Abstract
Generally speaking, the uncanny in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is an aspect critics leave untouched, yet I think it deserves further pondering besides "the self-quest journey” or “the double” discussions in psychoanalytic criticism. On the other hand, putting it under the colonialistic paradigm, we find that in the 1960s and 70s, critics had chosen to develop arguments roughly based on a debate judging whether the novel is imperialistically biased or not. Inferring from this critical phenomenon, there is an uncanny effect practicing in criticism, too. Could these two phenomena be related--the uncanny ignored in Heart of Darkness by psychoanalytic criticism and the uncanny produced by colonialistic paradigm? In fact, I propose here that in the novella the protagonist escaped an uncanny from/in Europe, which is exactly performed in later literary criticisms represented by psychoanalytic and colonialistic methods, and yet he was still to be terrified with his most familiar countrymen in a foreign territory. It is not an easy job to depict completely what that uncanny is, though I tried to, and may even be a mission impossible. A never successful grasp is that depiction, which aptly explains why Conrad in this novel entangled between inferring darkness of Europeans and the Africans, darkness between the civil agents and the wilds. The uncanny is what makes it difficult to identify an object to represent the darkness inherited from a kind of authoritative/orthodox discipline which, we can name it as "European" or "philanthropic". Previous critiques in this novel do not satisfy me because they seem to be developed from an existed, well-constructed methodology. That, I propose, will miss the uncanny part in the novel. And I propose also that for the critique of the novel, the uncanny is a very important part. You cannot just utilize some existed, convenient and standard critical tools to interpret the novel. Because the darkness in the novel Heart of Darkness is exactly something like that finally everything is funneled back to the mainstream (in the novella it is the protection, the principle, or the life in the sepulchral city; in the criticism it is grandiose discourse such as colonialism, romantic self-quest theme, "the double" or Oedipus complex in psychology); however, that "something more" rustling under the stream is ignored-- because it is "not obvious enough" or it is not compliant to any existed, standard paradigm in criticism which we are accustomed to apply. Yet at the same time, do you think that in Heart of Darkness standard procedure is praised, romantic idea is recommended, or that the narrator's personal pursuing toward self-understanding is the point? Do you agree that is all the story? I started a series of dialectical processes from Freud's contemplation on heimlich/unheimlich, which he derived from the two-in-one aspect of the uncanny (1919) to humanist philosophers' questions on related fields, in order to expect not to be "disavowed" (or misguided) by the un-canny. Basically, I always wish it could be an intriguing fascination to stare at the negative in the, heart of . . .darkness. This thesis is a re-consideration of the uncanny derived originally from Freud’s definition (“The Unheimlich”, 1919) and an extension of it, partly leading to the whole study portfolio on the connection from The Uncanny to Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud, 1920) in my future studying plan. It is going to unravel the problem, the uncanny, in two levels: first, the uncanny in the text and second, the uncanny in the criticism on Heart of Darkness in order to represent the dialectic between Heimlich and Unheimlich, giving the dialectic another parenthesis in literature reading, since the uncanny never appears in form of panorama.