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Therein consists the most elementary formal definition of psychosis: the massive presence of some real that fills out and blocks the perspective openness which is constitutive of "reality."
Slavoj Zizek, "Grimaces of the Real"1
Heart of Darkness has perversely proved a central document in postcolonial discourse. As Homi K. Bhabha puts it, "the long shadow of Conrad's Heart of Darkness falls on so many texts of the postcolonial pedagogy."2 Notably, Bhabha cites Edward W. Said's Culture and Imperialism as an exemplary example of such a text:
Heart of Darkness is the novel that invites the most comment and interpretation. It serves as a resource for many of the central arguments in the book. In Said's early discussions of the complex address and consolidation of the imperial idea as ideology, Heart of Darkness features prominently. In the later, postcolonial perspectives that deal with resistance and opposition, Said demonstrates the "anxiety of influence" generated by the novel on the anti-colonialist fictions of Ngugi wa Thiongo, The River Between and Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North.3
When we turn to Said's book, Bhabha's comments are clearly borne out as Conrad's novel takes on a privileged and at times pervasive role. Importantly, however, there is a particular tension running throughout Said's discussion and use of Heart of Darkness to which Bhabha does not immediately direct our attention. This tension emerges from Said's recognition of an ambivalent status afforded colonialism in Conrad's novel, as it at once offers critics a perspective from which can be gained critical leverage on the discourse of colonialism and yet is itself one of the most concentrated and influential documents of modern colonial discourse.4 In terms of the former, Heart of Darkness has commonly been seen to present a subversive perspective through Marlow's perversion of the West's image of itself as the place of light and civilization. After his up-river journey into the heart of darkness, the Western metropolis is revealed to Marlow cloaked in the folds of darkness he encountered at the ends of the earth: the white woman, the Intended, resembles Kurtz's African woman; the tall houses lining the city streets appear in the profile of the posts with human heads on them outside Kurtz's Inner Station; and the pounding of...