“What I really wanted was some rivets, by heaven!” The labours of empire

Work and production in Conrad’s “Youth” and Heart of Darkness

Dados Bibliográficos

ID21189585
AutoresJosh Hambleton-Jewell (0000-0002-9461-0947, University of Exeter, autor correspondente)
Ano2023
Volume59
Fascículo2
Páginas200-214
Data de publicação2023-03-04
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17449855.2022.2160085
OpenAlexW4313566619
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas17

Written during the decline of the imperial-capitalist international division of labour, Joseph Conrad’s maritime adventures such as “Youth” constitute some of the earliest literary registrations of the stagnation of a world-system undergirded by the exploitation of labour. This is perhaps why Fredric Jameson claims that Conrad’s fictions mark “a strategic fault line in the emergence of contemporary narrative”. Conrad’s are some of the first texts to question whether imperial capitalism actually contributed to social development in the colonies. This article argues that his representation of the inefficiency and unproductivity of work aboard the Judea in “Youth” and in the Belgian Congo in Heart of Darkness signals a broader strategy of exploring the contradictions and discontinuities of the social logic that structures capitalist accumulation. Whilst still writing within an imperial language and logic, Conrad’s portrayal of imperial inefficiency in these texts moves towards representing the colonialist division of labour from without

Adventure · Aesthetics · Ancient history · Art · Art history · Capitalism · Empire · Heaven · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · History · Joseph Conrad and Literature · Law · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

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