Colonial and Postcolonial Rewritings of "Heart of Darkness"

Joseph Conrad's novella "Heart of Darkness" (1899) is taught and read all
over the world. Everywhere, novelists and travel writers respond to it in
their own creative work. I discuss 30 responses, or rewritings, from Africa,
India, the Caribbean, Australia, Europe and the US. Their perspectives
include those of groups who identify with Conrad's Europeans and groups who
feel close to his Africans, and increasingly those of groups who situate
themselves between these two extremes in various ways. I identify world-wide
developments as well as themes, strategies and paradigm shifts that
correlate with different geopolitical situations. Rewriters address the
contribution Conrad has made to the identities of his very different
readers, and the patterns he has suggested for encounters. In ever more
intense dialogues, people from all backgrounds work through images of
themselves and of each other. However, like Conrad's narrator, they also
become aware of limits of language and communication.
Rewriters act as rereaders of the many layers of meaning in "Heart of
Darkness", and thus imply that the reader's experience is as important as
the author's. This approach is increasingly developing into a use of
discourse-analytical methods in non-theoretical texts. Rewritings can bring
"Heart of Darkness" close to the readers' lives. Rewriters champion
processes of highly personal learning and unlearning as well as political
and social approaches, and can thus help readers rework their own cultural
backgrounds. Accordingly, I both use close-reading methods and take into
account political and didactic intentions. In conclusion, I recommend
reading "Heart of Darkness" together with one or more of its rewritings, and
outline some ideas for teaching such combinations.
After comprehensive introductions to "Heart of Darkness" and to the theory
of rewritings, I discuss works by the following authors in a convenient
handbook format: Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer), Leonard Woolf, W. Somerset
Maugham, Andre Gide, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Graham Greene, Charlotte Jay,
Patrick White, Chinua Achebe, Wilson Harris, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Tayeb Salih,
Arun Joshi, J.M. Coetzee, V.S. Naipaul, Robert Silverberg, Caryl Phillips,
David Dabydeen, Marlene NourbeSe Philip, David Malouf, Mineke Schipper,
Abdulrazak Gurnah, Urs Widmer, Redmond O'Hanlon, Arundhati Roy, Barbara
Kingsolver and Jeffrey Tayler.