was wrong and evil; Hamas’ murders were horrific. Colonized ppl can do immoral and ugly things like anyone else. That doesn’t mean it’s not a colonial situation.
You’re not actually responding to anything I wrote. You’re just asserting that you think all Palestinians are evil and that Israel can do no wrong. Do you approve of Netanyahu ‘s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza?
Wow.
Nicely parsed! I feel deeply informed and able to reframe what is carefully framed and coming our way.
Excellently explained and related to our current, sad state of the world.
I'm not sure it is entirely illegitimate to focus on the degradation experienced by a colonizer--it's one way to convince people that the whole enterprise is bad even for those benefitting from it. It is often easier to relate to how your "own kind" can turn into monsters than it is to the plight of thousands of people who are abstract numbers to so many of those not directly involved. But I agree completely that it depends on how it is done. Focusing on SYMPATHY for the "sad colonial" doesn't do the trick. Focusing on how the "sad colonial" has become less than human, someone the audience would abhor, might work.
My own impression on first reading Heart of Darkness was definitely Kurtz as bad guy. That was back way before Vietnam. The book, like so many over the years, has developed overlays of meaning as we apply it in light of our current preoccupations and prejudices.
For me, colonialism has always meant at root taking over and exploiting others' resources for oneself. Genocide is the ultimate result: the power doesn't even exploit the labor of the colonized, but simply eradicates them. And that is what is going on in Palestine today. Genocide in Gaza, "mere" colonialism in the West Bank.
Thanks for the analysis of the Israel/Palestine situation. Meir was even worse than the most bloodthirsty of mandate-era terrorists. Unlike Jabotinsky, who had no illusions about what he was involved in, and never denied that there were other people on the land, Meir claimed that there were no Palestinians.
That said, I disagree with your analysis of Heart of Darkness, a work I've gone back to rather obsessively. I'm not saying you're wrong in your conclusions (It's a fiction, after all) but I see things differently.
Ultimately it's the bookends of
“You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies"
and the lie to the "intended" that closes the book.
Marlow is astounded that he gets away with it.
"It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle"
To me that's the entire point of the work, that it's lies all the way down by everyone involved even those who profess to be truth-tellers.
I’m not sure that’s really at odds with what I’m saying?
that is, Conrad is clearly saying that Kurtz is morally bad/evil/culpable. the question is whether he’s bad because he’s a colonizer, or whether contact with colonized people makes him bad.
and beyond that, the question of why a novel about colonial violence is centered on the question of the moral state of the colonizer.
Thank you for once again blowing my mind. Now that you point this out, I can see it all over the place. And that Kipling poem is deeply fucked up.
"...they are “not about the Vietnamese at all…but about American guilt only.” Vietnamese people have no voice in these movies, which “allows Americans to talk on [their] behalf."
This could arguably be said about American films made in relation to World War II, especially those actually made during the conflict. When they weren't trying to make American people live up to impossibly dramatic and idealized portraits of the country, they were portraying the Japanese as sub-human people who didn't deserve to exist in the same vicinity as the U.S. And ignoring the fact that the U.S. had done a great deal of pseudo-colonialism in the Pacific Islands.
Utterly wrong and pretty tone deaf in the wake of the murder of two Israelis. You appear to have left out the part where Palestinians slaughtered more than 2,000 people. Apparently that's Israel's fault? What nonsense.
You know that Israel is starving the entire population of Gaza right now, yes?
The murder was wrong and evil; Hamas’ murders were horrific. Colonized ppl can do immoral and ugly things like anyone else. That doesn’t mean it’s not a colonial situation.
You’re not actually responding to anything I wrote. You’re just asserting that you think all Palestinians are evil and that Israel can do no wrong. Do you approve of Netanyahu ‘s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza?