Analysis 4: Post-Colonialism

"The Noble and the Savage": Joseph Conrad's An Outpost of Progress and Edward Said's Orientalism

         In Edward Said's essay, Orientalism, he lays the groundwork for a methodical analysis of how England, and other dominant and Imperialist nations, have maintained their international socio-economic grip on the subservient peoples whom they exploit in their expansion. As his theory is grounded in Marxism--mainly that the more powerful class has the control to create and spawn discourses about an inferior "Other" figure. Yet Said's glimpse can be elucidated and enhanced aside Joseph Conrad's short story, An Outpost of Progress; Conrad's short story is a critique of the English Imperialism of the late 19th Century and can be understood in the context of Said's essay. In Conrad's story, we meet two white officers, Kayerts and Carlier, who are Britain's two chosen men assigned to maintain a station, an outpost of progress, if you will, in Africa, among the indigenous peoples--the "others" in the story. 

              

Living on their station's grounds, albeit in worser conditions than the two  British officers, is Makola, the resident domesticated African man. Conrad describes Makola as an African who is  "taciturn and impenetrable" and one who "despised the two white men” (Conrad 1073). Paired with Said's essay, specifically the line, "The Oriental is irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, ‘different;’ thus the European is rational virtuous, mature, ‘normal’” (Said), Conrad's text comments on how the inferior Africans--the colonized--are ideologically meaningful to the superior conquerers, Britain. Here, Conrad describes Makola the African as "taciturn" to reveal the alienation he encounters from his white, superior, invaders. He is described as "impenetrable" to show that he is socially distant from Cayerts and Carlier, the two white men who are different from him. Yet, Conrad is doing something more than merely explicating Colonialism in Africa here; he uses only Makola to represent the "different" and "normal" officers to uncloak the mentality the British had with their conquered peoples; the author is satirizing British Colonialism. Makola, then, is the "other," defined by the two Europeans but he is, too, the human who is unjustly exploited according to Conrad's depiction of him.

       

If Katerts and Carlier represent the Europeans dominating the inferior Africans, they do so with a certain ideology in mind--one in the sole interest of their conquering nation, Britain. Conrad describes the two officers in the context of this hierarchy when he says, “They had been in this vast and dark country only a very short time, and as yet always in the midst of other white men, under the eye and guidance of their superiors” (Conrad 1074). In addition, Conrad puts his own spin on the hierarchy he has focused on--that which has dictated the actions of its subordinate European officers; the author describes the two Europeans as part of a crowd, who "believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and of its morals, in the power of its police and of its opinion” (Conrad 1074). It is clear that Conrad is criticizing the British or European superstructure which drives its officers in a foreign land, as it forces its subordinates to its ends. Moreover, the two Europeans Conrad uses to critique such ideology also serve to show the inescapable nature and irrevocable influence of the ruling class, or the Conquerers, the British in this story. Said explains that  Orientalism’s rationale is primarily grounded in Western thought and rhetoric in defining Orientals as Others in discorse, that “these representations rely upon institutions, traditions, conventions, agreed-upon codes of understanding for their effects, not upon a distant and amorphous Orient” (Said). Thus Conrad's story isn't only highlighting the differences between the Conquerers and the Conquered, it also focuses on Western dominance over Eastern ideology. After all the conquered will follow the conquerer's ideology as it is impressed on them by force in the end. 

        

Later in the story, the two European officers come across another African tribe and its respective leader; he is describes as follows: “Their leader, a powerful and determined-looking negro with bloodshot eyes, stood in front of the verandah and made a long speech […] and yet resembling the speech of civilized men. It sounded like one of those impossible languages which sometimes we hear in our dreams” (Conrad 1077). There is something subtextual at hand here; not only is the leader powerful and resembling a civilized decorum, Conrad is using him to make a statement on how Otherness works. Said says that, “the Orient is transformed from a very far distant and often threatening Otherness into figures that are relatively familiar” (Said), and we can come to a new conclusion thereafter. Conrad is taking an African tribe, the Others in the story, and likens them to their conquerers, the two European officers. In one poignant sentence, Conrad has illustrated how the savage and incommunicable become civilized and powerful, even similar to their conquerers on an unconscious level in dreams. Subtly and vehemently, Conrad takes the Other and reveals his link to the Conquerers' humanity.

         

 Towards the end of his short story, Conrad has one of his British officers say,“We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know nothing real beyond the words. Nobody knows what suffering or sacrifice mean—except, perhaps the victims of the mysterious purpose of these illusions” (Conrad 1080). At heart, Conrad is making a statement on the discourse of a Conquering people, as he uses a white officer, or member of the conquering people, to ironically make his point for him.  Said denotes Orientalism as, “a discourse [that] exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power, shaped to a degree by the exchange with power political (as with a colonial or imperial establishment), power intellectual (as with reigning sciences like comparative linguistics or anatomy, or any of the modern policy sciences), power cultural (as with orthodoxies and canons of taste, texts, values), power moral(as with ideas about what ‘we’ do and what ‘they’ cannot do or understand as ‘we’ do)” (Said). Essentially, Said says that the imperial nation conquers a people with their discourse--one which is political, intellectual, cultural, and moral. Said's argument is relevant to Conrad's here--Conrad's European duo acts as the instruments of Britain's Imperial discourse; he uses the British officers to shed unabashed and sober light on what this discourse really is. Conrad, thus, reveals what Said implies--that the discourse of the conquering class, what Said defines as Orientalism (defining an inferior, conquered people as the other), is an illusory tool that has one purpose: to benefit the Imperial nation and exploit the Conquered one.

Works Cited   

Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1998. 

Conrad, Joseph. “An Outpost of Progress." Broadview Anthology of British Literature. Vol. B. Eds. Joseph Black, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, and Isobel Grundy. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2007. 1073-1084.