/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12438386]

stop reading Conrad

[Anonymous No.12438412]

No, and Things Fall Apart was fucking boring.

[Anonymous No.12438453]

>>12438386
i haven't read image of africa, why does he think conrad is racist?
they were savages in africa at the time weren't they

[Anonymous No.12438476]

>>12438453
>they were savages in africa at the time weren't they
No, that was a myth used to justify colonialism. This is exactly what Achebe is pointing out

[Anonymous No.12438485]

>>12438476
but there are still headhunters in uncontacted islands in the indian ocean

[Anonymous No.12438937]

>>12438476
Africans are still savages

[Anonymous No.12438960]

>>12438937
By the magic of cherry picking, so are Europeans.

[Anonymous No.12438977]

>>12438476
I like Achebe but i'm not sure I agree with his take on Heart of Darkness. It IS a racist book but that racism is more reflective of the madness and degeneracy of the white man than anything indicative of the natives, the theme of "blackness" in the book is really just a mirror held up to the worst aspects of the colonisers. The rage of Caliban not seeing his face in the mirror.

[Anonymous No.12438982]

>>12438960
Go visit Africa and don't come back (not even as a corpse).

[Anonymous No.12438997]

>>12438982
Real scary
>>12438937
this guy has a photo of a bunch of garbage saved to his computer so he can be racist whenever the situation calls for it. What a fuckin' genius literary hero.

[Anonymous No.12439005]

>>12438982
Challenge accepted.

[Anonymous No.12439011]

>>12438960
>>12438937
We could look at more substantive things like large, general economic data, national IQ, policy, longitudinal success over history etc. But the funny thing is we don't even have to because the picture you cherry-picked for Europe is not even close to as bad as the cherry-picked picture for Africa.

[Anonymous No.12439016]

>>12438476
>No, that was a myth used to justify colonialism
Sure, let's just pretend that vast swathes of the interior of Africa weren't living a literal stone-age existence right up until the advent of colonialism. Also, read up about the Bantu expansion and how it can be mapped with DNA, the Bantus of west Africa genocided their way across central and southern Africa with a savagery only matched by the Mongols, no wonder East Africans hate them.

[Anonymous No.12439022]

>>12439011
I mean I could post a picture of the 9/11 aftermath as proof that Americans are losers, but that would just be fucking petty and stupid which is what posting a picture of a bunch of garbage as a metonym for an entire continent basically is.

[Anonymous No.12439026]

>>12439005
Um sweetie, all I see is cultural appropriation. They need to give it all back. Huts made of cow shit are true African culture.

[Anonymous No.12439036]

>>12439026
Right, because all that shit belongs to you exclusively you fucking basement dweller

[Anonymous No.12439046]

>>12438960
lmao good job not being able to get a better comparison pic

[Anonymous No.12439054]

>>12439036
You smelly nigger

[Anonymous No.12439055]

>>12438937
loos like my room

[Anonymous No.12439058]

>>12439016
>let's just pretend that vast swathes of the interior of Africa weren't living a literal stone-age existence
They weren't though. That's a myth invented to justify colonialism. But who cares dude, you just want to give your racism a figleaf

[Anonymous No.12439059]

>>12438960
This is making me laugh my ass off. Fuck

[Anonymous No.12439063]

>>12439054
Your only contribution to "western culture" is drinking too much fucking mountain dew

[Anonymous No.12439062]

>>12439046
>Le civilized European face

[Anonymous No.12439077]

>>12438960
When were the Europeans not animals?

[Anonymous No.12439091]

>OP is about a black writer
>thread is instantly derailed by faggots arguing about whether or not Africans are savages

Racism is not /lit/-related thank you

[Anonymous No.12439101]

>>12438386
no

[Anonymous No.12439115]

>>12439062
the dead layed out to be identified and counted in europe....

meanwhile in africa they are left to rot in open air unidentified

[Anonymous No.12439125]

>>12439115
>identified and counted
Because covering a corpse is "civilized." Fucking holocaust denier

[Anonymous No.12439131]

>>12439115
>posts a photo of a genocide that was literally caused by Dutch racism/favouritism
You’re really not doing much to prove your point.

[Anonymous No.12439134]

>>12439022
Your false equivalencies are making you like an absolute mongoloid. Please, keep posting. This is great.

[Anonymous No.12439142]

>>12438386
Did he really say that or is this another in group white outrage thread?

[Anonymous No.12439148]

>>12439125
it was kind of a big deal that hector and patroclus had a proper funeral and burial mound

[Anonymous No.12439153]

>>12439142
Dumbass.

[Anonymous No.12439166]

>>12439142
He wrote an essay that was along those lines, yes.

[Anonymous No.12439172]

>>12439134
How is it a false equivalency? Reagan funded some Islamic terror cells to harass Russia, then they destroyed our trade center. We did it to ourselves. Huge backfire.

Then we made all our own people fat to the point of immobility and spent millions of dollars on an endless war.

Anyway, the holocaust was a much better example of European savagery than I came up with.

[Anonymous No.12439177]

>>12439148
when achilles agrees to have the body of hector washed and returned to priam is the moment he regains his humanity'' Because covering a corpse is "civilized.''

[Anonymous No.12439181]

>>12438386
I think Things Fall Apart is a great book, but I'm not giving up Conrad.

[Anonymous No.12439203]

>>12439131
Dutch racism/favouritism did this

[Anonymous No.12439216]

>>12439181
Hey look a response that isn’t fucking stupid

[Anonymous No.12439224]

>>12438937
Um sweaty, that's capitalism's fault.

[Anonymous No.12439231]

>>12439203
>inb4 fuckin' jews
You do the same damn thing.
>wah, immigrants caused my problems
>I'm actually really smart, its just Chad and the immigrants
shut the fuck up

[Anonymous No.12439253]

>>12439181
This, I love TFA and Conrad. I thought Achebe was a great author though I'm pretty racist against blacks (mostly I just don't want them around me).

I've never read his essay on Conrad but what is the upshot? I think it's pretty obvious Conrad is "racist" in various conventional senses in HOD, since he's melding the black inhabitants of the chaotic jungle with the jungle itself, dehumanizing and maybe essentializing them. But that's what you do in literature so what is Achebe's real argument? That Conrad hated niggers, or that any book that specifically aestheticizes humans as non-subjective or subhuman is somehow bad? Because tons of important books do that in important ways, it's no different essentially than how Conrad treats the jungle (or the ocean etc.) as a symbol.

I don't care if Conrad was personally racist or not, and I don't think literary license should be barred from using humans as impersonal symbols or symbolic structures. The only thing I would really strongly disagree with though is if Achebe is saying "don't read Conrad" or that Conrad's book is somehow compromised and flawed because of this, which is the same as saying "don't read it (because it's bad poetry)."

[Anonymous No.12439259]

>>12439172
>Reagan
>we

[Anonymous No.12439300]

colonialism allowed africans to propagate to such numbers that wouldn't have happened if africans had been left to their own devices.more africans are living today because of colonialism.

[Anonymous No.12439340]

>>12439231
i never said any of that,and that was a crazy rabid autistic stupid response

[Anonymous No.12439358]

>>12439131
>when blacks genocide each other, it's really the white man's fault

every time, it's getting absurd

[Anonymous No.12439380]

>>12439172
see >>12439011 again.
Actually give an argument instead of going
>durrrr 9/11

[Anonymous No.12439628]

>>12438386
nigga can hardly close his mouth lmao

[Anonymous No.12439675]

>>12438386

[Anonymous No.12439766]

>>12439358
When you give rights and privileges to one group of blacks with lighter skin and deny those same things to another group with darker skin, what do you think will happen? They wouldn’t be genociding each other if you hadn’t orchestrated their opposition in the first place.

[Anonymous No.12439784]

>>12438386
Achebe never even fucking said that.

[Anonymous No.12439804]

>>12439766
considering they are separate racial tribes im sure they have been killing and eating each other long before the white man showed up.

[Anonymous No.12439805]

>>12438977

Yeah, me too. It’s a good essay, but I have to wonder if he ever read Nostromo, which is likewise very critical of colonialism. It’s also very prophetic about new forms of colonialism that are more purely economic.

[Anonymous No.12439825]

>>12439804
>”I’m sure they...”
>proceeds to speculate wildly
Why the mental acrobatics? What’s wrong with acknowledging the colonisers seriously fucked up?

[Anonymous No.12439866]

>>12439825
Why the mental acrobatics?
my deductive reasoning is far from mental acrobatics

What’s wrong with acknowledging the colonisers seriously fucked up?
i think it was a bad move for whites because africans spread out into europe and the new world.

[Anonymous No.12439879]

Conrad is more important to read than ever. You don't have to travel up the Congo river to experience the horror of Black corruption of the soul. Today Marlow could have lead the boat crew off the Thames into South London to experience the same things he did in the heart of Africa.

[Anonymous No.12439883]

>>12438386
Conrad >>>>>>>>>>>>> any nigger "writer"

[Anonymous No.12439890]

>>12439866
They had been killing each other long before the white man arrived, they did so after he left, they're doing it now and they'll keep doing it in the future. It's time to come to the realisation that white people aren't at fault every time other races do something you find reprehensible.

[Anonymous No.12439894]

>>12439879
How did the message of the book sail so clean over your head?

[Anonymous No.12439911]

>>12439866
>deductive reasoning
>”black people kill and eat each other because I want to absolve the white colonisers of their guilt, even though I have no evidence for this claim”

>>12439890
The Rwandan genocide wouldn’t have happened had the Dutch not interfered, that’s a simple fact.

[Anonymous No.12439940]

Whites should just kill themselves now instead of this slow pitiful downfall, just go out with a bang to much shit to hang over thier heads for the rest of their existence

[Anonymous No.12439962]

>>12439911
>The Rwandan genocide wouldn’t have happened had the Dutch not interfered, that’s a simple fact.

That's interesting, considering the Dutch were never there.

The Rwandan genocide occured decades after both the Germans and Belgians had left the country, and they had only BEEN in the country for like 50 years. It's so utterly absurd to blame them for the violence that occured, you'd need to have some serious anti-white biases to find it sensible.

[Anonymous No.12439986]

>>12439300
And thats not a good thing, whitey should of realized they were worthless from the get go but had to get greedy

[Anonymous No.12440178]

things fall apart always gets way underrated here

[Anonymous No.12440476]

>>12438476
>myth

[Anonymous No.12440515]

>>12438977

>It IS a racist book but that racism is more reflective of the madness and degeneracy of the white man than anything indicative of the natives, the theme of "blackness" in the book is really just a mirror held up to the worst aspects of the colonisers

Fucking this. I don't understand how hard it is to understand this.

[Anonymous No.12440700]

>>12440476
>Le civilized European face

[Anonymous No.12440792]

>>12440476

Holy shit those are terrible photoshop jobs.

[Anonymous No.12440822]

>>12438386
>getting upset over an important milestone for post-colonialism that only uses racism to show the dehumanisation of africans under the colonial system
amazing

[Anonymous No.12441174]

>>12440700
pest control is perfectly civilized, idiot

[Anonymous No.12441373]

>>12439253
Based and level-headed-pilled

[Anonymous No.12441642]

>>12438997
book a flight already

[Anonymous No.12441645]

>>12438386
Narcissus, please

[Anonymous No.12441669]

>>12440515
It seems like it's hard for people to understand because they adopt this reddit-tier philosophy where every author is supposed to have the same thought process when it comes to issues of racial representation. So you have Conrad writing a novella that's more critical of the white man than it truly is of the natives, implying that the white man has in his heart the same kind of savagery of the supposedly uncivilized Africans, but because there's no "positive" portrayal of Africans in HoD it makes it racist.

I don't know where people lost the ability to differentiate between the views of an author and a character they write.

[Anonymous No.12441677]

>>12441669
It's just a lack of reading comprehension.

[Anonymous No.12441690]

>>12439058
>They weren't though.
he hasn't watched the wakanda movie yet, give him time

[Anonymous No.12441708]

>>12440792
HAHAHA what are you on about?

[Anonymous No.12442000]

>>12438476
I don't know what his critique of Conrad is, but you can hardly blame a Pole living in London during the 19th century for not having a more sophisticated view of Africa beyond stereotypes.

I read Heart of Darkness years ago, but I remember it ultimately saying that there was very little difference between Europeans and Africans too. I find that difficult to characterise as being racist.

[Anonymous No.12442007]

>>12438982
You can live safely in Namibia, Mozambique, the Seychelles or even Zimbabwe.

[Anonymous No.12442015]

>>12439766
a good example of this is the Bougainville Civil War in Papua New Guinea, which arose directly because of the way an Australian mining company carried out business on the island

[Anonymous No.12442030]

>>12440476
Do you consider the Japanese civilised? They very quickly turned cannibal in the second world war and ate Australian POWs even when they weren't low on rations.

[Anonymous No.12442033]

>>12438386
achebe you are posting from wakanda?

[Anonymous No.12442034]

If Africans weren't underdeveloped savages, why were they so easily conquered? Did they desire white leadership?

[Anonymous No.12442044]

>>12442000
Achebe has a hard-line view that people who are not from Africa shouldn't write about Africa and hated the idea that Africa was used as just a backdrop to tell a story about white depravity without giving any of the actual Africans the dignity of being characters.

He was a product of the times he lived in, Nigeria was still a British colony when Things Fall Apart came out. He had good reasons to be angry, but in 2019 it makes more sense to read both Conrad and Achebe and appreciate both of them for the things they do well. And white European/Americans writing about life in Africa in 2019 sure as hell aren't going to write about it the same way they would have written about it in the 19th century.

[Anonymous No.12442050]

>>12438386
without heart of darkness we would have no cannibal ferrox, without cannibal ferrox we have no modern cannibal film or meta-cannibal films like green inferno.
Direct origin of the "characterize the natives as brutal and totally alien to our western mores but through a series of meaningful events the protagonist (should she survive) realizes that the true brutality lies in the heart of her fellow whites" trope.
I mean I don't have a literature degree, this is not an academic reading, but I think that shows just how obvious a critique of colonialism this book is.
His reason for disagreeing is stupid. Read his book in high school, was pretty good but he's nowhere near Conrad in terms of skill as a writer too. I'm not trying to make some kind of black/white comparison there's plenty of black authors I'd consider to be Conrad's equal in prose (but again, not really that educated about this stuff just going by my gestalt of the way the language impresses me, how much depth I can read into the interactions, how much I enjoy it, how critics took it on its release and the current critical opinion), so you know it's not a racist thing. Why not Paul Beatty, he's great and a real sleeper and lots of 'woke' black readers haven't heard of him because his initials aren't TNC.