Chinua Achebe, Aggravated Postcolonialist

In his essay “An Image of Africa”, Chinua Achebe expressed his ire about the influential role Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness played in shaping and perpetuating negative stereotypes of African people in English-language literature and academia. (There's a quick run-down of how Achebe’s arguments relate to Conrad's book after the jump)
Achebe’s 1975 criticism of an 1899 novel reflects cultural norms and expectations of earlier European and American societies, which may be less valid in the contemporary era of globalization where many Americans and Europeans presume some African citizens to be literate and intelligent, and are more personally familiar with educated African immigrants in their own communities. Although Conrad’s symbolic link between moral purity and European whiteness (and its correlative connection of African ethnic identity with savagery and evil) is less explicit in contemporary European and American cultures, the strength of the white/black, good/evil dichotomy in his novel may subconsciously introduce such racist concepts to new generations of readers without the mitigating influence of an authority’s critical guidance.
At the same time, is it really the responsibility of a culture to slip a leaflet into each copy of Heart of Darkness, saying 'Africans are just as important and valuable as any other group. Conrad is a racist. Be nice. Be open-minded. Or else.’? And who gets to decide which pieces of information and artwork should be censored and controlled? I think Achebe’s contention that Conrad's novel fulfills some “Western desire and need” for superiority over other cultures (African cultures in this case) is an easier case to argue. “If the African characters in the Heart of Darkness cannot be accepted as peers with independent motivations (resembling those of the narrator and resembling ours) and an autonomous voice, pity is the response that remains” (788).
Charity events to assist impoverished Africans, such as Feed the Children, Live Aid concerts, the Peace Corps, and USAID have run for decades and are motivated by pity (among other factors). While some aid programs have helped people in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and other locations achieve economic independence and increase their quality of life, other programs have poor track records when it comes to actually assisting their recipients; such programs create cycles of aid dependence and perpetuate poverty (if the donations even reach their intended audience at all). Such aid programs may benefit their donors more than their recipients by allowing their (comparatively rich) sponsors to feel good about themselves by sending money to ostensibly help people. This situation echoes Achebe’s critique of Western-African power relationships: “the West seems to suffer deep anxieties about the precariousness of its civilization and to have a need for constant reassurance by comparing it with Africa.” (792) Charity work provides a convenient venue to demonstrate superiority in this model, because the ability to help others and dictate the terms for the use of aid packages demonstrates the Western donors’ financial abundance (which they may also construe as moral superiority). But is this an accurate perception of Western-African power relationships at the moment? Is this a new colonialism?
[The Jump, if the code works right]



Achebe's article:
http://www.sjsu.edu/upload/course/course_6697/Achebe_An_Image_of_Africa.pdf

Achebe's argument, as applied to Conrad's novel:
Achebe’s charge that “White racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely undetected” (788) may have some validity: symbolic contrasts of light and darkness permeates the events of Conrad’s narrative, elucidating the savage depravity inherent in all human souls by establishing physically dark African characters (and Europeans who imitate them) as examples of sub-human behavior. According to Achebe, “Conrad projects the image of Africa as “the other world,” the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where a man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by a triumphant bestiality” (783). Conrad follows the symbolic codes of the Victorian era to enforce his distinction between the ‘pure, white European conqueror-masters’ and the ‘dirty, bloodthirsty African slaves/laborers’; this color-based dichotomization relies on Victorian cultural conceptions of Africa as 'The Dark Continent”, a paragon of evil and symbol of depravity.
Language is a key factor in Conrad’s establishment of European cultural superiority in Heart of Darkness, and the literal devoicing of African characters in the novel enforces their subhuman status. Conrad's audience is able to access and understand the motivations and perspectives of the European traders, sailors, and other workers through the British sailor Marlow's narration, but they have no comparable opportunity to listen to the thoughts and perspectives of the Congolese. The relative accessibility of the European narrative compared with the Congolese story requires the audience to privilege the European version of events and encourages them to sympathize with the Europeans’ struggles, while forcing them to ignore the astonishingly tragic mutilation and exploitation of Congolese citizens under the rule of the Belgian King Leopold (because the English narrator usually does). Linguistic incomprehensibility exoticizes the Congolese characters, and enforces their depiction as enigmatic and animal-like savages who lack rational thought and the literacy that symbolizes such intelligence.