Confronting Racism and Hegemony in World Literature: Extending Achebe’s Critique of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

Abstract:

The interest of this paper is to examine racial issue and historical references, as well as the imperial discourse that Achebe has succinctly appropriated as thematic material and out of which his fiction emerged. The concern extends to Achebe’s theoretical directions and the important debates about racial politics and hegemony in fiction. The essay serves as a reminder that the prevailing condition of what critics refer to as post colonial culture emerged from the historical phenomenon of colonialism, with its wide range of material practices and effects such as slavery, displacement, emigration and racial as well as cultural discrimination. These material conditions and their relationship to question of ideology are the heart of the most vigorous debates in Achebe’s works. Since the colonial space is an antagonistic one, the paper reviews the divergent opinions of participants in the imperial discourse and locates the neutralizing influence of Achebe’s literature in the colonial world.