Spontaneous Flow of Colonialism: A Postcolonial Reading of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

摘要

To a large extent, practice in post-colonialist criticism begins with a re-reading of Joseph Conrad's famous work Heart of Darkness. Those interpretations, more often than not, tend to focus on Conrad's questioning and exposing of Europe's colonial expansion, while overlooking the co-existence of its colonial discourse and postcolonial criticism. Conventional research subjects like plot or personal relationship aside, this paper aims to pursue, by means of post-colonial criticism, the spontaneous flow of Conrad's colonial tendency through a detailed analysis of implicit discourses like the one-sided allocation of power discourse, the presumption of a contrived dualistic distinction between "us" and "other" and, above all, his tacit approval of Europe's culture hegemony.