8/9/2020 Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ portrayal of the Democratic Republic of Congo is outdated and problematic — Quartz Africa

Yet contemporary writers continue to use Heart of Darkness as a metaphor

and guide to their own views of Africa. Most recently,
Maya Jasanoff, a Harvard University history professor, retraced Conrad’s
journey up the Congo River in a New York Times op-ed. Her essay re ects
the research for her upcoming book, The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a
Global World. In her article, Jasanoff compares her trip to that of Conrad
and, in the process, falls right into the same racist tropes of Africa that he can
be forgiven for, but not Jasanoff today.

AP P HOTO

The Congo River of colonial times.

“The smoked monkeys brought the point home,” Jasanoff writes, describing
herself, the only white woman onboard, as “the real exotica” on the boat she
was travelling on. “When I saw the monkeys impaled on stakes, skulls picked
clean of brains and teeth thrusting out, I looked otherness in the face — and
saw myself mirrored back.”

The essay provoked a collective outrage on social media, part of a decades-

long rebuttal, especially by Africans, of the continued use of Conrad to set
 the parameters of Africa’s progress—or lack of it. For Africans, Heart of
Darkness is a dif cult read. The Africans portrayed in the book are primitive,
defeated, and grotesque. They are manipulated by the book’s shadowy
character, Mr. Kurtz, and are

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