Heart of Darkness or...

Racism for Dummies

Chinua Achebe Sells Himself Down the River


'Die Hodoshe Span'

Joe Duemer's teaching a freshman Humanities course on "the modern world". The booklist reads like a dream. Not having been subject to the teachings of professorial types, I wish I had a desk at Clarkson. Including Antigone, The Outsider, Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, it represents large chunks of my life and, together, much of my worldview [I've not read Maus or The Last Summer of Reason].

In 1973, Brian Astbury and his wife, Yvonne Bryceland, who ran Cape Town's first 'theatre in the round', the Space, put on Athol Fugard's play, 'Die Hodoshe Span'. It translates loosely as The Work Team of the Carrion Fly. Watching Winston Ntshona and John Kani open South Africa to my 14-year eyes the play, better known as The Island [any reference to Robben Island would have had it banned], had a profound effect on me. Fugard's early plays and their performance remain strong influences.

Central to the play is a performance of Antigone by the two protagonists for fellow prisoners and their jackboot guards. For some reason yet to coalesce to thought, I can't think of a better script to tie Antigone to Heart of Darkness. It also somehow raises or addresses Joe's disagreement with Professor Chinua Achebe, who believes Joseph Conrad to have been racist.

Bump this selection up against Camus' The Outsider, and all hell could break loose. The bugger of it is that these works remain so close to my skin. Anybody who can deride Camus' work would not recognise beautiful writing were it rammed up their noses. Anybody not having seen the opportunity to better recognise the greatness of Mersault's story in everyday, common-or-garden situations, is lost.

In Fugard's play, the transcendent spirit evinced by Ntshona and Kani when, as a child, I watched the sweat and grind and ugliness of Robben Island defeated by a refusal to accept the unacceptable, could not have left me cold. That first performance spoilt the theatre for me. I've not seen another play like it.

Through Camus, I understand the world. Through Conrad, I expect it and, through Fugard, I experience it. I can't put it any better than that. Marry Mersault's 'benign indifference of the universe' to 'the horror' of Kurtz and Antigone's laws 'that come from God' and you have a blogger.


Who is this, Bubba? This is us.

"...Conrad pandered to a certain stereotype of African barbarity that, at the time, was accepted as the norm. Finally, we both agree that this stereotype is still with us today."

Guardian

Yeah, oh boy, Joseph Conrad the racist, I know him well. Joe [Duemer] points to a Guardian article, Out of Africa, wherein the interviewer, Caryl Phillips, finds common ground with Conrad deconstructionist and detractor, Chinua Achebe, one of Africa's greatest writers. Achebe argues convincingly for Conrad's indictment as an out-and-out racist. I think he's suffering Pauling's Disease.

Apparently, as he got older, Linus Pauling [he of quantum complementarity and a couple of deserved Nobel Prizes], took to eating vast quantities of Vitamin C. Devoting books to the subject, he punted it as a cure-all. I reckon he'd lapsed into early dementia. Take too much vitamin C and you end up pissing it against the wall. You ripping into the Vitamin C, Chinua?

Perhaps Joseph Conrad, in some weird way, validates some inadequacy felt by fellow author Chinua Achebe. The Guardian article is well but duplicitously argued, but I reckon Achebe should be more upset by its title, Out of Africa, than by any long-dead white male. It would be interesting to hear his opinion of Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen] and 'her Africans'.

Heh... I wonder at the mind of the sub-editor who headlined the article. He or she is either dumb, artful or disagrees emphatically with Achebe. It's rather like calling the "father of modern African literature" the Lion King. So why does Achebe see Conrad as "a thoroughgoing racist"? Bugger you, I'm not going to synthesise it here. Go read his paper, An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Achebe is as disingenuous as he accuses Conrad of being. Ultimately, though, he is dead wrong and somewhat pathetic as he resorts to defending the indefensible, a silly paper he wrote a while back.

I have no doubt Achebe would heap scorn on anybody purporting to relate to his post-colonial African identity and feelings of personal injury when confronted by the colonial-era writing of a dead European author. To pretend to do so would be like a male cop telling a female rape victim [sorry, 'survivor'] he knows just how she feels.

Nobody but someone who has walked a mile in Achebe's shoes can tell where he's coming from. He is, however, taking undue advantage of a privileged position and anybody can call him on that. The paper and the article are so littered with gaping illogicalities, specious statements and generalisations, I'd be happy to argue my allegations any time.

Achebe's accusation is illogical, flies in the face of Conrad's body of work, diminishes its contribution to an awareness of colonialism's dark side, and wallows cumbersomely in "...a bombardment of emotive words and other forms of trickery". He ascribes judgement where there is none, deflects attention from the origins today's post-modern global slavery, and ignores Conrad's sense of the absurd and European mockery of self. He purposefully ascribes malicious intent where there is none, and offers evidence of a thin skin and serious personal insecurities.

Fuck it, he reminds me of my president, Thabo Mbeki, a bright man who needs to get a grip on himself.

Chinua Achebe has his row to hoe. Joseph Conrad had his, a century ago. I put it that Conrad had it a damned side tougher making it as an artist in 1901 than the revered father of African literature has in skewering him a century later. Conrad's problem was essentially European. What is Achebe's?

"And where is the proof that he is on my side? A few statements about it not being a very nice thing to exploit people who have flat noses? This is his defence against imperial control? If so it is not enough. It is simply not enough. If you are going to be on my side what is required is a better argument."

Chinua Achebe

Never Mind the Weather

This year, Cape Town's weather has been weird. It's mid-winter and the cold freezes the bones to the marrow. If one stays indoors, that is.

Outside, the mercury's been hitting 22-27 degrees Celsius on a regular basis. But we've had no rain. For a winter-rainfall region, it's not good news and the farmers are making the most of the space given them to bleat about 'the drought'.

We have a drought due in the next year or two but, if I know Cape Town, we'll probably see a surfeit of miserable weather come storm month, August. The dams will fill to about two-thirds of their capacity and those in charge of water management will continue to do bugger all to plan for our fifteen-year weather cycle.

In the early 70s and mid-to-late 80s, our winters were extraordinarily mild affairs and no rain fell. Drought is inevitable. To pretend surprise when it arrives along is a sure sign of negligence.

Mind you, without rain, it's bloody cold. Our average low has been running between 8 and 13 degrees which, in houses and offices without central heating, is bloody awful. Try explaining that to a foreigner, though. I see them wandering through the city in T-shirts and shorts. Bloody animals.

A north is blowing promises of rain...

Just Do It

As you're aware, I'm moving blog. It's a bugger. Frank doesn't think so and Joe turns it into a mystical experience. Si Adam just does it. I hadn't read SiBlog before coming on it at Wayward Webloggers and was thrown by its spring-water freshness. Without lapsing into condescension and as a parent, Si, I guess reaction to your blog might enable you to see why your folks are so damned proud of you.