ENGA10

LEC #4

2.5 days
Prompt that summarizes a lot of main ideas
4 quotes from the work we will cover
Keep up on readings

Topic: Heart of Darkness (looping it back to Dorian Gray)

● Heart and darkness is the geopolitical equivalent of the picture of dorian gray
● PODG is a individual psychological allegory
○ Oscar Wilde refers to Dorian Gray as an experiment (a scientific position)

● What the soul and self have in common is that they both look for what is missing (soul;
connection to god. If you lose your soul, you lose awareness of the connection that there
is something better, greater and transcendent outside of this world
● Whenbasil is trying to pray when he sees the whole painting
● People want materialistic things, but none of those things matter when you can’t take
them with you.
● Money making money is unnatural and represents something satanic. Money used to be
subservient to labour until interest began to make its appearance.
● When money can make money, you don’t need people and the increasing number of
billionaires is an example.
● It easier to multiply wealth then make/get wealth
● Think about Dorian grey as the stock market; market sets value for certain items (dorian
grey is worth his beauty). Investment vs gamble
○ You are told that this stick is worth something and it might not be true but it is
what you have to pay that amount
○ A stock itself is valueless its value lies in relation to other things
○ Interest allows something to come from nothing
● From age of science to age of economics: divine judgement; something happens that
you don't understand; you lose your job, negative mortgage
● We are in an increasingly systematic time that is becoming increasingly economic and
while that may be bad in some sense, it helps make sense of thing.s You don’t
understand the value of yourself or things, but there is already a value set for you

● Dorian grey is like a stock that appears to be worth more far more than its actual worth
● Alan Campbell (the chemist) people who invest in dorian gray go bankrupt. They think
he's worth so much and pay so much and then they go bankrupt.
○ Dorian to Sibyl “without your art you are nothing” your value is not your own but it
is associated with other things
○ Dorian’s value was not intrinsic to him (his soul) but to his youthful beauty
 ○ Dorian Gray is a bad stock that is overvalued

● Marlow in Heart of Darkness

○ Something compulsive about the telling of his story
○ Hes not trying to entertain but he is thinking out loud
○ Marlow is an unreliable narrator; he tells you what he thinks but hes not sure
what he thinks, as a modern reader you are reading as someone trying to figure
out whats wrong. The character doesn't know either and so you listen on a
character trying to make sense of their life and so you try to make sense of their
life through that but its full of self deception and self delusion
○ When you move from soul to self your soul is aware that something is missing.
■ Devotion of the soul comes through deprivation you feel in self
■ Cautionary tale of the soul is if you try to cure your soul with things to
please the self, you will lose everything

● The self says you need to fulfil yourself with other people and their energy now
(vampiric)
● Self confidence is vampiric and draws on the insecurities of others
Self confidence is a hologram and projection of the insecurities of people they are lauding it over
● The self is a bucket with a hole in it
● Marlow and heart of Darkness: relationship of Dorian Gray to Sibyl vane is what the
company was to the congo without your ivory you are nothing/ without your art you are
nothing
● Going to another area or county and extracting resources without any return
○ Vampiric but also seen as an extension of the self
○ How does a man profit who gains the whole world and loses his whole soul?
○ The only point in the world is profit; what the economic world call slord henry’s
equivalent of sensation
○ Profit becomes a pleasing sensation
○ Age of science and the self; point of exchange is to leave with more than you
have going in
○ This is vampiric. You are profiting off someone else
○ Dorian and Sybil grane - in an economic market where things value is what they
can do for you versus now in an exchange economy how does it make you feel
○ Dorian Gray demands brand loyalty from sibyl vane which she no longer gave

● Marlow is a misfit who can't seem to get a job, his aunt got his job for him
○ He is a misfit; already suspicious of ideology and suspicious of the company and
what they were saying about the “Belgian Congo”
○ The company was bringing the savages and civilization and giving them jobs
○ The company would go into random villages, separate the men from the women
and the children, lock up the women and the children
○ Demand for ivory reduced and demand for rubber increased
 ○ Men were forced to bring some amount of rubber or they would be physically
punished
○ The system was brutal
○ Its not over, the congo is still a thing now it is cobalt; the minerals that go into
your computer and phone
○ Child labour also exists
○ Also minerals that fuel wars and create bioweapons
○ The congo’s intrinsic value is not the soul (the people) but what is associated with
them (rubber and minerals)
○ Once all that is possible that has been extracted, they up and move (vampiric)
● Kurtz falls apart because he won't allow his ideology to be altered
● Marlow also falls apart and has a nervous breakdown, but realities in the Congo have
created a nervous breakdown and he goes back to London shattered because he can't
look at London without knowing that the Congo makes this possible. Brussels makes this
possible. The pomp and circumstances of London are due to the exploitation of the
congo and their labour. Wealth kept flowing in without anything else in return
● Nobody cares about kurtz but they care that the ivory has stopped (your value is not
intrinsic to yourself but what you can do for others)
○ “But the ivory stopped coming”
● You give people a name that fits with your sense of Justice
● Kurtz’ voice is perfectly synced with the dominant ideology it sound like it makes perfect
sense

RUDYARD KIPLING: WHITE MAN’S BURDEN

● He was very pro dominant ideology
● He calls the people inferiors
● ‘Take up the white man’s burden- and reap his old reward’
● Capitalism is a way to naturalise and justify a certain group of people;s wealth
● When you're self driver you have a certain kind of nature and when you're soul driven,
you have a different type of human nature
○ “There is a heaven and hell in both of us” Dorian gray
○ We are capable of being cruel and we are capable of being kind

INSTITUTIONAL RACISM AND THE RHIZOME

● Arborescent thought vs rhizomatic thought
● Rhizomatic thought; there are connections that you don't see
● We should try to use rhizomatic thought
● Aborescent thought process separates things as if they are not interrelated and
combined and separates elements eg. the periodic table
● In a way, wisdom in a way is being able to think rhizomatically
● Whiteness is a position of privilege
● White supremacy is often promoted to underprivileged people who are “white” and say
you aren’t privileged because coloured people are taking your jobs and positions in
society.
● Racism is a way to naturalise social inequality and wealth inequality
● Kurtz - when he could get the congo people to do or be who he wanted he wanted to kill
them (similar to Dorian with similar vane)
● Marlows rhizomatic gives him a unique vantage point outside the “arborescent reality”
that the company has imposed on the congo designed to locate and retract a resource
(ivory) out of the congo as cheaply as possible (exploiting native labour) and selling it for
as much as possible (the ivory keys on kurt intended fiancee’s piano)
○ Everything in that elegant drawing room has the blood of the congo all over it
● Paranoia, megalomania and disassociation surround the “self” and is at constant war
with these things trying to keep them at bay while indulging in your identity, personality
and performance
● Self cannot stand by itself, it will fall over
● When Marlow lied to the assistant about Kurtz ' last words and said “it was your name”
she was like “I knew it i knew it”. She was sure
○ Certitude
○ Marlow lied because if he didn't it would shatter the dominant ideology

● Dominant ideology is like a drug that keeps people comfortably numb

● What seems to have permanently altered Marlow is how the apparent wealth and
wellbeing of a very satisfied western society i speed off the systemised torture and
institutionalised racism of the congolese
● Other people’s knowledge of life became an “irritating pretence” for Marlow
○ Is this kind of like false class consciousness?
○ There is also this word in the dictionary of obscure sorrows related to kansas and
oz very related to this

● Capitalism and racism are mutually constituent

● Like lord henry, ads appeal to your worst fears and insecurities
●