Russell Samolsky
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234790
- eISBN:
- 9780823241248
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234790.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter examines Heart of Darkness' apocalyptic drive to power by establishing a dialectic of “hollowing out” and “filling in” as the mechanisms by which the text incorporates the African ...
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This chapter examines Heart of Darkness' apocalyptic drive to power by establishing a dialectic of “hollowing out” and “filling in” as the mechanisms by which the text incorporates the African genocide into its textual field in a radical inflation of its technique of delayed decoding. It considers the Kurtz/Marlow pairing as the text's meditation on its future reception and performs the political intervention of setting a limit to the power of this text to consume mutilated bodies. Using Freud's analysis of the uncanny, the chapter turns the text's incorporation of African genocide back on itself, releasing an ethical counter-history. What the incorporated bodies now call up is the repressed memory of colonial genocide in the Congo, which is overwhelmed by its will to power over the Rwandan genocide. The chapter concludes by analyzing Heart of Darkness in relation to contemporary discourse on messianism.Less
This chapter examines Heart of Darkness' apocalyptic drive to power by establishing a dialectic of “hollowing out” and “filling in” as the mechanisms by which the text incorporates the African genocide into its textual field in a radical inflation of its technique of delayed decoding. It considers the Kurtz/Marlow pairing as the text's meditation on its future reception and performs the political intervention of setting a limit to the power of this text to consume mutilated bodies. Using Freud's analysis of the uncanny, the chapter turns the text's incorporation of African genocide back on itself, releasing an ethical counter-history. What the incorporated bodies now call up is the repressed memory of colonial genocide in the Congo, which is overwhelmed by its will to power over the Rwandan genocide. The chapter concludes by analyzing Heart of Darkness in relation to contemporary discourse on messianism.
