[lbo-talk] Lincoln Gordon, he dead

[c b]

James Heartfield
I am just re-reading Heart of Darkness now, and find it difficult to
think of Conrad as a racist. The book is plainly one facet of that
upsurge of humanitarian feeling in England that exposed the atrocities
in the Belgian Congo. He was a friend of Roger Casement, I think.
Conrad comes to it though as an artist, not a political pamphleteer,
and so he occupies the minds of people who characters who are racists.
But representation of white cruelty is no more white cruelty than the
representation of Christ on the cross is collusion with the torture of
Christ. Where you can fault him is that there are no black characters
who are agents, no black characters at all, really, whereas there was
at least one black American prominent in the Congo movement. But I
wouldn't call that racist, just the limitations of his writing.

^^^^^
CB: How about Euro-centric ? (smile) I mean if there is nothing from
the standpoint of a non-European ?