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1 Heart of Darkness
Not the Heart of Hardness.
Alexa and Nueva folks, the Slides.
Ok. Now that that's out of the way, let's deal with this "Bloody Racist" book. To understand this work fully, one must understand Congo, its govermental systems, and the Scramble for Africa (Africa's cakeification by Europeans).
1.2 Scramble for africa
- Europe goes after things in africa
- ivory
- gold
- labor
- diamonds
- land
- food
- rubber
- Visualization ### The Slave Trade
- Taken away:
- Male, 13-43
- Woman
- Children
- Left behind: babies and elderly
- Effects
- Population drops
- No more labor force
- non diverse economy
- colonized countries are dependant on the empire
- lack of infrastructure
- discrimination and racism
1.2.1 Presense in Africa
- Biggest colonies: france and england #### Started on the coast
- Because they needed steamships and quinine (tonic water) to go into the center
1.2.2 Naming: heart of darkness
- Civilization
- Skin color
1.2.3 Berlin Congress
- Countries got together and divied up africa amongst themselves
1.2.4 Congo Free State
- King leopold II believed that a country needed a colony to be cool
- created international association of the congo
- promised to promote humanitarian things
- "skillful and cunnnin diplomacy"
- slash vines for rubber and get it on yourself then scrape it off
- this kills the vines which means you have to keep moving
- rubber used for bikes and cars
- Pay tax or get mutilated / killed
- Humanitarian atrocities videos ### History of Congo Region
1.3 Critical Theory
An approach to contentualize a text + see through to something. Think: "a feminist lens" — Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, Maxist Theory, Feminist Theory, Post-Colonial Theory, Colonial Theory, Cultral Studies, etc. etc.
And, here's the rub: History is Written by the Victors — an important part of the analysis of the Heart of Darkness is to recognize its story in a Colonial Lens.
1.3.1 Colonial Theory
- View through the Colonizer
- "Written by the victors"
1.4 Congo's Colonial History
1.4.1 A timeline!
Figure 1: Timeline
1.4.2 Some background on the Congo Free State
1.5 Reflections
1.6 Why are we reading it?
For answers to the essential question, of course! KBhENG201AlexaD1
- How do literature, language, and storytelling both perpetuate and
dismantle the tools of the colonizer?
- Could be a text that attempts to dismatle racism => "loot at the damage that Europeans did"
- Could be a text that attempts to propergate racism
- How does colonialism shift notions of race, equity, socio-economic status, natural resources, religion for the colonizer, colonized, and the reader?
1.7 Objectives
Central to Know
- Basics of plot and character development
- Conrad's style and key lit devices
- History of colonialism in Africa
- King Leopold took "Ethiopia", and sectioned it off
- Spain and Portugal agreement => "spain has Americas, protugal has africa"
Important to Know
- Engagement with Essential Questions
- Conrad's background
Nice to Know
- Modernism + Heart of Darkness's relationship to lit history
*"The sunken eyes looked up … vacant … a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out slowly. … I found nothing else … but to offer him … biscuits. The fingers closed slowly on it and held — there was no other movement and no other glance."*
"Deadness in the eyes" => {the soul, the witness, sense, knowledge} => "the fool is blind"
- His eyes => the sunken eyes
- His fingers => the fingers
Ambiguity and dehumanization of fingers
- Frequent talk about the feature
- No descriptions as a whole
- Description of the non-black parts of the body only
- Notices and grapples with the darkness
- "White Eyes, Hands, etc" => notices the whiteness
- Dehumanization
- Porchugal invented a faster boat
- Brits and Franchies and Dutch had more nefarious goal
1.8 Graded Discussion
1.9 Essays
M.A. HoD Lit Analysis
- Jack's Take: KBENG201HoDLitAnalysisEssay