I’m struck by the “foreign” images in Things Fall Apart for which we have counterparts in our own culture that do not strike us as unusual, irrational, or primitive.
Okonkwo’s tribe, the Igbo, display total acceptance of their Oracle and the priestess’ commands to kill a boy and take a girl away from her family to a cave overnight. In the United States today, many people display total acceptance and readily obey quack physicians and prank callers on one hand, and the governmental power of the draft and military orders on the other hand.
Justified beating is excused in the native village. We say beating cannot be excused, yet our society often “looks the other way” when it happens in the military, during law enforcement, or among vigilante groups.
Okonkwo and his relatives practice both polygamy and monogamy. In the US, we sanction the official status of persons of the opposite sex share living quarters (POSSLQ’s), and accept several such out-of-wedlock sexual relationships over the length of a person’s life, and do not find it unusual for the same individuals to also have one or more monogamous marriages.
Superstition and polytheism are part of the villagers’ beliefs, becoming mingled with Christianity among the converts. In our country today we have hospitals, hotels, and other public buildings without rooms and floors numbered thirteen due to superstition, an Episcopal bishop who also practices Zen Buddhism, and many who adhere to a wide range of new age religions. We generally shrug off these ideologies, even among self-identified Christians.
The Igbo have a secret male society and exclusive meeting house, like current US all-male clubs, fraternities, and some Native American kiva traditions.
I’m also struck by our typically Eurocentric judgment of the native Africans’ culture as simple, without ethics, and violent. Achebe’s portrayal of the Igbo challenges these stereotypes in several ways.
The natives’ oral culture seems too simple to those of us raised in a written culture, yet we as DTC students study how our computer-literate generation is now cycling back to orality with the advancement of the Internet.
Rather than a simplified social structure, the Igbo have an intricate hierarchy, and official titles similar to our governmental, educational, religious, social, and corporate organizations.
In a different way than our combined governments now provide welfare, social security, Medicare, and Medicaid, Okonkwo’s clan takes care of its own, displaying high ethical standards(75).
These Africans place ethical priority on the higher good of all over justice of the individual (74). Our schools educate the middle eighty percent of students well for the good of society, often unfairly setting aside the individual needs of the top and bottom ten percent of individuals who under- or over-achieve.
We’re appalled by the unethical abandonment of twins among this tribe, yet many in our present culture support more violent means of dealing with unwanted babies through abortion.
Guns and a cannon are initially used only non-violently, in ceremony, by the Igbo, until there’s an accidental killing (74). Our own society has high violent usages of guns today.
These images should shatter our stereotypical views and widen our fields of comparison when we experience “foreign” cultures first hand--in our travels abroad, as well as in our personal relationships with those from other cultures here at home.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Exposure Invites Examination
Should We Read Heart of Darkness?
First comes naked truth; next, examination of “the other;” and finally—hopefully—self-examination. We’re shocked when Joseph Conrad reveals his view (through Marlow) of the horrors of domination, racism, and dismissal of one race by another, exposing the greed and cruelty of former generations in distant lands. As we read criticisms by Miller, Achebe, and others, sparking discussions of past and current colonialism, we dare to look more closely at our own culture’s attitudes toward the other. If we follow with an honest, humble look inward at our private thoughts and personal choices, we have most certainly benefitted from reading Heart of Darkness.
Visiting a culture and living among its people are two completely different experiences. Both in reality and his fictional journey, Conrad travelled to the African interior for a short time. From his brief encounter as an outsider, he made broad generalizations through Marlow's narrative which, in part, reinforced nineteenth century readers’ uninformed stereotypes of Negroes. However, Conrad went beyond his travelogue to pry open the eyes of his complacent audience. He enticed them—and us—to peer beneath the cover of accepted racism and witness secret happenings.
A third viewpoint comes from being one of those “others.” Nigerian Chinua Achebe, in "An Image of Africa," does not hesitate to proclaim “Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist” (343), in spite of critics’ defense citing the twice-removed narrator-within-a-narrator technique distancing author beliefs from characters’ flaws. I agree with Achebe’s conclusion, but see great value in the reactions Conrad elicits. Achebe chafes at Conrad’s overuse of antithetical concepts of silence and frenzy (338) when describing European and African dichotomies. Other readers may be annoyed, as I am, by the constant drum beat of darkness against light, black against white. Both treatments oversimplify the issues dredged up, which involve gray areas that escape clear definitions, and require infinite shades of ethical, moral, and cultural considerations. The fact that these are not yes-or-no, do-or-do-not, all-or-nothing choices is what makes this novella worth our time. The truth that we face various forms of these choices in our daily twenty-first century lives is what demands we engage the text, digest it, and allow it to challenge our “unexamined assumptions” (Miller 464, quoting Bette London).
One unchallenged assumption in the late eighteen hundreds seems to have been what Benjamin Kidd described as the inherently better work ethic and ethical behavior of one race (Europeans) over another (Africans), resulting in a natural dominance. Marlow echoes these sentiments, yet ironically describes whites carefully lining up numbers into neat rows while black natives do hard manual labor and starve without compassion outside the Europeans' offices (19). Do we allow this picture to turn our own notions of certain core attributes inside out? Do we dispute others' false statements about “what everybody knows” today?
In "Should We Read 'Heart of Darkness'?” J. Hillis Miller asks, “What or who gives us the authority to make a decision [about who should study Conrad]…Who is this ‘we’?” (463). Study of this short book should make us ask other far-reaching, long-debated questions: Who decides standards of superiority to label cultures or individuals as educated or ignorant, as smart, half-witted or idiotic? Which groups do we empower to determine the definitions, responsibilities, and rights of property ownership? Who establishes the value of a human’s life? Are we personally exercising such powers without realizing it? What mistakes do we risk when we dismiss another’s potential—as a friend, co-worker or possible spouse, as an employee or employer, as a daughter- or son-in-law?
Exposure to Heart of Darkness can result in a healthy, enlightening probe of our own core values. It’s well worth the uncomfortable, piercing light if we seize the opportunity to produce, as Miller puts it, “an active, responsible response” (463).
First comes naked truth; next, examination of “the other;” and finally—hopefully—self-examination. We’re shocked when Joseph Conrad reveals his view (through Marlow) of the horrors of domination, racism, and dismissal of one race by another, exposing the greed and cruelty of former generations in distant lands. As we read criticisms by Miller, Achebe, and others, sparking discussions of past and current colonialism, we dare to look more closely at our own culture’s attitudes toward the other. If we follow with an honest, humble look inward at our private thoughts and personal choices, we have most certainly benefitted from reading Heart of Darkness.
Visiting a culture and living among its people are two completely different experiences. Both in reality and his fictional journey, Conrad travelled to the African interior for a short time. From his brief encounter as an outsider, he made broad generalizations through Marlow's narrative which, in part, reinforced nineteenth century readers’ uninformed stereotypes of Negroes. However, Conrad went beyond his travelogue to pry open the eyes of his complacent audience. He enticed them—and us—to peer beneath the cover of accepted racism and witness secret happenings.
A third viewpoint comes from being one of those “others.” Nigerian Chinua Achebe, in "An Image of Africa," does not hesitate to proclaim “Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist” (343), in spite of critics’ defense citing the twice-removed narrator-within-a-narrator technique distancing author beliefs from characters’ flaws. I agree with Achebe’s conclusion, but see great value in the reactions Conrad elicits. Achebe chafes at Conrad’s overuse of antithetical concepts of silence and frenzy (338) when describing European and African dichotomies. Other readers may be annoyed, as I am, by the constant drum beat of darkness against light, black against white. Both treatments oversimplify the issues dredged up, which involve gray areas that escape clear definitions, and require infinite shades of ethical, moral, and cultural considerations. The fact that these are not yes-or-no, do-or-do-not, all-or-nothing choices is what makes this novella worth our time. The truth that we face various forms of these choices in our daily twenty-first century lives is what demands we engage the text, digest it, and allow it to challenge our “unexamined assumptions” (Miller 464, quoting Bette London).
One unchallenged assumption in the late eighteen hundreds seems to have been what Benjamin Kidd described as the inherently better work ethic and ethical behavior of one race (Europeans) over another (Africans), resulting in a natural dominance. Marlow echoes these sentiments, yet ironically describes whites carefully lining up numbers into neat rows while black natives do hard manual labor and starve without compassion outside the Europeans' offices (19). Do we allow this picture to turn our own notions of certain core attributes inside out? Do we dispute others' false statements about “what everybody knows” today?
In "Should We Read 'Heart of Darkness'?” J. Hillis Miller asks, “What or who gives us the authority to make a decision [about who should study Conrad]…Who is this ‘we’?” (463). Study of this short book should make us ask other far-reaching, long-debated questions: Who decides standards of superiority to label cultures or individuals as educated or ignorant, as smart, half-witted or idiotic? Which groups do we empower to determine the definitions, responsibilities, and rights of property ownership? Who establishes the value of a human’s life? Are we personally exercising such powers without realizing it? What mistakes do we risk when we dismiss another’s potential—as a friend, co-worker or possible spouse, as an employee or employer, as a daughter- or son-in-law?
Exposure to Heart of Darkness can result in a healthy, enlightening probe of our own core values. It’s well worth the uncomfortable, piercing light if we seize the opportunity to produce, as Miller puts it, “an active, responsible response” (463).
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Conrad Echos Hegel...Hegel...Hegel
On G.W.F. Hegel's
“The African Character”
Hegel’s general premise is that all African Negroes are incapable of comprehending any intangible higher power, and therefore lack respect for the immortal nature of humans. He concludes this unusual disregard for their own lives--and those of others--exhibits itself in an undeveloped, wild state which includes love of slavery, physical violence, and cannibalism. Hegel dismisses the African continent’s past and future (apart from the Europeanized sections) as having “no movement or development to exhibit” (212).
Seventy decades after Hegel’s sweeping assessment, Conrad echos similar sentiments in Heart of Darkness. One judgment Hegel puts forth is that native Africans’ “consciousness has not yet attained to the realization of any substantial objective existence--as for example, God, or Law” (208). Conrad has Marlow’s aunt speak of “weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways” (12). Hegel asserts “the Negro...exhibits the natural man in his completely wild and untamed state” and has no “thought of reverence and morality--all that we call feeling” (208). He describes “magicians, who perform special ceremonies, with all sorts of gesticulations, dances, uproar, and shouting, and in the midst of this confusion commence their incantations” (209). Painting a similar picture, Conrad’s Negroes “howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces” (36). Ironically, Kurtz presided at “midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites,” with Africans worshipping him--a white human--since he “must necessarily appear to them (savages) in the nature of supernatural beings” (50). In addition, it is Kurtz who exhibits the ultimate lack of reverence, morality, and respect for God, law, and human life by parading Negro skulls skewered on poles in front of his quarters (57). In an explicit display lacking feeling, it is Marlow who callously tips his black helmsman’s body overboard, acknowledging his faithful aide as no more than “an instrument” (50).
Proclaiming blacks as obviously inferior to whites, Hegel proclaims Negroes have “nothing harmonious with humanity” (208). In Heart of Darkness, Kurtz’s native followers are something less than human, attributed with “rudimentary souls”, while white pilgrims are said to have “small souls.” Yet at least one of Kurtz’s devoted friends (presumably the white Marlow) possesses a soul “neither rudimentary nor tainted with self-seeking” (50).
To illustrate his conclusion that blacks have no respect for self or others, Hegel asserts “Negroes indulge…(in) perfect contempt for humanity, which in its bearing on Justice and Morality is the fundamental characteristic of the race.” Conrad points to such perceived contempt by describing Africans variously described only as “enemies, criminals...and rebels” (58). Hegel declares that, among Africans, “tyranny is regarded as no wrong, and cannibalism is looked upon as quite customary and proper.” Conrad describes a black native, reported to be a cannibal, as having “fierce nostrils,” “a flash of sharp teeth,” and wanting to eat an unseen human in the bush (40). Yet, it is Kurtz who expresses ultimate tyranny--the cruelest, most oppressive, unreasonable, and arbitrary abuse of power--in his post-scripted advice to “exterminate the brutes!” (50).
Hegel concludes that Africans are “Unhistorical, Undeveloped Spirit(s), still involved in the conditions of mere nature” (212). Marlow mirrors this dismissive attitude, proclaiming Africa to be “so hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness” (55). Conrad supports Hegel’s view of blacks deserving little consideration when Marlow’s African helmsman is reduced to “a savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black Sahara” (50). (575 words)
“The African Character”
Hegel’s general premise is that all African Negroes are incapable of comprehending any intangible higher power, and therefore lack respect for the immortal nature of humans. He concludes this unusual disregard for their own lives--and those of others--exhibits itself in an undeveloped, wild state which includes love of slavery, physical violence, and cannibalism. Hegel dismisses the African continent’s past and future (apart from the Europeanized sections) as having “no movement or development to exhibit” (212).
Seventy decades after Hegel’s sweeping assessment, Conrad echos similar sentiments in Heart of Darkness. One judgment Hegel puts forth is that native Africans’ “consciousness has not yet attained to the realization of any substantial objective existence--as for example, God, or Law” (208). Conrad has Marlow’s aunt speak of “weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways” (12). Hegel asserts “the Negro...exhibits the natural man in his completely wild and untamed state” and has no “thought of reverence and morality--all that we call feeling” (208). He describes “magicians, who perform special ceremonies, with all sorts of gesticulations, dances, uproar, and shouting, and in the midst of this confusion commence their incantations” (209). Painting a similar picture, Conrad’s Negroes “howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces” (36). Ironically, Kurtz presided at “midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites,” with Africans worshipping him--a white human--since he “must necessarily appear to them (savages) in the nature of supernatural beings” (50). In addition, it is Kurtz who exhibits the ultimate lack of reverence, morality, and respect for God, law, and human life by parading Negro skulls skewered on poles in front of his quarters (57). In an explicit display lacking feeling, it is Marlow who callously tips his black helmsman’s body overboard, acknowledging his faithful aide as no more than “an instrument” (50).
Proclaiming blacks as obviously inferior to whites, Hegel proclaims Negroes have “nothing harmonious with humanity” (208). In Heart of Darkness, Kurtz’s native followers are something less than human, attributed with “rudimentary souls”, while white pilgrims are said to have “small souls.” Yet at least one of Kurtz’s devoted friends (presumably the white Marlow) possesses a soul “neither rudimentary nor tainted with self-seeking” (50).
To illustrate his conclusion that blacks have no respect for self or others, Hegel asserts “Negroes indulge…(in) perfect contempt for humanity, which in its bearing on Justice and Morality is the fundamental characteristic of the race.” Conrad points to such perceived contempt by describing Africans variously described only as “enemies, criminals...and rebels” (58). Hegel declares that, among Africans, “tyranny is regarded as no wrong, and cannibalism is looked upon as quite customary and proper.” Conrad describes a black native, reported to be a cannibal, as having “fierce nostrils,” “a flash of sharp teeth,” and wanting to eat an unseen human in the bush (40). Yet, it is Kurtz who expresses ultimate tyranny--the cruelest, most oppressive, unreasonable, and arbitrary abuse of power--in his post-scripted advice to “exterminate the brutes!” (50).
Hegel concludes that Africans are “Unhistorical, Undeveloped Spirit(s), still involved in the conditions of mere nature” (212). Marlow mirrors this dismissive attitude, proclaiming Africa to be “so hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness” (55). Conrad supports Hegel’s view of blacks deserving little consideration when Marlow’s African helmsman is reduced to “a savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black Sahara” (50). (575 words)
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