Culturally-mediated Perceptions: Remapping Conrad’s Narrative of Colonial Violence

In this paper, I shift critical attention from a focus on the colonialists’ overt rapacious practices to a more fundamental question of how the Other is framed and perceived in the eyes of the colonialists in Heart of Darkness. I argue that the text allows Marlow to transcend the limits of his culturally-determined perception and perceive the uniqueness of the Other in his confrontation with the unknown; as such, it resists the inculcated exclusion of the Other. To this end, I first reconsider a characteristic Conradian technique–“delayed decoding”–in the narrative, and show how this literary device unveils the driving telos of perception, the culturally-mediated selective attention. Thereafter, I trace the ways in which Marlow attempts to transcend the limits of his culturally-prescribed perception and see the Other for who they are, even as he remains confined within perceptive boundaries inscribed by European language and culture. The last section discusses how Conrad creates a dynamic space for Africa by assiduously attending to Africa per se in his writing. Ultimately, the paper aims to reveal how colonialism continues to exert its influence on the way that the contemporary world itself is framed.