Colonialism and Post Colonialism: Since postcolonial theory is rooted in the history of

Imperialism, it is worth briefly looking at this history. In modern times, there have been at
least two major phases of imperialism. Between 1492 and mid-eighteenth century, Spain and
Portugal, England, France, and the Netherlands established colonies and empires in Americas,
the East Indies, and India. This is basically the age of colonialism, since it concerned itself
with discovery and trading posts. Then, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, we
have the age of Imperialism; an immense scramble for imperialistic power between Britain,
France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and other nations. In 1855 Belgium established the Belgian
Congo in the heart of Africa, a colonization whose horrors were expressed in Conrad's Heart
of Darkness (1899).

The motives behind imperialism have usually been economic. Marxists saw imperialism as a
late stage of capitalism, in which monopolistic home markets were forced to subjugate
foreign markets to accommodate their overproduction and surplus capital.The Dark Continent
has always been the first target. The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 marked the climax of
the European competition for territory in Africa, a process commonly known as the Scramble
for Africa. During the 1870s and early 1880s European nations such as Great Britain, France,
and Germany began looking to Africa for natural resources for their growing industrial
sectors as well as a potential market for the goods these factories produced. As a result, these
governments sought to safeguard their commercial interests in Africa and began sending
scouts to the continent to secure treaties from indigenous peoples or their supposed
representatives. Similarly, Belgium’s King Leopold II, who aspired to increase his personal
wealth by acquiring African territory, hired agents to lay claim to vast tracts of land in central
Africa. To protect Germany’s commercial interests, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck,
who was otherwise uninterested in Africa, felt compelled to stake claims to African land.

Inevitably, the scramble for territory led to conflict among European powers, particularly
between the British and French in West Africa; Egypt, the Portuguese, and British in East
Africa; and the French and King Leopold II in central Africa. Rivalry between Great Britain
and France led Bismarck to intervene, and in late 1884 he called a meeting of European
powers in Berlin. In the subsequent meetings, Great Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, and
King Leopold II negotiated their claims to African territory, which were then formalized and
mapped. During the conference the leaders also agreed to allow free trade among the colonies
and established a framework for negotiating future European claims in Africa. Neither the
Berlin Conference itself nor the framework for future negotiations provided any say for the
peoples of Africa over the partitioning of their homelands.

The Berlin Conference did not initiate European colonization of Africa, but it did legitimate
and formalize the process. In addition, it sparked new interest in Africa. Following the close
of the conference, European powers expanded their claims in Africa such that by 1900,
European states had claimed nearly 90 percent of African territory.

A second motive is related to various visions of Social Darwinism. Some of the white
scientists saw imperialism as part of the natural struggle for survival. Like individuals, nations
are in competition, and those endowed with superior strength and gifts are able and fit to
subjugate the weaker nations. The third motive was the scientific and technological
advances of Europe such as germ theory, steamship, and machine gun. The final motive
propounded by figures such as Rudyard Kipling (in his poem such as "The White Man's
Burden") and questioned by writers such as Conrad, rests on moral and religious ground:
imperialism as a means of bringing to the subject people Christianity and the blessings of a
superior civilization, liberating them from their benighted ignorance. Clearly much of this
rationale rests on Western Enlightenment notions of civilization and progress.
Post Colonial Theory

A critical analysis of the history, culture, literature and modes of discourse on the Third
World countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean Islands and South America, post colonialism
concerns itself with the study of the colonization (which began as early as the Renaissance),
the decolonization (which involves winning back and reconstituting the native cultures), and
the Neo-colonizing process. Focusing on the omnipresent power struggles between cultures
and the intersection of cultures, Post colonialism analyses the metaphysical, ethical and
political concerns about cultural identity, gender, nationality, race, ethnicity, subjectivity,
language and power.

Influenced by the poststructuralist and postmodern idea of decentering, postcolonial literary

criticism undermines the universalist claims of literature, identifies colonial sympathies in the
canon, and replaces the colonial metanarratives with counter-narratives of resistance, by
rewriting history and asserting cultural identities through strategies such as separatism,
nativism, cultural syncretism, hybridity, mimicry, active participation and assimilation.
Backed by an anti-essentialist notion of identity and culture, it critiques cultural hierarchies
and the Euro-centrism of modernity. The major theoretical works in postcolonial theory
include The Wretched of the Earth (1961) by Franz Fanon, Orientalism (1978) by Edward
Said, In Other Worlds (1987) by Gayatri Spivak, The Empire Writes Back (1989) by Bill
Ashcroft, Nation and Narration (1990) by Homi K Bhabha, and Culture and Imperialism
(1993) by Edward Said. In literature, indigenous people from previously colonized and
marginalized countries have increasingly found their voices, attempting to assert their own
visions, tell their own stories and reclaim their experiences and histories.

With the objective of locating the modes of representation where Europeans constructed
natives in politically prejudiced ways, post colonial criticism intends to unveil such literary
figures, themes and representatives that have enforced imperial ideology, colonial domination
and continuing Western hegemony. It endeavors to probe beneath the obvious and apparently
universal/aesthetic/humanist themes in order to reveal their racial, gendered, imperial
assumptions. Postcolonial critics reinterpret and examine the values of literary texts, by
focusing on the contexts in which they were produced, and reveal the colonial ideologies that
are concealed within. Such approaches are exemplified in Chinua Achebe’s rereading, of
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Edward Said’s rereading of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, Sara
Suleri‘s rereading of Kipling’s Kim, Homi K Bhabha’s rereading of Forster’s A Passage to
India. They seek to identify the gaps and fissures within the discourse that provide the native
with means of resistance and subversion, and the dissenting colonial with means of
articulating opposition.

Key concepts in Post-colonialism

Othering: Othering involves two concepts — the “Exotic Other” and the “Demonic Other,”
The Exotic Other represents a fascination with :the inherent dignity and beauty of the
primitive/undeveloped other, as delineated in Yeats‘ Byzantium poems; while the Demonic
Other is represented as inferior, negative, savage and evil as is described in novels like Heart
of Darkness and A Passage to India.

Double Consciousness: A major concept formulated by W.E.B. Du Bois, double

consciousness echoes Frantz Fanon‘s contention of the divided self in Black Skin, White
Masks that the black always sees himself through the eyes of the white.Du Bois described
double consciousness as “two souls, two thoughts… in one dark body”, which Meena
Alexander later altered as “many souls, many thoughts… in one dark body”— pointing to the
migrant’s experience in multiple subject positions — a recurrent theme in the writings of Ben
Okri, Amitav Ghosh, Derek Walcott, Salman Rushdie, Caryl Phillips and others.
Mimicry: Mimicry demonstrates an ambivalent relationship between the colonizer and the
colonized. The colonized subject mimics the colonizer by adopting the colonizer’s cultural
habits, language, attire, values etc. In doing so, he mocks and parodies the colonizer. Mimicry
therefore locates a crack in the certainty of colonial dominance, an uncertainty in its control
of the behaviour of the colonized. Homi Bhabha notes that mimicry is the process by which
the colonized subject is reproduced “as almost the same, but not quite” — it contains both
mockery and a menace; it reveals the limitations in the authority of the colonial discourse,
almost as though the colonial authority inevitably embodies the seeds of its own destruction.

History: Writing in the wake of decolonization, after long years of imperial suppression and
effacement of identity, the writers of the Third World nations are increasingly interested and
keen on writing about their native histories, problems of colonization; they have written case
studies of cultural colonization, native identity and anti-colonial resistance. Anti-colonial
writing of the first phase is thus of the culturalist nationalist variety — embodied in
movements like Negritude, Africanite, and African Aesthetic. These struggles were aimed at
liberating themselves at the individual as well as the colonial level, from colonial attitudes
and forms of thinking. The postcolonial obsession with history, closely linked with the
overarching goal of decolonization, addresses issues such as 1) interrogating the effects of
colonialism, especially in terms of cultural alienation; 2) the anti-colonial struggles of the
Third World and the rise of nationalism; 3) the creation of mimic men in the colonial culture;
4) the appropriation of history by the colonial master; 5) attempts to retrieve and re-write their
own histories by the formerly colonized cultures; and 6) modes of representations. Retrieving
history for a postcolonial culture invariably includes an intense awareness that native history
without colonial contamination is not possible. The Subaltern Studies project seeks to
discover, beneath the layers of colonial historiography, the local resistance to colonialism. It
is a history from below, utilizing resources in native languages and non-colonial forms of
history-recording such as folksongs, ballads etc.

Nation: The postcolonial writers are conscious of their role in nation-building. In postcolonial
literature, the nation-building project seeks to erase the colonial past by rejecting and resisting
the Western constructions of the “other” as primitive, savage, demonic etc. and by seeking to
retrieve a pre-colonial past that would help them redefine a nation and project a destiny and
future. However, the postcolonial methodologies and epistemologies are almost always
mediated and manipulated by Western ones, and the native realizes that the destiny of the post
colony is not as ideal as had been dreamt of earlier. Postcolonialism brings with it a new
process of exclusion, marginalization and “subalternisation”, as Gyanendra Pandey argues,
“minorities. are constituted along with the nation”, and a continuation of colonialism through
the formation of elites. Literature of postcoloniality that constitutes nationhood emphasizes
the modes of constructing, imagining and representing the nation, the role of locality, space,
community, religion, spirituality, cultural identity and the politics of nativism in the making
of a national identity.

Race: According to Michael Banton, race is a concept that has been the basis of
discrimination and disempowerment. Race has become a central category in social, political
and cultural theory. Critical race studies, which includes studies of race in literature and
culture, ethnicity studies, studies of minority literatures, and specific traditions in literature
and philosophy, explicitly addresses questions of race and racial discrimination. Issues of race
and ethnicity lead to collective, communal identities and have a larger political and social
significance. The political reading/ critical practice of racial studies have had significant
impact within Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Black British Studies, and Asian American
Studies etc. The race turn has also been instrumental in the development of cultural
movements like Black Arts and Harlem Renaissance. W.E.B, Du Bois in his writings like The
Souls of Black Folk criticizes the scientific racism — Eugenics, Social Darwinism and
Nazism — which gives rise to “biological discrimination!’ He also argued that racism was
socially constructed, that it emerged through social discourses and practices and was not
scientifically demonstrable.

Gender: Postcolonial gender discourse discusses the double colonization of women by both
imperialism and patriarchy. In postcolonial literature, gender and sexuality have become
prominent themes in the last decades of the 20th century. Gender and the role of women in
the postcolohial countries have been the focus in the writings of Anita Desai, Ama Ata
Aidoo,. Suniti Namjoshi, Buchi Emecheta, and Nawal El Saasdawi. The linkage between
gender and the racial/ethnic identities has been the subject of numerous autobiographical
writings by native Canadian and African-American women like Gloria Anzaldua and Maria
Campbell.Postcolonial gender studies examine how class, caste, economy, political
empowerment and literacy have contributed to the condition of women in the Third World
countries, Another interesting area of study is the impact of “First World Feminism” on Third
World writers while exploring the possibilities of Third World Feminism.

Black Feminism: The domination of the black male in the civil rights movement and the
white woman in the feminist propaganda necessitated the emergence of Black Feminism
detailing the inextricable connection between sexism and racism.

Walker‘s Womanism, Angela Davis‘ Women, Race and Class and Kimberle Crenshaw‘s
Identity Politics discusses the marginalized, intersectional plight of the Black women. The
Black feminist lesbian organization, Combahee River Collective, started by activists like
Barbara Smith, is ideologically separated from “white feminism.” The CRC questions
conventional social hierarchy with the white man at the centre and began creating theory
which spoke of the combination of problems, sexism, racism etc. that they had been battling.

Neocolonialism: The term “neocolonialism” generally represents the actions and effects of
certain remnant features and agents of the colonial era (national parties) in a given society.
Post-colonial studies have shown extensively that despite achieving independence, the
influences of colonialism and its agents are still very much present in the lives of most former
colonies. Practically, every aspect of the ex-colonized society still harbors colonial influences.
These influences, their agents and effects constitute the subject matter of neocolonialism.
Neo-colonialism refers to the continuing economic dominance and exploitation of the
“politically-free” Third World countries by both national parties and the European imperial
powers.

Hybridity/ Syncretism: The Schizophrenic state of the migrant as s/he attempts to combine
the culture of origin with that of the host country, without abandoning either is called
‘Hybridity” or “Syncretism”. The central theme in postcolonial diasporic literature is the
negotiation of two identities — the split consciousness of being both, yet neither completely;
the multiple identities or solidarities; or in extreme cases, reassertion of native cultural
identity as manifest in cultural fundamentalism. Hybridity in postcolonial studies has been
influenced by the work of political theorists like Will Kymlicka who posits a “multicultural
citizenship” in the globalised world. This leads to the emergence of new identities where the
original identity, historical experiences and memories are not abandoned but is constructively
merged with the host culture, to move beyond the “constructed” limits of both, forging
solidarities against essential racial oppression. Cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall have
argued for “new ethnicities” that deny ideas of essential black or essential white identity,
proposing a “real heterogeneity of interests and identities.”
Heart of Darkness: Major Themes

Theme of Evil
Evil has a substantial reality, prevailing throughout the novel. In the very beginning when
Marlow, the main narrator as well as protagonist of the novel, was describing his journey to
Congo, he tells about the ancient Roman conqueror that invaded Britain and captured that
place with very brute and wild strategy. It was sheer "robbery with violence aggravated
murder on great scale and men going at it blindly ".here Conrad, through his mouth-piece
Marlow, intends to say that man has been the victim of the evil of conquest and brutality
which has robbed and created horrible scenarios as perceptible in the history of Mankind.

In the very outset of the story Marlow feels the existence of evil in the appearance of two
knitting women, to whom Marlow says there was something sinister about them. He called
the city of Brussels as " whited sepulcher" which is outwardly beautiful but inwardly corrupt
and full of vices and miseries. He has clearly expressed the tendency of colonial exploitation
among the Westerners who go to distant, undiscovered places with the purpose of
accumulating more and more money and power. Both seem obsessions to them.

Nature itself seemed to Marlow an evil, a monster. Dark cloud, dark jungle, dark bushes, dark
fog, immense heat, all the climate of the Congo was horrible, and Marlow, all the time feels
an evil lurking in the atmosphere.

There were few sights that are evident of the presence of evil. For example; sight of firing gun
aimlessly ; useless blasting of rock; six black men chained together , and an iron collar on
their neck; sight of dying men; sight of the head on post surrounding the main gate of Kurtz's
Station. These are the approval of the existence of evil in the white men who are involved in
sheer exploiting ignorant natives for the gratifications of their monstrous passion. The central
figure Mr. Kurtz himself becomes an evil- incarnate. Thus, we see evil pervading everywhere
in the novel.

Theme of Imperialism

This theme is introduced to us in the very beginning of the novel when Marlow tells about the
ancient Roman conquerors. They were too brute and inflicted many cruelties to the English.
Their conquest was "robbery with violence". They captured and seized whatever they got;
they robbed, ruined and shed lot of blood everywhere. In Heart of Darkness, ivory is the
cause behind white man's coming to Congo region. These white people wanted to satisfy their
lust of greed and ivory, and motivated by these two passions they explored the dark region of
Congo and exploited men a lot. Ivory was hovering over the thoughts of people like the
Manager of the Central Station, Brick maker, Mr. Kurtz, Russian etc. Thus there was no
moral purpose of white men coming to Congo. They were not intended to ameliorate the
conditions of native's life; their sole inclination was exploiting the black men in order to gain
more power and money. Conrad has condemned the imperialistic attitude of white men in this
novel, and it has a great value for both who were exploited and who were the exploiters.

Lack of Self- Restraint

It is want of self-restraint among the white people which causes their enlarging lust for greed
and power and imperialistic attitudes. The lack of self-restraint is the root cause of the white
man's devilish nature which takes demonic shape by and by. All the white characters in the
novel lack it badly. Their hunkering for accumulating more ivory begets from the lack of self-
restraint. They are called, by Marlow, "faithless pilgrims". This ivory leads them to the extent
of committing murder also. Mr. Kurtz is the best example for reflecting the theme of lack of
self-restraint. He was obsessed with ivory that later on he becomes an embodiment of evil in
order to gain more and more ivory. He was ready to kill the Russian because the Russian did
not surrender to him even a small account of ivory given to him as a gift by a tribal chief. Mr.
Kurtz, got gradually , involved in the abominable satisfactions and in this order started to take
participations in the midnight dances, ceremonies, and " unspeakable rites" of Congo men.
Thus he became their God, an evil man-God. The Russian and Marlow himself lack it badly.
Both have praised and almost adored Mr. Kurtz who was a devil incarnate. The Russian and
Marlow were well-educated, but fell as a prey to the bewitching impact of Kurtz's personality.
Marlow, who once said, Kurtz "hollow at the core", later developed a close friendship and
affinity to Mr. Kurtz. Only cannibals on the board of the steamer possessed self restraint seen
in not killing and eating the flesh of white men though they were suffering from hunger
miserably.

The Hypocrisy of Imperialism / Hollow at the Core

Heart of Darkness explores the issues surrounding imperialism in complicated ways. As
Marlow travels from the Outer Station to the Central Station and finally up the river to the
Inner Station, he encounters scenes of torture, cruelty, and near-slavery. At the very least, the
incidental scenery of the book offers a harsh picture of colonial enterprise. The impetus
behind Marlow’s adventures, too, has to do with the hypocrisy inherent in the rhetoric used to
justify imperialism. The men who work for the Company describe what they do as “TRADE,”
and their treatment of native Africans is part of a benevolent project of “civilization.” Kurtz,
on the other hand, is open about the fact that he does not trade but rather takes ivory by force,
and he describes his own treatment of the natives with the words “suppression” and
“extermination”: he does not hide the fact that he rules through violence and intimidation. His
perverse honesty leads to his downfall, as his success threatens to expose the evil practices
behind European activity in Africa.
However, for Marlow as much as for Kurtz or for the Company, Africans in this book are
mostly objects: Marlow refers to his helmsman as a piece of machinery, and Kurtz’s African
mistress is at best a piece of statuary. It can be argued that Heart of Darkness participates in
an oppression of nonwhites that is much more sinister and much harder to remedy than the
open abuses of Kurtz or the Company’s men. Africans become for Marlow a mere backdrop,
a human screen against which he can play out his philosophical and existential struggles.
Their existence and their exoticism enable his self-contemplation. This kind of
dehumanization is harder to identify than colonial violence or open racism. While Heart of
Darkness offers a powerful condemnation of the hypocritical operations of imperialism, it
also presents a set of issues surrounding race that is ultimately troubling.